What you need to know about the UK’s upcoming general election

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has taken the biggest gamble of his troubled premiership by calling an early general election that almost everyone believes he will lose.

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has taken the biggest gamble of his troubled premiership by calling an early general election that almost everyone in Westminster believes he will lose. We’ll know on 4 July whether the decision was a masterstroke or a misfire. If, as current polls indicate, the opposition Labour party triumph, it will finally bring down the curtain of a 14-year era of Conservative rule, ushering in a center-left government led by former barrister Keir Starmer. Any other outcome would mean Sunak has orchestrated a shocking victory that even many in his own party believe is beyond reach – and would result in the Conservatives extending a political dynasty towards a third decade. Here are some key questions answered. Sunak was obliged to call an election by December and hold it by the following month, but until that deadline – five years on from the last vote – the decision of when to stage a poll is in the gift of the prime minister.