General election 2019: can Boris Johnson succeed where Theresa May failed?

This general election isn’t the most important in a generation, it is the most significant in the lifetime of anyone born since 1945. It will decide whether Brexit happens, whether Britain has the most left-wing prime minister in its history, whether the Scottish Nationalists are able to secure a second independence referendum and whether Britain’s two–party system can survive.

Boris Johnson has taken a risk. A winter poll at a time of unprecedented electoral volatility is dangerous and he has no safety net. The Tories have to win outright to govern: they have no potential partners anymore. The Liberal Democrats’ position on Brexit is irreconcilable with the Tory one; the DUP won’t be doing another deal with them any time soon. If Boris Johnson wins the most votes and the most seats but not a majority, he’ll still lose office. It is all or nothing for him.

But there were no better options for the Prime Minister. The alternative to this election was trying to pilot his Brexit deal through the Commons without a majority,  having been defeated already on the timetable. His loss on the Brexit programme motion last week was a clear indication that he could not have got a clean bill through the Commons. If he had persisted down this route, he would have been left with the unappetising choice of either pulling the bill or accepting amendments that were designed to undercut the changes he had secured.

Even the most optimistic of Tories think that they will lose some seats to the SNP in Scotland and some to the Liberal Democrats in England. Given that they didn’t win a majority last time, and need one this time, it means the Tories are relying on winning a double-digit number of seats from Labour. As one cabinet minister puts it: ‘We know the Lib Dems and the SNP will do better.