Jeremy's Den: Where The Shadows Run From Themselves

Nigel Farage rarely talks about the economy and when he does, his numbers don’t add up. He says he wants to cut taxes and increase spending by £150bn. Huh? But before anyone can question his logic, he scuttles back to his safe space and starts raging about small boats.

(Jeremy Clarkson, 12 October 2025)

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it's done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

(Brian Eno)

Eleven years ago yesterday we lost Jack Bruce, one of the most accomplished musicians to come from Scotland in the Swinging Sixties, also a bassist extraordinaire who had a lasting influence on The Next Generation of Classic Rock bassists, like Chris Squire, Geddy Lee and Geezer Butler. Today's soundtrack celebrates Jack Bruce with all the live tracks from Cream's Wheels Of Fire, Goodbye, Live Cream and Live Cream Volume II, rearranged in the chronological order of the performances. With a few at the top from the BBC Sessions collection, that were also included in the Deluxe Edition of Disraeli Gears. Play it loud.

Insert summat here about clicking on the images. Just do it.

The hugely game-changing event of October 2025 is obviously Shitweasel getting a massive hard-on from the Che Guevara Greens pulling ahead of Labour in voting intentions polls. Well, one poll. By 0.08%. From a pollster who always finds Labour lower and Reform UK higher than any other pollster, and once argued that his colleagues underestimated the fascist vote. Of course, that's business as usual for the abominable Talcum X, relentlessly demonising Labour even when they are making decisions that any honest lefty would approve, so he can tell us he told us so when the Turquoiseshirts win the next general. The fanatical loopy far-left being the useful idiots of fascism is nothing new. It's the Communist Party of Germany of 1932 all over again, just like the far-left absolutists in the United States or France, who only want to discredit and eliminate everything between them and the fascists. History will not be kind to this lot. In the meanwhile, the trends of our voting intentions polls remain merciless for Labour, who still haven't found a way to get back on the voters' good side.

"Why is that?", you may ask. If you won't, I will. Do we have an explanation in how the Great British Public see themselves and the parties on the classic left-to-right scale? Of course, YouGov has polled that too for our benefit. The last time was in August, but it surely hasn't changed since. You instantly notice two things. The perception of the party leaders is very similar to the perception of their party, except for one. Of course, Keir Starmer is seen as less to the left than the Labour Party generally, but still pretty much on the left. It is also quite revealing that none of our parties or their leaders fit the "perfect profile", which would be duplicating how the average Brit self-identifies. Or does the high proportion of people rating the Liberal Democrats and Mister Ed as centrists make them the ideal fit? Just slightly taking the piss here, mates, don't worry.

The most important finding, from where I'm sat, is that more Brits describe themselves as being on the left than on the right, 38% to 35%, or 22% to 17% if you select only those who are "fairly" or "very" on either side of the rift. This surely does not fit with the mediatariat's narrative about a country sliding fast further to the right, for which they have little evidence other than the number of people present at a rally organised by a fascist convicted felon. You may splash 96-point headlines across the frontpage, ranting about how 100k or 150k attendees makes that the biggest fascist gathering in England ever, but it is still one tenth of the attendance at the anti-Brexit protests of 2019. I don't remember the mediatariat pontificating then that it showed the country was moving fast against Brexit and that we should rejoin. Go figure.

The art of losing isn't hard to master

So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster

(Elizabeth Bishop, One Art)

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning.

(James Clavell)

The proverbial and ancestral Preferred Prime Minister polls still find Nigel Farage in the lead and Kemi Badenoch trailing, though she has benefited from a decrease of the "none of these wankers" choice, which is nevertheless still attracting a third to half of Brits, depending on who your preferred pollster is. My caveat here is that such polling does not really prove that we think Farage would be a good Prime Minister. It only says that we think Starmer is a lousy one, and Badenoch is not even worth trying as she is totally shit as Leader of the Opposition. In most polls that offer this three-way option, the Bargain Bin Mussolini's ratings don't even match his party's voting intentions. I can only wonder what the real ratings would be, if the establishment mediatariat stopped acting as Reform UK's press office, and the loopy far-left fuckwitatriat stopped playing the useful idiots of fascism with their constant Starmer-bashing. How much of the influence would remain if we silenced the influencers? Which is not censorship, but just allowing the people to take back control of the way they form their opinions.

To add some spice to the broth, More In Common had the very baroque idea of polling the Great British Public on three alternative realities. Two, actually, as the baseline option was the real world, where we are likely to have Kemi Badenoch as leader of the Rump Conservative Party by the time of the next general. Then the poll surveyed a scenario where Tube Vigilante Bob Jenrick replaces Kemi, and one where Boris Johnson comes back from the £100k-after-dinner-speeches circuit to lead what will be left of his old party. Whatever they intended to prove, the results definitely look like a miss. Admittedly, Bozo would take the Tories back to first place in the popular vote, but not in a very convincing way, and that would still spawn just about half the seats needed for a majority in Commons. It would even make things worse as we would have Commons fractured three-ways like the current National Assembly of France, the oven-ready recipe for instability and fucking chaos.

Benito Farage may have a point here. The only Boriswave we have witnessed in the last five years is the tenfold increase in net migration that was a direct consequence of Brexshit, though Benito naturally fails to ever mention that part, despite every sentient being in the UK being fully aware of it. It sounds totally foolish to now expect a Boriswave 2.0 of the same nature and intensity as 2019's, especially now that the bulk of the Boris Fan Club have migrated to the turquoise side of the tracks, like Nadine Dorries who is really keen on proving that she is as lousy a politician as she is a novelist. The Boristas will nevertheless certainly find reason to believe in what the poll found with Vigilante Bob at the helm. Given the usual uncertainty and margin of error of such polls, it is the same outcome as if Kemi stays. So what is the fucking point of plotting against her?

I just ask questions. You know the answer but ChatGPT always says, "Oh, your questions are clever. You’re brilliant. You’re excellent. You have such insight".

(Boris Johnson)

One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about the people who build their pyramids, either.

(Molly Ivins)

It is common knowledge and common wisdom that you don't want to know how sausages are made. Brian Eno added that it is better to never know how laws are made, either. I would add that it is probably better for the psephologists' street cred if their audience never finds out how the seat projections we regale you with are made. I will nevertheless lift part of the veil of mystery that usually shrouds political predictions. I usually share with you a projection made up of the aggregate of a handful of polls fielded over a whole week. But what about the individual components? I have singled out the last three polls conducted by More In Common, YouGov and Find Out Now, the only three pollsters who conduct regular weekly voting intentions surveys, and are thusly present in all my snapshots. You will be surprised by how different their findings are, and how they can influence the overall picture in unexpected ways. It vividly shows what the pollsters call house effect, and the common people call bias. Find Out Now have a pro-Reform effect and have even theorised it, while YouGov and More In Common are more likely to factor in the incumbency bonus that would benefit mostly Labour, and to a lesser extent the Liberal Democrats.

Deeper at the core of the pollstertariat's bias, there is surely the sincerely-held belief that there exists a "Shy Fascist" vote, the same way they identified an alleged "Shy Tory" factor at earlier elections. I don't believe that for one millisecond, as the public expression of openly reactionary, exclusionary and anti-democratic opinions has been massively normalised in recent years. Mostly because we have unquestioningly imported, and then swallowed whole and raw, massive amounts of chemically pure American bullshit of the Musk-Trump-Kirk variety. After years of endorsing all the clichés of absolutist wokeism, the swingometer has moved in the opposite direction, and it is in many ways even worse. But maybe, just maybe, the punditariat, the commentariat, the pollstertariat and pretty much all of us now have to reframe our certainties about the next election in the light of the rather stunning Caerphilly by-election. This one may well prove to be more of an event, more of a turning point, than by-elections usually are. But I will tell you more about it in due course, when its time comes. In the meanwhile we are left with another depressing snapshot of voting intentions and projected seats, which Electoral Calculus again makes even worse than my model.

Today's snapshot is the aggregate of the last six polls, released between the 17th of October and the 24th of October by Focaldata, More In Common, YouGov, Find Out Now, Techne and Opinium, with a super-sample of 12,825. And I can only wonder which factors will influence the next polls, and where that will take us. I have a hunch it will again include an inflated number of Green votes, because that is the fashionable thing right now. Among the many building blocks that define our political landscape, I have a hunch that Shitweasel sees himself as a true influencer, shaping public opinion ahead of the next general, as shown by his latest compilation of word salad for the benefit of The Islington Gazette's vestigial readership. I fucking hope his true influence does not go beyond his paying worshipers on Patreon, as his latest outburst has fully revealed the true nature of his revamped whole true self. It looks like his earlier praise for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana was just a momentary lapse of derangement, as he has now gone into full bromance mode for Zack Polanski, the bloke who wants the UK to leave NATO, a move that would only benefit Russia. Why is the loopy woke far-left so eager to serve the strategic interests of a fascist, genocidal and hugely homophobic dictatorship? Are they as corrupted by Nosferatu's blood money as the bargain bin fascists at Reform UK?

