East Devon leader Paul Arnott 

They say never meet your heroes. They might also advise not to divulge in a local newspaper column who those heroes are. But I’ll go there anyway.

As a boy, my footballing hero was a Charlton Athletic player named Derek Hales. I never met him, but his nickname “Killer” suggests that if I had, this prolific goal scorer may not really have been suitable hero/role model material after all.

Last weekend, one of my sons and the fiancée he marries at the end of May were staying with us, and suggested we watch a documentary about Ed Sheeran. Inwardly I groaned. But by the end, and his quite remarkable tribute in song to his lost friend Jamal, young Ed had shown many of the classic characteristics of the hero.

So that’s not too weird, is it? A footballer and a music star. Okay, so hopefully I’ve broken the ground to give me space to describe recently meeting an actual living hero of mine without being laughed out of East Devon. And that man is Professor Sir John Curtice of Strathclyde University.

Who, you may well say? If you search his name, many of you may go, oh, him! The fellow with the huge cranium who is present at every election broadcast or debate, generally considered the finest analyst and predictor of elections this century.

A few weeks ago, I was attending a meeting of District Council leaders in glamorous St Albans, and when I was at the reception, he checked in next to me, one of the guest speakers. He was completely charming so I thought I’d try a question out, when he thought the next general election would be. He knows this kind of thing.

Without hesitation he said Thursday 14th November 2024. I blathered, but what about May, June, July etc? He said that was pure distraction politics to encourage non-government parties to spend scarce campaign funds early. He explained that Mr Sunak would want a party conference season in October to tell a narrative around lower inflation and interest rates and that by then at least a few migrants would have been flown to Rwanda. At or shortly before the Conservative conference he’d give six weeks’ notice of a general election.

The Professor’s speech in the main auditorium later was both brilliant and funny. It went down well, even with many Conservative leaders present. He was giving it to us straight, with all sorts of charts and graphs, and he had such a lovely way about him that even Conservatives have not demurred when he stated that they have less than a 1 per cent chance of winning the next election.

Many Tory grandees have seen the writing on the wall and are preparing for life after power with good grace. Therefore, it is desperately sad that the MP for East Devon, Simon Jupp, seeking now to compete in the new seat of Honiton (leaving Exmouth behind him) against Richard Foord, is not taking a leaf from their book but is punching below the belt. After some fine journalism from David Parsley in the i newspaper, Mr Jupp was forced to admit last week after much fudging that it was his office which had bought website domain names masquerading as Richard Foord’s which, on opening, went instead to his own Conservative page. Pure Trump.

Heroically Mr Jupp blamed a full-time employee, the young man running his campaign, Oliver Kerr. There are self-evidently so many more questions to be asked, but I’ll leave that to others. Sadly, I suspect Professor Sir John Curtice would not be in the least surprised.