A GENERAL Election could happen on November 14, according to the former chancellor George Osborne.
Speaking on Political Currency, the podcast Osborne hosts with the former Labour cabinet minister Ed Balls, Osborne (below) said he had been told Rishi Sunak’s team were looking towards the date in mid-November – which will be a Thursday – as the target for an election.
Sunak previously said his “working assumption” is that he will hold the vote in the second half of the year, while Conservative sources say a final decision has not yet been taken over a date.
Speaking on the podcast, Osborne said: “A little birdie has told me that the various work programmes required to get ready for a General Election have that date singled out – November 14.
“By the way, logic leads you there because you’re not going to have it in the first half of the year. I mean, this pretence that Rishi Sunak could have a May election was something we discussed last year. It’s a non-starter. He’s more than 20 points behind in the opinion polls. He’s not going to have a spring election.
“So then you’re left with the autumn. And you’re probably thinking: ‘I know, we’ll have the party conference as a kind of launch pad. We’ll fit in an autumn statement, like a mini-Budget, either before that or immediately after it.’ And that kind of leads you into mid-November. So November 14 kind of writes itself.”
Sunak has until January 2025 to hold a General Election.
It was previously speculated that he would do so in May this year, but the Prime Minister clarified that he was thinking of a date in the second half of the year.
He told broadcasters: “My working assumption is we’ll have a General Election in the second half of this year and in the meantime I’ve got lots that I want to get on with.”
An election on November 14 would mean Sunak announcing it at or around the Conservative Party conference in early October.
