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For how long will the UK government / parliament elected on December 12, 2019 remain (serve?), if we're not counting any possible new non-regular elections?

Put in another way: When will the next regular general election for UK parliament be held?

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The current law — the 2011 Fixed Term Parliaments Act — sets the next election as “the first Thursday in May of the fifth year after the last General Election”, which would make the next scheduled General Election the 2nd of May 2024.

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    Also not counting any potential acts that might amend or repeal the FTPA.
    – Jan
    Dec 13, 2019 at 4:15
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    @Jan you can only really go by current law, as otherwise the question is essentially unanswerable...
    – user16741
    Dec 13, 2019 at 4:22
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    Correct, was intended more as a hint towards OP since they explicitly noted non-regular elections but not any changes to the FTPA.
    – Jan
    Dec 13, 2019 at 4:24
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    Note that the Tories explicitly promised to repeal the FTPA in their manifesto, and given they never wanted it and suffered under it it's reasonable to assume that they will do so. This does not materially change the answer though IMO, as the previous rules mandated a 5 year term at maximum and given their strong majority now there's no reason to suspect they'll call an earlier election.
    – Dan Scally
    Dec 13, 2019 at 8:05
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    @DavidRicherby Which is all one can do until such time it ceases to be in force. The answer also (implicitly) assumes there won't be WW3 in the interim, and that an asteroid will not devastate life on earth in 2022. There are many things that could happen to change the date... repealing FTPA is only one of them.
    – TripeHound
    Dec 13, 2019 at 11:27
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The previous answer was correct at the time it was written.

However, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 was repealed by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, which returned the (effective) power to call an election to the Prime Minister.

Quoting the linked Wikipedia page:

Section 4 of the Act provided: "If it has not been dissolved earlier, a Parliament dissolves at the beginning of the day that is the fifth anniversary of the day on which it first met." For the MPs elected in the 2019 United Kingdom general election, who first met on 17 December 2019, this means the fifth-anniversary date of 17 December 2024 and the latest possible polling day 25 working days later, which is 24 January 2025.

The 25 working days comes from the timetable laid out in Part 1 of Schedule 1 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, as amended.

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  • It's likely, though not certain, that if the current parliament continues close to the end of its term, then an election would be held a little early, to avoid campaigning during the Christmas/New Year holiday season. That's a much more important holiday season in the UK than the US: much of the UK shuts down between Christmas and New Year., and campaigning would be regarded as annoying, probably reducing turn-out.
    – John Dallman
    Nov 5, 2022 at 17:12
  • @JohnDallman Indeed. Prior to the FTPA, PMs had tended to call elections in the spring anyway; prior to 2019, the last elections not to be in April, May or June were the two in 1974 (Feb and Oct that year); before that, there's less of a trend, with a number of autumn elections.
    – Steve Melnikoff
    Nov 5, 2022 at 17:22

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