It drives me mad seeing adverts full of black people, full of Asian people, full of anything other than white. It’s something that has happened because, I believe, the woke liberati that goes on inside this sort of, you know, arty-farty world.

(Sarah Pochin MP, Talk TV, 25 October 2025)

He that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cottar, is a thief. He that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird is a gentleman-drover.

(Walter Scott, Waverley, 1814)

The geeks shall inherit the Earth, they say, or summat. But it looks like Scotland shall inherit Paedo Andy. The Palace's grapevine says that Not-My-King has "invited" Wee Bro to stay at Castle of Mey, six miles from John O'Groats, as Fotheringay Castle is sadly no longer available. Mey is the northernmost and least accessible of all Royal Castles on These Isles, which is probably as big a hint as Charles can send to Andy to kindly fuck off to anywhere he wants, so long as it is not British soil. Mey's USP is that it has a direct view of Scapa Flow when it doesn't rain, so summat like once a month. But The Scottish Pravda has dug up that it may not be Andy's Last Stand, and he may have a fallback option at Carbisdale Castle on the bonny bonny banks of the Kyle of Sutherland, which is only marginally less depressing than having the graveyard of the Hochseeflotte in plain sight all day. The current owner, barrister Charles-Samantha-Charles-Samantha Kane, may have overlooked the massive irony in offering Paedo Andy a shelter from the storm there, as the castle was used as a youth hostel for almost 70 years postwar. Can't make that shit up, can we? In the meanwhile, Find Out Now has graced us with a new Full Scottish that has given The Scottish Pravda another hard on. It has actually not moved the trendlines of Holyrood voting intentions much, and is quite close to what Find Out Now found out then, in their previous Full Scottish of a month ago.

Find Out Now again drifts away from the dominant trends revealed by all other pollsters, with higher vote shares for the SNP and the Scottish Greens. But this time it predicts a bigger shift from the SNP to the Greens on the list than ever before, or than ever happened in real life. Can't wait to see what The Scottish Pravda's faux guru John Curtice makes of that, or if he is still in denial of vote-switching on the list, which has happened at every election. The seat projections from this latest poll also hint at some head-scratching for the SNP on The Day After. Technically, we would have a big notionally pro-Independence majority, on 76 to 78 seats. But the same old dilemma instantly rears its ugly head. Should the SNP risk another coalition with the Greenies, who would be emboldened by a better election result, when their new overlord Beaker Greer is on his way to make them more of a Borg Cube than they ever were under Paddy and Unicorna? Or should Swinney's successor, let's say Stephen Flynn just hypothetically, take a safer route? Like, still hypothetically, offering ministerial posts to Alba for the token pro-Indy presence, and to Labour to get the serious things done and blame the backlash on them. See where I'm leading you here? Of course, he would do that, at least the Labour part. Mark my words and watch this space.

On top of their rather inanely rambling column on the Find Out Now poll, The Scottish Pravda also unloaded on us Shitweasel's deepest secret thoughts on the Caerphilly by-election, which are somehow relevant to Scotland. Because it says that we must vote for the Scottish Greens for a faster way to the sunlit uplands of Independence, or summat, totally circumventing the awkward fact that the Welsh Greens have been flattened at Caerphilly like a hedgehog on the lorry lane of the Great North Road, losing half the votes they bagged at the regular election in 2021. But Shitweasel is just like the Clacton Mussolini, he never lets facts get in the way of his pre-scripted narrative. To end on a more refreshing note, Paedo Andy may find another distraction if he is indeed exiled to Castle of Mey. Borrowing binoculars to watch the Culling Of The Stoats on Orkney. Looks like stoats, which we usually know only as part of the Peers Of The Realm's costume, under their posh persona as "ermine", are also vicious serial killers of wee birds and voles. Before you ask, stoats are not native to Orkney, they swam across from the Scottish mainland. So I guess that makes their total dalekification up there all right. That or rounding them all up on the next ferry to Shetland, which has surprisingly never been considered.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

(David Bowie)

I'm greatly amused by Zack Polanski. He is constantly banging on about how he is going to sort out the country, and I just sit there thinking, "Mate, you can't even sort out your own teeth". Honestly, it looks like he takes a picture of Shane MacGowan to the dentist.

(Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times, 19 October 2025)

Now the North's Great Matter is when the by-election for Duke of York will be held. The Palace has not communicated on it, and no pollster has yet surveyed it. Of course, there is only one registered voter here, Not-My-King Charles, and he would probably not answer YouGov on that. The remaining members of the official Royal Family are already so top-heavy with fancy titles that the wise choice might be to leave the position vacant for now, like until the next change of Monarch. Or give it to Tony Blair. But the media are more interested by Sprotbrough-born Jeremy Clarkson firing broadsides at Salford-born Zack Polanski, in a typically clarksonian obnoxiously tasteless way. Zack surely deserves some flak for being a fucking wanker, but likening him to Shitweasel Owen Jones would have been both more civil and closer to the truth than invoking the ghost of Shane MacGowan. Then there was this speculation coming from Dog knows where, that Jezza might challenge Ed Miliband as MP for Doncaster North. YouGov of course speed-polled it, because there are no more pressing issues right now, and found that the Great British Public are not convinced that Jezza is fit for the job.

Oddly, a third of Brits genuinely think Jezza would do well as an MP, and we don't even have a majority opining that he would be shit at the job and that it's a fucking joke. Which it probably is, summat of a prank by an idle journo with way too much time on his hands. Unsurprisingly, only Reform voters take Jezza seriously, but that would never work. Like his role models Trump and Putin, Benito Farage tolerates nothing short of absolute devotion, and Jezza has already had harsh words towards him over his total lack of knowledge of the realities of English rural life, of which Jezza himself is of course an expert. Besides, Doncaster North maybe one of Benito's prime targets because of his rabid hatred of Net Zero, but Reform did not even find a candidate to stand there last year. Even gaining control of the City Council at this year's locals does not say they could nick Miliband's seat despite favourable voting intentions in Yorkshire.

What we have here clearly predicts a massive cull of Labour MPs, including seats that had turned into sinkholes after decades of Labour dominance. At face value, and without any caveats, Angela Rayner, Bridget Phillipson, Richard Burgon, Yvette Cooper, Rachel Reeves, John Healey, Kim Leadbeater, Jonathan Reynolds and Lisa Nandy would lose their seats to Reform UK. But Ed Miliband, Lucy Powell and Rebecca Long-Bailey would hold theirs. Incidentally, Gorton and Denton, which is rumoured to be Andy Burnham's target seat, is also predicted to remain in Labour's hands. Reform UK's massive lead in projected votes across all three regions says that it would require an equally massive swing back towards Labour to avoid that kind of unmitigated disaster. Unless we consider that Caerphilly reset the clocks, more on that below the fold, and that the Reform vote is significantly overestimated. Which would be such a fucking relief.

But should we factor in another wildcard now, Lucy Powell being elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party? Thank Dog for Find Out Now here, who gave us not just the right result, but also the exact vote shares, by asking Labour members after they had voted. Smart move, mates. The significance of this election goes far beyond a Mancunian from the left, who could have considered standing for Leader some day, being replaced by a Mancunian from the soft left, who has no identified leadership ambition. By the way, the Ashton-under-Lyne Constituency Labour Party, Angela Rayner's home turf, endorsed Powell. Just saying. It is clearly a setback for Keir Starmer, as he unofficially supported the other contender, Bridget Phillipson, who failed despite being nominated by 175 MPs to Powell's 117. The most important part is likely to be the ricochet effect for Andy Burnham. Powell was publicly endorsed by Burnham and can be counted as an ally of his. Starmer and the acting Prime Minister Morgan McSweeney are known to exert pressure on Labour's National Executive Committee to block Burnham from standing for MP ever again, which is the prerequisite for a leadership challenge, but how long will the centre hold with a Deputy Leader who is clearly on the opposite side?

Look, I'm not an expert, but the Chinese are so desperate for all this information that it seems to call into question how effective fortune cookies are.

(Ross Noble, Have I Got News For You?, 17 October 2025)

What's never known is safest in this life. Under the skysigns, they who have no arms have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

(Dylan Thomas, Was There A Time)

A by-election for the Senedd constituency of Caerphilly was held on Thursday, triggered by the death of Hefin David MS, who had represented it since 2016. Caerphilly was represented by a Labour MS continuously since the first election for the Welsh Assembly, as it was then known, in 1999. But the sequence of election results shows that it did not qualify as a solidly and reliably Labour seat. Plaid Cymru also has a strong base in the constituency, and Labour had to face powerful challenges from the left with Forward Wales in 2007, and then from the right with UKIP in 2011. The by-election was polled by Survation, who found a shocking but familiar situation. A massive loss of votes for Labour, crushed between a rising Plaid Cymru and a flamboyant Reform UK. Oddly, the usually talkative Guardian did not mention it until the day before Election Day, as if they failed to grasp its full significance. Many polls before that one have hinted that such findings could represent the new Welsh political landscape in 2026, and the Caerphilly by-election looked like summat of a dress rehearsal. But the result was another kind of fucking shocker, as lightning struck at a different place to where the Survation poll said it would, as if they had mistakenly switched their numbers.

