The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has unexpectedly called a summer election for July 4th, hoping to mobilize his divided Conservative Party as it lags behind the opposition Labour Party in the polls.

Sunak, standing in pouring rain outside 10 Downing Street, announced on Wednesday that he had spoken with King Charles and requested the dissolution of Parliament, paving the way for a short election campaign before the vote. "Now is the time when Britain must choose its future," he said.

With this move, Sunak ventures one of the greatest political turning points in recent British history. Many pollsters and even members of the Conservative Party have written off the Tories' chances of a fifth term, as their popularity has plummeted due to the after-effects of the pandemic and several political scandals. The Conservatives have been in power since 2010.

Under British law, the government had to call a snap election by January of next year at the latest. Most political analysts had expected Sunak to delay the election as long as possible in order to give his party a chance to close the gap in the polls.

An Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed that Labour under the leadership of Keir Starmer leads the Tories by 21 points. No governing party in the United Kingdom has overcome such a large deficit before an election in recent history.

John Curtice, a respected pollster, said last month that there was a 99 percent chance that Labour would form the next government. Starmer, a former public prosecutor who has led the party back to the center following a shift to the left under its former chairman Jeremy Corbyn, has repeatedly called on Sunak to hold an election.

Sunak, 44, recently highlighted his government's successes in curbing inflation and reducing net migration. Real wages, which had fallen sharply after the pandemic, have been slowly rising for nearly a year. Sunak has also emphasized the increase in defense spending to counter the threat of an expansionist Russia.

"Acting now gives him the advantage of surprise," said Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University in London. "It makes him appear bold rather than weak and frightened."

The Decision Surprised Many Tory MPs. When Asked How He Felt About the Election, One MP Simply Responded With a Screaming Emoji.

The Parliament will be dissolved on May 30. The election will then take place 25 working days later. In the United Kingdom, election campaigns are usually short and sometimes brutal.

During his brief speech, Sunak was almost drowned out by protesters playing "Things Can Only Get Better," the 1997 campaign anthem of the Labour Party. Over the noise, Sunak called out that the Conservatives had a plan to lead Britain through uncertain geopolitical times and stabilize the economy. "Our economy is now growing faster than expected," he said.

Shortly after Sunak's announcement, Starmer posted a campaign video on his X-account, in which he explained to voters that issues such as weak economic growth, political instability, and increasing dysfunctions in the national health system would only get worse if the Tories remained in power for another five years. "Britain deserves better," he said in the video.

Analysts said that the election result is unlikely to lead to significant political changes for the United Kingdom. Starmer has made his party, which suffered a heavy defeat at the last election, more business-friendly and has agreed with most of the country's existing foreign policy objectives, including support for Ukraine. Britain's finances are so strained that there is little room for large spending commitments.

"The truth is that we will not be able to buy our way out of the problems with the economic legacy we will inherit. We need to grow the economy and reform public services," Rachel Reeves, the Labour Party's Shadow Chancellor, recently said at an event of the Wall Street Journal CEO Council.

The British Pound Remained Largely Unchanged After Sunak's Announcement, Gaining About 0.2% Against the Dollar to $1.27. The Yields on Government Bonds Also Remained Largely Unchanged.

The upcoming election campaign is likely to come down to whether voters want change after 14 years of conservative rule. The Tories were divided over the Brexit issue which the voters supported in a referendum in 2016. Nonetheless, they achieved an overwhelming victory under Boris Johnson in 2019 with a mandate to implement Brexit.

Since then, however, the Conservatives have been dealing with numerous setbacks. The pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to a sharp decline in the standard of living across the country. Johnson resigned after a series of scandals, followed by the short tenure of Liz Truss, whose unfunded tax cuts almost led to a financial crisis before she was replaced by Sunak after just a few weeks.

Until recently, Sunak's advisors had planned for an election in October, hoping that the Bank of England would cut interest rates, which would boost voters' incomes. This was to be accompanied by a series of tax cuts in the fall.

The inflation, however, proved stubborn. It fell to 2.3% in the year to April but was higher than many analysts had expected, which reduced the likelihood of interest rate cuts by the central bank before the end of the year. Economists say that there is also little room in the British finances for significant tax cuts before the election.

The government may also hope to benefit from a plan to combat illegal migration by flying asylum-seekers to Rwanda in the coming weeks. Labour has called this plan a gimmick.

The election could be a disaster for the Conservative Party. Brexit, its main legacy of the last decade, is now unpopular. A survey by What Britain Thinks shows that 58% of Britons want to rejoin the EU. Many of the promised benefits of Brexit have not yet materialized. For instance, Brexit was supposed to reduce immigration, but legal and illegal immigration reached record highs in 2022.

The Tories’ last victory in 2019 united an unexpected coalition of voters, ranging from London bankers to workers in post-industrial towns. This coalition has now broken apart.

Labour has regained many of its traditional working-class voters, while a new party, Reform UK, has criticized pro-Brexit voters.

Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker, is struggling to win over his lawmakers with his technocratic style, and several have recently defected to other parties. Dozens of his lawmakers have announced they will not stand for re-election, forcing the party to nominate lesser-known candidates.

"I cannot and will not claim that we did everything right," Sunak said on Wednesday. "But I am confident about what we can achieve in the future."