An election called based on narrow party political interests can never be a foregone conclusion.

‘Strong and stable leadership’, ‘competence over chaos’, ‘proven track record’ – all the Lynton Crosby gems designed to bore the country into voting Tory are back.

The message is clear, just as it was in every David Cameron campaign – be happy with what you have.

But it is a message that comes with more than a hint of irony.

The Conservatives have a majority, they have a mandate to deliver Brexit, the government is as popular as it is ever going to be. None of their key policies have been voted down in the commons.

If the house did dare to vote against the government on near enough anything in the next two years, then May could hold an election and she would secure the three-figure majority the media believe she will secure this time around.

To be so cocky as to not even bother contriving a parliamentary vote she would lose, in order to trigger an election, is the kind of poor and naive leadership that ultimately cost David Cameron his job. It is far from impossible that Theresa May could end up like somebody who won millions on the roulette wheel and just had to have another spin.

The main reason this election will not be easy for the Conservatives, which clearly hasn’t been thought through properly at Tory HQ, is that the most important thing in an election is not who the voters want to win, but who they want to lose.

Now if the polls were level and the unions were running amok like it was 1979, it would be pretty easy to convince voters to vote against Jeremy Corbyn. Add the threat of a Labour-SNP coalition – a threat which won the day for David Cameron and still hasn’t gone away – and you’re pretty much over the line already.

But that threat is now a hollow one in the eyes of voters. If there actually was a chance of a Labour-SNP coalition, then what kind of Prime Minister would throw away a majority and expose the country to that threat by calling an election?

And with Corbyn so low in the polls, the game changes. When Ed Miliband was in charge, the country had no qualms about kicking the bloke who wanted to run the country but couldn’t eat a bacon sandwich into touch.

But since Corbyn, in theory, has no chance of being Prime Minister, people might decide he’s a genuinely nice bloke who entered politics to actually implement the policies he believes in, rather than sell out, and therefore he is not in the slightest bit deserving of electoral humiliation.

It could be a good image compared to the greedy woman who laid the future of the country on the line to feed her party’s ego.

In fact for the first time ever, the government has an opposition leader they might need to play up, rather than knock down, during an election campaign.

Further to the theme of who people want to lose, May doesn’t seem to appreciate the role that the Lib Dem wipe-out played in the Conservatives’ 2015 victory. Cameron only won because left-wing voters in Lib Dem-Tory swing seats were more determined to vote against Nick Clegg than against him.

Yet all those Lib Dems in the London suburbs and the South West who threw away their votes by voting Labour to prove a point will be right back on the yellow bus this time around.

It’s a scene that will be repeated all over the country, tactical voting will be rife as there is no other hope for the Left. Blairites will hold their noses and vote for Corbyn while Corbynites will do the same and vote for Farron where Labour can’t win.

Maybe Theresa May is hoping the Scots will be even more bored of voting than the English, and the more determined Tory vote north of the border will swing a handful of seats from the SNP.

My prediction for the final result is May will win 10-20 more seats, the opposition will be emboldened by the fact they are still in the game and no longer hostage to the EU referendum result, Brexit will become more complicated and the election will have been a huge waste of time, money and energy.