Hello, my name is David Runciman and this is Talking Politics.

And here we are again. We started this podcast a couple of years ago because we wanted to talk about the general election, which we used to think happened once every five years. On that series,

and we used to be called election then, we had Robert Toombs who came on to talk about Englishness

and what English nationalism might mean in the context of a general election. And I'm delighted

that Robert is back with us today. We asked him on last week because we were going to talk about France,

and we still are going to talk about France, because there's lots going on in the world.

There isn't just British politics, and we always have to remember that.

So we come on to talk about the first round of the French presidential election in a few minutes,

because it is still the most interesting election currently going on anywhere in the world at the moment.

But we're going to say a little bit first about Theresa May's decision yesterday

to plunge us back into British election fever.

And we've got, I should say, Helen Thompson and Chris Bickton with us.

As someone pointed out to me last night, I need to say already. I mean, we barely even got into

the business of predicting what might happen that I'm wrong because I've been wrong for two years,

including on this podcast, by saying that I thought the Fixed Term Parliament Act was a very

important piece of legislation that changed the dynamics of British politics. And it's one of

those things that I can now see that was clearly stupid,

but I can only see why it was stupid since Mrs May's decision yesterday in that it was very useful

for a prime minister who didn't want to call an election because then you have a reason not to

call an election and it's not just politicking. You can say it's the law. But what I didn't

realize is if a prime minister decides to call an election, it seems like, I mean, I'm going to check

here with Helen and Chris, if I'm wrong about this, but it seems like there's nothing the opposition

...