Sitrep: Why is this happening and when can I get off this planet?

Conservatives   Labour   Liberal Democrats   SNP

Great news! After an exhausting 9 months of pretending to have some shred of integrity, Theresa May has called a general election. Is this because the past 12 months have been such a rip-roaring success when it comes to people voting for things? Perhaps. But maybe I’m being unfair to her. The real reason could be that she’s finally overcome her fear of being seen to be brazenly exploiting our political system in exchange for massive personal gain. We’ll probably never know, despite it quite obviously being exactly that.

Depressingly, what she has done makes perfect sense. From a problem-solving perspective, it’s a wholly rational thing to do. She stands to gain an awful lot and risks very little in attempting to do so. In terms of political manoeuvring, it’s just about the best thing she could do and the best time to do it. In terms of news for the future of this country, it’s just behind the 4-minute warning.

As a quick and painfully subjective primer, I’ve put together a few posts covering who will be hoping for what, how they’ll be planning to get it, and whether they have a hope in hell of doing so. I’ll update the links at the top of this page as I add more posts. Please excuse the unlinked headers at the top in the meantime.