Boris Johnson may have a cunning plan. But as the Opposition ups its game, and support within his own party bleeds away, his strategy is looking increasingly vulnerable

Most political cartoons by their very nature contain a joke which does not stand the test of time. This is not the case with the Matt cartoon on prominent display in my kitchen for the last nine years. A couple are watching the television news from the sofa. One is saying to the other: “Is it possible to be sick of an election before it’s started?” The run-up to the general election in 2010 was indeed somewhat drawn out, and the cartoon seemed very funny at the time. It seems to have been almost permanently relevant.

Rest assured: the 2019 general election campaign, the one that pits Parliament against the people, is already well under way, as it has been since some time before Boris Johnson assumed the office of Prime Minister in July. That unlikely rebel, Sir Nicholas Soames, spotted it. “Set up!” he cried after being thrown out of the Conservative Party for standing up for his beliefs. “The whole thing was gamed,” he said in an interview a few days later. He praised Johnson with faint damns: said to write beautifully, of course, but, then again, also said to be deeply unreliable – and has anyone ever called him a diplomat or a statesman ...? It was ­elegantly done.