It started with a tall story told by a general in total command of her battlefield. It looks like it will end with a nervy victory that will be cabled out as a success but may do little to enhance her reputation as a commander of any great genius. And given the battles ahead in Europe, this could turn out to be the election’s unexpected legacy.

You’ll probably recall that, after multiple denials, the Prime Minister began her election by telling ITV’s political editor Robert Peston that she had changed her mind while on a walking holiday in Wales. Few in the media believed her; most of us thought she called it because she knew that our Brexit negotiations are likely to prove long, tortuous and complex and because securing a quick, bold victory against an apparently incompetent leader at home was a temptation too alluring to resist. It was a battle she was going to have to fight sooner or later and which she simply could not now lose. What was not to like?

The political calculations that lay behind it were, and still are, simple and brutal. At the last election, Ukip scooped up 3.8 million votes, an impressive 12.6 per cent of those cast. All the data we have seen since has suggested that these people are likely in very large numbers to plump for Theresa May in order to make sure Brexit is pushed through. Given that there are many Labour seats with historically significant Ukip votes in areas that overwhelmingly backed Leave in the EU referendum, it is this factor above all others that has fuelled talk of a May landslide.

Indeed, there are a number of seats where the Labour majority last time was smaller than the Ukip vote in which Ukip is not fielding a candidate this time, a nightmarish situation for all those incumbent Labour MPs concerned. It is to this particular group that May’s tediously repeated slogans — “Brexit means Brexit” and “strong and stable” — are most clearly targeted. All the signs are that it has worked. Or at least, were. But I will come back to that.

If this seems all too neat and you might expect the electorate to be generally more volatile in the aftermath of the referendum, all one can really say is that there was little sign of it in the run-up to the campaign. Those who voted Tory in 2015 appeared inclined to stay loyal and Brexit is not the great divide we once might have imagined. Those who opted for Leave are naturally inclined to stick with the party but most of those who backed Remain seem to feel that the vote was the vote, that we are leaving, and that we should therefore opt to back the leader who is most likely to get us a good deal. In their eyes, that seems still to be Theresa May.

So, as I said, she can’t lose. Or at least, this is how it once appeared. Her campaign began brilliantly. It is hard to take everyone by surprise in this political day and age and she undoubtedly did so. In fact, the only person who had confidently predicted an early election was Peston, and I’d started to wonder if he’d been smoking something funny (the last time I ever doubt him). But the tiny, tight-knit form of management that lets you to keep a secret even at the heart of government also limits your ability to road-test new proposals and this was painfully evident in the car crash that the manifesto precipitated. The U-turn on social care that followed was not only unprecedented in a campaign but not even effective; questions about what the cap is likely to be will dog her to the end of this campaign.

Combine this with May’s tetchy insistence that nothing had changed and the decision to avoid TV debates and you are left with the impression of a leader who has presided over a notably poor campaign and is a diminished figure as a result of it. The Tories might dismiss Jeremy Corbyn as a weird, Left-wing revolutionary but he has a sense of humour and some interesting ideas and has at least looked comfortably himself these past weeks. Whatever the result, no one can justifiably say the Labour leader has retreated. No wonder some of those floating voters, perhaps those who voted Ukip last time, have begun to waver in the polls.

But for all this, most analysts still expect the Tories to win reasonably comfortably next week. I have always been sceptical about the degree to which election campaigns really change anything and this one has been no exception. The choice at the start is the choice at the end. There is no real reason to suppose that people, when they come to stare at that ballot sheet, are likely to forget their instincts of a few weeks ago, though I grant you it is no easy decision. For most of those I have spoken to since it began, this could reasonably be summarised so far as the no-one-you-can-reasonably-vote-for election. There are pretty good reasons to take against every one of them.

But if May wins next week, the interesting politics will only have just begun. It has been David Cameron’s unintentional (I think) legacy to unite the Right behind the Tories. This is likely to last five minutes. Most people I talk to with experience of international negotiations seem to think we will continue to interact rancorously with European colleagues until about five minutes before the deadline for our exit, at which point both sides will step back from the brink and agree to a longer transition.

If and when this happens, the accusations of betrayal will vie with demands for a hard exit as the Right firmly splits again. So one might argue that the really big question of election night is around the Labour Party. If he does not win, will Corbyn stay or go? If he loses but stays, will the moderates finally split?

This has not been the Brexit campaign but it may still be the Brexit election. And, whatever happens next, our negotiations will set the framework for what may prove to be a volatile domestic political scene. You wouldn’t put it past the Europeans to delay a deal for so long that any new referendum would probably have us reverse the vote — and many Brexiteers must know this.

As we sit here in the early summer of 2017, one could argue that just about anything is possible.

Tom Bradby anchors News at Ten and will be host ITV News Election 2017 Live: The Results from 21.55 on June 8.