Tom Bradby: Politics is getting coarser — but I wouldn’t miss election night for anything

This will be my fifth overnight election programme in four years (two elections, the EU referendum, Trump) and if the last four are anything to go by, the night will fly by, with plenty of surprises along the way. Will the SNP sweep the board again as they did in 2015? Will the Prime Minister win the election, but lose his own seat? Will an unlikely campaign to shift the Foreign Secretary from his ultra-safe seat succeed? And what about former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, battling to hold on in the rather more marginal Chingford and Wood Green?

Sunderland and Newcastle will be in a race again to be the first to declare, probably at around 10.45pm. Safe Labour seats, but they will be the first indication of whether the exit poll is correct. The first true Tory target — Workington — should come into view at about 12.45pm.

When I took over the programme in 2015, we decided that people watched for two reasons; to find out what has happened and to work out what it means. So we have assembled what we truly believe is an unrivalled team of experts, two of the best political scientists in the country — professors Jane Green and Colin Rallings; the editor of the Evening Standard (and former chancellor); former shadow chancellor Ed Balls; our Political Editor Robert Peston; and our National Editor Allegra Stratton, who has been touring battlegrounds.

We will also be providing behind-the-scenes insight with ITV News presenter Nina Hossain and Peston co-presenter Anushka Asthana, and hearing from a roster of other guests from Ruth Davidson to Alan Johnson to the Prime Minister’s brother Jo Johnson, and the former Prime Minister’s chief aide, Fiona Hill.

It took until this week to get to the defining moment of this election, which was surely when Boris Johnson was asked what he was going to get his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, for Christmas. He was, he said, going to get Brexit done. Christmas is going to really fly by in their household.

It has not been the Prime Minister’s finest few weeks, on the whole. He has looked a bit like a neutered bull, a far cry from the bumbling, tumbling Boris who’d do anything for a laugh and made his reputation on shows like Have I Got News for You. You can see in his eyes sometimes that he has the caustic one-liner ready to go, but cannot escape the menace in Dominic Cummings’ off-camera gaze. Or perhaps I am just reading too much into the Private Eye version of Downing Street today.

Then there was the Love Actually video. And the weird business where he pocketed ITV correspondent Joe Pike’s phone when confronted with a picture of poor four-year-old Jack asleep on the floor of Accident and Emergency. But you can’t fault his message discipline. On he has ploughed: Get Brexit done. Done Brexit Get. Brexit Get Done. The deal is oven — or possibly microwave — ready (he’s not a cook, is he?). Boring, but resolutely on message.

The campaign has definitely had its moments, but it is hard to avoid the sense that politics is getting coarser and this campaign has just been another example of it.

After Monday’s controversy over Jack Williment-Barr lying on the hospital floor, Tuesday was ignited by Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth’s leaked comments on Jeremy Corbyn and the state of the Labour campaign (to summarise, if you missed it; dire, on both counts). It was another dispiriting indication of the state politics has fallen into.

As I understood it, Mr Ashworth thought he was exchanging confidences with a ‘friend’ on the other side of the political divide. Instead, this individual chose to record and leak the conversation. What happened to the days when we would have condemned this friend for being a complete s**t?

But whatever the highs and lows of the campaign, we are now at its end. Once again we must troop into polling booths and attempt, as a nation, to make a decision. It is like being forced to resit an exam time and time again, with only the glimmer of a hope by this stage that we might actually pass.

But from my point of view, there is a big silver lining. A life in journalism has plenty of privileges, but nothing compares with the pleasure of presenting an all-night election programme, a supremely stimulating eight hours locked inside a green studio with a fast-moving story and some of the most interesting people in the country.

The night really kicks off for me at about 9.40pm in a tiny room next to the studio, with the result of the joint broadcasters’ exit poll, a mighty survey that has been more or less accurate since 1992 but always needs to be treated with caution. It is a prediction, not a result.

In both 2015 and 2017, it delivered results we did not expect and there was a brief, fevered discussion before I went to sit on my own on the stairs for a few minutes as I tried to mentally map the eight hours ahead.

The night always comes on in a rush. It is, of course, a personal marathon. I try to go off-grid the evening before, eat well, avoid drinking any liquids after five on the day itself and then surf through the night on bananas and chocolate (tricky, clearly).

And I can’t really think straight for at least 24 hours afterwards. Eight hours of working in three concentric mental circles continually — listening to my guests, listening to the gallery and trying to think ahead to what is next — is enough to fry my limited brain. But, of course, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.