On June 22, the British Prime Minister made the long-awaited announcement that the country’s general election would take place this summer.

In an address seen by many as firing the starting pistol on what looks to be a painful election campaign race, Rishi Sunak had already, earlier this month, blamed the opposition Labour Party for “doomsterism” in its depiction of the UK's current condition through a “cynical narrative of decline”.

He'd said that, in their attempts to capture the feel-bad factor, Labour politicians were trying to "depress their way to victory". It seemed at least that they’d succeeded in depressing the Conservatives.

Trailed by the Daily Mail as a “landmark” speech and hailed by the Express for its “bold vision”, the Prime Minister’s intervention might have been seen as a desperate last throw of the electoral dice from a politician who appears to believe that the only remaining way to appeal to the British public would lie in whipping up paranoid frenzy and moral panic.

Mr. Sunak's fearmongering strategy insisted that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party simply wasn’t up to the job of dealing with the challenges posed by the modern world – by artificial intelligence and immigration, and by the threats of hostile states.

It's certainly true that the current premier has gone out of his way to make friends with some of the planet’s most impressive tech billionaires, but while that might be good for his own future career (after his apparently imminent departure from office), and for his marriage (to the daughter of one such tech billionaire), it seems unlikely that his mateyness with Mr. Musk will cut much mustard when the massed armies of mass-murdering machines come to overthrow our civilization and enslave us all to the eternal and eternally tedious mastery of ChatGPT.

It also seems unclear whether the Tories’ headline-grabbing plans to deport asylum-seekers to the heart of Africa will prove as effective as Sir Keir’s proposals to address the issue through diplomacy and cooperation in international security and border policies and policing.

Sunak meanwhile denounced those opposed to British foreign policy objectives as representing an “axis of authoritarian states” in language which sought to hark back to the Second World War, but which more immediately recalled George W. Bush’s declaration of his opposition to an “axis of evil” just four months after the attacks on the twin towers.

It might in turn have reminded the Prime Minister’s audience that the American President’s campaign of global aggression didn’t exactly end well, either for the United States or for the rest of the world.

Mr. Sunak stressed that the British people – when heading to the ballot boxes in the near future – would be faced with a choice not merely between rival political parties but between the past and the future.

It appeared that even in the throes and clichés of his War-on-Terror rhetoric, and even as he tried to revive the greatest hits of Conservativism’s Project Fear, he thought there might still be people out there who’d associate the party that’s been in power for fourteen years, a party that’s grown tired, jaded and corrupt, and which has done its best to undermine Britain’s public services, social infrastructure, economic health and reputation overseas, with a vision of a vibrant future.

The notion that the Tories might represent to anyone – even to their most ardent supporters – the possibility of vital, fresh, new hope, rather than clanging echoes of a disastrous past, would seem to be the greatest delusion of them all.

Rishi Sunak has, since coming to power, portrayed himself as the candidate of hope, the continuity candidate, the man who’d stabilize the foundering ship of state, the change candidate, and now the leader whose strength and vision will take the nation into the bright future of its manifest destiny.

In response to this latest reinvention, the Labour leader observed that Rishi Sunak had just attempted to put his government through its seventh reset in a period of only eighteen months.

But, within a few days, Sir Keir Starmer had launched his own pre-election mini-manifesto, half a dozen pledges on economic stability, green investment, education, healthcare, and law and order. If there was nothing particularly inspiring in all this, that was because, as the party’s spin doctors emphasized, this wasn't about flashy new flash-in-the-pan promises, but about reinforcing policy commitments and maintaining an even keel.

Mr. Starmer is of course so cripplingly wary of his party’s tendency to drop the most calamitous clangers that he’s starting to make Boris Johnson look like a man who’s ready to make a serious commitment.

Yet, though some might wish that Starmer would at some point demonstrate the courage of his predecessor's convictions, the progressive – but slightly dull – vision which he projects might appear to many voters infinitely preferable to the dissociative politics of the current government.

It is, after all, remarkably difficult to dispute his characterization of the Conservatives as a party of “chaos and division”. There are even those among the Tories’ own ranks who might quietly concur.

If these opening salvos are anything to go by, this election campaign is going to get much nastier before polling day. We can only hope and pray that – though this now seems vanishingly improbable – polite, civilized, intelligent, evidenced and reasonable debate will prevail.

But, in the absence of that, please stay tuned as we witness this ugly and bloody battle – a struggle to claim the soul of the nation – commence.