Whistle Stop Train leaves St. Pancras at 0900

British media across the spectrum are reporting that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, following a Cabinet meeting and regrouping from the Easter holiday, will head to Buckingham Palace and formally request that Her Majesty (finally) dissolve this current term of Parliament.

Provided he doesn't hiccup and wait for another month, the frustration of British voters accumulating over the past five years—the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan, MPs expenses, government spending in general, the Lisbon Treaty, immigration, devolution—will finally clash in what is the most anticipated election since the polls of October 1992. And with the most MPs standing aside since the war-delayed election of 1945 (where a big-tent Labour majority upended Churchill's postwar ambitions), the stakes couldn't be higher, and the outcome too close to call.

Over the course of the next month we will see all this play out, full-blown as opposed to just in news bits. Complete with duck moats, non-doms, kingmakers, baby bumps, bigots in denial, and the first televised debates between the men who could be Prime Minister.

Game on, Britannia.

Oh, and everyone in Missouri: several municipalities and school districts have candidates and ballot issues for your perusal tomorrow. Please don't be part of the 80% who don't bother to go to the polls tomorrow.