Chris Mason: Get ready - general election talk will dominate 2024

In the blizzard of guesswork about politics in the coming year, there's a fact as solid as a lump of coal at the bottom of your Christmas stocking.

The election campaign has to begin in 2024, and it looks likely it will end, with the election itself, in 2024 too.

Indeed, the prime minister told reporters just before Christmas: «2024 will be an election year.»

First, let's examine the facts about why the campaign legally has to begin in 2024.

Tuesday 17 December 2024 marks five years since Parliament met after the last general election, and so if Rishi Sunak hasn't trundled to the palace to see the King to request a dissolution of Parliament before then, Parliament will dissolve automatically and a general election campaign would formally begin just before Christmas.

Tuesday 28 January 2025 is the latest the next election can legally be. (You can read more on all this here, courtesy of the Institute for Government).

So there was a snippet of hard facts.

Now comes the analysis.

Once we are into the new year, the sprocket wheel of general election fever will crank around a few notches. For some at least.

Most people miss most of what's going on at Westminster most of the time, but there's a mild risk nonetheless of getting a little tired of the E word.

Election.

I have been trying to ration how many times I used the E word in 2023, conscious that folk might say: «Oh shut up about it until you can tell us when it's actually happening.»

The thing is, once we are into January all the parties will think, behave and prepare as though the election will be in the spring, until it legally can't be.

Ditto the summer, ditto the autumn, and yes, ditto the winter.

As I've written before, there is an excitable industry of guesswork