2017 UK General Election Trivia Quiz

Answer: Theresa May

The leader of the Conservative Party going into the 2015 general election was David Cameron, the MP for Witney in Oxfordshire. The Conservatives won 331 of the 650 constituencies, just over the value of 326 required to carry a majority. A majority is seen as important in the House of Commons as it gives the government the power to vote through new legislation without having to rely on the votes from other parties.

In 2016, the UK voted to exit the European Union and David Cameron resigned. After a lengthy leadership battle within the Conservative Party, Theresa May, the MP for Maidenhead in Berkshire, emerged as the new leader of both the party and the country. In 2017 she called for a new general election in an attempt to increase her majority in the House of Commons and gain a mandate for her own premiership.

Answer: False

In 2017, the Conservative Party won 318 of the 650 available constituencies. This was short of the number required to carry a 50% majority (326) and thus the UK was left in a situation known as a 'hung parliament', in which it is not fully clear how the next government will be formed.

As the Conservatives did not want to attempt to govern with a minority, they brokered a deal with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, who themselves won 10 seats, in order to hold a combined majority in the House of Commons.

Answer: 40%

Part of the reason that the Labour vote increased so dramatically from 2015 to 2017 was undoubtedly the collapse of support for some of the smaller parties that had picked up a lot of votes in 2015. However, opinion polls detected an additional surge in overall Labour support in the two weeks prior to the election, and the party increased its presence in the House of Commons from 232 seats in 2015 to 262 seats in 2017.

The 'youth vote' (those under the age of 25), also seemed to play a significant role in their gains, as the percentage turnout of young people was much higher in 2017 than 2015.

Answer: Jeremy Corbyn

After the resignation of Ed Miliband following Labour's poor showing at the 2015 general election, an internal election was carried out to find a new leader for the party. All members of the party (not just MPs) were eligible to vote under the 'one member, one vote' system that was intended to reduce the power of the trade unions within the Labour Party. There was a groundswell of support for Jeremy Corbyn (an often controversial figure from the far left wing of the party), particularly among young Labour Party members, and he won by a landslide.

His leadership led to the creation of factions within the Labour Party, with some members intensely pro-Corbyn, and others believing that he was completely unelectable. He withstood regular calls for his resignation, and in the event led his party to a significantly better result than most people had expected, safeguarding his position at least for the time being.

Answer: UK Independence Party

The main policy of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) was that the UK should leave the European Union and thus be free from the shackles of everything that that entailed. This opinion was particularly prevalent in the run-up to the 2015 general election, during which time UKIP won two by-elections and both Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless became MPs.

However, once the UK had voted for 'Brexit' in 2016, there was a clear perception that UKIP, having achieved its purpose, no longer had a role to play in UK politics. This led to significantly reduced support in the 2017 election. Another possible reason for the fall in UKIP's share of the vote was that its talismanic and leader Nigel Farage had resigned in 2016.

Answer: Nick Clegg

In the 2010 general election, no party won a majority and thus the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats entered into a coalition government in which they would jointly form a majority. The Prime Minister was the Conservative David Cameron, while the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, was appointed to the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

Many former supporters of the Liberal Democrats felt that Clegg had let them down during the coalition government, failing to keep several manifesto promises. In 2015, the Liberal Democrats won only eight seats, down from 57 in 2010. In the 2017 election this increased slightly to 12 seats, though former leader Nick Clegg lost his seat.

Answer: Brighton Pavilion

Founded in 1990, the Green Party of England and Wales had two 'principal speakers' from its founding until 2008, when a referendum was held to replace the former positions with the more traditional 'leader' and 'deputy leader' roles. Caroline Lucas was elected as the first leader in 2008, leading until 2012 when the role was taken over by Natalie Bennett. In 2016, Lucas came back into the leadership role, this time in a shared position with fellow Green politician Jonathan Bartley.

Brighton, a seaside resort on the south coast of England, is just the sort of place that would elect a Green MP.

Answer: Canterbury

In both 2010 and 2015, all 17 of the constituencies in the English county of Kent elected a Conservative Member of Parliament. In 2017, Labour challenger Rosie Duffield narrowly defeated the incumbent Julian Brazier (who had been in the position since 1987) by a majority of only 187 votes.

The smallest margin of victory in the 2017 general election was in the Scottish constituency of Fife North East, in which (after several recounts) the incumbent Scottish Nationalist Stephen Gethins beat the Liberal Democrat challenger, Elizabeth Riches, by a mere two votes.

Answer: Alex Salmond

Alex Salmond was one of the longest-serving leaders of the Scottish National Party, having led it for two 10-year terms, first from 1990-2000 and then from 2004-2014. He ran to become the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Gordon in 2015, and won the seat with a majority of over 8,000 votes.

In 2017, he lost the election to the Conservative candidate Colin Clark by a margin of over 2,500 votes. The former leader of the Scottish National Party in Westminster, Angus Robertson, also lost his seat in the 2017 election. Both were regarded as major upsets for the SNP, which in 2015 had wiped out almost all opposition to win 56 out of the 59 Westminster constituencies in Scotland. In 2017, this fell back to 35, with the Conservatives in particular making significant gains (winning 13 seats as opposed to just one in 2015).

Answer: True

Before 1987, there were less than 30 female Members of Parliament in the House of Commons at any one time. Since the 1987 election, this number has steadily increased, with 208 women elected in 2017. However, this still represents less than one third of the total number in the House of Commons, and thus there is still a little way to go before parity is reached.

The Labour Party were pioneering in the increase of female representation, running some local candidate elections with women only shortlists as early as the 1990s. The upshot of this was a dramatic increase in female MPs, notably when Labour won the general election in 1997 with over 100 women in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party saw a large increase in the number of female Conservative MPs during the 2000s, though they still only represented 21% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party in 2017.

However, it is worth remarking that the Conservative Party has so far had two female Party Leaders (and indeed Prime Ministers), as against none by Labour.