LONDON — The most tumultuous period in post-war British history just got more tumultuous.
Over the next seven weeks and two days, Theresa May will take on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the most consequential election of the last 30 years.
On the ballot paper is Britain’s future outside the European Union.
Standing outside Number 10, the prime minister framed the election as a choice between an orderly, clean Brexit under her leadership, or a half-hearted, chaotic version under the most radical Labour leader since the 1930s.
Despite winning the Conservative Party leadership on a promise not to hold another election until 2020, May came to the conclusion that she needed one to finish the job of taking Britain out of the EU. In the end, the fundamental parliamentary arithmetic prevailed: She didn’t have the numbers.
On June 8, Britain will decide whether it wants to give her the numbers.
Here are seven takeaways from a day that took even the most cynical Westminster watcher by surprise.
1. Why now?
If she didn’t move now, May would have been bound in until at least 2019, according to senior Conservative MPs. Philip Hammond has been making the case for a snap poll behind closed doors, one close ally of the chancellor said.
The prime minister had a small window of opportunity.
She had to trigger Article 50 to convince her party and a skeptical public that she really was enacting Brexit. But if she waited any longer, it would cost her precious time and resources during the exit negotiations with Brussels.
The June election date means a new Parliament will have been formed just in time for the likely start date for the Brexit negotiations.
EU27 leaders meet on April 29 to agree on the negotiating guidelines. After that, there is a window, likely to last until June or July, during which the European Commission will draw up detailed negotiating plans for final approval by EU leaders. Until that time, nothing substantive can be agreed between the EU and the U.K. — and May has decided to squeeze a general election into this window.
2. What sparked the decision?
“It’s all about the three Ms,” one senior Conservative aide said late last week. “Manifesto, majority, mandate.”
May’s problem was simple: She had a majority in parliament to trigger Article 50 but for almost nothing else — the final Brexit package included.
She was bound by former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2015 Conservative manifesto, his narrow 17-seat working majority in the House of Commons and by her own lack of a mandate from the country despite the Conservative Party’s runaway lead in the polls.
Her impotence was illustrated by the shambles over last month’s budget when Hammond was forced to abandon his signature deficit-reduction measure because it broke a pledge made by Cameron in the run-up to the last election.
If she could not pass a tax rise on small businesses, how could she expect to extricate Britain from the EU in a manner acceptable to a majority in her party and the House of Commons?
By calling a snap election, May is looking for a mandate to secure her own Brexit — and not one beholden to the few remaining pro-European die-hards or, perhaps more pertinently, 60-odd hardline Euroskeptics unable to accept anything other than the cleanest of breaks with Europe.
It’s a general election to endorse hard Brexit, but one which may well ensure that it ends up being softer than the options currently on the table.
3. What it means for Brexit talks
How the election influences the direction of the Brexit talks depends on the outcome.
If the polls are right, and May is returned as prime minister with a bigger majority, it will strengthen her hand. There is already a democratic mandate for Brexit. This election could become a democratic mandate for her specific kind of Brexit — out of the single market, but with favorable access via a hasty free-trade agreement. Whenever there was a disagreement over what the U.K. was demanding, May could bang on the table and say it was the will of the people.
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If the election delivers a small Conservative majority, as already exists, little will change.
But there is, of course, the wildcard outcome that the election wipes out the Tory majority — which would throw all assumptions about the U.K.’s Brexit strategy into the air.
The most likely threat to the Tories appears to be a revival of the Liberal Democrats, who have been recovering in the polls since the EU referendum. The centrist party lost many seats to the Tories in 2015. If they were to win most of them back, and Labour performed better than expected, the Tories could feasibly lose their governing majority.
It is hard to see the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats governing together again as they did from 2010 to 2015, as they are now miles apart on Brexit. Lib Dem leader Tim Farron would demand huge concessions on Brexit to enter government. His party is currently calling for the U.K. to stay in the single market.
Another (unlikely) outcome is that Labour, the Scottish National Party and the Lib Dems together have enough MPs to out-vote the Tories. Such a coalition would also probably back remaining in the single market.
4. Chance to bury Labour
May would not, however, have faced pressure to call a general election if it were not for her runaway lead over Labour in the polls. The most recent for YouGov put the Conservatives on 44 percent and Labour on 23 percent.
The momentum for a snap poll was growing with each new survey pointing to a Conservative landslide: To wait until 2020 was becoming the risky option.
Over the next three years, Labour could remove Corbyn as its leader, replacing him with a more popular, centrist candidate, Tory MPs feared. Facing Corbyn was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bury Labour that should not be wasted.
The looming threat of an economic downturn, Brexit-induced or not, was also weighing on Tory minds. To go now was increasingly seen as the safe bet.
5. Rerun of 2015 … on steroids
On the steps of Number 10, May made her opening bid to frame the election choice.
“The decision facing the country will be all about leadership,” she said. “It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government led by Jeremy Corbyn, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, who want to reopen the divisions of the referendum and Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.”
It was a pitch eerily reminiscent of Cameron’s 2015 warning to the country not to let then-Labour leader Ed Miliband into Number 10, propped up by the SNP.
“Every vote for the Conservatives will make me stronger when I negotiate for Britain with the prime ministers, presidents and chancellors of the European Union,” May said. “Every vote for the Conservatives will mean we can stick to our plan for a stronger Britain and take the right long-term decisions for a more secure future.”
6. It’s not in the bag
There was a reason May won support from Tory MPs last year by promising not to hold another general election until 2020.
Cameron’s victory in 2015 was a surprise. Almost no one had expected it — including Cameron. It was the first Conservative majority since 1992, built largely on the collapse of the Liberal Democrats’ support in the South West of England and Labour’s in Scotland.
While polls show there’s little chance of a Labour revival north of the border, the prospect of a mini Liberal Democrat resurgence has not been discounted. Since Brexit, it has aspired to be the party of the 48 percent of Remainers who feel abandoned by Corbyn’s pro-Brexit Labour.
In Labour’s traditional heartlands in northern England, many opposition MPs increased their majorities against the Conservatives, meaning even with dire national polls, many seats are out of reach for even the most popular of Tory prime ministers.
May also risks undermining one of her main electoral selling points — that she is not into “playing politics.” By announcing a new election, the public may conclude that she has acted opportunistically. Or they may just be sick of voting.
May attempted to take this accusation on outside Number 10. “I have only recently and reluctantly come to this position. Since I became prime minister, I have said that there should be no election until 2020. But I have now concluded that the only way to guarantee certainty and stability for the years ahead is to hold this election and seek your support for the decisions I must take.”
May has called the election to clear up her mandate. Her risk is that she ends up muddying the waters with an inconclusive result.
7. What happens next?
Under the Fixed-Term Parliament Act, introduced in 2011 by the Coalition government, for an election to be held, a majority of two-thirds of MPs must support the motion in the House of Commons.
May said she would bring such a motion to the House on Wednesday.
Labour’s Corbyn supported May’s announcement, all but guaranteeing that the vote will pass.
The main parties will now hastily finalize their candidates to fight for the U.K.’s 650 constituencies. While the announcement came as a surprise, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have been poised to fight a snap election since last year. Labour was reported earlier this month to have set aside a £4 million fighting fund.
“Labour has been planning for an early election since Theresa May was anointed prime minister,” Matt Zarb-Cousin, until very recently an aide in Jeremy Corbyn’s office, posted on Twitter. “They are very prepared today.”