Why on earth is Theresa May announcing a General Election now?

During the EU referendum debate David Cameron claimed over and again that if the public voted for Brexit he would trigger Article 50 the next day. We all know that he was lying because he resigned in disgrace after the failure of his gamble with the nation's future and left the job of triggering Article 50 to someone else.

Theresa May and the Tory government then spent an infuriating nine months blabbering empty platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" and bullshitting that they were busy coming up with some kind of winning Brexit negotiation strategy before they finally triggered Article 50 on March 29th 2017.

Within three weeks of setting the two year clock ticking on the most complex and risky set of diplomatic negotiations the UK has ever undertaken, Theresa May made a shock announcement that she's going to call a snap General Election on June 8th.

Now that the two year clock is ticking it's beyond obvious that Theresa May, the three Brexiteers and the Tory government should now be 100% focused on getting the best deal for Britain, but they're actually going to spend the next two months focusing their efforts on fighting a General Election campaign!

It shouldn't matter who you are, or what your party political allegiance is, the idea of triggering Article 50 and then calling a General Election instead of focusing your efforts on the negotiations is absolutely ridiculous.

Theresa May and the Tories had nine months between the EU referendum result and her self-imposed March 2017 Article 50 deadline in which they could have held a General Election, but they've chosen to do it now because it apparently suits their party political interests to do it now, and screw the importance of actually concentrating on the incredibly important Brexit negotiations they've only just set the clock ticking on.

It looks an awful lot like the Tories are trying to get themselves re-elected before the social and economic ruination of the "no deal" cliff edge Brexit they're steering us towards kicks in. They know that if they strop away from the negotiating table with nothing in 2018 or 2019 it will wreck the UK economy, which would have severely damaged their 2020 General Election chances, so they're getting the election out of the way now, instead of concentrating on the Brexit negotiations (presumably because they want the negotiations to fail anyway).

Holding an election now means that instead of having to fight a General Election almost immediately after they devastate the UK economy with a cliff edge Brexit and set about turning the UK into a low wage, low welfare corporate tax haven economy, they'll have three or four years to cling onto power.

Once again this is an absolutely clear demonstration that the Tories will always put their own party political self-interest above the social and economic interests of the nation as a whole.

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