Even at this nadir of British politics, a general election is a reporter’s dream

Contemplating the prospect of a third general election in little more than four years, many voters may be channelling Brenda from Bristol with a collective howl of “Not another one!”

But for the reporters who spend their days writing about politics, an election is a highlight of their working life to be relished.

A chance to get away from prowling the committee rooms, corridors and watering holes of Westminster, to get out into the real world and take the mood of real people across the country.

And a chance to see what happens when the ideas and plans dreamt up in party conferences and seminars come into contact with their only true judges: the voters.

Like everything in politics, election campaigns are becoming more controlled, more professionalised and more focused on TV and social media, rather than real-life encounters.

Long gone are the days of rallies in town halls and market squares when politicians took questions from all comers.

But as Theresa May found to her cost in 2017, hiding your candidate away from voters too much can be counterproductive. And other candidates – like Jeremy Corbyn and William Hague – have shown that they perform best when out on the streets talking to ordinary voters.

One thing that any political reporter loves about elections is that they can be guaranteed to throw up the unexpected.

Who could forget Gordon Brown’s disastrous “bigoted woman” jibe after an encounter with a (Labour-supporting) voter in Rochdale? Or Theresa May haplessly intoning “nothing has changed” as she ditched her social care policy? Or Tony Blair being harangued by the angry partner of a cancer patient during a choreographed hospital visit? Or Ed Miliband’s bizarre “Ed Stone” bearing his campaign pledges literally carved into limestone? Or the weird and brief spectacle of Cleggmania? Not to mention John Prescott actually thumping a voter after being hit by an egg.

During an election campaign, political time becomes compressed. Interviews in newspapers, on TV and radio come thick and fast. Polls appear on a virtually daily basis. MPs confront and are confronted by their electorate in a way that rarely happens in the day-to-day run of Westminster life.

And all the time, there is a delicious sense of suspense. The future direction of the country is in the balance, and whatever the polls say, no one knows how it will turn out.

All of the effort and thought and debate of the preceding years is concentrated into a precious few weeks as parties try every technique of persuasion and campaigning tactic to push up their vote.

And on the night itself, surprises are guaranteed, from the breathtaking shock of exit polls finding Ms May had thrown away her majority in 2017 to the downfall of once-dominant figures like Michael Portillo in 1997 or Ed Balls in 2015, cast out of Westminster by the power of a simple X marked by ordinary voters.

For many voters, it may be a chore. For candidates and campaigners, it must be a wearying grind. But for the chroniclers of Britain’s political life, an election is a glorious carnival of that democracy which Churchill once described as “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried”.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor