UNITED KINGDOM

It is less than two years since the last UK general election, ten months since the Brexit referendum and some nine months since the present occupant of 10 Downing Street replaced David Cameron. They say a week is a long time in politics. Yesterday, the prime minister announced that the country would face yet more upheaval: a snap general election on June 8. Polls suggest that Theresa May’s Conservative Party will win comfortably. However, what shouldn’t be in doubt is that Britain’s negotiations with the European Union will make the election a far more complicated contest than Britain has seen in many years.

Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act of 2011, Mrs May needs the backing of two-thirds of the House of Commons to validate the calling of an election. Curiously, her own MPs will have to vote in favour of a motion-of-no-confidence in the government in order to bring the election about. But the sanctioning seems likely to be a formality: the leaders of the main opposition parties have already said they are in favour.

Whilst opposition parties could hardly be seen to turn down a chance to eject the government, the glaring truth is that for many in the Labour Party the election is uncomfortably timed. The official opposition trail the Tories in the polls by more than 20 percentage points, attributed mainly it is said to the unpopularity of Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Mr Corbyn, a far-left socialist, was chosen with enthusiasm by the party’s members in 2015, and again in 2016, but who has failed uncharismatically to appeal to voters more widely.

What seems more probable is that Mrs May will easily extend her working majority, which currently stands at just 17. An electoral boost will give her a freer hand both in her EU negotiations and in setting an agenda at home (where she has so far proposed very little). A lack of obtaining a direct mandate is likely to be weighing heavily on the prime minister’s mind: she has never won a general election, having succeeded her predecessor at the helm of government only via a Tory Party leadership contest.

In Mrs May’s statement, she went further than announcing her intention to seek an election. She implied, too, that it was a chance to heal divisions over Brexit. “The country is coming together, but Westminster is not,” she said. In fact, something like the reverse is true: whereas polls and street marches show that a large minority remain bitterly against Brexit, in February MPs dutifully backed the legislation allowing her to trigger it by 492 votes to 122. Nonetheless, winning a general election would allow Mrs May to claim popular backing for her “hard” approach to Brexit—including taking Britain out of the EU’s single market—something that the referendum did not specify.

For the prime minister to go to the country as she has carries risks. One immediate penalty for doing so is giving up nearly two months of the government’s time and energy, when it has just two years to negotiate its exit terms with the EU. Notwithstanding a window that was already deemed narrow, the government’s agenda for agreeing Brexit terms looks even more hurried. Time is scarce and the clock is ticking. Mrs May might have calculated that not much really is going to happen until after the German elections in September, so there will be little to lose.

Another complicating factor is the unstable situation in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Only recently Mrs May turned down a request by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, for an independence referendum in Scotland, on the basis that it would be irresponsible to hold such a vote when the terms of Brexit were not yet clear. It is hard to see why the same cannot be said of holding a general election now in Britain. In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, the power-sharing government is currently suspended, and there is the prospect of a fresh election to its devolved assembly.

The divisions over Brexit and the unpredictable consequences in how people will cast their vote is likely to be the biggest complication at home. The populist UK Independence Party was jubilant after achieving its defining ambition of Brexit last summer, and was billed by some as a future rival to Labour in many parts of England; it has, however, since flopped in by-elections. The left-leaning Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, have defined themselves as the opponents of Brexit, a strategy which has seen them picking up seats in council and parliamentary contests since the EU referendum. Some senior Conservatives worry that the Lib Dems will deprive them of victory in many parts of London and the south-west. These factors meant that the decision to go to the country was harder than it might have looked for a prime minister with a near-record lead in the polls.

Last year Mrs May ruled out an election before 2020. In performing a U-turn, she seems to have decided that the gamble is one worth taking.