SARAH VINE: I do not purchase that Rishi simply needs a pleasant summer season vacation

Has Rishi Sunak been brushing up on his Shakespeare? When I heard the news that he was planning to announce a snap election, I couldn’t help thinking of Act 1, scene 7 of Macbeth: ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’

Of course, we all know how that story ended. Let us hope for Sunak’s sake that things turn out differently. Many will think he’s lost the plot with this move; but I’m not so sure. I don’t think he can win, sadly – but this may be the best chance he has of losing well.

Fair enough, the mood in the land is not exactly one of unbridled delight at the thought of a general election, with all the inevitable upheaval and strife that accompanies such events.

But on the other hand, the electorate is surely heartily fed up with the never-ending psychodrama that British politics seems to have become. One way or another, it’s time to put an end to it all, to draw a line under the chaos of the past few years and make a fresh start. An election is the only way to do that.

Rishi Sunak, for all his diminutive stature, is no lightweight, writes SARAH VINE

As for the prospect of an unprecedented fifth Conservative term, well, the polls speak for themselves. Labour has a pretty consistent 20-point lead. Surely only a madman or a sadist would trigger an election at this stage in the game?

Isn’t the obvious thing to hold on until the very last possible moment (January 2025) in the hope of at least turning things around sufficiently as to not be facing a total wipeout?

A lesser man, or a coward, might have done so. But Sunak, for all his diminutive stature, is no lightweight. I think the electorate will admire that. Besides, he has nothing to lose. And probably quite a lot to gain.

A July 4 polling day presents a number of challenges to the Labour party. Their advantage in the polls is entirely dependent on dissatisfaction with the Conservatives, and nothing to do with any genuine excitement at the prospect of a Starmer administration.

Thus far, they’ve mostly just capitalised on Conservative failures. When it comes to their own policies, they’re not exactly election-ready. Far from it. We saw this last week with Sir Keir Starmer and his six-point plan, or Starmer Stone, or whatever we’re calling it. Poor Wes Streeting (shadow health secretary) was quizzed about it on Sunday morning TV, and couldn’t even remember what the six points were.

And then there’s the tragedy of Gaza. Sunak is clear where he stands on the Middle East. Labour is in total disarray, as we saw from the council elections earlier this month when independent candidates running on openly pro-Palestinian platforms took more than 40 traditional Labour seats.

Historically, Labour have always been able to rely on the support of Muslim communities. But the situation in the Middle East has created a new and very sinister type of sectarianism in British politics, one that Labour – still mired in accusations of anti-Semitism from Jeremy Corbyn’s time as leader – does not have the first clue how to handle. Indeed, it threatens to split the Labour vote in much the same way that Reform will split the Conservative one.

But it’s about more than mere electoral currents. It’s about Sunak the man, and about him finally taking control of a situation which, in many ways, he rather fell into and which he has never quite been able to manage on his own terms.

His speech outside No10 today was very much a reminder of his own record in politics

He has never had a proper political mandate as Prime Minister, having inherited Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority third-hand via Liz Truss’s catastrophic tenure.

Calling the election now allows him an opportunity to own his political narrative. Had he held out for the autumn, or even longer, there might have been a justifiable sense that he was delaying the inevitable out of sheer desperation.

There’s nothing worse than being forced into going to the country simply because you’ve run out of road. At least this way he gets to fight his case head-on – and as much as possible dictate the agenda on his own terms.

It’s about him wanting to present himself as a leader in his own right, rather than just the last man standing when the Conservative ship was going down. About being more than the person who just cleans up everyone else’s messes – and showing the electorate that he is a man with a clear vision of his own.

His speech was very much a reminder of his own record in politics, of how against a backdrop of chaotic and unforeseen world events and infighting from within the party, he has at every turn been the man who has tried to find solutions to intractable problems.

He talked about furlough – a scheme that, while not perfect, nevertheless provided a lifeline for countless people during Covid. And also, of course, Rwanda, which has proven to be the most excruciatingly difficult policy to push through Parliament, and yet – somehow – he has managed it.

In a world of ADHD politics, where leaders flip-flop at the slightest whiff of a tricky hashtag (see Starmer), Sunak is framing himself as a leader who sticks to his guns, who’s in it for the long run, no matter how bumpy the ride.

It’s not the quickest or easiest route, and it’s certainly not the populist route – but it is in the long-term the responsible and honourable way to behave. And that is very much how Sunak sees himself, and wants others to see him.

Of course, his enemies – not just on the Labour side, but from within the Tory ranks – will try to frame it very differently. Acid tongues are already saying he’s only calling it now because he’s looking forward to a decent summer holiday and a break before the kids move to schools in America, where he and his wife will pick up their millionaire lifestyle.

Cute, but I don’t buy it. Sure, family is important, it always is. And it’s true that – in my experience certainly – his two girls (Krishna, 12, and Anoushka, ten) are getting to that age where having a parent in frontline politics can be seriously detrimental to their wellbeing.

Being a teenager is hard enough these days without having the added pressure of a father who is famous, in that limited and feverish world, for all the wrong reasons. The longer he stays in this job, the more their lives – and potentially their mental health – will be affected.

But in that respect Sunak’s personal wealth – often used as a stick to beat him with by the Left, even as the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, drones on about ‘wealth creation’ – offers him a little insulation from that problem.

If this was all just a rich man’s vanity, he would have walked away from it a long time ago, and saved himself and his family a lot of trouble.

Can he win? Unlikely. But he won’t go down without a fight. And if he manages in some way to mitigate the electoral disaster currently facing the Conservatives and ensure that, at the very least, there is still a decent opposition to rein in the worst excesses of Labour, he’ll have done the nation a great service.