“Why Sunak is taking a gamble by calling the election early” is how The Times put it in their article today. And that seemingly is the sentiment of many, including our sources suggest of not a small number of Tory MPs. But Rishi is not one to take big risks, and The Bear doesn’t think this is an exception. If one was sitting in the office of No 10, we recon a July election looks a lot like playing safe.

If one is to suggest that an election in the autumn would have been a better call, one would have to think there was at least a chance that things would improve for the Conservatives. However there is very few indicators to suggest that. The obvious argument is that you allow more time for something, anything to move the needle. But Rishi has been trying that for all of his time in office! The PM’s policy focusses; the NHS, the economy, small boats; have been hitting exactly where the polling suggests that voters might return to the party if they were successful, but none have had a real impact. In fact, the poll gap has been fairly consistently increasing.

And that leads onto the “time for a change” sentiment. The fact that nothing the government does has any impact on the polls suggests that the overwhelming feel of the country is that they’ve done a poor job and we need someone else. And events in the next six months are very unlikely to change that. Yes the economy could well improve, but forecasts aren’t predicting anything of momentous proportions, and even if they were, when it isn’t visible that your weekly shop is getting cheaper or your wages are getting higher - it’s very hard to convince the general public of economic direction.

Ok, what about small boats. The Rwanda policy is very flawed and The Bear is extremely sceptical that it will produce it’s intended effect. But even if it did, the time frame we’re talking about is unlikely to produce meaningful statistics to come to the country with in terms of drops in small boat numbers.

And the NHS isn’t going to change in 6 months. That would really be a miracle.

So if the government’s strategy doesn’t look like it’s going to change much, one has to ask themselves if waiting it out is really just blind hope.

But the risks of waiting it out? The economy could stagnate or even get worse, Rwanda could be shown to have no effect, or the PM could face a challenge - something that would be devastating! The extra time also gives Kier Starmer even more time to organise himself and give a clearer message, and it gives more opportunity for the “time for a change” sentiment to gain more momentum.

If one is a Tory and thinking about winning an election, now would not be the time to call one. But we would guess that Sunak is not delusional. Call an election now and you do have a reasonably favourable economic background, Rwanda planes should be flying, and there might even be some good national feeling with the Euros and the good weather. Wait and, The Bear would suggest, things are likely to get worse rather than better.

Assuming the polls narrow somewhat leading to the election, the conservatives could retain a reasonable number of seats and be a strong opposition, we must remember the swing labour requires is pretty large. If the situation got worse, the Conservatives could be looking at far worse, maybe even fewer than 100 seats. We think Sunak would rather take a respectable loss and jet off to California than risk repeating a certain 1993 Canadian election.