Stop all those clocks in Downing Street, counting down to the Halloween Brexit. Stop Operation Yellowhammer: cancel emergency medicine stockpiling, ferries, warehouses and freezers. Stop this morning’s Operation Brock, diverting HGVs on the M20. Melt down those shamelessly triumphal commemorative 50p coins, and halt the £100m splashed on “Get ready for Brexit” information. Gross maladministration must surely be the National Audit Office verdict, when the day comes to tally the cost, along with those hundreds of thousands of wasted civil-servant hours on the Brexits that never were.

Boris Johnson may not be dead in a ditch – just sunk into the Theresa May memorial Brexit quicksands. The more he thrashes around the deeper he sinks, quixotically abandoning his withdrawal agreement bill just as it won a 30-vote majority. No wonder he dare not give MPs time to scrutinise its 1,000 pages of notes for more than three perfunctory days: many were ready with Philip Hammond to append a customs union, and a confirmatory referendum was still on the cards.

In a contest where small shifts can cause shock results, a hung parliament is within reach. Anything is possible

The more MPs look, the worse Johnson’s Brexit seems, with ministers seizing arbitrary control of vital issues that should be subject to parliamentary votes while European Union working and environmental rights are removed. No wonder Johnson has three times cancelled his appearance before the powerful liaison committee. No wonder he dare not hold a budget, with the Office for Budget Responsibility due to issue grim assessments on the economy and future growth.

Instead he tried for an election to blame all Brexit pandemonium on parliament. Labour abstaining tonight is temporary. Whether by Lib Dem and SNP bill, a one-line government bill or Jeremy Corbyn moving a vote of no confidence, an election is imminent, as Labour’s shadow cabinet agreed today – even if it is delayed until after Christmas.

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Pollsters and psephologists judge this as the most wildly unpredictable election in modern memory. Almost anything could happen. Snapshot polls are no longer good forecasts when the electorate is more volatile than ever, says the British Election Study. Professor Rob Ford calls this “the biggest gamble in modern political history”, with recent polls showing the Tories anywhere between 3% and 16% ahead.

Remain and leave poll as stronger identities than party allegiance, but no one knows how that translates to seats on election day. Most in Labour are well aware of the perils, their leader unpopular with every age and class. The shadow cabinet were shocked to be told that no one knew how many key seats still have no candidate while Karie Murphy, ejected from Corbyn’s office to improbably run a campaign for the first time, left staff dumbstruck at her plan to have no target seats, but instead to fight everywhere equally.

Yet don’t imagine calm in the Tory camp, riven between wild man Dominic Cummings and more sober advisers. Their own reports are not good from those northern and Midlands leaver seats they want to snatch from Labour. Nor is their leader such a bonus. Sky Data polling shows Johnson’s personal rating is -3, lower for a leader in their first three months than any of the last five prime ministers. True, that looks dandy compared with Corbyn’s -55 rating, but there is no bouncing Boris-mania.

A confected “people versus parliament” Tory campaign will not survive its first encounter with the enemy. As Johnson meets real voters, wait for the nurse to speak up, or the teacher, the charity worker for rough sleepers or the bus driver on one of the rural routes cut by 40%. The prime minister may meet an environmental health officer no longer regularly inspecting restaurants, or the keeper fired from tending the local park.

Ordinary people, wherever Johnson goes, have nine years’ worth of cuts to scold him with, and will tell his accompanying cameras. When Tory politicians on walkabouts promise millions and billions to repair all this, why would they be believed? They cancelled their own budget so no one knows their fiscal plans. Nowhere is safe turf for them; there are angry denizens of Surrey too. Labour’s manifesto is already popular – from nationalising trains and utilities, to its investment in Green New Deal.

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Things happen in elections to spoil a government’s careful election grid, making this lot vulnerable on many fronts. Boris Johnson is a host of accidents waiting to happen, and so are many of his cabinet zealots. Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Liz Truss, Esther McVey, Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsom, to name just a few, are walking liabilities who think and often say memorably voter-repellent things. Five weeks can feel a long time under the scrutiny they have avoided so far.

In a four-party contest, where small voting shifts can cascade into unlikely shock results, a hung parliament is well within reach. This anything-is-possible election could break either of the old parties. Labour could implode, losing a devastating landslide of seats, with the Lib Dems riding the remainer rocket.

Consider this: if the Tories win, their Brexit deal will be theirs to administer. They who infected the country with the Brexit disease over the decades will now own it, not just for the next five years of miserable consequences but for ever, with no one else to blame. Already demography is destiny and year by year the average age of Tory voters grows higher, with 30-year-olds twice as likely to vote Labour. Brexit and its aftermath might finish the Tories off, for their historic crime of leading the country astray with lies and false visions. In their victory may be their demise.