Finally, the United Kingdom has received confirmation of what has seemed inevitable for months: an early election, to be held before Christmas. At the campaign’s heart will sit various Brexit pledges: give the people what they say they want, give the people what we think they want, ask the people what they want again. But perhaps the largest theme, which will be almost said but not in quite so many words, will be: please God, let it all just be over.

In this, Britain, for all its apparent idiosyncrasies, is like so many other countries in recent times. There is a case that, over the past decade, impatience has become the single most important force in modern politics.

It began its rise at different times in different countries. In Australia, the first symptoms were how quickly we turned on new governments. The rise of opinion pieces and the increased focus on "breaking news" – both cheap to produce and overwhelmingly negative – saw hatred of fledgling leaders gather quickly. And politicians, predictably, responded. Thanks to the combined determination of MPs and voters, Australia had five prime ministers in six years.

Soon we became impatient with our own impatience. Our thirst for fresh content gave way, in politics as in our lives, to a desire to slow things down. Nostalgia became important. We could, we believed, return to a better, slower time, whether that was a pre-EU British Empire, a time when America was great, or simply a point when Australia had one prime minister for any reasonable length of time.