If Rishi Sunak fails to call an election this afternoon, he could be copying ‘bottler’ Gordon Brown

Rishi Sunak did not look at Prime Minister’s Questions like someone who was girding himself for the rigours of an election campaign – so why had he allowed speculation to run wild in Westminster?

The rumours that he was about to call a 4 July election started early this morning, and seemed to be prompted by an overnight briefing from No 10 that there would be a cabinet meeting this afternoon, instead of the usual time of Tuesday morning.

There was an obvious explanation for this, which was that Sunak was in Vienna on Tuesday morning for a 12-hour city break to see Karl Nehammer, the Austrian prime minister, who helpfully backed the Rwanda deportation policy.

But what threw Westminster journalists into turmoil was the refusal of the prime minister’s spokespeople to deny the election speculation. Suddenly it was clear that something was happening, but nobody outside a tight circle around the prime minister himself knew what it was.

Could it be a reshuffle, possibly announcing a replacement for Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary who has said that he will be standing down at the election? Could Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, be quitting at the election after all? Could it just be a ploy to destabilise Keir Starmer at PMQs? Or to distract from another defection to Labour?

None of those seemed very likely, and when PMQs started there was no sign either of the Labour leader being put off balance, or of a defection. Instead the Commons was treated to an emotional reunion, as Craig McKinlay, the Conservative MP for Thanet South, made a dramatic entrance after his quadruple amputation.

He was treated to a hero’s welcome and granted that rare expression of collective goodwill, a standing ovation. “Breaking all the rules,” as the speaker observed, happily. Starmer timed his intervention brilliantly, crossing the floor to shake the Tory’s bionic hand the moment McKinlay sat down.

The Labour leader then devoted all six of his questions to a studiously bipartisan call for a duty of candour on all public servants in light not just of the infected blood scandal, but of the Post Office and Hillsborough.

It was left to Stephen Flynn, the Scottish National Party leader in the Commons, to ask the obvious question. “Speculation is rife,” he said. “The public deserve a clear answer. Does the prime minister intend to call a summer general election, or is he feart?”

Sunak seemed untroubled by this Scottish variant of Margaret Thatcher’s Lincolnshire “frit” that she once threw at Michael Foot when he was leader of the opposition. “Spoiler alert,” Sunak said. “There is going to be an election in the second half of this year.”

It was just as much a non-answer as journalists had been getting from his spokespeople all morning. Everyone in the chamber, including in the press gallery, knows that the second half of this year includes 4 July, which is when the election could be if the government cancelled next week’s recess and dissolved parliament next Thursday.

We ended the session none the wiser. In the “huddle” with journalists after PMQs, one of the No 10 spokespeople said that the 4pm cabinet meeting would not be a “political” cabinet – but immediately afterwards Downing Street sources warned against “overthinking” the distinction between political and normal cabinet meetings. An election is proper business for a normal cabinet with civil servants in attendance.

A source in the Labour leader’s office told me that they had not been informed by Downing Street of anything. They seemed as puzzled as we were, but gleeful. They are all too aware of the dangers of speculation about an early election getting out of hand. They were there, in Downing Street, when Gordon Brown allowed election plans to get to the point where it was embarrassing to cancel them.

“The election that never was” immediately entered Labour mythology as the moment when the new prime minister suddenly lost his early shine. The honeymoon was over as “bottler” Brown came across as indecisive, unwilling to admit the truth – which was that he didn’t like the look of the opinion polls – and “feart”.

Presumably Sunak knows this and, bad as everyone says he is at politics, he has something better to announce after the cabinet meets at 4pm.