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Seven key issues which will dominate General Election battle as Rishi Sunak declares date
Both Tories and Labour will want to stake a claim as the party of economic stability and prosperity
RISHI Sunak today fired the starting gun on the race for No10 by naming the general election for July 4.
The next few weeks will see the PM and Sir Keir Starmer set out their stalls to voters in a pitch for the highest job in the land.
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All manner of issues will be fought over - but several core battlegrounds will emerge to shape the course of the campaign.
Mr Sunak will hope to use positive economic news as a springboard to launch a defence of his record.
While Sir Keir will be countering with a devastating assessment of the last 14 years.
Here are the issues that will decide the election.
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Economy
Both Tories and Labour will want to stake a claim as the party of economic stability and prosperity.
Previous elections show that voters tend to reward the incumbent government if they feel better off - and punish them if they do not.
Sunak - an unashamed numbers bod - is most comfortable when defending his economic record and has a flurry of recent victories to sell.
Inflation has been sharply reduced to within touching distance of the 2 per cent target, Britain has exited recession, and the IMF has projected strong growth.
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He will also point to a recent spate of tax cuts - and almost certainly promise some more if he were to win.
Labour will aim to trash that record and ask voters whether they really feel better than they did 14 years ago when the Tories first got to power.
SNP's Stephen Flynn challenges Rishi Sunak over summer general election claims
Expect Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves to remind the public of Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-Budget.
But having backed most of the government’s future tax and spend plans, their challenge will be to prove they would do things any differently.
Stability or change?
Do voters want to stick with what they know, or is there an appetite for change?
The question cuts to the heart of the election, with both leaders sensing mileage in the other.
After being dealt a bad hand, Sunak has insisted he has turned things around and put the country on course for a “brighter future”.
He says Starmer would “take us back to square one.”
For his part, Starmer insists that “stability is change” and a switching of the guard is desperately needed.
Time will tell which way the voters fall.
Immigration
Summer is the high season for Channel crossings and the sight of small boat arrivals will likely raise the salience of illegal migration as an electoral issue.
Mr Sunak believes voters back his Rwanda plan and will draw a clear dividing line with Labour for vowing to axe it altogether.
Questions now hang over whether the PM can fast-track the first plane to take off before Polling Day as the civil service grinds to a halt.
Were the PM to get a plane to Kigali before polling day, the pressure would be on Labour to justify scrapping a visible possible deterrent.
The numbers are currently not in Sunak’s favour, with illegal migration running at a higher rate than any year on record.
And legal migration is still stubbornly high and miles off Boris Johnson’s 2019 pledge of 250,000.
Crime
In recent months both Sunak and Starmer have made big pitches as being tough on law and order.
Realising voters are fed up with crime going unanswered and unsolved, expect them to talk in the strongest terms about cracking down on theft, shoplifting and antisocial behaviour.
Crime has traditionally been comfortable Tory territory and Sunak will likely make pledges about giving police more powers to blitz yobs.
Election 2024: What happens next
RISHI Sunak will now formally begin the process of triggering the General Election.
He will go to Buckingham Palace tonight with a request that the King dissolves Parliament in the next few days.
Before that a process called “wash up” will take place where government bills that have not yet received Royal Assent will try to be crashed into law at breakneck speed.
It is because they will face away after the election is held and so time is off the essence.
Once Parliament is then dissolved, all MPs will automatically vacate their seats and the civil service will enter a period of effective pause known as “purdah”.
The election campaign will then go into full swing with all party leaders embarking on a whistlestop tour of battleground seats across the country.
The parties will also launch their manifestos setting out their core promises to voters.
Election TV debates and interviews will likely take place in the days leading up to Polling Day.
Then, it’s down to the voters.
But Starmer has spied an opportunity to park Labour tanks on his lawn and has been hamming up his previous career as a top prosecutor.
NHS
Cutting NHS waiting lists is the single pledge Sunak has openly admitted he is failing to hit.
He has blamed the lack of progress on endless strikes, but now rarely talks about it as an issue compared to the economy and immigration.
Labour on the other hand see it as home turf and will be hammering the government’s handling of the health service.
Polls consistently put the NHS as one of the public’s top priorities and Starmer will look to weaponise the groaning backlog.
But he will be forced to defend the Welsh Labour administration’s record which is arguably worse than the Tories’.
War
The world is becoming more dangerous and the public is looking at Sunak and Starmer to keep them safe.
Sunak will point to his recent pledge to ramp up defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 - and seize on Starmer’s refusal to match that.
Labour has outlined an “ambition” to hit that target but is yet to spell out a pathway to fund it, accusing ministers of cooking the books.
And expect Tory MPs to dredge up Starmer’s years-long support for Jeremy Corbyn.
Middle East
A knock-on effect of global unrest is the domestic reaction to the war in Gaza, which has the possibility to seriously hurt Labour.
Many of the party’s once-solid Muslim support base are furious with Starmer’s support for Israel, and previous suggestion it had a right to cut the water and electricity supply.
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The conflict cost Labour in several councils at this month’s local elections at the expense of pro-Gaza Green and independent candidates.
As the campaign develops and the Gaza bombardment continues, Starmer will be forced to walk a tightrope over placating his Muslim supporters without being too hard on Israel.
Why is Rishi Sunak calling a general election now?
By Noa Hoffman, Political Correspondent
RISHI Sunak's No10 team will have determined that right now the political landscape is as good as it's going to get for the Tories.
The PM's advisors will have also been keen to avoid a "summer of chaos" that could sink Conservative election hopes even further.
There's a sizeable chance no flights to Rwanda will be ready to take off over summer as promised - an embarrassing blow for Mr Sunak.
And the Treasury are likely to have determined there simply isn't room for major tax cuts in an Autumn Statement, previously intended as a pre-election sweetener.
With the small win of inflation hitting 2.3 per cent, now will be seen as the "least bad" option for calling an election.
That way huge issues including small boats, NHS waiting lists and a weak economy will become the problem of whoever forms the next government
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