Rishi Sunak has made the greatest gamble of his career

As the time for calling a May election came and went, many Conservative MPs must have breathed a small sigh of relief. Having passed on the chance to go to the country at the same time as the local elections, it seemed most likely that Rishi Sunak would call an election in the autumn, safely after his two-year anniversary in Number 10.

But there were a few straws in the wind. Most obviously, last week the Prime Minister refused to rule out a July election, repeating only that it would be in the “second half of the year”.

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Last month, he and Jeremy Hunt unveiled with much fanfare a new defence spending commitment, only a month after taking a lot of heat for ignoring the Armed Forces in the Budget. That strongly suggested they weren’t planning on holding another so-called “fiscal event” before going to the polls.

It’s still a very strange decision. March’s Budget was not a pre-election one, and was short on the sort of micro-targeted giveaways we might have expected. More bafflingly, this morning’s Downing Street media grid led with Oliver Dowden warning voters to stockpile tinned food and bottled water – hardly an auspicious backdrop to a general election.

Which brings us to the question: why now?

While we can’t know for sure until Sunak explains himself and the history books are written, the most likely calculation seems likely to be simply that there is more danger than opportunity in waiting.

The mounting crisis over prison places, which has seen ministers start releasing prisoners early and the police advised to arrest fewer people, is only going to get worse. The summer weather is likely to see another surge in Channel crossings, which will undermine any credit the Government hoped to get for delivering the Rwanda scheme.

Perhaps the Prime Minister’s team are aware of other ticking time-bombs. It must have taken quite the scare to induce him to go to the country when the Conservatives are consistently 20 points down in the polls. The urge to wait for something to come up, to keep the job and the perks for a few more months, is always a powerful one in politics.

Then there’s the fact that even the Government’s good-news stories might have been expected to develop and pay off over the next couple of months. The Rwanda Act is law, but no flight has yet taken off; inflation is down, but a snap election leaves little time for the practical benefits to be felt by mortgage-holders.

Whatever the reason, the die is cast. The Prime Minister’s last conference speech – an unworkable smoking ban, an arcane school exam reform, and a cancelled railway – are his case to the nation. We shall see what voters make of it.