Thread by @Staedtler

Shall we do some more Media Studies?
We're getting an election but not because the Tories want it.
The facts are Boris Johnson has inherited a coalition majority of 3.

And that's not enough to pass a budget or a Queen' speech.

If Theresa May hadn't resigned, she too would have had an election this autumn because she couldn't have got a budget or a Queen's speech through parliament either.

No one could. That's why there's going to be an election

The media is always getting stuff wrong. This general election is not being chosen by Johnson out of some sort of strategy.

It's being forced on him. The strategy is therefore a matter of necessity, not initiative.

So Boris Johnson is being forced into a general election.
He is therefore also being forced to decide on a manifesto. And that means deciding on Brexit one way or the other.

Johnson doesn't want this election for the very reason that he doesn't want to write a manifesto. And what can he put?
He can't choose May's deal. Everyone has seen that he can't get a new deal.

It's either no deal or no Brexit.

He could choose no deal. He could offer it in the form a referendum.
But that would risk re-energising the Brexit Party and splitting his party. he would almost certainly lose that election.

So what, does he put no deal in a manifesto?

Now, he's got a real problem.

See, the Tories are split, leave and remain. If he chooses leave, and leave with no deal, as all there is left, he will lose all the moderate voters, the centrists, from hundreds of marginal seats.

So the gamble must be that he can win more Brexit seats from Labour than he loses to the Lib Dems or the SNP.

But the more Brexit he has to be to win the more seats, the more marginals he loses to the Lib Dems

See, what the Tories would have to do is fight two separate general elections at the same time.
He has to remain enough to hold on to the marginals.
And Brexit enough to win seats off Labour.

And yet another problem is that all the main Brexit seats are Tory already. There's really not much more to win with Brexit than he already has.
But hundreds to lose to the Lib Dems.

There might be ways for Boris Johnson to win a general election, but it would take a serious bit of plotting and discipline to bring it off.

And not if he keeps taking advice from Dominic "Short" Cummings.