Election 2024 - Winning By Default

It's the day after and, despite a very late night, I have dragged myself back to the pressure-cooker vortex at the hub of Ramblings Central to sum it all up. The polls were pretty much there, although the prospect of a complete annihilation of the Conservatives, that seemed possible a couple of weeks ago, receded when the exit polls were published at 10pm.  Labour have won 211 seats, the LibDems 63. The Tories have lost 250 and the SNP 38. And yet the share of the vote for each party does not reflect this huge shift. Labour's share has barely changed from the debacle of 2019. The collapse in the Tory vote is mainly down to Reform who received more votes than the LibDems but only took 5 seats. Tactical voting has been the winner of this election, with Labour performing insipidly in safe seats and much better where there was something to gain.

All those flyers and leaflets may have helped the local LibDem candidate win spectacularly here in Stratford-on-Avon. [And it is 'on' rather than 'upon'. 'On' denotes the council district and constituency, while 'upon' means the town: Ed]. Other Conservative seats with similar profiles did not fall.

A tactical election is about getting the incumbents out and accepting that whatever pattern is thrown up by the outcome is better. It is a negative way to choose a government and the result of this election is that Labour has total dominance in the House of Commons but cannot point to a popular mandate. It is going to have to tread carefully.  But not as carefully as the Conservatives. Somehow they must reestablish credibility but with which set of voters? - the incoherent "stop immigration and let's get our country back" of the Brexiteers, now given full voice by Reform, or the more traditional centrist strand, the sort represented by John Major and David Cameron in the past.

There were one or two "Portillo" moments [Older readers will recall the shock. and visceral delight of his political opponents, when the cheerleader for Thatcherite politics, but now rather decent train-loving TV presenter, was ejected from his seat at Enfield Southgate in 1997;Ed]. Liz Truss lost her safe seat in Norfolk, the coda to the strange and sudden collapse of her prime ministerial period. My favourite was Jacob Rees-Mogg ousted from North East Somerset. This was the man who, as a minister, liked to dictate to his civil servants how to use English grammar and whose latest policy wheeze was to fix the problem of unwanted immigration. This was how it was reported on the Politico website

When I came across this quote, I spent some time imagining how one might put a wall up and, crucially, which firm one might appoint to do the job. Some experience at working in damp conditions, and a really plentiful supply of bricks, would be essentials. Probably need access to at least a couple of vans and have several brickies on call. Whether Moggy would have been on hand to supply the tea and biscuits ("Six sugars, thanks, guv") or would have delegated this task to his butler is not clear. There was also the delicate question of the bill ...

"Yerse, well, squire, I know we estimated five hundred nicker, plus VAT of course, but, well, the lad made a little error in the sums, told me it would be thirty metres long. Not thirty kilometres. And nobody said nothing about a thousand fathoms of water, neither".
"I think you could been more exacting in your surveying. We did specify it was The Channel"
"Oh, yes, guv, certainly, could have been, could have been indeed. We fort you meant a channel, you know, sort of small ditch at the back of your estate, that sort of thing. But, well, there it is, what with the water getting in, and the storms, and the shifting sands, and the fish boring holes in the foundations, and that problem with the van breaking down....tell you what, call it twenty four billion and I'll let you off the extra four bags of quick-drying cement"

Rishi Sunak gracefully paid tribute to his successor and was reciprocated. After the insults of the past six weeks, this made a pleasant change. Then the "no-surprises" Cabinet appointments were made and a new government started work.

Election 2024 - The Results Are In: - It's a LibDem Landslide!

Excuse the hyperbole in the title to this piece. The "results" are the count of how many separate pieces of communication have been received from each party contesting the local seat. The outcome has never been in doubt, and, far from a last minute campaign by the outsiders to disrupt the trend, the front runner has doubled down on their formidable lead, supplying leaflets both yesterday and today (all other parties, nothing).

Here then, is the count. <clears throat, coughs, taps microphone cautiously>. I, being the returning officer for the Ramblings household in the Stratford-on-Avon constitutency do declare that the sum of the bits of paper collected from the door mat for each party is as follows.

Reform                2
Conservative       2
Labour                 1
LibDem              12
Non-political      1
Green                  0
Independent        0

and that the LibDem effort is hereby elected as the one wasting the greatest amount of paper, taking up the largest amount of space in the paper recycling bag and becoming, in the end, a bit of a bloody irritant.

Back in the real world, I was waking up drowsily to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and was surprised, to put it mildly, to hear the Conservative spokesman in the flagship interview spot concede the election. He said they were going to lose. 

