Cast your mind back – if you can – to September 1978. Jim Callaghan announced he would not call an early election (which he might have won), Pope John Paul I died after 33 days of papacy and the Commodores were number one with their hit, 'Three Times A Lady".
That month also marked the first-ever Ipsos tracker poll which, nearly half a century later, has placed the Tories on 20 per cent, their lowest in the history of that survey, and an eye-watering 27 points behind Labour.
Think about that for a moment. Rishi Sunak's Conservatives are polling (and it is just one poll, and it could be an outlier) worse than John Major amidst sleaze, Boris Johnson following Partygate and Liz Truss in the immediate aftermath of the mini-Budget. Forgive me a moment of fatalism, but this is not a political party a penny off national insurance away from securing a fifth term.
The Budget is of course an opportunity for the government to seize some control of the narrative. You'll hear lots of Jeremy Hunt saying how inflation has fallen (it has, but not because of him), tax is falling (this will be the biggest tax-raising parliament on record) and the fiscal rules are being met (they are, if we pretend there will be big spending cuts after the election). But there is a broader problem for Hunt and Sunak.
Normally in an election campaign, parties fight not just on the issues, but on the terms of the debate itself. All other things being equal, Labour wants to talk about public services because it is more trusted on the issue, while the Tories want to talk about the economy, for the same reason.
When Ipsos asked voters which issues were likely to be the most important when deciding how to cast their ballot, they replied the NHS (30 per cent), inflation/rising prices (22 per cent), the economy (22 per cent) and asylum/immigration (15 per cent). Yet Labour leads the Conservatives as the best party to handle every one of these issues.
On managing the economy, Labour leads the Tories by 31 per cent to 23 per cent. On taxation, Labour leads 31 per cent to 19 per cent. On public services, Labour leads 43 per cent to 11 per cent (!) How the government expects to survive a general election without having any authority, or even a plausible line to take on public spending, is unclear.
The idea that Sunak might call a general election for 2 May continues to excite Westminster. If the Tories think things will only get worse, that Labour's Rochdale debacle proves Keir Starmer isn't ready and if the Home Office can get one poor migrant on a plane to Rwanda, spring makes a certain amount of sense. But it would also be madness.
That is because the prime minister's incentive structure is not identical to that of his party. Should the Tories lose the election, Sunak will be out. What does it matter to him whether he returns with 200 MPs in April or 175 in November? The negative would be unprovable anyway. Far better to bank the two years in office – a respectable tenure by the feverish standards of modern British politics – fly off and do something else.
