Analysis: Rishi Sunak could have a worse campaign than Theresa May in 2017

The logic which meant most missed Brexit coming was shaped by many factors, including two important things. The first was that most believed something couldn’t happen because it was what important people said would not happen. The second was that the public are viewed, broadly, as rather dependable in their voting habits.

With that in mind, there are a few “truths” in this election campaign that we should all be wary of.

Key among these is that the “polls will narrow” because that’s what polls do during an election period.

It is very possible that scrutiny on Labour and on Sir Keir Starmer will mean that Labour’s lead falls, and that the Tories therefore pick up some support.

However, this relies largely on the idea that the Conservatives are better at politics than the Labour Party. Currently, they are not, and arguably have not been for a long time.

Theresa May’s gaff and error-strewn 2017 campaign is held up as the high watermark for Conservative ineptitude in a general election where she blew a 20-point lead only to squeak past Jeremy Corbyn by 2.5 points.

It is easy to think that the Conservatives will not have a campaign this bad again, but that is no reason to discount it entirely.

Rishi Sunak is running a presidential-style campaign despite being personally incredibly unpopular, in addition to his party.

He comes across poorly when meeting voters, and in debates he can come across as tetchy.

He is unpopular with large parts of his party, and will be more so now that he announced an election despite telling them it would be months away.

This took only his own party by surprise, running into a Labour machine that has been election-ready for about a year, and on high alert since the local elections.

His MPs, and ministers, are standing down, with new unproven, untested, unknown replacements taking on the battles in their seats, with little planning in place for many races.

He has ditched key policies such as the smoking ban, days after saying they would be his legacy.

He has tried to tell voters he will keep them safe, while looking sad and bedraggled, unable even to keep himself dry.

He is running on the platform of “I have returned things back to normal” at a time when everything in the UK seems worse.

He has accused Labour of wanting to take the country back to square one, despite square one being a time when people felt much less depressed about the state of the nation and their finances.

There is so much that can go wrong for the Conservatives, while the reasoning for things going right rests on the understanding the politics will not reach the extremes of the unexpected.

The Conservatives may well keep more seats than feared, but it is not something we should expect.

It would be wise not to underestimate the Conservatives’ ability to completely implode in this election campaign, and not to assume that voters will come out to vote for them, simply because they often do.