Rafael Behr writes:

MPs on all sides are trepidatious about a December ballot. Christmas is not traditional election season and it isn’t clear how kindly the electorate will take to the idea. Brexit has already corroded traditional party allegiances and incentivised tactical voting. There is no one pendulum swinging between blue and red. In 2017, polls at the start of the contest proved a hopeless guide to the final outcome.

Johnson has no intention of repelling voters as efficiently as May did. He is incomparably better on the stump, and the campaign he wants to run has been sitting in a Downing Street drawer for months awaiting activation – a presidential-style race against Jeremy Corbyn. No 10 strategists surmise that Labour’s prospects would be enhanced under any other leader. Johnson also fancies his chances as the holder of a Brexit deal – safe passage out of the quagmire, when everyone else in the contest offers more bog.

But many Tories are nervous about this plan. A pledge to deliver Brexit is not the same as Brexit delivered, and Johnsonian promises are not a high-value currency. Even his closest allies hesitate to list integrity and consistency among his qualities. There is also uncertainty around his supposed electoral magnetism. It has never been tested in Labour heartland seats where, in theory, leave votes are up for grabs. There is also a cultural inoculation against Tories in those parts that pre-dates Brexit. In Scotland, the blustering Etonian shtick is a drag on a weak Tory brand. Factor in an exodus of pro-Europeans to the Liberal Democrats and it gets very hard to map Johnson’s route to a majority.

Corbyn’s path is even harder, which is why many Labour MPs resisted the election. (Some of them also think he is unfit for Downing Street and dread having to pretend he should be prime minister, regardless of whether they think it can happen.) The leader himself relishes a campaign because that is the kind of politics he can do. Corbyn would rather be in a town hall, firing up the faithful with dire warnings about Tories and the NHS than cooped up in parliament with a convoluted Brexit position. Labour pessimists speculate that their leader would rather fight and lose than wait; better martyrdom in electoral battle than suffocation in the Commons. The Corbynite faithful expect their champion’s candidacy to come alive in the bracing air of an election. [Continue reading…]