Scribbled out in my diary for this Thursday is a single word: election.
I wrote it earlier this year, with a cautionary question mark attached, when many Conservative Party bigwigs and Westminster soothsayers predicted Rishi Sunak would go to the country on November 14.
Tory Cabinet Minister Michael Gove hinted it was the likely date with destiny. Ex-Chancellor George Osborne concurred. At the time, even polling grand knight John Curtice pronounced a growing consensus behind this Thursday.
As it turned out, battered and bruised Sunak surprised his Cabinet by suddenly cutting and running for July 4 and the rest is history.
Keir Starmer is now the Labour Prime Minister sitting on an impregnable Parliamentary majority, and the Conservatives are nursing their worst trouncing for 200 years.
What if Sunak had held his nerve, fought on and delayed until Thursday? Would the outcome have been any different?
The spoiler alert is Starmer and Labour would in my view almost certainly have still won but possibly by a smaller margin that would have left the Tories in better shape.
Two interest rate cuts, inflation dipping below the Bank of England’s 2% target and sparks of economic growth might have breathed life into the Conservative cause. Sunak would not have abandoned veterans on the beaches of Normandy for a TV interview, the single worst campaign gaffe in the modern era.
Trump’s US win could have weaponised against Labour those KKK and Nazi sympathiser attacks by David Lammy.
King Charles would have been unhappy at the delay, mind. Thursday is his birthday and on Friday, nursing a hangover, he might have resented a new or continuing PM visiting Buck House. We will never know.
Sunak jumping early ranks alongside Jim Callaghan in 1978 and Gordon Brown dithering in 2007 plus Theresa May’s snap 2017 election as four moments when PMs called it catastrophically wrong.
Starmer on Thursday may raise a glass to give thanks to Sunak for saving him an uncertain wait to November 14.