 “I have accepted that where the polls are at the moment – and it seems highly unlikely that they are very, very wrong, because they’ve been consistently in the same place for some time – that we are therefore tomorrow highly likely to be in a situation where we have the largest majority that any party has ever achieved,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. (source: London Evening Standard)

This was not some off-the-rails intern fronting for Conservative Central Office - it was the work and pensions secretary Mel Stride.

This is very odd behaviour. Politicians are normally required to smile, shake their heads gently and say "Of course the only votes that count are those cast in the ballot box" right up to the point that the polls are shown to be roughly correct, and then they can say either they are proud to have the overwhelming mandate of the entire country (based on a 35% share of the vote) or that their policies were absolutely the right ones but they just failed to get their message across and they will do better next time, especially once the other lot have mucked everything up.

It would be hilarious if millions of voters are playing the old lie-to-the-pollsters game to the hilt and a disbelieving Rishi Sunak is back in Downing Street on Friday morning. I would love to hear him explain to Mr Stride his position in the new government (grovelling on the floor and lashing himself with a cat'o'nine tails, I should imagine). But I suspect that the polls are reasonably sound and that a huge change in the political landscape is about to occur.

Election 2024 - Canvassed

 Our first canvasser of the current election campaign knocked on the door this afternoon. Not surprisingly, given the torrent of leaflets already received from this quarter, it was on behalf of the LibDems and she handed over yet another, now increasingly redundant, piece of paper. It was nice to be asked what single policy measure I would like and it seemed to strike a chord when I said it would be to reverse Brexit; sadly I do not see this is remotely achievable in the near future even if the EU were to welcome us back, which I rather doubt.

The national talking-point seems to be about the blatant racism and homophobia of a Reform candidate but this is hardly news, the whole point of the party is to try make such views respectable.

In international news, France is having its first round of elections that could give a very right-wing party a majority in the Assembly and Joe Biden's weak performance in a televised live debate might have just done the same for his florid-faced felon of an opponent. It is not quite time to wake up my correspondent and despatch him back to Karakorum but the rattle of scimitars is getting closer.

Election 2024 - It Grinds on

A week and a half to go in this strange general election. Opinion polls continue to suggest a huge Labour victory, coupled with a Conservative wipeout. I remain sceptical that it will be so big a change. The weather has turned warm - the first prolonged hot spell of this wet and chilly year - and it has clearly been good for the local party promoters because we had a positive flurry of leaflets in the past couple of days. 

I pass over "Reform" whose underlying fascist tendencies grow more marked each day that their glorious leader shows his admiration for Russian brutalism. Maybe he sees himself in ten years driving round in a fancy limousine with World President For Life Putin, much as Putin and the horrible thing that runs North Korea did in their much-publicised meeting. I would have to ignore it anyway, because their candidate has nothing to say except to highlight, with skilfully chosen tick marks, a list of seven policies. 

The LibDems continued a strong marketing campaign with a newspaper-style leaflet claiming once more that they are the only opposition likely to topple the Tories in Stratford. This was the prediction from ElectoralCalculus, and it was pretty accurate. The seat did fall. [I have edited this piece retrospectively, because originally I used a prediction that was actually based on some numbers I put in, not those based on the polls].

But my focus is on the two main parties. Labour produced a very slender prospectus featuring its candidates career as a financial crime analyst - now that is a skill that may well be in demand as the investigations in Conservative dodgy betting activities and the covid PPP sourcing programme continue. But as to some meaty policies - a promise to end the scramble for 8am GP appointments and support for a small hospital the other end of the constituency is about it.

Labour's man appears to be local. Actually he has been a local councillor for Coventry, not Stratford, but it is not too far away. The Conservative candidate has, in two distinctly different leaflets (that suggest the job was given to two interns working on the same material but in different rooms and not communicating with each other), emphasised his past political career. He is not very forthcoming about the fact he was MP for a constituency in Lancashire and a councillor in Salford before that, so not actually a local man at all and the pledge to support small business rings somewhat hollow from a man who supported the Brexit government of B. Johnson. Anyway he seems to believe that the Rwanda plan will "stop the boats", despite all evidence to the contrary and we can magically get to Net Zero without it costing any more. Perhaps the immigration fairy and the climate fairy can be persuaded to show up at last.

All attention now shifts to the last group match for England in the European football championships. Scotland were booted out yesterday after a miserable performance. England have not inspired so far though they will qualify for the next round whatever happens tomorrow night when they face the might of Slovenia, 57th in the FIFA world rankings compared to England's flattering 5th. What could possibly go wrong?

