00:00On May the 22nd, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took the country by surprise
00:04when he stood here in Downing Street, in the pouring rain, without an umbrella,
00:08and announced that there would be an election on July the 4th.
00:11Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future.
00:15To decide whether we want to build on the progress we have made
00:18or risk going back to square one with no plan and no certainty.
00:22He had until the end of the year to name the date
00:25and most people had expected he would wait until the fall.
00:28Sunak is urging voters to back the Conservative Party, which he leads
00:31and which has been in office since 2010 under five different Prime Ministers.
00:35The left-of-centre Labour opposition has lost four straight elections,
00:39but under its leader Keir Starmer it has had a steady lead in opinion polls
00:43for more than a year and is widely expected to win on Thursday.
00:47This is an election dominated by the cost-of-living crisis,
00:49which has seen mortgage rates soar, the prices for food and energy spike,
00:54and has left millions of people in the UK struggling to pay their bills.
00:58The Conservative Party, which presided over this cost-of-living crisis,
01:03is arguing that its economic plan is now working.
01:06Interest rates have gone way down.
01:08They are just over 2% after reaching 11% in late 2022,
01:12and they claim that a Labour government will raise people's taxes.
01:15Labour, in contrast, insists that it wouldn't raise personal taxes
01:19and says it would invest heavily in infrastructure and green energy
01:24and get the economy growing, and that would raise more taxes
01:27and allow it to invest more in public services.
01:29Other major issues include the struggling National Health Service
01:32and the high rate of immigration to the UK,
01:34which is symbolised by the tens of thousands of people each year
01:37who try to reach this country in small boats across the English Channel.
01:41The promise to stop the boats has been key to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's premiership.
01:46He developed a contentious plan to send some asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda.
01:51That has yet to happen, and his failure to live up to that plan
01:54may well hurt him at the polls.
01:56The Conservative campaign got off to a pretty inauspicious start
01:59with that rain-soaked announcement by Sunak, and it hasn't really taken off.
02:03Sunak has made a number of unforced errors,
02:06most notably leaving commemorations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day in France early
02:11so that when world leaders including President Biden and French President Macron were standing there,
02:16he was nowhere to be seen, but Keir Starmer did attend.
02:20Lately there has also been a growing scandal over gambling
02:25with the Gambling Commission and police investigating reports
02:28that Conservative candidates and people close to the government
02:31made bets on the date of the election before it was announced,
02:35which potentially could mean some insider knowledge.
02:39Labour has taken an extremely cautious approach to the campaign.
02:43It's often likened to Keir Starmer being like a man carrying a very expensive vase
02:48across a highly polished floor and not wanting to drop it.
02:51They just want to preserve that lead that they have in opinion polls
02:55and get to polling day without messing things up.
02:59Critics say that's led them to be very cautious to avoid big promises
03:03and generally to have a kind of uninspiring campaign.
03:06There are almost 50 million people eligible to vote in this election.
03:09On Thursday they can go to the polls and elect a lawmaker for their local district.
03:13There are 650 seats in total in the House of Commons
03:17and the party that either gets a majority or can form a coalition to command the majority
03:22will form a government. Their leader will become Prime Minister.
03:26It is almost certainly going to be either Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer.
