By Angela Green: Confidence growing a Summer General Election will be announced later today.
There is mounting speculation across the media that this afternoon Rishi Sunak will announce a General Election.
This afternoon a cabinet meeting has been called with no specific agenda; it is being described as a political meeting.
David Cameron called short a trip to Albania after meeting the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama earlier today, jumping back on a flight to attend this afternoon’s cabinet meeting.
Home Office ministers’ diaries are being cleared, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt who earlier this afternoon cancelled a scheduled appearance on ITV’s Peston this evening.
There is confidence is some media quarters that the prime minister will use this afternoon’s 4pm cabinet meeting to inform his ministers that he is heading to Buckingham Palace later today to ask the King to dissolve Parliament for a general election, most likely on 4th July.
There are also reports of a stage under construction now for a previously unscheduled conservative party event being held this evening at 8pm at London’s ExCel Arena.
Perhaps most telling are the odds available on a July General Election from bookmakers, which today have been slashed. The best available are 1/6 on skybet, and the only other bookmaker even giving odds is betfair at 1/12.
Let’s hope all the speculation is correct and after 14 years of national decline led by the various charlatans occupying Number 10 through that time, they are finally evicted.