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It’s a dramatic shift from the last general election in 2019, when the Conservatives and then-leader Boris Johnson won by a huge margin promising to finish Britain's exit from the European Union.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, 61, is a human rights lawyer, a knight, and was rumored to be the inspiration for actor Colin Firth’s brooding character in the late 1990s Bridget Jones movies.
A recent poll from the Financial Times showed that combined support for the country's two main parties is now at only 63% — an all-time low since the two-party system emerged after World War I.
Progressives and moderates across Europe are alarmed by the rise of the far right, as right-wing nationalist populist parties have performed well in other recent European elections such as in France and for the EU Parliament.
If, as polls predict, Starmer moves into the prime minister’s residence at London’s 10 Downing Street, he'll be inheriting a state with public services that have been hobbled by more than a decade of budget cuts and Conservative government-imposed austerity measures.
Last year, Sunak scrapped an over-budget, behind-schedule project that would have belatedly connected parts of England with the type of high-speed rail service that’s long been the norm in continental Europe.