Election 2024 - Place Your Bets

Vote Spendthrift

Our Policies for a Massively Richer Britain 

A recent meeting of the Spendthrift Shadow Cabinet

We, in the Spendthrift Party, have been accused by poorly informed detractors of having "a galaxy sized black hole" at the heart of our policy to cut income tax to 1% whilst recruiting four million doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers and reasonably competent left-sided attacking wing backs, starting the day after we sweep to power. And they might have a point, were it not for our revolutionary financial plan. We will have little need of conventional sources of revenues, my friends, because we are riding the express train of the future and all the signals are green. We have found a sure fire way to raise enormous amounts of the ready and it's all thanks to the Conservative Party.

There's no need to work hard to create wealth. No need to to work at all, actually. Simply obtain some inside information and place a bet. Results guaranteed. This is a proven technique. Already associates of our great party have made the following wagers:

• The newly installed foreign secretary to describe Mexicans as "lazy, tequila-swilling loudmouths in stupidly large hats who spend all day lying around outside cantinas". The odds - a very tasty 20,000 to 1, thank you William Hill. We've pledged our tax revenues from North Sea Oil on this one and it is a dead cert to bring in £190bn within the very first week of a Spendthrift government taking office.
• Appointment of Liz Truss as Director of the Office for Fiscal Responsibility. Corals offered 38,000 to 1 against this ever happening and we've snapped it up, staking the take from customs duties in Dover and Southampton for the next five years. There's a guaranteed £290bn right there.
• Date of the next general election. We know when it will be, nobody else does and if Ladbrokes are happy to offer 90,000 to 1 against it being on Christmas Day 2024, who are we not to bet the Crown Jewels on it?

Vote Spendthrift. The only party who can genuinely say "We're betting it all on Britain".

Election 2024 - Out of the Woodwork

 The election is entering the second half and finally I have received a leaflet from somebody other than the energetic LibDem candidate for Stratford (4 separate items from her so far). Unfortunately the newcomer claims to be a contradiction-in-terms, a non political party (cunningly called Nonpol) that is campaigning to be elected on a raft of policies that somehow, mysteriously, are not political at all, even though they represent choices in exactly the same way that all political parties offer choices.

There is a list of policy objectives. Item one is something incomprehensible about transgenderism. Why on earth this should be the first thing they want me to read is baffling. Later on we learn that Boris Johnson is responsible for the war in Ukraine (and there was me thinking it was Putin, the historical legacy of Tsarist expansion south and west since Peter the Great and Russia's long term strategic goal of dominating the Black Sea), and that if only Britain left NATO then everyone else would disarm, link hands and sing folk songs in joyful comradeship. I noticed that they intend to simplify the tax system by abolishing VAT, charging a flat rate of income tax and raising the threshold before tax is paid to £35,000. How would all this be paid for? Ah, it's much too complicated for the leaflet so we are directed to the party website.

I went to the party website. Now they want me to watch a YouTube that will explain their tax strategy and how they will make the rich pay by forcing everyone to have one bank account, or something. Erm, if I might just interject - I am not going to watch your video. Either explain your plans in writing using words that convey a straight meaning or kindly leave the stage.

Towards the end of the manifesto is a comment about Covid and this gem

As Covid 19 originated in China and was not bought to a halt like SARS1, it has cost the UK thousands of lives and billions in costs. The cost to the UK from Covid will recouped from the Chinese economy. This will be done via imports of Chinese goods and taxation on Chinese assets based in the UK, until the debt is cleared.

I fail to see how importing even more Chinese goods will somehow "recoup" the cost of Covid. Surely all it will do is bolster the Chinese economy and undermine our own? But it's all right, we shall tax Chinese assets based in the UK. There's bound to be loads of those just lying around and of course there is no  question of any retaliation. No, we're definitely on safe and legal grounds. We could also tax them for bird flu, the black death and that nasty throat complaint, Chinese whispers, while we are at it.

As I have written in another context: when asked about these policies, the Chinese ambassador smiled inscrutably

Election 2024 - Beware the Reds

I glimpsed a curious headline in the Daily Mail today whilst shopping (I only browse through it for its excellent coverage of the North Lincolnshire Basket Weaving League (Division Three) and gleaned the following from its website:

A Tory wipeout risks one-party socialist state: Conservative MPs warn public not to hand Keir Starmer a 'super-majority'  

The story acknowledges that Labour continues to lead in the opinion polls and that Reform is steadily eroding the Conservative vote. It is unusual for Lord Rothermere's personal journal to be so defeatist with three weeks of electioneering to go, but it amuses me to see two massive chunks of true-blue hypocrisy in the one short paragraph.

