Will he or won’t he? Those are the questions that have been sweeping the political landscape in the days in advance of the motion of no confidence that David Burt plans to call against the One Bermuda Alliance government led by Michael Dunkley when Parliament reconvenes tomorrow.

With both the OBA and the Progressive Labour Party in full electioneering mode, the country is braced for a particularly special period of nastiness to replace the simply special periods of nastiness that are normally reserved for the House of Assembly.

But first the Premier must have the Governor, John Rankin, dissolve Parliament and call the next General Election — or he could have it done for him.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Dunkley does not want to run the risk of having the rug pulled from under him, with independents Shawn Crockwell and Mark Pettingill appearing to hold the keys to the kingdom, which leaves him a mere 24 hours to make the call.

Crockwell for sure has it in for the Premier and is sharpening the knife in standing his ground on the same principles that 11 months ago led to him abandoning the party he had helped to found. “Those sentiments have not changed,” he said recently when asked for his position on Burt’s motion. “I can’t see how I can now take a different position. In summary, I will be consistent.”

Which leaves Pettingill in the box seat and potentially Randy Horton, the Speaker of the House, as well.

Horton, the former Somerset Cup Match cricket captain, could face the decision of his political life — much harder than deciding whether to throw the ball to Winston “Coe” Trott, El James or even to keep the cherry for himself.

Banker decisions back in the day. But as the PLP MP for Southampton West, this one is not so straightforward and he may have to check the state of the wicket to determine whether pace or spin is the better option.

Battered from pillar to post by his own party in the most tempestuous days of Marc Bean, Horton is not only a senior statesman from a seemingly bygone era, but it is questionable how much he is in step ideologically with the new guard — although not necessarily a youthful iteration — that is attempting to wrest back control of the government after an interruption to 14 successive years in charge of the public purse in December 2012.

Dunkley, yet to win an election as a party leader, will feel miffed that he is being forced into this position, especially when he and others in his Cabinet should be revelling in the continuing festival that is the 35th America’s Cup going on at Cross Island and on the Great Sound.

So now, yes, AC35 will be trotted out as a political football in earnest.

The PLP, hitherto with no one to play against, has kicked this football up and down the pitch in a one-dimensional scrimmage of attack against defence, with only like-minded folk to find favour with.

An easy target, the Cup is at the pinnacle of international sport, and the scale of the opposition towards it here reveals nothing more than an indifference to sport in general, if truth be told.

Unless a relative or loved one is taking part, or something universally sensational happens — the capsizing of Emirates Team New Zealand captured the imagination in these parts of those who had little to no interest beforehand — we just don’t want to know. So, out-and-out sports lovers? No.

Which is why it has been so easy for the naysayers to tilt opinion and to build an army of propaganda merchants that would pounce on any opening to make the America’s Cup look bad when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary that the arrivals of the six professional sailing teams, their backroom staff and their families have put a smile on many a Bermudian face.

Those smiling widest are the children of the Endeavour Programme, which will go down as the true legacy of this hairy month of high-wire balancing acts on the Great Sound.

There will also be big smiles from the members of Team BDA, who will take to the water in competition on Monday and Tuesday for six fleet races in the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup.

How can anyone have a bad thing to say about nine young people who have come through an arduous training programme to get to this point?

Much in the same vein as the idiots who likened the comedian Nadanja — our own flesh and blood — to an Uncle Tom for promoting the America’s Cup, would those same persons then lay into 22-year-old Dimitre Stevens?

When the ACBDA rolled out the team line-up, it attempted overtly to play up the diversity angle by emphasising that Dimitre and Mustafa Ingham had made the boat and that they were black — an historic feat. But we were having none of it because there was and is little significance in the historic make-up of a team for an event in only its second go-around. There was just no sample size.

But this is Bermuda, and the bitty race baiters and those who expect an economic trickle-down to rush in as though through a water fountain even before the event has left town do themselves few favours, serving only to further sow the seeds of discontent and estrangement.

Dunkley, estranged from the independent MPs on whom he previously so relied, now faces a sheepish tea engagement with the Governor sometime tomorrow, with at least a further four candidates scheduled to be introduced today in St George’s.

Surely he will not allow Burt to effect what would be a humiliating hammer blow in advance of the already inevitable election. He has to jump the queue.

It only means now then that an election by September 9 is a dead certainty, with mid-July being the betting man’s favourite.

Burt has taken flak for the timing of his motion, coming as it does in the middle of the America’s Cup, but can you blame him?

This is politics and it’s personal, and the America’s Cup, after all, is just “a sailing race’.