This by-election is also remarkable because the turnout was 50.4%, astonishingly high for a by-election. Even better, it was the highest turnout ever in Caerphilly for a Senedd election, as the highest at a regular election was 44.3% in 2021. That shows very strong determination to defeat Reform by all means necessary. What we have just witnessed totally reframes what we can say about the main trends from recent Senedd polling. It is not going to end well for Labour, no matter how hard they try and distance themselves from the London leadership. But Caerphilly shows that Reform can be stopped in its tracks like a Russian tank in the plains of Ukraine, and the mediatariat's pet self-fulfilling prophecy defeated. Unless something unexpected happens, that the most recent polls of this autumn hint at. Could some wee swing from Plaid Cymru back to Labour split the left-wing vote in such a way that it disproportionately benefits Reform UK? We are not there yet, with most polls still close to a tie between Plaid and Reform, but who knows what can happen in the 193 days left until the election? Ironically, a Labour surge could be the worst case scenario, as exemplified by the most recent poll from Beaufort Research. The workings of the highest averages method in minute constituencies with a very uneven distribution of the votes, most prominently Labour's, deliver quite an interesting result compared to the theoretical single national list.

It would be interesting to watch how Labour and Plaid wriggle their way out of this one, with no majority for their coalition and Plaid bagging more seats on fewer votes, but it is very unlikely to happen just that way. Many caveats apply though, on top of the Caerphilly by-election telling us to handle all Welsh polls with extreme caution. It is just one poll. It has a wee sample of just 533, less than half of what YouGov use in their Full Welsh. There is a constant house effect with Beaufort polls, that always find bigger Labour vote shares and smaller Plaid vote shares than any other pollster. Which might actually prove the exact opposite of what I'm trying to explain. No shit. If Beaufort find Labour and Plaid tied, it means that it's really going wildly badly for Labour, and they may well be in even deeper shit than they think by Election Day. It may not be as bad as the last YouGov poll, that credited Plaid with more than double Labour's vote, but it may also be a sign that Labour will really end up third and their Hundred Years Reign in Wales will abruptly end there and then.

I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

(Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas In Wales)

So if you're watching, hello to my friends at Greggs, at Peterborough North Services. You might see me later this week.

(Robert Jenrick, Conservative Party Conference, 6 October 2025)

We have heard less of Reform UK's shenanigans in the Midlands over the last month. Nottinghamshire County Council has gone back to slumber after its Trumpesque spat with the local newspapers who had hurt the feelings of the turquoise snowflakes. None of their Councillors have jumped ship in Derbyshire, North Northamptonshire and Lincolnsire, and they have lost just one seat each in Staffordshire and West Northamptonshire. Which is quite an achievement for the Turquoiseshirts these days. And that lack of juicy scandal is predicted to propel them to first place in the popular vote, with Labour crashing down to third place after losing an astonishingly high share of their 2024 votes to the Greens. Which begs the obvious question, what have the fucking Greenies ever done for the Midlands? Well, fuck all, like pretty much for anybody in England, but that's not even the fucking point in this day and age.

There is nothing good in store for Labour in the Midlands. Liam "I'm afraid there is no money" Byrne and Liz Kendall would lose their seats to Reform UK, along a long procession of backbenchers from the 2024 intake. To make it more painful, Jess Phillips and Shabana Mahmood would lose their seats, both in Birmingham, to Your Party. But beige Pat McFadden and arch-woke absolutist Nadia Whittome would hold theirs. The Liberal Democrats are predicted to have a much better day, snatching South Shropshire from the Conservatives in addition to North Shropshire and Stratford-on-Avon, which is oddly not "upon" as its main town. If Labour somehow managed to snatch back the 8% of the popular vote they have lost to the Greens, they would bag 35 seats instead of the currently predicted 14. Reform UK would still remain the first party in both regions, holding 54 seats out of 104. but that would make the results less awkward and painful for Labour. But they would also need to snatch another 3% back off Reform UK to hold a narrow majority of 56 seats out of 104, and that's definitely an uphill battle.

The Next Big Thing, if you believe the punditariat, the mediatariat and those within Labour who want Starmer gone, will be the English local elections in May 2026. Everybody remembers that the 2025 elections were a massive shock, especially for Labour, and that, because of delayed elections in most of the South, the core of the action took place in the Midlands. 10 of the 23 Councils up for election were there, with 645 seats at stake. Reform UK gained six of those, leaving one to the Liberal Democrats and three to the proverbial No Overall Control. You can say that the Midlands thusly tolled the bell that started all the rumours and plots about Keir Starmer's imminent demise. The Midlands will not have to stage a repeat performance next year, as they will have no Council up for election. And Starmer may be gone already anyway, as the most ardent plotters now want him gone before Christmas. But the locals could actually and realistically be the final nail in the camel's back, which would not necessarily be a good thing for anyone in Labour. Just imagine a leadership contest without Andy Burnham and Angela Rayner, and being left with Lucy Powell and Wes Streeting on the final ballot. Not the most exciting prospect, is it?

Robert Jenrick is not very keen on judges, particularly the ones who suggest that it was unlawful for him to take a donation from a Tory donor, and then rush through a planning application.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 10 October 2025)

I turned to my wife and I said, "In your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine you'd be leaving a general election count with your husband having just been elected as a Member of Parliament?". She turned to me and replied and said, "In my wildest dreams, you don't feature".

(Chris Philip, Conservative Party Conference, 7 October 2025)

The trends of polls in London, from the 2019 election to the present day, are also quite alarming for the Labour Party. The results of the 2024 election were already not that bright, thanks to increased vote shares for both the Greens and Reform UK. Only the fall of the London Conservatives protected Labour, as the magic of first-past-the-post allowed them to bag more seats than in 2019 on fewer votes. The success of the independent "Gaza candidates", fore-runners of Your Party, should also have triggered some alarms, as it cost Labour at least one gain from the Tories, and came within an inch of unseating Wes Streeting in Ilford North. It has become even worse since then, as London Labour are pretty much caught in the crossfire between opposition blocs on their left and their right. The Liberal Democrats and Greens are both progressing, but it explains only a part of Labour's losses. The Conservatives are pretty much holding their ground, which is hugely beneficial under first-past-the post, so the unavoidable conclusion is that a sizeable chunk of the Labour vote of 2024 has migrated straight to Reform UK.

We do have the numbers to prove that. The aggregate of all polls conducted in October shows Labour down 14% and the Conservatives down 2% on their vote shares of 2024. The combined LibDem and Green vote, usually considered the natural refuge for disgruntled Labour voters, is up by only 6%, while the Reform vote is up 12%. The seat projections for each month of the last six say that the main beneficiaries of Labour's downfall would be the Conservatives, despite losing some of their 2024 votes. Because the important factor is whether or not they could close the gap with Labour in the 30 Labour-held constituencies where they came second in 2024. Gaining eight of those ain't half bad, innit? Aye, that's eight gained from Labour, as they would also lose two to Reform, for the final visible net gain of six. Of course, that would be reclaiming just part of what they held between 2005 and 2019, and lost in 2024. But London is the only region of England where the Rump Tories would gain seats, so that's surely worth mentioning.

A very similar pattern works for Your Party. They are not polled separately, as they do miserably badly every time they are included in a run-of-the-mill poll, but bundled with the other "Others". In London, that obviously mostly means Their Party, as the follow-up to the opportunistic "Gaza Independents" of 2024. For them too, what matters most is closing the gap with Labour in their best seats of 2024, and possibly overtaking them. Here they are predicted to unseat rogue landlord Rushanara Ali in Bethnal Green and Stepney, and Shitweasel's pet hate Wes Streeting in Ilford North. Unless we witness the unthinkable. Zack Polanski showing some baws and leaving the peace and quiet of the posh West Central, where he tried to get a constituency seat at the London Assembly in 2021, and failed. And stands himself against Streeting instead of lecturing and smirking from the safety of the sidelines and a list seat at the London Assembly. But Zack may also sit that one out because he is all smirk and no bite, which wouldn't surprise me in the least.

In the old days, we would’ve just slit you up the middle like a fucking Cornish pasty, and hanged your steaming entrails all around the Tower of fucking London.

(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It, 2012)

Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away, but there just aren’t.

(Anonymous senior Reform cabinet member, Kent County Council)

Honestly, mates, I find it extremely refreshing and exhilarating that Reform UK are doing their utmost best, day after day, to feed the never-ending "Reform UK are such fucking wankers" saga, with Kent County Council being just another brick in a wall that will soon grow bigger than the Great Wall of China. It gets really fucking hilarious when you factor it that the crux of the ferrets-in-a-sack brawl is by how much they will hike the Council Tax, after promising they would lower it, and then realising that doing that would bankrupt the Council. That's how amateurish, crassly incompetent and unfit for any job the New Model British Union of Fascists are. Then I should probably stop calling them that, as British Union of Wankers definitely sounds closer to their whole true self. Of course, Reform UK's Führer could not let any challenge to authority go unpunished, so four of the rioters have been suspended from the British Union of Wankers. For bringing the party into disrepute, which is fucking hilarious when you consider the amount of very disreputable stuff spewed by the rest of the party everyday with the Führer's full approval. But it seems that bullshit still works with voters in the Leafy South.

