My concern is that he’ll be under a lot of pressure to call an early general election. And an election campaign will completely suck the energy out of dealing with the shit really starting to hit the fan with the economy. Worse still, it will probably be followed by a chaotic Reform government, or months of wrangling over a coalition.

I think it might be actually be better in the long run if he loses the byelection. It’s hard to see any positive change happening any time soon though.