Those who have worked with prime minister Boris Johnson longest doubted he would risk the job he had wanted his whole life after just three months in office.



But after a week of tense disagreement at the top of the Conservative party, and spurred on by the conviction of his chief aide Dominic Cummings that he would never have more favourable conditions for an election, the prime minister decided to bet the house.

The view ultimately taken by Johnson was that the Dec. 12 poll would be a huge gamble, but one that he had to take.

As the six-week campaign gets underway, BuzzFeed News can reveal concerns held by senior Tories about their chances of securing a majority, the dangers of holding an election in the midst of a looming NHS winter crisis, fears that Johnson will be unable to make this a single-issue election about Brexit — and that he could await the same fate as Theresa May when her own decision to go to the country in 2017 resulted in a hung Parliament.

The double-barrelled message you can expect to hear day in, day out over the next 43 days from Tory MPs is that Johnson will “get Brexit done”, so he can then focus on the things that really matter to voters, be that schools, policing, the NHS, housing, or other issues neglected by Westminster over the last three years and longer.

In Conservative headquarters (CCHQ), the party’s election campaign is being run by Isaac Levido, a former Australian Liberal Party strategist and Lynton Crosby protégé. Cummings and his team of former Vote Leave officials, who would be the first to admit that their real strengths lie in campaigning rather than governing, remain in Downing Street.

“Isaac has full grip over the campaign. Dom is in Number 10 with the Vote Leave team. CCHQ staff are answering to CCHQ, not Vote Leave,” a CCHQ insider said.

Central to the push for an election now was Cummings’ belief that it is easier for the Tories to win before leaving the EU than afterwards. Before Brexit, Johnson can accuse Labour and the Liberal Democrats of being responsible for it not happening and pitch himself as the only candidate capable of leading Britain out of the quagmire. After Brexit, an election would be solely about where to take the country next — a completely different ballgame and one possibly much more favourable to Labour and Jeremy Corbyn.

Tory aides in favour of going to the polls before Brexit is done often refer to Winston Churchill’s defeat in the 1945 election straight after the second world war, in which the Conservative prime minister was not rewarded by voters for delivering victory, and a radical Labour government was elected instead.

Internal polling has concluded that the public is sick of Brexit dominating the news and politics and, above all else, want it resolved as soon as possible.

But there are concerns among some Tory MPs that an election now damages one of Johnson’s main attack lines: that Parliament blocked Brexit. The decision to call the election despite having an apparent House of Commons majority for his deal and passing his Queen’s Speech means Johnson cannot so easily argue that he exhausted every means of delivering Brexit and that MPs did everything they could to block it.

Some MPs believe voters will see the election for what it is: a self-interested political calculation by Johnson rather than a last resort after Parliament stopped Brexit.