(30 Oct 2019) Londoners on Wednesday had mixed reactions to Tuesday's decision by the House of Commons to back an early national vote. While some said that the incumbent party's role in Brexit "has ensured I will never vote for the Conservatives ever again", others predicted that the current government will stay in power after and election because "if they win by a majority, then Brexit happens."
Britons will be heading out to vote in the dark days of December in an election that could break the country's political impasse over Brexit — or turn out to be merely a temporary distraction.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes electing a new crop of lawmakers will give his Conservative Party a majority and break the stalemate that blocked his plan to take Britain out of the European Union this month.
This week the EU granted Britain a three-month Brexit extension until January 31.
But after three years of inconclusive political wrangling over Brexit, British voters are weary and the results of an election are hard to predict.
Among them is, Richard Peck, from Winchester, England, who said: "I think we are into a set of turmoil because the politicians can't sort it out themselves, its ridiculous."
The House of Commons voted 438-20 — with dozens of lawmakers abstaining — for a bill authorizing an election on December 12.
It will become law once it is approved Wednesday by the unelected House of Lords, which does not have the power to overrule the elected Commons.
The road to polling day opened up when the main opposition Labour Party, which had opposed three previous attempts by Johnson to trigger an election, changed its position.
Now that Brexit has been delayed, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would vote in favour of an early election because the prospect that Britain could crash out of the EU without a divorce deal had been taken off the table.
An election is a risk, though, not only for Conservatives but also for Labour.
Opinion polls currently give Johnson's Conservatives a lead, but there's a strong chance that an election could produce a Parliament as divided over Brexit as the current one.
Many voters are fed up with politicians from all sides after more than three years of Brexit drama, and all the parties are worried about a backlash from grumpy voters asked to go to the polls at the darkest, coldest time of the year.
"I think it has been caused by hubris, by a lot of politicians that have been playing a lot of games..for me it is a complete waste of time," said, Andrew, from London, who declined to give his last name.
The looming vote comes two and a half years before the next scheduled election, due in 2022, and will be the country's first December election since 1923.
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