Date of Next UK General Election

[The Oncoming Storm]

It will be May 6th 2010. There are local elections in England on that day and GE's are usually timed to coincide with local polls, historically Callaghan and Major went on the equivalent dates in 1979 and 1997, both of them were PM's at the end of a 5 year parliament and who led unpopular governments.

Brown can go on until June but the consensus on UK political sites is that if he tries on go on past May 6th, the electorate will be very unhappy and will give Labour an almighty hiding in those polls. This will destroy much of what remains of Labour's activist base across most of England and they may not be able to put up a credible election campaign in many areas.

If the locals coincide with the GE then it will be interesting to see how they pan out. A fact lost from Blair's triumph in 1997 was that the Tories actually did very well in the county council elections that year, regaining control of authorities such as Essex and Surrey that they had lost in 1993, which was held in the aftermath of Black Wednesday and was the first chance the electorate had to express it's displeasure with Major. Similarly it will be interesting to see if Labour can start to claw back some of the strength it's lost in local government over the last few years.

[The Oncoming Storm]

It's also rare for a parliament to run into it's fifth year, this is the 6th time since the war. Certainly Callaghan was forced to go on May 3rd after losing the confidence vote when he could, in theory have hung on until November 1979. Major in 1992 was level pegging with Labour in the polls and he was able to choose his moment, in contrast to 1997 when all he could do was wait until the last possible moment and hope that something came up.

In contrast Thatcher in 1983 and 1987 was able to use the local elections as a barometer of the public mood so she could go to the country a month later. Had those results been disappointing then she had the option of waiting for another year.