Hypocrisy 1 - It is totally fine and in keeping with God's eternal plan for Britain, this sceptred isle etc etc for the Conservatives to have a huge majority. Absolutely no risks to anything there, if a load of no-hope extremist candidates should happen to get elected on the back of a massive swing to the Tories, and then put through some stupid policy that fundamentally damages the country (I don't know, say the European "Research" Group forcing a referendum on EU membership or something), then that is good and proper, and we should all applaud. A Conservative majority of say, 100, does not in any way turn Britain into a one-party state.

Let Labour get a decent working majority and instantly the Devil and all his works will be let loose in Whitehall; democracy demands that they must be forced to do deals with other parties so as to dilute their policies or perhaps have them regularly voted down. A Labour majority of say, 100, automatically means a one-party state, the Security Police breaking down the doors of private schools, anyone earning more than £20,000 pa paying 110% income tax, the abolition of the Monarchy and public executions in Trafalgar Square (renamed The Glorious People's Struggle Arena of Hope) of anyone denounced by their neighbours for thought-crimes against freedom, such as being able to choose what time you go to the shops,

Hypocrisy 2 - What exactly is a socialist state anyway? The introduction of the National Health Service was opposed at the time because it was socialist. Now every party defends it and says it is safe in their hands. The idea that income tax should be progressive (meaning lower earners pay little or nothing, high earners pay more) is also widely accepted - indeed Tory chancellors in recent times have often boasted about how many low-earners they have taken out of tax. Yet this too is a broadly socialist idea. Social care, free education up to and including sixth-forms, pensions and income support measures that give older people something reasonable to live on - these are all socialist ideas that grew from the extremes of deprivation witnessed in Victorian times and all are embraced by the Conservative party. 

Of course when the Daily Mail uses the word "socialism", they really mean "communism" but these days it is hard to see many of their readers making that connection, let alone the mass of voters. 

Anyway, enough of that. I was delighted to learn that Immingham Ferrets had roundly trounced Caistor Stoats by six baskets to three, Mrs Arkwright with two superb late plaits and an assist, and continue their bid to win promotion.

Election 2024 - Sunak: The Riches to Riches Story

 The news story overshadowing the launch of various party manifestos is the astonishing revelation of prime minister Rishi Sunak, who has laid bare the deprivation and misery of being born to a family who could only afford to send him to Winchester College for his private education. Here is The Guardian's take on it

The Guardian (picture removed)

Now it all falls into place. The young Sunak naturally took up politics, keenly aware of the injustice of wealth ownership, filled with a burning anger to fight for social justice and determined to better the lot of his fellow citizens, Never would he forget the privations of his younger days when he pressed his nose against the windows of the houses of neighbours, eyes wide as he realised that yes, there were indeed more than five channels of television and yes, the one that he was unable to see featured non-stop ¹utterly non-rigged American wrestling .

My eyes teared up on reading that his parents "wanted their kids to have a better life". It seems incredible that any parents could think in such a way. Surely all normal parents want their kids to suffer, to work even harder than they did, to grow steadily poorer and until, in despair, they trade in their fancy 68" HD 4k televisions and go back to a black and white set that you have to thump on the back to get it to switch from BBC to ITV. Or was that just my family?

I too was deprived of Sky. Although, to be fair, this was through my own choice. I decided that I had no need to subscribe to Sky One (bringing you fifteen hours a day of non-stop American wrestling) nor Sky Two (another twenty hours of the bits of non-stop American wrestling you may have missed on Sky One) nor Sky Sports (All the big stories behind American wrestling), Sky Movies (coming soon, American Wrestling III, the grunting continues) nor Sky Arts (Those American Wrestlers costumes - we reveal how they get the sequins to stick on) nor indeed Sky News (All those all-important results from the American wrestling). But I can see how little Rishi must have yearned for the glamour and excitement of watching wrestlers pretend to be hurt as they bounce off the ropes, or surprised by a lethargic drop-kick, or angry at a forearm smash that didn't actually connect with them. Here were a bunch of actors making good money by prancing around for the cameras without actually doing anything. What an inspiration for an aspiring politician.