But the most important part is, as usual, that the South is the litmus test of how well the Liberal Democrats are doing. Even the usually more Reform-friendly algorithms used by Electoral Calculus are kind to the LibDems, predicting they would lose only six seats, which is an astonishing level of resilience compared to Labour and the Conservatives. And the South is where most of the MPs from the 2024 intake are nested and burrowed, 53 out of 59 in England outwith London, and 72 total. Now my model says it would be 56 out of 64 in England outwith London, and 77 total. It clearly dampens the effect of the Reform UK infection in the South West and South East, but is less efficient in East Anglia, where Reform mostly face their easiest opponents, Labour and the Rump Tories. But Mister Ed's best hunting grounds remain Hampshire and Surrey, where Team Orange would kick out four Conservatives, including Jeremy Hunt and former Junior Ministers Caroline Nokes and Damian Hinds.

The fun side of all this polling, if there is one, is that you can see how British voters could have to face impossible choices at the next general election. Labour, who have made inefficiency a way of life? The Liberal Democrats, who would make misgendering a criminal offence? The Greens, who would make misgendering a criminal offence and welcome Russian subs at Faslane? Reform UK, who would welcome Russian subs at Faslane and build a barbed-wire fence the length of the Channel? The Conservatives, who would build a barbed-wire fence the length of the Channel and reopen workhouses? Now that's for the Englanders to pick from, but is there anything better in store for us Behind The Wall? Aye, we have the SNP, whose greatest achievement of the last year has been to make themselves irrelevant. How fucking fortunate we are. Then maybe The Land Of The Bruce is the harbinger of the shape of things to come, when the deconstructionist Green Party deconstructs itself with defections to the less openly batshit-loopy and more traditionally faux pacifist Your Party. Now that would be something.

Two hundred years ago, there were lots of people who said we shouldn’t build railways because they were expensive, and they were intrusive, and we should keep with our well-trusted toll roads and canals.

(John Selwyn Gummer, Baron Deben)

I don’t support all these employment rights that come from Europe. In the Victorian age most employers were benevolent, kindly, good.

(Jacob Rees-Mogg)

The European Convention on Human Rights and its enforcer of last resort, the European Court of Human Rights, are clearly living rent-free in Nigel Farage's and Kemi Badenoch's heads, who have chosen to ignore all the bad vibrations associated with obsessively fighting against something with human rights in its name. But always look on the buttered side of the toast, it is also an incentive for our favourite pollsters to survey the issue again and again, and coming out with the same results, in defiance of Einstein's working definition of madness. YouGov has been at it again this month, but added a new dimension to the polling. It's not just about how favourable people are to the ECHRs, but about how knowledgeable they are about them. At face value, not much, as only 5% of Brits claim to be fluent in all things ECHR and 15% admit they know jack shit. If you add the intermediate ratings, a third of us are more or less knowledgeable and two thirds more or less ignorant. YouGov tried to check that with a simple true-or-false question about eight different ECHR-related statements, with impressive numbers honestly admitting they don't know.

But the real value of the line of questioning is not whether we are ready to admit we have no fucking clue about one of the hottest debates of the day, but whether those of us who pretend to know actually do. Because we wouldn't want to see such a debate framed by a combination of ignorance and misconceptions, even it the far-right would see nothing wrong with that, as it would make it easier for them to manipulate public opinion with their usual flow of disinformation and falsification. The results are actually not that bad, though the right answers are usually given by only a smallish fraction of the panel. Then the reality of what the ECHR says shows quite clearly that a lot of Benito Farage's claims are total bullshit, and even some of Keir Starmer's "new" policies are bollocks. To single out just one, the UK has always had the right to interpret the decisions of the ECHR the way it sees fit. It's written in a virgin goat's blood in Article 15 of the original convention of 1950, which gives the signatories quite a lot of leeway in invoking derogations in situations identified as public emergencies.

But the lack of really intimate knowledge of the Convention's fine print still makes us prone to falling for some of the far-right's disinformation and falsification. The most obvious case is the belief that we need to leave the ECHR to "stop the small boats". This is total bullshit, and the Survation poll is a wee smitch ambiguous, if not manipulative, in its wording. Protocol 4 does indeed "cover" the "right to migrate", which it actually defines as the right to freedom of movement within the Council of Europe area. But it applies only to citizens of the signatory countries and foreign nationals who are here legally according to each country's legislation. It does not offer any protection to persons who are here illegally, again according to local laws. More awkwardly for the obsessively xenophobic far-right, it also forbids mass deportation, which is sadly a moot point in our case, as the UK has signed Protocol 4 but never ratified it, over concerns that it might clash with the oddities of British nationality laws. So the UK government is absolutely free to do whatever it fucking wants to repeal the boarders.

Now Sly Keir has found a new way to deter migrants, requesting that they be fluent in English. Which sounds quite common-sensical until you read the fine print. Which says that the level of proficiency in the lingo will be raised from GCSE, which 33% of kids in England and Wales failed this year, to A-level, where only 28% of kids in England and Wales got A or A* grades. To highlight the absurdity of the new English test for visa applicants that most Brits would not pass, The Mirror published a tongue-in-cheek five-question mock test. Take it and see how you do. I did and I got questions 1 and 2 outright wrong, questions 3 and 4 outright right, and question 5 right after some hesitation, which would probably have got me timed out if it had been in real life, though I would argue that the wording of that question is not totally clear. Now, seriously, tell me who the fuck knows spontaneously what present continuous is? What? You do? No shit? Fuck me sideways, mate.

I don’t know why we didn’t implement Rwanda. Why did we go to the country before we got that done? That was a mistake.

(Boris Johnson)

We tend to acquiesce in the erosion of our rights by our indolence and ignorance.

(John Deed, Judge John Deed, 2005)

But the key question is not whether or not we are totally familiar with the details of the ECHR, it's whether or not a serious level of ignorance can push us to support withdrawing from it. But the last YouGov poll say that it is not happening, and open debate about the ECHR since the beginning of this year has even increased support for staying in it, with a higher level of support now than in the historic YouGov poll of nearly nine years ago. Talk about another Streisand effect. Only Conservative and Reform voters want to withdraw from it, fully revealing what it actually is. A right-wing ideological scam with massive ulterior motives.

The Great British Public are obviously fully aware of these ulterior motives, as they are fully aware of the negative impact that withdrawing from the ECHR would have on many aspects of our lives. If we set aside immigration issues and the delusion about "taking back control" for a second, the YouGov poll identifies quite rightly what would be at stake and what would be in jeopardy if some UK government was loopy enough to withdraw from the ECHR like we withdrew from the EU. Our international reputation and our ability to cooperate with foreign countries on security issues may even be the least of our concerns if that happened. The main threat would be to those everyday human rights we take for granted, especially the rights of minorities, and the whole corpus of employment rights. And we have brutal evidence of that under our eyes, Trump's authoritarian America. That's what Nigel Goebbels wants to import here, that would genuinely turn us into a lawless and broken Britain. We are right to fear it, and it is still time to fight it.

The Survation poll also includes a stunt no self-respecting pollster should even try, twisting the wording of a fairly straightforward question in a totally dishonest and manipulative way that lures the respondents into answering a totally different question. Their twisted wording deserves quoting in full. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is an international treaty created to protect fundamental rights and freedoms across Europe. Some politicians argue that leaving the ECHR would make it easier for the UK to enforce measures like deportations to deter illegal English Channel crossings, while others say it is important to stay to protect human rights.To what extent do you support or oppose leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)? Survation could argue that it is fair and balanced as it mentions both points of view. But the initial emphasis on a far-right talking point that we know is a lie clearly reframes the question, as does the way "support" and "oppose" are swapped in the final question, compared to the most usual wording. And it sadly works, showing a totally opposite result to other recent polls.

The switch in the wording of the question is also the reason why I switched the colours in the chart, to keep green the colour of the positive side. But the manipulation does not actually work 100%. The most interesting part is the replies from the Scottish subsamples. When asked the honest direct question, 53% of Scots want to remain in the ECHR and 21% want to withdraw. When asked the manipulative question, 45% oppose leaving the ECHR and 29% support it. That's just a wee 8% moving from one side to the other and it doesn't change the verdict, unlike everywhere else where it turns it upside down and inside out. It really says one thing about Scots, two actually. We are smarter than the rest of Great Britain as we saw through the manipulation and didn't fall for it. We are more consistent than the rest of the Great British Public, who tend to be quite anemoscopic. Probably because we are smarter. That's you telt, Sassenach.

We have the same rights, so we call those human rights. Any other subdivision or category or descriptor is unnecessary, not to mention patronising and presumptuous.

