2017 United Kingdom general election
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Key Takeaways
- The Conservative Party, which had governed as a senior coalition partner from 2010 and as a single-party majority government from 2015, was led by May as prime minister.
- Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 an election had not been due until May 2020, but Prime Minister May's call for a snap election was ratified by the necessary two-thirds vote in the House of Commons on 19 April 2017.
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Source summary
WikipediaA general election was held in the United Kingdom on 8 June 2017, two years after the previous general election in 2015; it was the first since 1992 to be held on a day that did not coincide with any local elections (2001's elections, local and general, were delayed by a month due to that year's foot-and-mouth outbreak). The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister Theresa May remained the largest single party in the House of Commons but lost its small overall majority, resulting in the formation of a Conservative minority government with a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland.
The Conservative Party, which had governed as a senior coalition partner from 2010 and as a single-party majority government from 2015, was led by May as prime minister. It was defending a working majority of 17 seats against the opposition Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. It was the first general election to be contested by either May or Corbyn as party leader; May had succeeded David Cameron following his resignation as prime minister the previous summer, while Corbyn had succeeded Ed Miliband after he resigned following Labour's failure to win the general election two years earlier.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 an election had not been due until May 2020, but Prime Minister May's call for a snap election was ratified by the necessary two-thirds vote in the House of Commons on 19 April 2017. May said that she hoped to secure a larger majority to "strengthen [her] hand" in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations.
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