British lawmakers on Tuesday approved the conduct of a snap general election in the United Kingdom on December 12.
The new election date comes after members of the house of Commons voted 438 votes to 20 in favour of the motion proposing the conduct of a general election on December 12, rather than December 9 as championed by the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Liberal Democrats.
The bill is still to be approved by the House of Lords, but could become law by the end of the week.
If the date is approved by the upper house, it will be the first election to be conducted in the UK since 1923.
The UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who championed the conduct of a new election, said the public must be “given a choice” over the future of Brexit and the country.
He hopes the election will have a lot of his fellow Conservative Party members win, get a fresh mandate for his Brexit deal and break the current parliamentary deadlock, which has led to the UK’s exit being further delayed to January 31, 2020.
He added that it is time for the country to “come together to get Brexit done”.
However, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the major opposition Labour Party, described the election as “once-in-a-generation chance”.
“This election is a once-in-a-generation chance to transform our country and take on the vested interests holding people back,” Corbyn said.
He said his party would “now launch the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change that our country has ever seen”.
Discussion about this post