Personally I am with the woman called ‘Brenda’, interviewed by the BBC , whose response to the news of a sudden election was ‘Oh no! Not another one! I can’t stand it!’ How many times do the government need to ask us what they should do?

I used to love general elections long ago, but now find them ghastly festivals of boredom, money and lies, and would leave the country, if I could, for the whole campaign.

Also the announcement, which bears some of the signs of panic, and some of the signs of wild indecision, explodes the carefully-assembled image of Mrs May as an unflashy , responsible and calm person. ‘I am not going to be calling a snap election’, said *that* Mrs May, the calm, responsible, unflashy vicarage one, only a few months ago. Today’s (April 18th) announcement has more of the air of the bookmaker’s shop than the vicarage. The great political commentator Alan Watkins said that all prime ministers were at bottom either bookies or bishops. Perhaps Mrs May is the first to be both.

The moment I heard about it, I was full of suspicion. My initial impulse, and one for which I have still seen no real counter, is that it is not a chosen election, but one pressed on her by circumstances - really to do with this fascinating and inadequately covered story from a month ago:



https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global/2017/mar/15/second-tory-reveals-police-investigated-him-over-spending-allegations

It begins: ‘A dozen police forces have passed files to the Crown Prosecution Service over allegations that up to 20 Conservative MPs broke local spending limits at the last general election. Prosecutors have to decide whether to charge the MPs or their agents, after a 10-month investigation into whether party spending on an election battlebus that brought activists to marginal seats was wrongly recorded as national spending.

‘Downing Street refused on Wednesday night to comment on the development, but senior party figures are concerned that any successful prosecutions of sitting MPs could lead to election results being declared void, causing a string of by-elections as the Brexit negotiations draw to a conclusion in late 2018 or early 2019.’

And interestingly it goes on : ‘There was even speculation in Westminster that May would consider seeking an early general election to draw a line under the spending allegations about the 2015 election.’

I am sure that this very sticky problem has been causing a huge amount of grief in Downing Street. It has the capacity to do an extraordinary amount of damage at a crucial time. I suspect that when Mrs May said on 3rd September that she would not be doing exactly what she has now done, she meant it. Indeed, as Spectator Blogs point out here, she has five times squashed any suggestion of a snap poll https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/five-times-theresa-may-no-10-ruled-snap-general-election/#

The same blog rightly notes that boundary changes which would help the Tories won’t come into force till 2018. That is strange. Can she really hope to much increase a working majority of just 17? Can she even be sure her majority won’t get smaller? For reasons explained above, the Tory campaign may be a bit constrained.

Several other things are going on. The Democratic Unionists in Northern Ireland, whose support is important to the Tory whips in the Commons, are not doing well. The supposed Tory revival in Scotland is unlikely to produce much in the way of seats. A lot of voters everywhere may feel that they are being made to troop to the polls yet again for no good reason, and take revenge on the party that has caused this, either by staying at home or by voting for someone else.

UKIP, which kindly took a lot of votes from Labour last time, so indirectly helping the Tories, while doing itself no good at all, seems to me to be weaker than for many years. It may well be fighting itself. That would help Labour. By contrast, the Liberal Democrats are scrambling out of the slough of despond into which they were hurled in 2015, with EU supporters ready to forgive and forget tuition fees because they care so much more about the EU, and I suspect (especially if Tim Farron can be persuaded to step aside) they may well grab a number of seats back from the Tories in June. That would hurt the Tories. The SNP will, I suspect, hold on to what they have and do their utmost to gain advantage. Horror of horrors, what if the snap election so rearranges Parliament that it ends up giving the SNP a lever at Westminster?

Since the near-destruction of Labour in Scotland, there is no possibility of a majority Labour government, unless we get an economic collapse or some other cataclysm or cataclysmic revelation during the campaign(who will run this? The Tory Party is not crammed with election-winning talent just now) and very little chance of a Lib-Lab coalition(though I suppose that if the campaign goes really badly for Mrs May, this might conceivably happen).

All kinds of messy outcomes are thinkable, even including a new coalition. Not all of them would allow Mrs May to remain at Downing Street.

I am not predicting this. I genuinely have no idea what is going to happen. Nor, I have to say, do I care all that much as things stand. I can see no outcome that will make any of the things I care about materially worse or better. And I have seen enough elections to know that they do not always work out in quite the way those who call them expect . Apart from March 31 1966, I can think of no recent government with a majority seeking a new election so soon after coming to office. And by March 1966, Labour’s majority of 4, won in October 1964, was down to three, and government was almost impossible – an excuse Mrs May does not have. Ted Heath’s ‘Who governs Britain?’ election of February 1974 comes rather more to mind. The answer, as Keith Waterhouse memorably recorded was ‘Not you, matey’. Could this be the Election that Goes Wrong? Do not rule it out.