News / Politics

British PM May says June election result ‘not certain’

Friday, 21 April 2017 3:39 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 22 April 2017 4:49 PM ]

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May talks to students and first-time voters at Cox Green School in Maidenhead, south east England on April 21, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

British Prime Minister Theresa May says the result of the country’s upcoming national election is “not certain” despite the fact that polls suggest her Conservative Party is heading for a landslide victory.

In a surprise move on Tuesday, May called a snap election to be held in June in order to bolster her position before going into two years of negotiations with the European Union about Britain’s departure from the bloc.

Polls put May's Conservatives about 20 points ahead of their rivals, which is enough to win a majority that could be over 100 seats, but the prime minister said she was not complacent.

"The election campaign has only just begun. I'm not taking anything for granted. The result is not certain," she said on Friday in a speech at a GlaxoSmithKline factory in her constituency of Maidenhead.

Conservatives are leading because the Labour party has been marred by divisions over its leader Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit.

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Despite bad poll ratings, UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn however has claimed that he could still win the election in June.

He pitched himself as the anti-establishment candidate in his passionate speech on Thursday who is determined to take on the “cozy cartels” of multinational corporations that run a “rigged system” and establish a government that puts the interests of the majority first.

The Labour leader rejected the notion that a Conservative victory was a "foregone conclusion.”

Corbyn said in the vote the debate should be about the battle between "the Conservatives, the party of privilege and the richest, versus the Labour party, the party that is standing up for working people,” not on pulling Britain out of the EU.

Lawmakers in the UK Parliament’s House of Commons voted 522 to 13 on Wednesday in favor of a motion put forward by May for a “snap” election.

The election will be held on June 8, nearly a year after 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the European Union. The current Parliament will dissolve on June 3.

May said an early election will bolster the UK’s position in talks over Brexit and is in the country’s national interest. Despite this, she had repeatedly said in the past that she would not seek a new election before 2020.

Influential figures like former Prime Minister Tony Blair argue that May made the call because she knew the Labour Party is in a disadvantaged situation.

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