The United Kingdom will hold its first national election in almost five years on Thursday, with opinion polls suggesting that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party will be punished for failing to deliver on promises made during 14 years in power.
The center-right Conservatives took power during the depths of the global financial crisis and have won three more elections since then. But those years have been marked by a sluggish economy, declining public services and a series of scandals, making the Tories, as they are commonly known, easy targets for critics on the left and right.
