Contrasting Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for a general election with Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance, it would be easy to assume that the result was pretty well assured: the Conservatives will win a majority. The pollsters and the bookmakers seem to concur — as they have done before misjudging the result of virtually every major election on either side of the Atlantic in the past few years. But make no mistake: the Prime Minister is taking a huge gamble in pushing for an election now.
In the Conservatives’ favour is the prospect that the resurgent Lib Dems could split the Remain vote, and that Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity seems to have reached depths seldom seen in democratic politics. Against that, the strength of the SNP has completely changed the geometry of Westminster elections. The effect of the Brexit party is also hard to predict. It is now much more difficult for any party to gain an overall majority.
Moreover, in 2017 Theresa May and many others made a near-fatal underestimation of Corbyn, who showed himself an impressive campaigner, with the ability to make extreme economic policies come across as reasonable. Momentum are well-organised and digitally adept. Two years ago, they helped Labour increase its share of the vote more than at any other postwar election. It would be madness to write Corbyn off now.
So far, the Conservatives’ case for an election seems to have focused on public discontent with the current stalemate. Give me a majority, Johnson is saying, and I will put Brexit to bed and we can all move on. The party is pinning its hopes on Labour Leave voters, with whom Johnson made common cause during the referendum campaign. They will have had enough of being told that they didn’t know what they were voting for and will dislike Labour’s proposal for a second referendum.
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