Britain is to hold a general election on December 12. It is a decision that the country’s political class hopes will end once and for all the damaging debate and procedural manoeuvres about how, when or whether the UK will leave the European Union.
Although after three years and four months of argument and uncertainty the British Parliament finally voted in principle on October 22 for a withdrawal bill, the same parliamentarians then rejected the extraordinarily short three-day timetable the Conservative Government had proposed for scrutiny of the country’s most important legislation in decades.
Now in an attempt to end the deadlock, the same UK parliament has agreed to try to resolve the issue through a general election which each of the main political parties hope will result in them being able to deliver or reject Brexit, improve Britain’s long-term economic and social prospects, determine the future of its union of four nations, and remake its place in the world.
