As this democratic exercise in mutual destruction hurtles towards its close, the polls are coming thick and fast — and some seem thicker than others.
My favourite survey this week came from ComRes, which asked people if they had made up their minds who to vote for: 70 per cent had, 21 per cent hadn’t, and 9 per cent replied “don’t know”. They couldn’t make up their minds about whether they’d made up their minds. I applaud these people.
If there is anything we should have learnt from politics by now, it’s the need to just say: we don’t know. No idea. Haven’t a Scooby-Doo. Staggering around in the dark. In a permanent state of discombobulation.
You were told that Ed Miliband would win and Donald Trump wouldn’t and that Leave would be crushed. You were told (probably by me) that Jeremy Corbyn was a useless pudding, and the wise brains in the “moderate” wing of the Labour Party had hatched a clever plan to sit back and let him fail on his own terms. Yet it turns out a man who has spent his life campaigning for lost causes has inadvertently proved that Labour can win, or at least give it a good go, with a traditional, hard-left agenda.
You were told that the Lib Dems would harness the power of the 48 per cent to seize back dozens of seats. Instead they have barely pursued a 4.8 per cent strategy, with a campaign best remembered for gay sex, cannabis and smelling spaniels — and we’ve all had nights out like that.
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You were told that Ukip posed an existential threat to Labour. Instead Paul Nuttall poses only a threat to himself, and possibly those guilty of treason if he succeeds in his dream of becoming chief executioner. Most importantly you were told that Theresa May was destined to secure a landslide so vast that extra constituencies would have to be invented to properly capture the public mood and tally a majority of a thousand seats or more.
How could we know she would turn out to be fallible? And hapless, indecisive, brittle, inflexible, obstructive, unimaginative and elusive?
Well, modesty forbids me from pointing out that I did try to tell you four weeks ago on these very pages, before people saying she is a bit rubbish became as ubiquitous as fidget spinners and Pippa Middleton. Now, instead of debating the size of her majority, we wonder whether she will survive until Christmas.
It is the unknown unknowns that have made this election campaign so fascinating, as the Lego blocks of politics as we know it are snapped apart and rebuilt. Is Corbynmania really catching alight? Will the Tories gain in the north but risk alienating their southern base? Will the young put down their phones and turn out for Labour? Will the old still turn out for the Tories? Has the SNP peaked? Has Ukip troughed?
We don’t know, because the people who do know, the amorphous blob called “the electorate”, probably won’t know until stubby pencil hits paper on Thursday, as they try to decide who they are least unenthusiastic about.
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This is an election that nobody wanted, in which the leading protagonists have failed to live up to even modest expectations of consistency, honesty and competence. If only the ballot paper also had a box marked “don’t know”.