I look forward to more revelations - the days he was picked up from school in just a Range Rover because the family Bentley was being serviced while all his classmates looked on and sniggered, the awful holidays in Mauritius, New Zealand or Monte, having to keep his old iphone going for a month after the latest model was available - the voters need to know these things. We need to understand better the fire burning in his belly to ensure that no child will ever undergo these dreadful things again. 

Incidentally, the ITV interview, that is the source of this story, is the one Sunak dashed back to London to film instead of standing with other world leaders at the D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations last week. Draw your own conclusions.

-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-

 Readers! Join our Buy Rishi a Sky Subscription Appeal

Let's all dig deep and give our leader the best present he could ever have - a year's subscription to Sky, including all the wrestling channels. Send whatever you can afford to the usual address and we will ensure that not a moment of all-American canvas-pounding action will be missed by a man who, if the opinion polls are to be trusted, may have a lot more time on his hands to watch it all come July 5th. Let's end the years of suffering right now and do the right thing for Rishi!

Footnote

1. Commercials and trailers for yet more American wrestling on various Sky channels included, of course.

Election 2024 - Headlines, Claims and Gibberish

 Like spores and bacteria, there are words that lie dormant and disregarded for years but which, in favourable conditions, spring back to life and begin multiplying as if nothing had happened. Such conditions are those when politicans are hurling out sound-bites in all directions in the pressured environment of a general election. Lying half asleep this morning listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, I picked out some old favourites, from, I think, a LibDem spokesperson but it could have been from any party. Targeted. Comprehensive. Fully-costed. And I think Crackdown might have been in there, inevitably accompanied by Avoiders or Dodgers.

My muse in matters satirical is Michael Frayn and he, many years ago, identified combinations of words that existed only in newspaper headlines and which conveyed some sort of meaning to readers, but often so vaguely that the same headlines could be used over and over in many different ways. Bid Probe Allegation Shock could be one. Leak Drama Move Slammed another.  In the same way, when a party announces that, on taking office, it will solve all Britain's financial problems through a targeted, comprehensive and fully-costed crackdown, the dozing listener absorbs this in the way a damp J-cloth absorbs a spillage - the first wipe gets most of the liquid but always leaves a bit. The policy announcement gets blotted up and largely vanishes from the brain, leaving a slimy trail of those buzz words which convey something but, in the words of another great satirist, Lewis Carroll, "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!"

When grappling with political ideas it does feel as though we are tracking the Jabberwock through the tulgy wood. Figures are thrown about like branches snagging one's armour - Rishi Sunak's recently invented claim that Labour measures would raise taxation by some £2,000 a household being a good example. He then claimed this was an official civil service calculation, only to have to withdraw when the Treasury said it was nothing to do with them, and to further withdraw when it became clear that it was £2,000 over the four years expected life of the next parliament. The details have become lost in the murk and only the headline "Labour Tax Bombshell Claim Shock" remains.

-&-&-&-&-&-&-&-

Readers! Do you examples of words that come alive at elections? Send them in to the usual address and the very best will be used to make a suitable headline for a forthcoming piece. Comprehensive Terms and Conditions apply and have been targeted to be spot on with whatever they are required to do. A fully-costed copy will be sent on receipt of £2,000 or whatever figure you feel is suitable.

Election 2024 - Don't Say The F Word

 Poor old Rishi Sunak. Not only is his party trailing Labour in the polls, but the sinister, grinning wrecker of Britain's good relationship with the world's largest trading bloc has today announced his intention to stand for Parliament and to do so as leader of the party he founded. Reform seem likely to take more votes from the Tories than from anyone else, and may do reasonably well as a third party but perhaps without taking a seat. Or maybe just one, if their leader finally achieves his long-held ambition.

Only recently it seemed that Nigel F. was going to spearhead the campaign to re-elect to the White House his idol, a convicted criminal with even more ambitions to wreck things than himself. Now he has turned his back on the glitz of conventions and coast-to-coast jetting in favour of assaulting the sanity of the good folk of Clacton. Will he stand defiantly on the beach, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the continent while declaring his intentions to fight them on it?

Election 2024 - The Shadow of the Past

 The election campaign has been galvanised by the Prime Minister's unexpected attempt to recapture the magic of the Tories golden years in the 1950s. No, not a sudden assault on Egypt to retake control of the Suez canal but, in the words of the Daily Telegraph

Rishi Sunak has vowed to bring back National Service for 18-year-olds to create a “renewed sense of pride in our country” in his first policy announcement of the election campaign...

