Most boring election campaign ever? You’ve clearly forgotten about Theresa May

Honestly. Why on earth did Rishi Sunak do this to us? The past six weeks have been a complete waste of our time. As anyone with half a brain could have told him, the voters made up their minds a good 18 months ago. They wanted the Tories out, and nothing Mr Sunak could say was going to change that. The entire election campaign, therefore, has been utterly futile. He would have saved himself a lot of grief, and his party a lot of money, if he’d simply allowed us to vote the day after he called the election. The outcome would have been exactly the same.

Even so, I do think it’s worth making one point in this campaign’s defence. We constantly hear people moan that it’s been “the most boring campaign ever”. And yes, all right, it’s certainly felt that way – but only because the result was always a foregone conclusion. If you forget the polls, and look objectively at the events of the campaign, you’ve got to admit that, in many ways, it’s actually been very entertaining.

And, if you still insist that it’s been the most boring ever, you’ve clearly forgotten about Theresa May.

But, before we come to that dementor-like extinguisher of all human joy, let’s think about the many dramatic, bizarre and downright stupid things that have happened over the past month and a half.

Most obviously, you’ve got the sudden spectacular comeback of Nigel Farage, erupting on to the scene like a stripogram out of the world’s most terrifying birthday cake. On top of that, you’ve got the tireless efforts of his candidates to provide the press with a lavish supply of scandal and outrage – in particular via old social media posts about why Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, or why women deserve to be “deprived of healthcare”. Given all that these lunatics have done to help us fill our pages, it seems appallingly ungrateful of journalists to complain of boredom.

Then we’ve got Sir Ed Davey, and his adorably desperate attempts to get the Lib Dems on TV by forcing himself to perform endless humiliating stunts on paddle boards and bungee cords. You think that was boring? What more do you want the poor man to do? Ride a unicycle across a tightrope above a tank of starving piranhas while juggling six lit fireworks blindfolded? Fair enough, maybe you do want him to do that, especially if you support Brexit. But it would have been very hard to arrange the insurance.

Inevitably, given that he’s about as exciting as a patch of damp on a B&B ceiling, Sir Keir Starmer has offered little in the way of interest, beyond his perpetual anguished grappling with the ancient mystery of whether or not women have testicles.

Mr Sunak, however, has done his level best to make a splash. He may be hopelessly bland (asked to name his favourite meal, he replied: “Sandwiches”). And he may have a voice that makes him sound like Will from The Inbetweeners reading out the timetable of the 74B to Melton Mowbray. But, by sacking off the D-Day commemorations to do a totally pointless 20-minute sit-down with ITV, he scored the single most staggering own goal in election history. Disastrous, yes. Dull, no.

Now: compare all of the above with Theresa May’s campaign of 2017, in which literally nothing happened, other than a brief rumpus about the supposed “dementia tax”. That, and Mrs May’s sensational revelation that the naughtiest thing she’d ever done was to “run through a field of wheat”. Next to that, how can anyone say that 2024 has been the most boring campaign ever?

There’s only one explanation. Mrs May’s campaign was so traumatically soul-destroying, we’ve all blocked it out.