The Guardian view on a snap election: a reckoning the voters may not want | Editorial
General elections must be about the issues. The 1997 election was about 18 “wasted” years of Tory government, with Tony Blair’s manifesto saying “Britain deserves better”. In 1974 Edward Heath called an election seeking an answer to the question of who governs Britain – the prime minister or the unions. The answer the electorate returned was the unions. More often than not, politicians overestimate their ability to frame the terms of political debate. Theresa May reasoned that Brexit would be the issue in her snap election of 2017. It dominated voters’ thoughts – but that did not help her. Boris Johnson might be on the verge of making a similar mistake.
The prime minister has the election he long sought, though there was a surly undercurrent of resistance in parliament not giving in to Mr Johnson. It could be seen in the number of MPs who wanted to lower the voting age to 16 and give citizens of EU countries the vote, both of which are permitted in Scotland’s Holyrood elections. However, Mr Johnson persevered to foreshorten his mandate. He wants to weaponise the exhaustion that voters feel with the first stage of Brexit and shift blame to a “remainer” parliament for the delay. He hopes to stir apathy in his opponents’ base. The election is to be held in December, the first since 1923. There’s a reason why the month has been avoided for national polls. Cold, dark nights are not the ideal conditions to go canvassing, or to get people to a rally or to a polling station, however important the issues facing the nation might be.