This idea seems to have come from nowhere. It has not featured in Conservative manifestos of recent years, nor did Sunak wow the party conference last October by donning a beret and posing with beaming 18 year olds who just could not wait to get down to Caterham and start shovelling coke behind the mess hall. 

Naturally one might expect the top brass at the War Office to be delighted. And one would be wrong. The headline in The Independent the day after read

Ex-military chief says Rishi Sunak’s national service plan is ‘bonkers’

 Britain has changed. Huge numbers of young people aspire to university or college education when they leave school, not to put on uniform and march up and down barracks squares for the gratification of their sergeant-major. Even if the idea of doing something for one's country were to be popular, they wish to choose what they do, not to be conscripted by a faceless Whitehall bureacracy. Presumably Sunak is aiming this policy at older Tory voters who still nurture strange ideas about "discipline" and "respect"; the conscripts of the 1950s certainly learned how to smoke furtive cigarettes by cupping them in one hand behind their backs but this was the generation that produced the artistic flowering of the 60s, the satire boom and the biggest shift away from deference to authority ever seen in this country. 

Details of how the scheme would work are sketchy but it does not seem to involve compulsory service; volunteering either for military support duties or work in the community are being touted. According to Sky.com

Exactly how the scheme would work has not yet been hammered out. The Tories have said they would set up a royal commission - a type of public inquiry - to come up with the details.

 however we do have some information

Conservative MPs have given various examples of the kinds of volunteering teenagers could do, including delivering prescriptions or food to infirm people, being a lifeguard, supporting communities during storms and working with search and rescue.

All is well. The next time it rains we can call up the King's Own Waterproofs Brigade and be personally shepherded to the bus stop under the protection of a trained umbrella-holder, first class. Instructions in the fitting of galoshes will be given by keen youngsters in village halls. Ranks of eager kids will be taught to say "Looks like it's clearing up" and "Wrap up warm, now" before being let loose on householders contemplating another ruined carpet. And traditional techniques will not be lost either - a couple of weeks filling, stacking, moving and emptying sandbags at Aldershot should beat a bit of discipline and respect into the long-haired, work-shy, don't-know-they're-born, generation who are sure to vote Tory in future elections out of gratitude. Yup, that'll definitely work.

Election 2024 - An Unexpected Party Political

 Mrs C and I were enjoying a well-earned cup of tea yesterday, on a damp and disappointingly chilly May afternoon, when the bland afternoon TV coverage switched to a damp and chilly Downing Street where a podium had been put up outside Number 10.  Political correspondents spoke of rumours about an election. We watched, fascinated, as the podium was moved a bit and the rain continued to lash down. 

With little warning, the door was opened and the Prime Minister emerged to tell us that he had had a chat with Charlieboy and Parliament was to be dissolved for an election on 4 July. He then tried to explain what a great bloke he was, and how great everything the government had done had been and why we should all vote for him. Unfortunately our attention was diverted to the wet patches running down his jacket and to the discordant sound of a pop song played loudly just outside the gates to Downing Street (My sources later informed me that this was D:Ream's "Things Can Only Get Better", the anthem to Labour's 1997 landslide).

This move has certainly taken everyone by surprise. Summer elections are unusual. Sunak was expected to try to big things up at the party conference in the autumn, perhaps on the back of a tax cut, perhaps after sending the first few hapless migrants to Rwanda. There are rumours that Tory MPs were poised for a no-confidence vote and he decided to strike first. Others suggest that this has been to get a jump on Reform who have been nibbling at the traditional Conservative vote. Still others opined that, the rate of inflation having fallen to about 2.5%, this is a golden opportunity to boast about sound economic management (while keeping very quiet indeed about the last few years).

This will be the first election I will witness from my new constituency, having moved from Uxbridge and South Ruislip (seat of part-time strolling PM B Johnson) to the rural surroundings of Stratford on Avon, seat of the retiring ex-chancellor Nadim Zahawi, who featured (anonymously) in these columns not so long ago. I suspect that there will be little in the way of canvassing around here but we will see.

The timing of this election is not good news for the many post office managers, wrongly accused of fraud by a conspiracy of the directors of the Post Office and of software supplier Fujitsu; the news about the hearings will now be downgraded. And only in the last couple of days has the PM apologised for the long running NHS infected blood scandal, and promised compensation to the victims. Will this promise be quietly shelved on the grounds that it is now a matter for the new government?

One might also wonder if the PM is hoping for a bounce should England or Scotland do well in the Euro Football Championships - if either survive to election day then they will be in the quarter-finals, and this would surely be a huge boost to the feel-good factor. Will Harry win it for Rishi?