Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
When Nigel Farage launched his “shadow cabinet” last week he made a remarkable prediction: “a general election is coming next year“.
It’s not the first time he’s made that claim. Back in September he used his party conference speech to warn delegates to be ready for an early general election. And in a speech to a City of London audience in November, he prophesied that a financial crisis would force the government to the polls in 2027.
In 2026, he’s still “absolutely certain” that this will come to pass. But how can Mystic Nige be so sure?
Under the terms of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, an election doesn’t have to be held until the 15 August 2029. Even if the government doesn’t wait until the bitter end — and calls an election in the autumn of 2028 or the spring of 2029, we’re still less than half way through the likely duration of this parliament.
Furthermore, the governing party has every reason to play for time.
On poll ratings of 20 per cent or less — and with rival parties advancing on the Left as well as the Right, Labour seat losses could exceed 300. That would be the heaviest landslide defeat in the British history — worse even than the Tory humiliations of 1906, 1945, 1997 and 2024. Worse too than Labour’s nadir — the loss of 235 seats in 1931. So given the party’s huge majority, why wouldn’t they hold on in the hope that something turns up?
The notion of a 2027 general election would thus appear to lack all credibility. Or at least it would if Nigel Farage didn’t have a track record of spotting — and exploiting — the political possibilities that everyone else has overlooked. After all, who was it that thought that a fringe party like UKIP could be used to force an In/Out referendum? Who was it that imagined that an entirely new party could defeat a concerted establishment effort to overturn Brexit? And who was it that turned that single-issue party into a general purpose vehicle to bring about the most significant realignment of British politics in a hundred years?
None of this means you have to agree with Nigel Farage or even like the man — but only a fool would write-off his political instincts.
But if we’re to take his big prediction seriously, then we need to work out how a 2027 election might actually happen.
For the sake of argument, let’s kick off with the remotest possibility — which is that an election is triggered not on the Prime Minister’s initiative, but that of King Charles III. In theory, the dissolution of Parliament is a royal prerogative, but in practice the monarch acts on the advice of his or her ministers. To break with that centuries-old convention would take a truly extraordinary crisis — for instance, a credible allegation of treason at the highest levels of government.
Somewhat less unlikely is a constitutional crisis provoked by, say, an attempt to change the electoral system or rejoin the European Union in the absence of either a manifesto commitment or a referendum. If such a move were to be blocked by the House of Lords, and the government tried to invoke the Parliament Act to break the impasse, then conceivably the King could use his right to “advise, encourage and warn” the Prime Minister to seek a fresh electoral mandate.
Let’s move on to more likely scenarios — starting with Farage’s own prediction of a financial crisis. As Liz Truss could tell you, our national finances are delicately poised. So imagine that a run on the pound forces the current government to slash public spending. That, in turn, could lead to an anti-austerity rebellion in the Labour ranks and further turmoil on the money markets. Without an effective majority, the Prime Minister would either have to turn to the opposition parties in order to govern — or go to the country. I doubt that Keir Starmer would want to become a second Ramsay MacDonald, so it’s more likely he’d ask the British electorate to resolve the situation.
Are there any other circumstances that might produce a majority-destroying split in the Parliamentary Labour Party? Two plausible scenarios come to mind. The first is a rift over British participation in a war — especially if the conflict involved siding with Donald Trump and/or Israel. Given the lingering scars of the Iraq War, I don’t see enough Labour backbenchers backing a Labour PM in any remotely similar situation.
The other trigger point for a Labour split might be over immigration policy. In most circumstances, Starmer would prefer to remove Shabana Mahmood as Home Secretary than risk a Labour civil war over her comparatively hardline stance. If, however, the country were faced with an immigration emergency — for instance, a dramatic surge in the number of small boats — then the credibility of the government might rest on taking tough action or breaking an international treaty. If enough of his own MPs were unwilling to support him in such a crisis, going the country would be more palatable than going to Kemi Badenoch for help.
There is another way for a governing party to deal with disunity — and that’s to change its leader (and hence the Prime Minister). The Conservative Party is in no position to complain about any Labour switcheroo, given that we’ve performed the same manoeuvre on no less than four occasions since 2016.
Of course, swapping leaders in office doesn’t mean that an election has to follow shortly thereafter. In fact, the time it takes for an “unelected” PM to go the country varies quite widely — it was about 15 months for John Major, 9 months for Theresa May, 3 months for Boris Johnson and 19 months for Rishi Sunak. In recent decades, Gordon Brown is alone in holding out for more than two years — and that is hardly the most encouraging precedent. So if Keir Starmer is pushed out by his party later this year, past form suggests that a 2028 election is more likely than one next year.
However, that is to assume that the transfer of power goes relatively smoothly. Like Samson bringing down the temple, an embattled Prime Minister can always threaten his internal enemies with an early election. Indeed, “allies” of Keir Starmer have already done just that. If it comes down to it, I don’t think he’d would follow through on such a threat, but there are other ways in which a change of leadership can go badly wrong.
You may recall how the 2016 Conservative leadership race descended into farce after a series of unfortunate events forced one candidate after another to withdraw. In the end, only Theresa May was left standing and she won by default. This year it’s conceivable that Labour could go one better and find itself with no viable candidates for Prime Minister. There’s all sorts of ways in which the campaigns of people like Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Ed Miliband could all blow-up on the launchpad — in which case, Keir Starmer (as caretaker PM) might feel obliged to call a general election.
Alternatively, a new Labour Prime Minister might attempt to lead the government in a radically different direction — for instance to compete or align with the Greens. Again, that could be the cause of an election-triggering split in the parliamentary party.
I’ll finish with one last possibility — and I think an under-rated one. You see, sometimes, the power to call a snap election proves irresistible. Theresa May found that out to her cost in 2017. The polls might have suggested that her decision was a rational one, but the evident unpreparedness of the Conservative campaign revealed that it was anything but. Ditto the summer election of 2024 — for which the party was also clearly unprepared. But the most spectacular recent example is from France, when in response to heavy losses in the European elections, Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly three years before he had to. To this day, it’s unclear what he’d hoped to achieve, but the outcome was catastrophic — his allies lost 86 seats and the assembly was polarised between the radical Left and the populist Right. As a result what remains of Macron’s presidency is effectively paralysed.
It may be that Keir Starmer has learned something from these reckless gambles. Then again, the lesson of history is that desperate politicians tend to do desperate things.