(Madeline Crow, Douglas Is Cancelled, 2024)

In the Leave campaign, there were undoubtedly promises made that have shown to be undeliverable. It was a false prospectus. It was a fantasy set of promises that have been shown up for what they were.

(Jo Johnson)

At long last, Rachel Reeves has put her finger on it and squeezed where it hurts. Brexit is the root of all evil and the cause of all our woes. Well, perhaps not all of them literally, but at least the 4% shrinkage of GDP, the £50bn and rising black hole, the economy's sluggishness, the neverending cost of living crisis and Chris Philip's atrocious choice of socks. Give credit where credit is due, Rachel, even if you're only stating the obvious that all of us have been aware of since Brexit became real, and not just one of the Clacton Mussolini's wet dreams. Even the Bank of England says that it is a fucking disaster that is here to last, so it must be true. Compared to Brexit, the Gallipoli Campaign and the Charge Of The Light Brigade were both strokes of genius and outstanding successes. YouGov's last poll of Brexit, on behalf of Best For Britain, shows that the Great British Public are massively aware that Brexit was the worst self-inflicted wound this side of Suez. Six to one, not even close.

Even Conservative voters have now come to terms with it, and only Reform voters are still mushbrained enough to opine it worked and delivered. It is actually not even news, as YouGov have tracked our feelings for Brexit regularly since July 2019. They asked 81 times if we consider Brexit the right or the wrong choice, never found a majority saying it was right, and found a plurality saying it was only thrice, the last time in April 2021. Because we know it was an abject failure, and a disaster of unprecedented magnitude that is now quite probably unrecoverable, unfixable and irreparably final. Labour should have fought it as soon as the first cracks in the Brexit coalition started to show. But Corbyn's clique did not as they were Europhobes too, and then Starmer was too feart of losing a Council by-election in the backwaters of Derbyshire if he took a clearly Europhile stand. He shouldn't have, as another question in YouGov's poll tested our "Brexit Mood", the feelings that most spontaneously come to mind about it. There are very few positives in the replies, and the dominant feelings are exactly the ones Labour should have relied on. Anger, sadness, disappointment and betrayal, the very combination needed to blow Brexit and the Brexiteers apart once and for all.

Obviously, triangulation and focus groups told Keir Starmer for years and years not to touch Brexit. And Peter Mandelson too, based on his intimate knowledge of Hartlepool. <Basil Fawlty>Don't Menshun Brexshit</Basil Fawlty>. Nothing could be more wronger. It was precisely the nail that Starmer should have hammered home every day, because that's where it hurts Farage the most, by proving he is an incompetent lying bastard. With the added bonus that it was the opportunity to kill the proverbial two turds with one scone, also debunking the cretinous myth of Lexit, which Shitweasel promoted before he was Shitweasel, and even Poseur Varoufakis totally disemboweled... from the left. The amazingly low numbers of people harbouring any sort of positive feelings towards Brexit should convince Labour of the urgent necessity for a change of course. Don't concede that fight to Ed Davey, who will never miss an opportunity to rub your nose in it, because more Brits than just his voters agree and he likes taking the piss out of you.

Wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organized protected robbery.

(Frantz Fanon)

We talk about freedom so much, don’t we? But none of us really believes in it. Most people don’t want it at all. Most people are weak and stupid and cowardly and contemptible.

(Francis Urquhart, To Play The King, 1993)

Now that we know as a certainty that the Great British Public are unshakably stipulating that the Brexit farce was a fucking disaster that should never have happened, let's see if we can put our collective finger on the exact damage it has done. Of course we can, YouGov even found fourteen items that prove it, and asked their panel to rank them as the most obvious symptoms and consequences of Brexit's abject failure. Mind you, there is no stunning revelation in there. I guess we all already know pretty well what happened. We just have to compare the UK's vital statistics to the EU's for evidence. The most salient facts selected by the poll, as evidence of the extensive damage Brexit has done, totally fit the picture of our overall Brexit Mood. They fully support the feelings that we have been lied too and swindled by a bunch of devious scammers who played on the collective gullibility of the English electorate. And won. Which puts current voting intentions in a much cruder light, the transition from gullibility to outright stupidity, when the Chief Swindler of 2016 leads the 2025 polls.

Experts, who we know are never wrong except when they totally are, have told us that Brexit has cost us 4% of GDP. That was last year, so we can safely assume it's more like 5% now. Whatever, it means that our nominal GDP would be above £4 trillion this year, or above £4.7 trillion if you consider GDP on purchasing power parity. What matters to our everyday life is what this gap means it terms of the overall amount levied by taxes, ceteris paribus. Basic maths says it is at least £60bn, and could be as high as £75bn. Enough to plug all the budget black holes for the foreseeable future and buy a couple of real aircraft carriers on top. It is also interesting that the two Brexit fuckups relating to immigration rank only 11th and 12th of the 14th top Brexit damages highlighted by the poll. This is quite remarkable from an electorate the mediatariat and the far-right paint as obsessed by immigration, though both are in fact technically true, and totally Boris Johnson's responsibility. Immigration skyrocketed after Boris had UK immigration law modified after Brexit, and the prevention of illegal Channel crossings was brought to a halt by the loss of specific cooperation with EU countries. So much for "taking back control".

Now even the atrocious Zack Polanski is supporting rejoining the EU, which only proves that even a broken record can be right once a year. Of course, it assumes that they would agree to take us back, which is not a given. They have every reason to really take the piss, and make it an ordeal worth of a Royal Marines boot camp. That's where Euro-bureaucracy and its multiple forms in triplicate come in handy. But Labour would be wrong to concede this issue to the loopy Che Guevara Greenies the same way they have conceded others to Mister Ed. Only Trump and Putin really see Brexit as a success, because we have distanced ourselves from the rest of Western Europe. Labour should stress relentlessly that putting more distance and more hurdles between us, as Adolf Farage advocates, would serve only the short-term interests of Trump and the long-term strategy of the Russian Reich. So it's time to aim straight for the jugular before it's too late, no matter how stinky the mud is. The time for fighting clean and civil is gone.

As George Bernard Shaw said. "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it".

(Kemi Badenoch)

In English history, only the monarchy itself is an older, continuously filled post than the Archbishop of Canterbury, although in both cases the word continuously needs to be qualified.

(Jacob Rees-Mogg)

Remember how the politicos and the media were all over the grooming gangs scandal not so long ago, and rightly so? After too many years and suffering, the victims were vindicated and the criminals sentenced. We have another grooming gang scandal on our hands right now, that probably won't go anywhere because it involves Not-My-King's kinky paedophile brother and close relations of the President of the United States. The Orange Baboon will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell and Paedo Andy will never see the inside of a court of law, unless he adds insult to injury and sues anyone who calls him a paedo for libel. It can happen, mates. If we were living in a normal democratic country like, let's see... the Netherlands or Denmark, the story would have ended long ago with Andy in jail. But we're not, and it is likely the last remaining feudal institution in the civilised world, the English Monarchy, will survive unscathed as all possible mechanisms of self-protection have been activated. Again, only Ed Davey seems ready to fight for transparency. Opinium polled the oiks about the Monarchy earlier this month, and its image remains incredibly favourable, given the impact the most recent events should have had. In a normal country.

The idea that the Monarchy benefits the UK's economy is quite ridiculous, even it if is still accepted by a majority of population. The estimated capital value of "monarchy tourism" is about a fifth of that of the Eiffel Tower, which costs the French taxpayer only a tiny fraction of the £132m we are giving away to the Royals this year. Likewise, I don't see the bonus in terms of the UK's image, when the Monarchy started disgracing itself 80 years ago by protecting a Nazi collaborator and influencer whom Winston Churchill wanted executed, and gifted him a lavish exile paid entirely by British taxpayers. But what do we really want now? Perpetuate the last truly feudal Monarchy West of the Urals? Or go one step beyond, like back to 1649 without the gore and the military coup, and transition into a truly democratic modern state with an elected Head of State? In other words, a Republic? Opinium asked not just once, but twice, first rather bluntly, and then summat challenging their panel to confirm that they actually meant what it seemed they meant.

Opinium, in true pollster fashion, actually asked the same question twice. Once in a pretty straightforwardly blunt way, without emphasising or dephasising, if that's a word, either option, and we get a quarter self-identifying as Republicans. Then they added a very strong certainty to one option and some sort of equivocating nuance to the other, and now we get a third open to, ye ken, not necessarily the Monarchy, but maybe not a Republic either, just whatever. I wouldn't call that outright poll manipulation, though, as the wording of the second non-monarchist option is way too awkward. It sounds more like a crude attempt to attract a chunk of the "don't really give a fucking shit either way" fraction of the population to the Republican side, and it worked quite well. But a general kindness for the Monarchy does not extend to Andy, as a later YouGov poll shows that the whole of the UK, except Nicholas Witchell, support him being formally stripped of his medieval title, not just agreeing to not use it.

