On your marks! Sunak and Starmer are on the campaign trail – and this is the most likely date for the election

The prime minister more or less set us for a winter election, while the Labour leader set out his stall, writes John Rentoul. Today’s the day the campaign (unofficially) started...

Just 11 months and one week to go! (PA)

The prime minister bowed to the inevitable before journalists’ speculation about the election date could reach “bottler Brown” fever pitch. Well aware that Gordon Brown’s big mistake in 2007 was to allow election preparations to become too far advanced before pulling the plug, Rishi Sunak said that an election in the second half of this year was his “working assumption”.

That still leaves July as a theoretical possibility, and October as a more plausible option, but I read his words as pointing towards November or December. Of course, Sunak could still dash to the country in May if the opinion polls suddenly turned in his favour, but that was never likely, which is why his words today merely confirm what had already become accepted in Westminster. No prime minister would voluntarily call an election while their party was so far behind in the polls.

Many political observers are a bit rusty about the rules, now that they have reverted to the position before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act came in after the 2010 election. But the simple rule is that the prime minister decides the date of an election, and advises the monarch to dissolve parliament 25 working days beforehand.