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Hello and welcome to special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots. I'm Katie Balls and I'm

joined by James Seif and Fraser Nelson. When Rishi Tsunak unveiled his budget in the House of Commons, there were tax rises,

not quite as many as MPs had dreaded, but what really got people talking was the sense that

if you looked at the timeline of when these would come in, perhaps, some asked, the Tories could

be considering an early election.

Fraser, can you talk us through why there is now speculation that actually the budget could be laying the ground for an early election,

something you write about in your telegraph column?

Well, there are a few stars aligning now in favour of an early election.

The first, of course, is to point out that this isn't entirely cynical.

Technically, Boris Johnson could last five years. That's what he was entitled to, so he could keep on going until December 2014. But realistically, are you going to have another December election?

People don't like being hauled out to the ballot boxes in the middle of winter. So it was always

going to be May. And that case, his choice was four and a half years or three and a half years.

Now, again, the average in Britain is four. We tend to do four-year parliaments. But if that's

going to not be an option, in other words, you wouldn't want it in December, then you have

a little bit longer

or a little bit less. So therefore, May of 2023 was always on the cards. Now, initially,

the feeling was that borders would wait for longer. You go for the four and a half years,

because you wanted the results of a leveling up to come through. The leveling up agenda means you're covering the north of England

and all sorts of infrastructure projects which take time to bear fruit.

And also, when the pandemic came along, the argument was,

well, this has been dreadful, but let's see if we can recover

...