Okay, so 2017 is turning out less dull than we expected.

Because the Prime Minister of the UK has lost her mind.

Let’s just go over the basics.

– Firstly, the PM can’t actually announce a general election will be held on June 8th. To get around the restrictions of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (which was created in 2011 by her own party specifically to stop this exact thing happening) she needs to get a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which she probably will but can’t yet count on. Jeremy Corbyn could order Labour to block it, just for the laughs.

(The BBC’s Norman Smith noted that if he did, Labour would seem to be running away from the fight and Corbyn would be “crucified in the media”. Gosh, whatever would that be like, eh? Also, how would it be any more ridiculous than May doing the thing she’s repeatedly promised she wouldn’t do?)

– Secondly, assuming it goes ahead, May has nothing to gain and everything to lose. Under the UK’s electoral system, there are very few likely Tory gains from Labour or the SNP, and the Lib Dems have almost no seats left for the Tories (or anyone else) to take. Labour are already close to rock bottom under FPTP – what seats they still hold are mostly very safe ones.

But Brexit has revived Tim Farron’s party in byelections, and there are around 50 seats which were Lib Dem until 2015 and could very conceivably switch back in an election that’s going to be – quite expressly – a proxy second EU referendum. If as few as a quarter of them go, May loses her majority.

– Every argument that May used against a second Scottish independence referendum has just turned to ashes. There is no majority in the UK for an election. Less than a third of voters want it. Now is not the time.

If the SNP take the vast majority of seats in Scotland again in these circumstances (and they surely would – there are very few Scottish seats where the Tories are even in second place, and Scotland voted Remain by a big margin), that’s an overwhelming mandate for a second indyref, if not a flat-out declaration of independence.

(For the avoidance of doubt, our position on UDI has not changed.)

– May’s government has had no trouble passing significant votes before now, and certainly not in terms of Brexit – the Article 50 bill was passed by a huge majority in the Commons (498 to 114). They already have a clear political mandate for it. So they’ll have risked their majority for nothing, at a time when they were just about to rejig electoral boundaries to give themselves a massive extra advantage in the future.

– Even if, as most people seem to think (we’re not so sure), the Tories win a massive landslide leading to Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation, Labour can only be strengthened by that: the Tories, you’d think, want Corbyn to stay in charge for as long as possible.

– And what on Earth happens if the Tories DO lose their majority (or even just see it reduced)? They will no longer have a mandate for Brexit, yet have already invoked Article 50. Nobody will know what the hell is going on.

The newly-elected PM would presumably have to resign and be replaced by someone who (a) nobody voted for as PM, and (b) might well have a totally different view on Brexit. “Omnishambles” doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of it.

We’ll update this article with the next 400 most ridiculous things we can think of about the situation as they come to us. Right now, frankly, we’re a bit overwhelmed at the absolutely galactic scale of the stupidity of it.