Next UK General Election thread

[cp]

Isn't May (assuming she remains PM) only set out to continue what was supposed to be Cameron's term? 

Thus, wouldn't the next election be in 2020, barring any early elections?

No. When an election is called the preceding 'term' ends and the proverbial clock is reset to 5 years.

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A random question.

What would the UK people recommend for an American who's become intrigued by the British electoral ongoings to familiarize himself enough to not be a complete idiot in commenting by regurgitating the hot takes of Twitter?

I've been scrolling through past British elections on Wikipedia, and suchlike, but clearly, British political traditions and customs are very unlike the United States so I can't really comment with knowledge here.

Not to derail the thread or anything. Sorry about that.

Great question! I think you're already doing the right thing. Expand your wikipedia readings to include articles on British history, institutions, and major figures and you'll start to get a better idea over time. Don't get too frustrated by how much there is to learn, though. Some people spend their whole lives trying to understand British politics and still don't know it all!

If you have specific questions then feel free to DM to ask me.

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Anyways atleast 2 years away, so kind of meaningless.

Why 2 years, do you say?

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Wow. Fantastic discussion here! I'll add my two cents/pennies here, as I'm a Canadian who now lives in the London commuter belt (Cobham):

Parochialboy's point about the elite and milesiunn's point about the surbubs are both spot on. The Tories in the UK are akin to the Liberals in Canada in that they are both the party of the establishment, consensus, and small-c conservative bourgeois values. This makes them intrinsically more appealing to the affluent and long-established (i.e. not immigrant) communities that make up most of the Home Counties near London. Meanwhile, Canadian Tories/British Labour represent a challenge to the status quo, and hence are only really considered when there's been a major scandal, and even then, their support is too thin and too poorly organized to ever win. I sometimes explain this to outsiders by saying: For middle-class Brits, voting Labour is a decision, voting Tory is a habit.

There's also the issue of constituency boundaries. The constituencies in and around London tend to be quite compact. When laid over the regional urban planning designs, it produces a map where densely packed, urban areas (think Kingston or Croydon) are 'contained' in one or two competitive ridings, while the much less dense, ex-urban/semi-rural, and ultra affluent (i.e. gated communities) areas between them get ridings of their own. We have very few ridings that bridge both zones, like, say, Ottawa-South or Aurora-Newmarket.

One last point I'll bring up: the UK Tories have been guided *far* more by their fringe (right) wing than the Canadian Liberals have by their fringe (left) wing, especially over the past 5-10 years. This may be due to the role of third parties (the NDP drifting toward the centre during the Layton/Mulcair years and the rise of UKIP on the right), but I think the entrenched Tory advantage in places like the M25 area is the more likely culprit. The UK Tories don't have to compete for centrist minded voters here, so they drift more easily to the right.

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None of them is a perfect analogue. Saskatoon and Manitoba don't really have a large swatch of suburban ridings that would cultivate this relationship with one party or another. BC and Australia do, but they're far more diverse and far more middle-class (as opposed to stinking rich) than most of the M25-area constituencies.

I don't think the average UK voter is any more or less conservative than the average Canadian, Australian, or even American one, or that the country as a whole is appreciably more or less conservative (I'm not convinced such categorizations aren't just partisan rhetoric dressed up as analysis). However, something that struck me from living in the UK for a while is how the existence of the monarchy/aristocracy insinuates itself into all aspects of political and social life in a way it doesn't come close to in Canada. If I had to pin the enduring conservatism of the British middle class on any one factor, it would be that.

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Would Hillingdon count? That's Boris Johnson's seat and, from what I understand, pretty lockstep Tory.

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Good points. Defeating Johnson would also resonate more than the typical outer-borough London Tory going down to defeat, especially in the event of an overall Labour victory. It would be a 'Portillo moment', as the commentators over here often say.