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Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Lara Prendergast and on this week's special

election episode we'll be casting our eye over the two countries heading to the polls in the next

couple of months. We'll be taking a look at the UK after Theresa May called a

snap election on Tuesday, and then we'll be taking a look at France, who will whittle their

presidential field down to two this weekend. First up, much to the surprise of everyone, Theresa May

announced a general election this week to be held on the 8th of June. I'm now joined by Jane

Forsyth, Richard Angel from Progress, and Bobby Duffy from

Ipsos to discuss what we can expect and what the result might be. So James, why has she called it now?

Well, I think there's obviously the opinion polls, the fact that she will come back of a bigger

majority. But when you talk to people involved in this decision, what they say weighed most

heavily on her mind is Brexit, not just the ease of getting Brexit through Parliament,

but also the timings of it. They feel that this gives her extra time at the end of the process,

because they won't be an election until 2022. She's not going to be kind of butting up against

the Article 50 timetable and the electoral timetable. This will give her three years from the

conclusion of the Article 50

deal before she goes to the country again, which means there's more chance she'll have done

the deal on the future trade relationship between the UK and the EU by the time of a general

election after next. And also, it makes it easier for there to be what she calls this implementation

period. So a few years in which free movement continues, the jurisdiction of European

Court of Justice continues to prevent a cliff edge. Because if she had stuck to the existing

electoral timetable, she'd only had a year from the end of the Article 50 process to a general election.

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