Did you ever have a sense that the Conservatives weren't quite so ready for an election?

The starting gun is fired, the commentariat are up and running, and there is a frenzy as everyone gets ready for the campaign ahead. Me, I've got things to keep me occupied, but I've still got time to think.

And I have an odd sensation that, whilst one could not envisage a better set of circumstances for a snap election - twenty points plus ahead in the polls, Opposition in apparent meltdown, no obvious domestic threat - there's something not quite right with the Conservative campaign. Don't get me wrong, a majority Conservative administration still seems 'bolted on', but amidst the shambolic start to the Labour campaign, there is a sense that the Conservatives weren't really oven ready.

For, ultimately, Brexit was won by a coalition of groups whose mutual interests beyond winning the vote were mutually contradictory. The free traders and the anti-migration lobby, the sovereignty campaigners and the racists cannot be reconciled, and Theresa May must either know that or be astonishingly naive, and I don't believe that for a moment. Thus, the preparation for a series of retreats after the desired majority is obtained, with the hope that, five years down the road, all will be forgiven and forgotten. That might turn out to be astonishingly naive.

In a campaign that will doubtless centre on Brexit, we still aren't clear what their position is. What are they intending to negotiate and why, what sort of Brexit do they really want? There has been little so far to suggest that they have any sense of the compromises that will (not might, will) be necessary to secure a good deal, nor is there much clue as to what they believe would be the implications of no deal. They certainly don't appear to be anything other than gung-ho about it.

On tax, there appears to be no firm commitment to hold tax rates as they are, and whilst as a pragmatist, I can see the attraction of leaving one's options open, I'm not sure that the totality of current Conservative support would agree. And, in fairness, why should they, given what they were promised?

A series of retreats have already been signalled - 'barista visas', quotas for agricultural workers, bankers, nurses and doctors, construction workers, students - which will only serve to disgruntle those who voted for Brexit to stop them coming. And, even if you make exceptions, are key sector migrants being offered enough security to make it worth coming? Anecdotal evidence suggests not. In any event, the slump in the value of Sterling makes it necessary to rethink the rates of pay on offer to make good the reduction in the value of earnings sent home.

The question is, is anyone capable of asking the right questions and, even if somebody is, is there anything willing to contemplate the answers? Labour are in a world of pain, conflicted on Brexit between those who see the European Union as a capitalist club of neo-liberals and the pragmatists who see Europe as a means of protecting their supporters from the worst excesses of the anti-regulation zealots of the Right. Jeremy Corbyn is never going to ask the right questions.

As for the Liberal Democrats, whilst it is interesting to see how much coverage they are getting already - it's almost as though the media are rediscovering them all over again - it is uncertain that they will elbow Labour out of the way to establish themselves as the real opposition. But with the Scottish Nationalists focussed on a second independence referendum, they may be the only credible challenge to Conservative hegemony.

No, I'm convinced that the next six weeks or so will serve to demonstrate exactly where Conservative weaknesses are for the next five years. Watch very carefully and take notes. They might be very useful one day...