The fun part of the story is that Big Bro Charlie constitutionally cannot demote Paedo Andy from his Dukedom. It has to be done by an Act of Parliament. A real one, tabled by the Government, not a Private Members Bill. Which, to cut to the bone, means it cannot happen unless Keir Starmer decides it must happen. Sly Keir should be reassured and motivated by that poll, that shows that even Reform voters want Andy to be fully demoted. So there is no need to summon a focus group or ask Morgan McSweeney. Just fucking do it and make it quick, or else you might just fuck it up as you are prone to do with even the simplest and most obvious things. Go Get 'Im, Tiger.

St. Dunstan, who crowned Edgar as King of England in Bath Abbey in 973, used a ceremony that in all essentials was the same as the one used by Justin Welby to crown the King. The most notable change is that the liturgy is now in English.

(Jacob Rees-Mogg)

The sacramental anointing of a king secures the position which is certified with the coronation oath, that is set out in statute. This oath promises good government and provides a link to the Anglo-Saxon kings, as the Normans took trouble to keep the ceremony intact.

(Jacob Rees-Mogg)

What remains to be seen is how the premeditated exit-stage-left-pursued-by-a-bear of Paedo Andy will impact the image of the few remaining Royals. Maybe it won't be that bad, and they will actually benefit from it. After all, a majority of the subjects of the Realm still believes the massive delusion that the Inbreds are good value for money. And we're talking fucking big dosh here, to the tune of £180m a year. £132m directly from the Treasury, in other words taxpayers' money, and roughly £25m each in tax-free income from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. We are really entitled to expect good value for that amount, which doesn't include the protection details, the cost of the medieval ceremonies that make such good TV, and the real estate costs of The Palace and the various mansions and lodges, which are taken off another line in the budget.

Scots are the least convinced by that ages-old narrative, probably because the Mountbattens don't really look that good in kilts, a wee smitch ridiculous even. But Charles is trying to mollify us with this new idea of a "slimmed down" royalty, which sounds a bit like taking the piss when you consider that the first concrete result was Parliament granting the Royals a 52% pay hike for the current fiscal year. Sounds more like slimmed up to me. This is the result of a rather weird and unique arrangement, as the dosh comes from the profits of the Crown Estate, which is neither state-owned nor a private property of the Monarch, but somewhere in between, in a legal a limbo of its own. Another very British peculiarity that would have to be erased if we transitioned to a Republic. In the meanwhile, the Great British Public are conclusively in favour of a trimmed-down Royalty, just as we like our dogs looking like really good boys after getting their seasonal haircut.

The idea here is to reduce the officially-defined Working Royals to a mere seven, though you may genuinely wonder what kind of actual work some of them are doing. When you think of it, Harryghan were the only ones who got a real paid job on their own merits, even it it turned out to be no better, and less funny, than Meet The Richardsons reset in Malibu. And they were kicked out of The Firm anyway, for some obscure crimes that were never properly explained. Then it is good to know that the Inbreds take a dimmer view of woke wankers than of a paedo. So refreshing of them. Of course, Charles' main flaw is that he is not his mother, something that can conceivably happen only if you are the lead in Robert Heinlein's All You Zombies. Then Elizabeth was the only person, other than Barack Obama, who was deified while alive and in office, so that's kind of hard to beat, innit?

As a Catholic, Papist, if you prefer, I am glad that the Constitution still has a formal role for Christianity. It, in a small way, helps the state to be on the side of right and is a link to a more religious age when faith was more central to people’s lives.

(Jacob Rees-Mogg)

We have a very beautiful country, with the coastline, the regions, the gastronomy. The problem is that, when you say it, you're instantly called a fascist. So you start wondering what you may say.

(Jean Dujardin, 16 October 2025)

The current political chaos in the country of my birth, and the quite flabbergasting panto performed by France's parties, makes more sense against the background of Emmanuel Macron's unpopularity. The hard truth is that his honeymoon period after the major upset at the 2017 presidential election was really short. He was already in net negative territory by the autumn of 2017 and has never surfaced since. This is pretty much the same pattern as Keir Starmer after our general election of 2024, and partly for the same reasons. Like Labour's landslide, Macron's election was very quickly considered a victory by default against Marine Le Pen, not evidence of genuine popular support for his policies. This was exacerbated by the 2022 presidential election, when Macron's lead over Le Pen shrunk from 32% to 17%. Macron's gradual shift from vaguely progressive social-liberalism, which helped him rally the bulk of the soft left voters in 2017, to the basics of neo-liberal dogma, including taxphobia and distaste for the traditional French welfare state, also contributed to the loss of the people's trust and the widespread feeling that he is out of touch with realities of their everyday life.

The intriguing part is that this data is not available on the French Wokopedia, but is on the English Wokopedia, which is for all intents and porpoises the American Wokopedia. But I am not building any conspiracy theory on that. There is also a lot to decipher in the ratings of Macron's seven Prime Ministers, so far. I plotted only the favourables this time to, hopefully, keep the chart clear. The first two, Edouard Philippe and Jean Castex, enjoyed rather "normal" cycles of popularity and unpopularity, reflecting both their association with Macron and an assessment of their personal standing. It could also have been the case for Elisabeth Borne, but her popularity was deeply damaged by the very unpopular reform of the state pensions system of 2023. This turned into a totem for the oppositions on the right and left, and a taboo for Macron's "central bloc", later jargonistically rebranded the "common socle" who considered it an unmovable object even when subjected to tremendous force. Until the last of the line, so far, Sébastien Lecornu, bought himself a reprieve by agreeing to suspend the implementation of the reform until 2028. Which may not be enough to ensure his survival through another vote of no confidence, which will undoubtedly happen before the end of the year and would trigger Manny's nuclear option, another snap legislative election.

The most singular story is that of Gabriel Attal, whom Macron is rumoured to have described as his "little brother". But it was never going to end well between these two, who are way too much alike. Both were bright young things, with Macron becoming President at 39 and Attal Prime Minister at 33. Both are more hungry for power than my dog for sausages, and ready to do absolutely fucking anything to hold it. Both have erased "loyalty" and "principle" from their inner dictionaries and act only on expediency. Both have an ego half the size of Donald Trump's, but there is no way anyone can beat that one, is there? Both have grown up convinced they always were the smartest kid in town, which doesn't explain how Macron could be stupid enough to call a snap election everybody knew he would lose, and how Attal could be stupid enough to transition into Brutus to Macron's Caesar before having solidified his support within the Rump Macronist Coalition and without a fallback plan. But his greatest sin, in Macron's eyes, is having remained more popular than the President all along his Premiership. In Manny's Weltanschauung, this is a crime of lèse-majesté, that deserves the harshest punishment.

In the political debate we often ask ourselves the question of our identity. But our identity is never built on narrow-mindedness, or on first names or crampedness.

(Emmanuel Macron, 29 September 2021)

During the flooding of the Nile, the most important task is not to control the rising water, but to know how to use the silt that it deposited.

(Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Le Choix de l'Insoumission, 2016)

Elections in France are not polled as obsessively as in the UK, which is probably a good thing. Pollsters see little point in surveying elections that will happen several years in the future weekly, as ours do. There have been 29 presidential polls in 30 months, and 10 parliamentary polls in 16 months since their last elections. We have had 278 Commons polls since our last election, that was held three weeks later than the last French legislative election. Even the USA, from where we have borrowed this polling frenzy, have had fewer general election polls, with just 59 in 10 months since the current House of Representatives was sworn in. But the scarcity of polls still allows us to identify clear trends, which are pretty bad for the Macronist coalition and, let's face it, for anyone but the far-right National Rally. This is painfully clear in presidential polls, where they totally benefit from split votes in the other two political camps, left and right alike.

The trends of legislative election polling tell pretty much the same story, even if you assume that the Left will see the light and again go united in a reboot of the New Popular Front of 2024, and add the predicted votes from split candidacies. Even this optimistic scenario, which will probably not happen as the political rifts within the Left have spiraled out of control, sees the National Rally leading by several points and the other parties on the right and centre performing very poorly. Seat projections, which are tougher to get right in France than in the UK because of the two-round system, nevertheless hint very loudly that the National Rally, in coalition with their junior partner at the Union Of The Rights, will get a majority of seats. Or miss it by so few seats that a minority government will be feasible with the support of some unaligned MPs or defectors from the classic right The Republicans. Some could surely be lured by the offer of a government job or a key position at the National Assembly, as the grass is always greener on the buttered side of the toast. Or browner, in this case.

The real question now is which recent event will influence future polls the most. Will it be the truly unbelievable "Heist Of The Century" at the Louvre, which has left the French people in deeper shock than news about the twin genocides in Gaza and Ukraine, and is turning into a bigger political scandal than the embezzlement of European Parliament funds by Marine Le Pen's MEPs? Or will it be former President Nicolas Sarkozy being jailed after he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit embezzlement and election fraud, but still receiving solid signs of solidarity from all across the political establishment, who definitely support harsh sentencing for convicted felons only so long as it does not hit one of their own? So, at the end of the day, there seems to be only minor differences between the French politicariat and the British one, despite the massive differences in political history and culture. At least on the right side of the chessboard, when they have to protect one of their clan. If you want to know the root causes of disenchantment and discontent, look no further. And that's how France could get its first openly far-right government since the Vichy Regime, and an openly pro-Putinist administration years ahead of the UK putting Nigel Mussolini in charge, Dog forbid.

