In the dreary rain, with the chants of “Tories out” rebounding through Downing Street, Rishi Sunak dissolved a Parliament first elected in Boris Johnson’s 2019 landslide sweep. A parliament that legislated through Covid, inflation, Partygate, the war in Ukraine, Liz Truss’s mini-budget and a steady stream of by-elections and Conservative losses that may augur the scale of their coming loss.
The expected reaction to the announcement of a general election was one of relief. Yet today it was mostly confusion. Why now? What about 4 July appealed to Rishi Sunak and the Conservative party as the date that holds the best hope for their government’s salvation?
