No wonder that the Prime Minister has tried this week to dampen speculation that he might call an election in the Spring.
After Brexit and Covid, five Prime Ministers and a cost-of-living crisis, a war in Ukraine and a war in Gaza, the Labour leader wishes to appeal to a weary electorate with a vision of tedium.
Farage is 59 – a rubbery, ebullient 59, but 59 nonetheless. Does he really fancy a decade’s prospective work to recast the right, with no certainty of elected office at the end of it?
The Government can now at last claim consistency, and at least enter the next election arguing, with more of a straight face, that it has tried to deliver migration.
There is no easy way out of the toxic combination of already-high taxes, corrosive inflation, low productivity, and a Health Service funded exclusively by the taxpayer.
Rather than giving them more powers, as Labour will do if it wins the next general election, we should make them more transparent.
The longer Number Ten fails to declare, the more cheerfully Labour will pile in – preparing to frame the Prime Minister as a bottler if he waits until after the Budget to rule out a May poll.
The OBR predicts that our total debt pile will more than triple to 310 per cent of GDP by 2070. As staggering a figure as that is, it will never be a priority for politicians interested in buying their re-election on the backs of future generations.
The only means by which individuals should be able to avoid removal, is by demonstrating to Home Office officials, that they have entered the country legally, are under 18, or are medically unfit to fly.
Though any of the 106 members of the One Nation Caucus do worry that declaring Rwanda a safe country in law is a push too far.
His Bill may be held up in the Lords as he continues to insists that his Government will stop the boats. The only means of squaring the two would be an election with illegal migration centre-stage.
Those who claim the Conservatives would benefit from a spell in opposition to ‘rest and detox’ are misguided. My first nine years in Parliament were spent in opposition, and it was a frustrating experience.
Even as it is, we have been fortunate riots that have proven a rarity. Cut 6.7 per cent a year from the budget and they become almost an inevitability.
Doing the minimum possible on legal migration would have the unwelcome effect for the Prime Minister of prolonging and intensifying debate about it.
Picture a triennial month-long regulation symposium, drawing on industry, consumer groups and political representation proportionate to seats in the Commons.