Our country is full of division and doubt. Therefore we must be strong and no one will be left by the wayside. Together we must work towards that unity which is the only way we can live happier in France, and can overcome the challenges of the coming years.

(Emmanuel Macron, 24 April 2022)

Mélenchon has an authoritarian vision of life and politics. He is stuck in the 1930s.

(Daniel Cohn-Bendit, 4 May 2014)

While perusing French news and polls for updates on their political turmoil and prospects, I quite serendipitously came across a poll conducted in July by Elabe, including French attitudes to Ukraine and Russia, and how it impacts their views on defence. It is relevant to us on the other side of the White Cliffs because France is a key partner in the Coalition Of The Willing supporting Ukraine, has a clear ambition of being the senior partner in that coalition, but may very well be forced to take a step back because of their self-inflicted political shambles. It is also useful to know how our closest neighbour's public opinion feels about an issue that should be consensual in a civilised democratic country, but is not because of the influence of scheming politicos bought and sold for Russian blood money. Like our own combination of George Galloway, if that fucking wanker had any influence, and Nigel Farage. Elabe first probed their panel about a rather blunt statement mad by Emmanuel Macron, "Freedom has never been under such threat since the end of the Second World War in 1945", which obviously targeted the Russian Reich's genocidal imperialism and the Kremlin's Nosferatu.

The French public tend to agree with Manny, but less spectacularly than the British public would. The crosstabs by political affiliation, from the loopy far-left to the loony far-right, are quite revealing. The Macronist Renaissance voters are behind the Big Man in an almost cult-like way. Those you could call the soft left and the soft right have very similar positions, also in agreement with Macron's statement. Dissent comes from the two opposite corners of the spectrum, which actually function as a unit on these issues. La France Insoumise and the National Rally are both notoriously Putinist, and both also benefited from Russian subsidies at various points before the criminal invasion of Ukraine. After keeping it quiet for a while, both are now again spreading FSB-manufactured bullshit about the Russian Reich being a force for peace and only reacting to existential threats from the West. Sadly, it does influence the average Frog-eater because both have more weight than their British equivalents, Reform UK and Your Party. Another explanation is that, over time, the French public have lost their sense of urgency about the war.

Extension of the war to the Eastern flank of the European Union, because Nosferatu wants it and the Orange Baboon is too weak-minded to oppose it, is a very real possibility. More than two thirds of the French public are still worried this could happen, but just one out of five are very worried. It seems they didn't listen when Nosferatu himself mentioned it, with his infamous statement that wherever a Russian soldier has once set foot is Russian forever. Obviously that was a direct reference to Ukraine and the Baltic States, and plausibly Finland and Poland. But remember that Russian soldiers also once occupied Paris. In 1815, but Nosferatu has already resorted to excuses from much further back in time. And I can also argue that the war has already spread into France, just like into the rest of Western Europe. It's not a giant gun shelling the Cathedral of Reims, of course, it's more insidious and dangerous. Sabotage, terrorist acts, ships of the Shadow Fleet operating as drone carriers off the EU's coasts. But the majority of the French public are no longer worried about that, which also explains their opposition to increased military spending.

This debate is framed along different lines in France to the UK. The level of taxation, in proportion of GDP, is 7% higher in France and alleged to be the highest in Europe, though that may be Denmark. Macronism has also spread an almost hysterical culture of taxphobia among the French public, so the Pavlovian response to any increased funding in one domain is a demand for equivalent cuts somewhere else. Interestingly, far-right voters are aligned with the soft left and representative of the average position here, only moderately opposed to a bigger defence budget. Only the far-left are vociferously opposed, in the true tradition of the appeasers of the 1930s and the Soviet-funded faux-pacifists of the 1970s. We have the same at home, haven't we? And our Greens are part of that, unlike the French Greens, which isn't the first time Continental Greens prove smarter than English Greens. The current political chaos and the incoming fight over the budget for 2026 may well result in some parts of the defence budget being axed or postponed, which is usually a cover for deferred cancellation. It would be extremely unwise but would fit a familiar Macronist pattern, doing the wrongest thing at the wrongest time.

As cruel as it is to hear it, peoples can make mistakes. Ours already has, and we know the price history makes you pay if you miss the train of history.

(Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 6 June 1992)

We’ve watched legions of far-left radicals resort to desperate acts of violence and terror because they know that their ideas and arguments are persuading no one.

(Donald Trump, 14 October 2025)

The election year has now begun in the United States of America, that actually look more and more like the Disunited States where the two sides of the widening political rift no longer pretend to be listening to each other, as one spews fake news and bile on Twatter, while the other one talks bollocks out of their arse on BlueShite. I know, the elections are scheduled for the 3rd of November 2026, so that's one year and one week away. Unless the Orange Baboon demands Congress pass a sur mesure Ermächtigungsgesetz 2.0, making him President for life or summat. Which of course won't happen, even if the most unhinged fanatical woke wankers are squealing that it will. You definitely get a sense of brewing civil war on social media, and lots on both sides actually wanting it. Trump himself stokes the fire with asinine actions that definitely don't help, like the deification of Charlie Kirk or the Ceausescuesque destruction of the White House's East Wing to make way for a very nouveau riche ballroom. Fortunately, the vast majority of the American people are happy to just keep grumbling without taking it to the streets in full Antifa or Proud Boys mode. Thank Dog again for YouGov, who have been tracking the Americans' mood about the direction of their country since the start of Obama's second term.

So, Americans are permanently convinced that their country is heading in the wrong direction, no matter who the President is or who controls Congress, regardless of what they actually do. If a newly elected President gets a semblance of honeymoon period, with malcontents cutting him some slack, it rarely produces a majority agreeing that the country is heading in the right direction, and it never lasts for long. It has happened to Obama, Trump 45 and Biden, and it's happening to Trump 47 now. Obama and Biden, in true Democratic fashion, thought they could deal with that through compromise and appeasement, and it didn't really work. Trump has none of this sort of caution, and relishes in being deliberately antagonistic and confrontational, the man with a big stick in an iron glove. He is also a pathological liar, though this can also be considered part of his strategy, for example claiming that he enjoys extravagant levels of popularity that never happened. We have another of YouGov's trackers as evidence.

This one surveys Trump's popularity, in the usual most simple terms, whether people have a favourable or unfavourable view of him, regardless of their detailed assessment of his policies. YouGov polled Trump's favourability 465 times since February 2016, even before he was first elected, and found a net positive only six times. And it was just a net +1% all six times, nothing like a stellar popular endorsement. The last of these positives was on Inauguration Day this year, and then it quickly sunk back to double-digit negatives. YouGov have a third tracker, Trump's job approval, that combines both his favourability and the direction taken by the country. It is not better than his raw favourability rating, and there is surely a hint in there than a deliberately abrasive and aggressive style is disliked even by those who may otherwise approve of some of his policies.

We have fewer data points here as it covers only the second term, the one Elon Muck bought him with billions in Russian blood money. The last net positive rating was at the end of February, a month after the second Inauguration, and now it's firmly set in the familiar double-digit negatives. It is quite disturbing, though also fucking hilarious, to think that Trump's British zealots certainly have a better opinion of him and his policies than the average American. Some of the Orange Baboon's early actions, that earned him praise on our side of the Ocean, like his determination to prove that he "knows what a woman is"™, were also seen positively on his side. But the American people were also quick to realise that rejection of the transcultist woke doxa did nothing to solve any of their everyday problems. It did not cure inflation, which was soon boosted by the impact of Trump's extravagant tariffs. It didn't make the USA's image better on the international scene, where appeasement of Russia does not really go down well. All in all, even the much overhyped peace plan for Gaza did nothing for Trump's job approval. Bad it was, bad it remains.

The far-left know that they’re failing. They have the devil’s ideology and they’re failing. And they know it. They feel it, and they become violent

(Donald Trump, 14 October 2025)

I have lived 82 years on this Earth, and this is the first time I've ever witnessed people delighting in the suffering of others so openly, so proudly, and even recording it for the world to see.

(Mick Jagger, 8 October 2025)

The absolutely abhorrent images of ICE's interventions against allegedly "illegal immigrants", which Mick Jagger is referring to, have done nothing to boost Trump's image and approval. YouGov's most recent poll shows that the American public are divided about what should happen to the illegals, with a tiny margin against deporting them, but also think conclusively that ICE agents should intervene in uniform and unmasked, not in the thug-like attires they have adopted since the Orange Baboon unleashed them uncontrolled in the streets. But Trump surely doesn't give a frying duck about Mick Jagger, as what remains of his brain was focused on the celebration of his real estate deal for Gaza, which failed to get him the Nobel Peace Prize. YouGov did not poll their American panel about that, just their British panel, on three different topics, with sometimes entertaining results.

