A year ago, the logjam broke and the election campaign began

The prime minister has written to John Rentoul to remind him of an important anniversary

Jo Swinson addressing Lib Dem conference  (Getty)

A year ago the country was preparing for an election. I was surprised to receive an email from Boris Johnson about it recently. It wasn’t really from the prime minister – it was a mass mailing from the Conservative Party; I subscribe to it because it is useful to know what the Tories think will encourage their supporters to donate money or to join the party. 

This “election vote anniversary” email, for example, was soon followed by another, from Amanda Milling, the chair of the party, telling me: “Keir Starmer is Corbyn’s man.” Which I thought was duff information, arriving as it did on Thursday evening, after Corbyn had been suspended from the Labour Party. 

But it was interesting that the party thought it was worth reminding its supporters that “it was one year ago today that parliament voted in favour of a general election”. It was indeed a momentous week in parliament. Johnson had managed to win a vote on the withdrawal agreement – the first time a vote for a Brexit deal had passed the deadlocked parliament. It looked as if the resistance was crumbling, as a group of Labour MPs opposed to a second referendum finally voted with the government. 

That was when Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, made her fateful decision to support an early election. Her great gamble was that it was the only chance of stopping Brexit. I suspect that she knew the chances of doing so were slim, but that she was also motivated by a side bet: on the Lib Dems winning a large number of seats. Seat-by-seat computer models – remember MRP, multilevel regression and poststratification? – suggested that Remainers in Conservative seats across the south of England were ready to vote Lib Dem in large numbers. 

Unfortunately for Swinson, after she had said she would vote for an early election, it turned out that the polling was out of date, and the tide was already going out. But by then Jeremy Corbyn, assuming that the Scottish nationalists would also vote for an election, giving Johnson the votes he needed in the Commons, had instructed his MPs to vote for it too, and the bill was passed by a large majority. 

It seems a long time ago now, given what has happened since. As Boris Johnson admitted in his email, “truthfully John the last year hasn’t been anything like what I expected”. Perhaps the prime minister’s helpers at Conservative Campaign HQ hope to rekindle the spirit of Getting Brexit Done – although that is rather conditional on Getting Macron and Merkel to Sign a Trade Deal – but it does feel as if they are reminding those former Labour voters in the north of England that they voted for a fresh start. 

A year ago, Johnson could at least offer a bit of optimism and uplift. But if that’s what people thought they were voting for, it was not what they got. 

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator