LAST Tuesday morning there were a lot of surprised Tories wandering the corridors of Westminster. The calling of a snap General Election for June 8 was a complete bolt out of the political blue, not to mention a 180 degree reversal of the Prime Minister’s opposition to an early poll in the weeks before Easter. What gives?

The most important fact to glean from this turn of events is that Theresa May lives in a political bunker surrounded by only a tiny coterie of advisers. Foremost among these is Nick Timothy, 37, her bearded and Rasputin-like political chief of staff. Timothy has reinforced May’s natural tendency to seal herself off from other Tory ministers and make decisions entirely on her own — including gambling the future of her premiership on a sudden election. This bunker mentality could be May’s undoing.

When a Prime Minister goes it alone, there is always a sporting chance they become so blinkered and arrogant that they get whacked by events they didn’t notice coming. This was instantly demonstrated within hours of the June 8 election being called. Chancellor Hammond — off on a long-scheduled junket to Washington DC — cheerfully shot his mouth off to the media about scrapping the legislative lock on raising VAT, income tax and National Insurance, as introduced by his nemesis George Osborne. Result: instant headlines about an incoming Tory Government raising VAT. This precipitated an instant dip in the polls for Mrs May (at least according to the Sunday Mail). Oops!

Philip Hammond has form with Number 10. His March Budget proved a public relations disaster when the Chancellor tried to raise National Insurance rates for the self-employed, in defiance of a Tory election promise not to do so. Number 10 immediately started briefing against “Spread Phil” and our lacklustre Chancellor was forced to do a reverse ferret, blasting a big hole in his budget calculations (which is still there).

All of which tells me that May and the Tories cannot guarantee to win anything like the 140-seat landslide some commentators are predicting. In fact, this General Election is like the Grand National: the racecourse is replete with political hedges and water jumps that can catch the Tories out, especially since they are riven with internal divisions, an on-going police investigation into election expenses in 2015 and (top of the list) May’s bunker mentality.

It is the latter which has made her unwilling to debate on television. But elections are about the moment and May’s inability to think out loud, take her colleagues into her confidence, or be flexible in the face of rapidly changing events could be her undoing.

That said, the current electoral arithmetic favours the Conservatives at a UK level. But this must be qualified. For starters, Labour will not do as badly as the Tories think. True, most Labour MPs hate Corbyn. But they have seized on this early General Election with surprising alacrity because it brings matters to a head more quickly than any of them expected.

They think the likely defeat will get rid of Corbyn and bring a change of leadership. Corbyn himself, I suspect, is glad to fight an external campaign against the Tory enemy rather than face another three years of internecine warfare. Besides, he is better with the public than facing Theresa May across the dispatch box while being howled at by mindless Tory backbenchers.

Labour will lose fewer seats than predicted to the Tories in the English north. Ukip is a busted flush and while some ex-Labour votes will transition on to the Conservatives, many will come home to Jeremy provided Labour MPs stay reasonably disciplined till election day. Equally, if the Conservatives go on making gaffes such as hinting they will abandon the triple lock guarantee on pensions, they will gift Labour and the SNP the opportunity to attack their base. All bets are off, of course, if the Labour right wing starts attacking Corbyn mid-election.

Which brings us to the LibDems. The latest YouGov poll figures shows the LibDems have picked up since the election announcement and the party also claims to have recruited 2,500 new members last week (good for canvassing). Which means the LibDems could blunt Tory chances in the English South and South West. But there is a caveat here: many of the seats the LibDems lost in 2015 voted Leave in last year’s referendum. They will be hard to win back given the party’s aim to garner the Remain voters under its banner.

Any LibDem resurgence will hurt the Tories. If the LibDems take another dozen seats, for every one they take from the Tories then the Conservatives have to win two just to stay where they are electorally. The decider comes down to whether the LibDems prove a bigger danger to Labour than the Tories, in England. The strongest Remain constituencies are in Labour areas such as London and in university towns (eg Labour-marginal Cambridge).

What of Scotland? The SNP are still polling in the mid-40s, an unheard-of level of popularity after a decade in government. Not that you would know it from the anti-SNP media barrage sustained day-in and day-out by the London-controlled press.

Here, the expectations game will be crucial. The SNP famously won 56 out 59 Scottish seats at the 2015 General Election. Even losing one will be portrayed by the Unionist media as a catastrophic defeat for the independence movement. I think we can rise above such nonsense. The Scottish electorate have become very sophisticated since their education under political fire during the first independence referendum.

Where there is a tactical issue lies with how we engage with those pro-independence voters who were Leave in the EU referendum. I don’t think they can be ignored, on the basis they have nowhere else to go but the SNP.

If our electors are sophisticated and able to think for themselves – as they certainly are – then we need to debate with them. The SNP is a pro-European party that rejects the Little Englander project to exit the EU with absolutely no real alternative planned or possible. May has called a snap election precisely because she feared going to the country in 2020 having failed to negotiate a sensible Brexit deal with the EU.

That said, the SNP needs to give its potential voters a positive message that we intend to see the EU reformed. This necessarily will involve giving more internal power to smaller members and turning Europe from austerity to growth. It means protecting Scotland’s farmers and fishing industry. And just as important, it means imposing tighter regulation over the construction industry to police the use of low-cost labour, whether local or imported.

With Labour a distant third in Scotland, and the Tories threatening the triple lock on pensions, this General Election is perfect ground for an SNP push.

I will miss fighting it with my colleagues Michelle Thomson and Natalie McGarry. But this snap election shows the Tories are more frightened of events than they pretend. Elections are where history is forced. Remember: One For Arthur won the Grand National for Scotland at 14-1. Get out and start knocking on doors!