RISHI Sunak has called a General Election for July 4.
The Prime Minister confirmed in a statement outside 10 Downing Street on Wednesday afternoon (May 22) that The King has granted his request to dissolve Parliament.
A July election is earlier than many in Westminster had expected, with a contest in October or November widely thought to have been more likely.
Attention now turns to possible outcomes and what this will mean for Slough and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
Labour would hold Slough and gain Windsor at the next general election, polling data has found.
The political forecasting site also predicts that Theresa May's Tory successor will hold their Maidenhead seat.
The former Prime Minister and longstanding MP for Maidenhead has sat in office since 1997.
In March Mrs May revealed that she will be standing down at the next General Election, but said it has been an "honour and a privilege".
In a statement on X (formerly Twitter) she said: "After much careful thought and consideration, I have realised that, looking ahead, I would no longer be able to do my job as an MP in the way I believe is right and my constituents deserve."
The Maidenhead Conservatives have not yet announced their candidate for the upcoming election.
Tensions are high in the town after the Liberal Democrats won a majority at the local elections last May.
Electoral Calculus, which aggregates all the latest polls, predicts a Conservative majority as the likeliest outcome in a snap general election at 61 per cent, with only a 14 per cent chance of a majority for the Liberal Democrats and a 25 per cent for Labour.
Following changes to electoral boundaries, some local areas have now found themselves in a new constituency.
This includes Langley Marish and Langley Foxborough both joining Windsor.
It is predicted that Labour has a 75 per cent chance of winning the Windsor seat in the General Election, stealing the seat from the Conservatives - who have a 24 per cent chance of taking the seat.
In Slough, Labour has an overwhelming chance of keeping their seat (96 per cent), with Tan Dhesi having represented the town since 2017.
Responding to the news of the General Election, Mr Dhesi told the Observer: “After 14 long years of Tory failures from the crashing of the economy to the record high NHS waiting list, the crumbling schools and much else besides I think the good people of Slough and the wider British public are ready for change.
“I’ll be campaigning for very strongly to make sure that in Slough I’m re-elected and that we do our bit to get a Labour government.”
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