This 'punishment election' is revenge for the past 14 years

Is this the most vindictive general election ever? There's reason to think so. The former Conservative MP and junior minister Paul Scully puts it rather well, calling it a "punishment election" in which the Tories and particularly their leader - are coming in for a vengeful kneecapping in a fortnight's time.

- SEAN O'GRADY

It’s not the kind of reception that any party worker knocking on doors in the drizzle dreams about, or admits to, but Scully can say it as it is because he has ducked out of any doomed attempt to hang on to his Croydon constituency: “It feels like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot and we’re not millipedes. We’ve only got two feet. There’s only so much capacity. When you have got effectively what is a punishment election, when you’ve got people that are wanting to punish the Conservatives and so they’re going to be looking under the microscope at absolutely everything that we do, and then we’re making it easy for them to punish us even further on that basis.”

Indeed so, with a particularly grubby betting scandal widening hour by hour, voters are being continually reminded about one of the reasons why they’d like to give the Tories a damn good thrashing. If I were a cabinet minister or other high-profile Conservative politician I’d be worried about them meting out especially harsh punishment.

The numbers speak for themselves – even on the more optimistic poll ratings and a routine level of voter turnout of, say, two-thirds, only about one in six Britons will bother to vote for them this year.