On the UK Parliament e-petitions webpage, a petition has been created calling for an early general election to be called, with its creator stating that:

I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.

At time of writing, it has garnered more than five times as many signatures than the 100,000 required for a parliamentary debate to be held on the subject, with the UK Government not yet issuing a response.

Following the repeal of the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the prerogative power to call general elections was effectively restored to the Prime Minister. As Labour won a Commons supermajority in 2024, albeit due to the distortive effects of the First Past the Post system, Keir Starmer is more likely to push the next general election as far back as possible until (perhaps) his government’s actions are only memories.

However, if another general election were to happen about four years ahead of schedule, what would happen and how would our party respond?

The 2024 election ended nearly a decade of chaos under the Conservatives. Following austerity, a botched Brexit deal, the mismanaged COVID-19 response, corruption and sleaze, the mini-budget and the cost-of-living crisis, the British people voted to get them out of office, which by default got Labour into power. It also witnessed increased fortunes for third parties. Whilst we won 72 seats, near-proportionate to our total vote share, the three highest-polling third parties – the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Green Party of England and Wales – won a combined vote share of one-third, comparable to Labour’s. The UK election was one of many in 2024 that followed a worldwide anti-incumbency trend, and the failed delivery of meaningful change has prompted this call for a new election.

As the opinion polls currently stand, Labour and the Conservatives are practically neck-and-neck, often polling in the high twenties. It has not even been five months since the Conservatives fell from power, and not even one since Kemi Badenoch was elected as their new leader. With the Conservatives seemingly shifting rightwards to fend off the challenge from Reform UK, are they likely to, at the very least, outpace Labour in either vote or seat shares?

Given the public’s palpable disaffection with both major parties, a hung parliament could possibly result from a very early election. Such a situation would be conducive to enacting serious reform through concessions extracted from either of the major parties. However, this would depend on two factors.

The first would be the parliamentary arithmetic resulting from such an election. To act as kingmakers, we would need to retain a seat share constituting the third-most in the Commons. However, Reform UK could build upon their election wins and garner a larger seat share. If either major party were a dozen or a score of seats shy of winning a majority, who would they be more willing to cooperate with, given the policy concessions likely to be demanded.

The second would be the sort of working relationship we would want to form. The Cameron-Clegg coalition did witness the enactment of several Liberal Democratic policies. However, many of our policies were either stymied or later reversed, with collective responsibility resulting in our acceptance of blame for austerity and the undermining of our popularity and reputation for years. Instead of a coalition, we may well opt for a confidence-and-supply agreement, whereby we would automatically support the Budget and forego ministerial positions in exchange for the passage of some of our policies whilst avoiding supporting policies unpopular with the public or contrary to our beliefs. Say what you want about the Democratic Unionists, but at least they got a great many concessions from their 2017 deal with the Conservatives. We could even go with a power-sharing agreement, such as the Bute House Agreement between the Scottish Nationalist Party and the Scottish Greens, a halfway house that would grant us the prestige of Cabinet posts whilst allowing us to avoid responsibility for unpopular policy or even U-turns. However, given the negative outcomes that these arrangements had for the major parties involved, and the major parties’ likely presumed right to govern, would we be forced to choose between a coalition or nothing?

While it is unlikely that this e-petition will bring about an early general election, the unpopularity of both major parties may well persist for the next four or five years, at which time these considerations may well still be valid.

* Samuel James Jackson is the Chair of the Policy Committee of the Yorkshire and the Humber Liberal Democrats and had served as the Liberal Democratic candidate in Halifax during the 2024 general election.