General elections must be about the issues. The 1997 election was about 18 “wasted” years of Tory government, with Tony Blair’s manifesto saying “Britain deserves better”. In 1974 Edward Heath called an election seeking an answer to the question of who governs Britain – the prime minister or the unions. The answer the electorate returned was the unions. More often than not, politicians overestimate their ability to frame the terms of political debate. Theresa May reasoned that Brexit would be the issue in her snap election of 2017. It dominated voters’ thoughts – but that did not help her. Boris Johnson might be on the verge of making a similar mistake.

The prime minister has the election he long sought, though there was a surly undercurrent of resistance in parliament not giving in to Mr Johnson. It could be seen in the number of MPs who wanted to lower the voting age to 16 and give citizens of EU countries the vote, both of which are permitted in Scotland’s Holyrood elections. However, Mr Johnson persevered to foreshorten his mandate. He wants to weaponise the exhaustion that voters feel with the first stage of Brexit and shift blame to a “remainer” parliament for the delay. He hopes to stir apathy in his opponents’ base. The election is to be held in December, the first since 1923. There’s a reason why the month has been avoided for national polls. Cold, dark nights are not the ideal conditions to go canvassing, or to get people to a rally or to a polling station, however important the issues facing the nation might be.

Reckonings like this are an insult to voters. The prime minister has tried to manipulate opinion to give the impression that this election is for the benefit of the people, rather than for the benefit of himself and his party. Mr Johnson wasted time after attaining office by not talking to the EU. He then unlawfully prorogued parliament to evade scrutiny. Mr Johnson came out with a set of proposals that were unacceptable to Brussels before being swiftly amended. There was no way MPs would permit Britain to be bundled out of the EU with no deal or on terms that threaten jobs, the economy, peace in Northern Ireland or the union with Scotland. The courts and MPs did not allow the prime minister to disregard proper procedure – to their credit, because a future government could use the precedent established for more sinister purposes. Mr Johnson does not care about such things. His calculations revolve around naked self-interest and power.

Democracy should be about more than cynical calculation. Forcing the country to go through an exercise that there is little enthusiasm for is a way of feeding the distaste for politics that Brexiters often rail against. MPs voted for Brexit last week in the shape of the withdrawal agreement bill. Mr Johnson could have pushed ahead to get this deal through the Commons. But that would have been beyond the political skills of the Tory leader, who lacks the intellectual grace to accommodate the diversity of his opponents’ views. Instead the prime minister, whose political career has been marked by untruths and evasions, hopes to fight a dirty election aided by the propaganda he can mobilise on platforms like Facebook that allow lies in political advertising.

Brexit will be central to the campaign. This ought to surprise no one. Dealing with the tension between the plebiscitary demand to leave the EU and the parliamentary urge to hammer out the least damaging Brexit compromise will remain the biggest task for the next government. Yet plenty of other issues are going to be foregrounded: the economy, inequality, and austerity. On the right, it seems that leading figures such as Mr Johnson and Nigel Farage scare and repel sections of the electorate. Opposing them are politicians whom many voters tell pollsters they don’t like or trust. If this does not make you giddy, then prepare for the whirl while history is being made.