This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Ramnik.

On the 4th of July, while we're watching the parades and the fireworks,

and drinking a couple billion dollars worth of beer, Over in the United Kingdom, citizens will go

to the polls. And if predictions are correct, they're going to vote the current government

out of power. The Conservative Party has run the UK for most of the past

14 years, an era of steep economic decline. Four years after Britain left the

EU, some of Brexit's biggest advocates

acknowledged that it's been a disaster, in soccer terms, an own goal on a historic scale.

The economy has sort of flatlined basically since 2010.

Brexit's disaster.

We've staggered out of COVID and Ukraine War the health services and bits the education

some bits and everybody is genuinely fed up.

Rory Stewart is uniquely placed to enlighten us about what's happened in Britain and what's about to happen.

He spent nine years as the Conservative Member of Parliament and he quit the government before Brexit took place.

Now Rory Stewart co-host,

The rest is politics, one of the most popular podcasts in the UK.

Roy, the Prime Minister of Britain, Rishi Sunak, has called an election, which is party the

Conservatives are expected to lose and maybe lose badly to the Labour Party. Everything about that sentence is completely confusing to an American.

So we have elections at fixed times. Why does a Prime Minister call an election and if you're Rishi Sunec, why would you call an election if your party is almost bound to lose?

Well, good questions.

First on the constitutional point, in Britain, as in places like France, there are no fixed terms,

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