FOUR months to go and campaigning is already well under way in the UK’s general election. It’s likely to end up in the history books as a bigger groundbreaker than most, the favourite date for the vote, coinciding with the council elections, being 6 May.

General elections are almost always pivotal occasions but predicting results hasn’t always been an exact science. My own first election as a television reporter was June 1970 when the country expected another Labour victory for Harold Wilson as Prime Minister.

Electorates usually vote with their back pockets – wage increases in the first half of 1970 had left people with the impression they felt better off with a Labour government. The Conservatives, under Edward Heath, warned of price rises to come and a ‘sham sunshine’ promised by Labour.

Nearly all the opinion polls agreed that Labour had a massive lead over the Conservatives, up to 12%, and Wilson would be back in Downing Street.

The polls all turned out to be completely wrong. Heath’s party romped home and he became the new Prime Minister.

The repercussions on political broadcasting of that 1970 debacle remain even today. In its current guidelines for reporters and editors, the BBC still insists on a strict health warning on opinion polls: ‘Always bear in mind that even properly conducted opinion polls by trusted companies can be wrong. When we report polls – no matter how convincing they may seem or what the attitude of the rest of the media – we should always ask how much of the rest of our story – and its prominence – is dependent on their accuracy’.

Four years later, in 1974, the country was crippled with a miners’ strike and industry forced onto a three-day week. Widespread power cuts, fuel rationing and even the banning of late-night television to save energy pushed Heath into a February election.

‘Who runs the country, the government or the miners?’ Heath asked. To his dismay, voters weren’t quite sure. It took a second election in October to produce a Labour majority of just three and the end of Heath’s political career.

If the early 1970s had been a rollercoaster, the decade ended with a humdinger of an election and another moment of history, when Margaret Thatcher swept into Downing Street. The 1979 overall swing to the Conservatives was the biggest in an election since 1945 and it ushered in 18 years of Conservative rule. In 1983, when Michael Foot’s Labour manifesto was described as ‘the longest suicide note in history’, Mrs Thatcher’s majority increased to 144 and it was still over 100 in the following 1987 election.

For television interviewers, Thatcher was dreadful. ‘The question you should be asking me, Mr Parker, is this..!’ she would say, and then answer her own question.

It wasn’t just journalists who were handbagged, her ministers were, too. After her very first cabinet meeting, Lord Soames was heard to remark of her behaviour towards a colleague, ‘I wouldn’t even treat my gamekeeper like that’.

The first John Major election win in 1992 was one of the biggest election surprises of the 20th century. Right up to the last few days of the campaign, the polls were giving Neil Kinnock a convincing win.

On the night of the infamous Sheffield rally, I happened to be with some senior Labour Party officials who came to BBC Southampton to watch a ‘live’ feed of pictures from Sheffield.

A triumphal Kinnock made his way to the stage, shouting to an ecstatic audience, ‘We’re all right! We’re all right!’ The Labour party officials watched with horror and put their heads in their hands. The Welsh windbag had gone

too far.

The opinion polls dipped the following day: the Sun newspaper urged ‘the last person to leave Britain’ to ‘turn out the lights’ if Labour won the election. Come the day, John Major’s Conservative government was back with a majority of more than 20 seats.

In retrospect, the phenomenal rise of New Labour started almost on the very day John Major began his 1992 administration. Black Wednesday, a string of debilitating by-election losses, sleaze, BSE, rail privatisation and divisive plotting by Eurosceptics, all plagued Major and led to the rout of 1997.

That final election of the 20th century was as spectacular as any before it. New Labour under Tony Blair gained a record number of seats and a staggering majority of 179 before winning two further elections.

So, what about May 2010? Definitely a change of government and a campaign dominated by party leaders head-to-head on television in presidential debates.

The aftermath of the election? Seismic. If Labour loses badly, the party will tear itself apart.

Ex-colleagues who are still members of the House of Commons press gallery question whether a losing Labour Party will ever win another election.

Who will lead the Labour Party? Who knows – a contest between David Miliband and Ed Balls, or would both stand aside for a unity candidate, David’s brother Ed? Will there, in the end, be two Labour parties ?

The Speaker, John Bercow, might be toppled by UKIP’s Nigel Farage. Unprecedented in recent times, but possible.

Will the Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power? Or even Green MPs or UKIP MPs? Will, heaven forbid, independents such as Esther Rantzen make it to Westminster? Is there still worse to come on MPs’ expenses when Sir Thomas Legg publishes his audit next month?

Had enough already, with just the very thought of it?

Perhaps, I can leave you with this transcript of an television interview with Clement Attlee, the post-war Labour Prime Minister, resurrected in a Times blog last week.

Interviewer: Tell us something about how you view the election prospects.

Attlee: Oh, we shall go in with a good fight. Very good. Very good chance of winning if we go in competently. We always do.

Interviewer: On what will Labour take its stand?

Attlee: Well, that’s what we shall be announcing shortly.

Interviewer: What are your immediate plans, Mr Attlee?

Attlee: My immediate plans are to go down to a committee to decide on just that thing as soon as I can get away from here.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you’d like to say about the coming election?

Attlee: No.