The election campaign grinds on with no major change in the opinion polls. You hope this is because voters have not yet ‘engaged’ but it could be because they have mostly already made up their minds. Who knows, but you want as many people to vote as possible with today being the last day to register.

Despite these fairly static opinion polls, there are trends emerging amid quite a lot of activity, which are worth taking a look at:

The Tories with a relatively smooth campaign have strengthened their position a little to c41% at the expense of the Brexit Party. Did Farage guess how damaging his half concession to the Tories would be to his credibility? Tory confidence is reflected in a fairly modest manifesto, new promise-wise, although their startling 50,000 more NHS nurses comprises 19,000 who would be persuaded not to leave in the first place. Umm…I suspect the Tories think they have it in the bag barring last minute disasters. Farage has delivered enough for them.

The Labour Party is in a hole and just keeps on digging. £83 billion of extra expenditure a year is too much for all but the most die-hard of Corbynites and then, incredibly, on Sunday they pledged another £50 billion ‘off-balance sheet’ to deal with ‘Waspi’ women over 60 caught in a pensions reform trap. They have flat-lined at c30% in the opinion polls and that is before the Chief Rabbi urges voters not to support them on the back of anti-Semitism. This is certainly Corbyn and McDonnell’s last stand and, to coin a phrase, it is ‘do or die’. Likely the latter.

The LibDems have perhaps had the hardest time. After much promise, they are flailing on c15% as they struggle to justify Revoking Article 50 (perfectly plausible initially to create distance from Labour), still seem to be getting the blame for the Tories’ austerity policies when they were in coalition with them and are struggling for airtime having been shut out of key TV debates. To cap it all, Jo Swinson, their leader, is also not the vote winning personality they thought. Unfair on her first General Election outing but who says politics is fair? They just have to hope they benefit from some smart tactical voting and at least the former Tory Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine, urged people to vote for them today.

So, as we enter the home straight, with a shockingly poor choice in front of us, we seem to be heading towards a world of Trump-ite Tory hegemony. ‘Get Brexit Done’ is the refrain even though there will be no trade deal by the end of 2020, more culture wars and a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit.

The best all the major parties deserve is a hung parliament, allowing time for Labour and the Conservatives to head back to the centre-ground and the country to re-assess Brexit and all its implications carefully. Hopefully, the electorate will engage before it is too late.

Most people would agree that this is the most important General Election in a generation. At stake is the UK’s place in the world, our future specifically within Europe, and possibly the break-up of the union.

And yet to quote Nick Watt, Political Editor of Newsnight, who is speaking at my company’s investment seminar next week: ‘…this is the dullest election ever. I am just waiting for something to happen that will make it take off’.

Why is this the case? It is because the esteem in which politicians are held has plummeted to new lows. Last night there was the first of the one to one debates between Johnson and Corbyn. This was not the moment the election took off. The standard of debate was terrible with the audience openly laughing at some of their responses. Two things struck me; Johnson’s popularity has all but vanished. He is seen as a serial liar, not to be trusted personally or politically. Corbyn, likewise, but he was never rated outside his core base in the first place.

However, the debate was a victory for Johnson. As the front runner, all he needed to do was not to screw up and as the debate was a non-score draw (nil-nil…), that was sufficient.

It was also disappointing that other parties were not included in this debate. Opinion polls suggest support for the two major parties has fallen below 70% and yet in national party terms, where were the Liberal Democrats, polling c15%? They are the only party with a definitive Remain stance on the EU and have most to lose by being starved of the oxygen of publicity.

So, let’s just summarise where we are in this election. We have had £800 billion of extra expenditure promised across the three major national parties and we haven’t even seen their manifestos yet! The Tories are losing their reputation for financial rectitude with a splurge of spending promises on the NHS, law and order and education to buy off Labour voters in Leave areas.

But it is Labour whose promises are truly eye watering. £400 billion promised on everything from re-nationalisation to more money on the NHS, free broadband and ultimately a 4 day working week. They are essentially reversing the base of mixed economy capitalism as defined by Margaret Thatcher onwards and therein lies their problem. They are seen as too extreme, too unaffordable, too incompetent. Add to that their ill-defined stance on Brexit and Brexit fatigue, and the Tories are on a home run.

The Tories, helped by the Brexit Party standing down in their currently held seats, are on c40%, Labour c29% and LibDems c15% according to the latest opinion polls. It is early days, but it is difficult to see these figures moving significantly unless there is a break-through moment and the Tories, in particular, have learnt from their catastrophic mistakes in 2017. This election, on a seat by seat basis, will be hugely unpredictable and exciting on the night but it is difficult to see the Tories not winning comfortably in the face of Corbyn’s Labour.

Yet it is worth reminding ourselves that a Tory victory will be no mandate for their brand of right-wing English nationalism and a no-deal Brexit at the end of 2020. It is simply the least bad choice. More Brexit battles have yet to come and things will be just as bad as a hung parliament and further referendums. Can we all really bear to be indifferent??

It seemed an act of hubris when the LibDems and SNP handed Johnson a December election date. Drunk on their immediate ability to win more seats, they forgot that once he had his new withdrawal deal, December suited Johnson more than anybody. As long as he ran to the voters before Corbyn stood down as Labour leader, he was always in with a good chance of election victory.

There were three pieces of the jig-saw puzzle which needed to be put in place for the Tories to win. A new withdrawal deal (tick), a December election preferably on the 12th when students had headed home for Christmas (tick), and then, finally, a deal with the Brexit Party. This is now firmly a tick. I wonder what they offered Farage and his hugely controversial backer, Aaron Banks….time will tell…

The naivety and stupidity of the Opposition is now laid out for all to see. A deal between Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the LibDems won’t save them or the Remain cause. Possibly only a pact between Labour and the LibDems would but that is never going to happen. And Labour is also damaged in those marginal seats the Tories hope to win off them even though the Brexit Party is still standing. Why would any Leave voter support the Brexit Party when the latter has just signalled that the best way to achieve Brexit, at least in Tory held seats, is to support the Tories!

The Tories are now the Brexit Party in all but name and Remainers are distinctly unwelcome throughout today’s Conservative Party. Labour is firmly in the hands of Marxists. The centre ground, as represented by the LibDems, will splutter into life but nowhere near strongly enough to make a difference.

A comfortable Tory election victory may lead to the break-up of the Union both from a Scottish and Northern Irish perspective. It will mean a sharp tilt to the right in domestic and foreign policy. Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement marks only the start of how our future relationship with the EU will unfold. There are now no plans to make the UK and EU a level playing field in many areas of regulation and the way this new deal is constructed could mean a very hard Brexit indeed by end 2020.

The forces shaping British politics and indeed politics elsewhere are ones that would have been considered wholly unacceptable just a few years ago. I hope I am wrong in my immediate analysis of GE2019. It would be a small price to pay! But we seem to live in an age of extremes and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.