Rishi Sunak has fired the starting pistol on the general election – it will take place on 4 July, writes BBC senior political analyst Peter Barnes.
The opinion polls suggest his Conservative Party is starting the campaign a long way behind its main rival, the Labour Party.
In fact, that’s been a pretty consistent picture for the last 12 months, with Labour consistently polling above 40%.
Of course, opinion polls can be wrong, and Mr Sunak will be hoping that improving economic news, and a focus on the parties’ policy platforms, will help the Conservatives turn things around as the campaign progresses.
As things stand, though, Labour start the campaign with a commanding poll lead.
Reform UK are in third place but with their support spread evenly around the country it could be hard to turn that support into seats in Parliament.
The Liberal Democrats have been fairly consistently at about 10% on average, but they hope that by focusing on their target seats they can make gains when it comes to the election.
The Greens have seen their poll ratings edge up in recent weeks and they will also be concentrating their efforts where they think they can win.
For the SNP and Plaid Cymru, GB-wide polls aren’t a good way of gauging their levels of support in Scotland and Wales respectively.
Now the campaign has started, there are likely to be many more polls than normal, including polls in each nation of the UK.