Background
The twin effects of COVID-19 and a last-minute Brexit deal that satisfied no-one has polarised and divided British politics like no time before it. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s solemn promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ was sufficient to hand him an 80-seat majority in parliament, which very quickly looked insecure with the triumvirate of the shambolic handling of the pandemic, the Russia Report, and good, old-fashioned sleaze and corruption.
Even so, it’s no simple task for a more centrist Labour under Sir Keir Starmer to boot the Conservatives out of office, despite the latter party’s abysmal popularity. Once a heartland, Scotland has increasingly become a single-party state in both Holyrood and Westminster.
SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continues to agitate for a second referendum (especially post-Brexit) in order to rejoin the EU. In Wales, Plaid Cymru under Adam Price have been taking a similarly populist stance, and despite the principality voting with England to leave the EU, what was once a dormant and distant dream for independence has become a very real prospect. The two leaders, already on friendly terms, coordinate their efforts to ensure the UK election as a whole results in a hung parliament, thereby strengthening their collective hand.
The Brexit Party, their sole purpose fulfilled, have morphed into The Reform Party. Nigel Farage managed to agree a formal pact with Johnson that didn’t transpire on equal terms in 2019.
The Liberal Democrats, revived under the charismatic Layla Moran, reached out to Labour as one of her first acts in power that went much further than the ‘understanding’ enjoyed by Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown in the run-up to the 1997 landslide. Despite their low base of seats, Starmer was shrewd enough to understand he needed both the Lib Dems’ and Greens’ support to make the numbers stack up. The price for coalition was PR to once and for all bring the UK into the 21st Century, becoming a truly pluralistic, representative democracy in the process.
Usually out of sight and out of mind, the battles in Northern Ireland take much more centre stage than usual, with calls for a border poll to reunite with the south. With only Sinn Féin unaffiliated with one of the duopolies, every single seat will matter in the ultimate struggle for supremacy!
Notes
I have changed every single aspect from the base file of 2019, except the constituencies and Endorsers. If you have any suggestions for the latter (especially websites/online media as opposed to print, please let me know!). Issues have been added such as transgenderism, UBI (Universal Basic Income), and BLM. (Black Lives Matter).
In the strictest sense, you can only win a majority as either Labour or the Conservatives… but in all the testing I did for this, very rarely did either reach the 326 threshold by themselves.
