Prime Minister calls July General Election

Voters in Stockport are being asked to go to the polls once again as Rishi Sunak calls a General Election to take place on 4th July.

The announcement ends recent speculation as to when a General Election, due by January 2025, would take place, with the Prime Minister having previously stated one could be expected in the second half of the year.

Speaking outside 10 Downing Street in the rain, the Prime Minister highlighted recent economic good news, including the return to growth for the economy and falling inflation in his speech announcing the election date. The announcement less than a month after voters went to the polls in local, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections, which saw Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives slip into third place behind the Liberal Democrats in the number of council seats won.

The 2024 General Election will be the first fought under new constituency boundaries that will see the number of MPs representing the borough reduced to three. The Denton & Reddish constituency is being abolished, with wards in Stockport transferred to the Stockport constituency. Elsewhere, Manor ward now forms part of the Hazel Grove constituency, while the Cheadle constituency is unchanged.

Currently, Stockport’s four constituencies are represented by two Labour MPs, Navendu Mishra and Andrew Gwynne (who will contest the new Gorton & Denton seat across Manchester and Tameside), one Conservative MP, Mary Robinson, and one Independent, William Wragg, who resigned the Conservative whip earlier this year, and previously confirmed he will not be standing for re-election. Stockport’s Cheadle and Hazel Grove seats are set to be a three-way battleground over the coming campaign period with Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which had held both seats until 2015, vying for residents’ votes.

This is election will also be the first to take place since new voter ID requirements were introduced, and will be the first July election since 1945, and King Charles III’s first as monarch.