🎄⭐️GENERAL ELECTION 2019⭐️🎄
BRITAIN will head to the polls for the first General Election to be held in December since 1923 after the Early Parliamentary General Election Bill passed through both Houses of Parliament.
The poll - on Thursday 12 December - will be the fourth in a decade which has also included votes on Scottish membership of the United Kingdom in 2014 and UK membership of the European Union in 2016.
Of course, it is since the result of the latter referendum that Parliament has basically been gridlocked and unable to find any sort of way forward.
As briefly as possible then, here is how events have unfolded in the last three-and-a-half years...
On 23 June 2016 - a matter of 1,225 days ago now - the UK opted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.89% to 48.11% with England and Wales largely voting to leave, while Scotland and Northern Ireland largely voted to remain.
Then-Prime Minister David Cameron immediately resigned and Theresa May emerged as the last woman standing following a rather messy Conservative leadership election in which the initial favourite - Boris Johnson - did not even stand.
Mr Cameron had at least bequeathed a majority in the House of Commons to Mrs May, albeit only a relatively small one of 17.
But, with the Conservatives holding a massive poll lead of up to 21 points, Mrs May called an early General Election in a bid to strengthen her negotiating hand with the EU.
Unexpectedly, it all went horribly wrong for Mrs May who lost her majority following her own disastrous campaign and the resurgence of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.
Instead, to keep herself in office, Mrs May was forced into a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, a hardline Northern Irish group of 10 MPs.
But, while Mrs May was nominally still in office, she held little power - and, having stalled in bringing her Withdrawal Agreement with the EU to the Commons in December 2018, she had to ward off a vote of no confidence among Conservative MPs.
That vote was one of Mrs May's very few successes during her term - and she would ultimately then put her deal before Parliament on three separate occasions in the first few months of this year.
On each occasion, the proposal was defeated - and, in fact, it was refused by a record of 432 votes to 202 on the first attempt on 15 January.
Humiliated, Mrs May was left with no choice other than to request a Brexit extension which was eventually granted by the EU to run until today.
By this point, though, Nigel Farage had returned to the forefront with his new vehicle for self-aggrandisement, the Brexit Party.
And so, in the 2019 European elections that should never have been, the Brexit Party repeated the UKIP achievement of 2014 by winning the most votes and seats.
By contrast, the Tories had plunged to fifth place with just 8.8% of the vote nationally.
Mrs May choked back her tears as she made her resignation speech in Downing Street and so began another frantic Conservative Party leadership contest.
Rather ridiculously, no fewer than 10 Tory MPs received enough nominations to be considered - although it quickly became inevitable that Mr Johnson would emerge as the victor.
Unlike Mrs May, though, Mr Johnson did not inherit a majority - and so the new PM quickly ran into his own problems in the Commons.
Famously, Mr Johnson declared he would “rather be dead in a ditch” than fail to leave the EU on Hallowe'en - but he can hardly be seen to have helped himself achieve his aim.
On his first day in the Commons on 3 September, Mr Johnson lost his majority even when counting the DUP after Phillip Lee crossed the floor - literally - and defected to the Liberal Democrats following a disagreement with Brexit policy.
Later that day, 21 Conservative MPs including two former Chancellors Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond had the party whip withdrawn for supporting an opposition motion aimed at blocking a no-deal Brexit.
The ousted rebels also included Sir Nicholas Soames - the grandson of former Conservative Party Leader Sir Winston Churchill - as Mr Johnson tempestuously reduced his own working majority to minus 43.
Unsurprisingly then, in record-breaking style, the Prime Minister lost his first six Commons votes throughout September as Parliament prevented him from calling an election while the grim prospect of leaving the EU without a deal was still possible.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson had also failed to prorogue Parliament for an extra-long period in another move widely expected to be an improper attempt to avoid scrutiny of his own deal with the EU ahead of the 31 October deadline.
Indeed, on 24 September, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the prorogation was unlawful and Mr Johnson was sheepishly forced to back down.
Gradually, though, the Prime Minister was able to make some breakthroughs as, remarkably, he returned from Brussels with his own Withdrawal Agreement after months of the EU stating that it would not reopen negotiations.
More remarkably still, Mr Johnson then achieved what Mrs May never came close to doing - and, on 22 October, the Commons voted in favour of a Withdrawal Bill for the first time.
The good news for Mr Johnson did not last long, however. The next vote on the Programme Motion, which set out only a three-day timetable for debate on the Bill, was defeated.
At this stage, a further Brexit extension had basically become an inevitability - but, rather than using the extra time to discuss the Withdrawal Agreement which had been approved in principle, Mr Johnson impertinently took it off the table altogether.
Instead, he focused on getting himself a General Election with which to improve his position in the Commons.
On Monday, Mr Johnson failed for a third time to get an election via the two-thirds majority required under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 brought in under Mr Cameron.
But there was still yet another option. A short Bill notwithstanding the FTPA, originally proposed by the Lib Dems and Scottish National Party, provided Mr Johnson with a workaround which required only a simple majority in the Commons.
It meant that, with no-deal back off the table until then, Labour was almost obliged to agree with an election or be accused of running scared.
So, now for a first General Election in December in 96 years - but here is a word of warning from the history books for Mr Johnson.
In that election in 1923, the Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, won the most seats - but Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, and Herbert Asquith's Liberal Party gained enough seats to produce a hung parliament.
Mr MacDonald consequently formed the first ever Labour Government, albeit one that only lasted 10 months.