So Reform UK voters think that Nobel Peace Prizes don't usually go to persons deserving them, but are almost tempted to demand one for Donald Trump. Go figure. Fortunately the rest of the British public are more consistent and logical on this one, probably because only a minority have faith in the solidity of Trump's plan. Sadly, as a lasting settlement and peace at the end of the tunnel is what we should all wish and work for. So maybe our job there is not done yet. It is not done in Ukraine either, as YouGov found that the American public are leaning more and more towards maintaining or increasing military aid, and less and less towards lowering of canceling it. The Kremlin's Nosferatu and his bribed minions in the West are in a fucking panic over the USA possibly delivering Tomahawk missiles, that would allow Ukraine to finish the job and annihilate the Russian Reich's oil industry. You can see that by the new horde of trolls unleashed by Elmo Muck on Twatter, propagating the most ridiculous Russia propaganda, and the renewed algorithm-muzzling of accounts supporting Ukraine. Would the Orange Baboon listen to the voice of the American people, and not to Muck's bots, and help Ukraine deliver the final blow to Putin's fascist genocidal dictatorship? Of course, Putin then made him change his mind by again appealing to his galaxy-sized ego and bottomless vanity.

There has also been some advance polling for the 2028 Presidential election. Three likely Democratic candidates have been singled out by the pollstertariat. Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Facing the Orange Baboon, his heir-apparent J.D. Vance or, for comic relief, the hapless Secretary of State Marco Rubio. This tentative polling shows roughly even odds of the Democrats snatching back the White House in 2028, and that Newsom would be the best choice to do that. Alas, poor Gavin, this is where the complete absurdity and abysmal stupidity of woke fanaticism comes to light, as some are already squealing on BlueShite that they will never vote for Newsom because he is a centrist transphobe or whatever. Because he chose to debate Charlie Kirk earlier this year, and opposed men competing in women's sports, a fairly mainstream view shared by a majority of Americans. Which seems enough for the decerebrated woke nihilists to let J.D. Vance, a real Christo-fascist ideologue, win the Presidency. Always in the name of ideological purity and absolute submission to the transcultist doxa.

But what becomes of that if Trump stands again? Which you will object cannot happen because of the two-terms-for-life rule. Unless... he gets the Constitution amended to remove that rule. Constitutional amendments must be passed by a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress first and that is, in their current configuration, as likely to happen as Nigel Farage converting to Shingon Buddhism. Furthermore, in the unlikely event it did happen, it would then have to be ratified by three-fourths of the States, and the Republican Party controls only 28 out of 50 State Legislatures, ten short of the required super-majority. So it's no use fantasising about a third Trump candidacy in 2028, unless he uses a loophole in the 22nd Amendment, the one that limits Presidents to two therms for life. Now, let's do a test. Go read the exact wording of the amendment and see if you can see the loophole. Your two minutes start... NOW. Surely you have found it, haven't you? It says that no person can be elected President more than twice, but it doesn't say you cannot hold the office more than twice. The United States have already had a President who was never elected, Gerald Ford, so I fully expect Trump's armada of lawyers to work out a way he could become President for a third time without standing for election, which is the key. It would surely be convoluted and questionable, but still within the law. I almost wish it happens, as it would surely be fucking fun to watch.

Voters tolerate a multitude of lies from politicians generally, and Mr. Trump specifically, but the American people are too smart to fall for a sham campaign based entirely on such a ruse.

(James Sample, Newsweek, 13 October 2025)

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.

(Hannah Arendt)

Before the USA get to choose between Christo-fascism and the soft left at a presidential election, they will face the same choice at the midterms that are still scheduled for the 3rd of November 2026. So far. But the year in between looks like stepping into a quicksand of terra incognita. The Republicans in Congress, as exemplified by the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, are totally happy with being the Orange Baboon's obedient lapdogs just as he is Putin's. They have totally lost all contact with reality and erased many words from their dictionaries, integrity being just one, as they keep weathervaning in whatever direction Trump's fungified brain is pointing. They don't even care about saying the opposite of what they were saying last week, which was already the opposite of what they were saying the week before. Anything to keep the monster they have frankensteined happy and quiet, and not tempt him to disembowel and eat them alive. Polls show that the Great American Public don't buy it, and are willing to bring the marginally less loopy Democrats back in charge of the asylum.

The problems with Democrats is two-fold. The party as a whole is still in denial about the deeper reasons of the 2024 debacle, and ready to re-endorse absolutist wokeism, just because the Christo-fascists are on a crusade against it. It's just like they thought that Bluesky is representative of the real progressive America, and furry rights are a hill worth dying on. The few common-sensical voices warning against playing the same cards again are instantly labeled "centrists", which is worse than fascist in the born-again woke Borg Cube. The second major flaw is that Democrats in Congress are appallingly ineffective, not even willing to put up a real fight against Trump's shutdown of the federal government, and leaving the spirit of resistance to the common people in the streets. Notwithstanding, the most recent batch of polls delivers a reversal of the popular vote, though less massive than you would expect given the level of discontent generated by the Trump administration, and a narrow majority for the Democrats. The seat projection does factor in the expected impact of the atrocious gerrymandering of Texas, enforced on direct orders from the Oval Office.

But American democracy is in danger because the Orange Baboon will stop at nothing to rig and steal the midterms. First there was the atrocious gerrymandering of Texas, on direct orders from the White House, that robbed the Democrats of five seats. A new offensive has started now, with a case taken to the Supreme Court by a group of white supremacists from Louisiana who can't stand their state being represented by two black Democrats and "only" four white Republicans, when moving the goalposts could make all six seats red and white. The political plot is crystal clear, making the Voting Rights Act of 1965 null and void by eliminating the so-called "majority minority" districts. Which, no matter how loudly the Republicans deny it, is deeply rooted in crass racism and nostalgia of the bygone era of Jim Crow laws. It is highly unlikely that the case will be settled, and gerrymandering enforced in the Southern states, before the 2026 midterms, unless the Supreme Court fast-tracks it and thusly shows its true face as enforcers of Trump's coups against the Constitution of the United States. But there is plenty of time to get that done before the 2028 elections, which could switch twelve seats, and allow the Republicans to keep control of the House on a minority of the popular vote. The MAGA mob's wet dream of power ad perpetuum fulfilled by corrupt Justices at SCOTUS.

You can never get justice in a world where criminals make the rules.

(Bob Marley)

After fourteen years of Conservative failure, the public are furious at the levels of sewage being released into our rivers, lakes and seas. This government will ban bonuses for chief executives when environmental standards have not been met, and will bring forward criminal charges for obstruction.

(Steve Reed MP, 12 September 2024)

Let's end on a less dramatic note, though there are links with a situation that many in the UK consider overwhelmingly dramatic, possibly the most dramatic of our generation. Survation conducted a poll about corporate responsibility and environmental damage, on behalf of the Citizens Arrest Network, an organisation devoted to bringing polluting CEOs to justice by all means necessary. Which of course include a citizen's arrest, which is totally legal in England and Wales under Section 24A of PACE, but not explicitly covered by any statutory provision in Scots Law. Which means that it is legal by default as it is not forbidden. So we may as well do it, as the little old ladies in London did. Without forgetting the obvious necessary first step, nationalisation without compensation of all private water companies, which the Environment Agency are rightly rating at an all-time low. To establish a landscape and framework, Survation first asked who we think is responsible for environmental damage and climate change, and the answer is quite remarkable.

Aye, we agree that the fossil fuel and water companies are responsible, but the CEOs and Boards are more responsible than the amorphous and shapeshifting entities they rule. Putting individual responsibility to the front, that is something all the libertarians embedded in the Rump Conservative Party and Reform UK should love, if they were not in denial about climate change and the irreversible damage already done by corporate greed. But what should we do, and can we do, to address this? The basic principle of our legal system is that any person or entity responsible shall be held accountable, but it totally fails when the opposing party is a large company with a horde of outrageously overpaid lawyers who will always first try and undermine the very notion of responsibility, and with it vanishes accountability. Survation nevertheless surveyed three options, from the rather innocuous to the more practical.

Honestly, mates, urging companies, kindly and respectfully, to "do more" is just as effective as telling your dog he has been a bad boy after he nicked the Sunday Roast off the table and ran away to hide it in your sock drawer. Not a lived experience. Surely we need to bark less and bite more, and complete criminalisation of pollution looks like the road to go down. And it is even better if we stop focusing on amorphous corporate entities and single out individuals instead. Odds are the big corporation will cut its losses, switch to damage control and let the singled out individuals hang out to dry under the bus. Which takes us to Survation's final trio of options, ending on what they were probably leading us to all along. Aye, we want the most responsible individuals to have their day in court, which would probably be more like their year in court as this kind of trials usually go, with full buses of experts and whatnot to muddy the waters that were just full of shit at the start. And of course, we would love to see some CEOs arrested, which is after all the whole raison d'être of the citizen's arrest, innit? Naming and shaming in legalese on YouTube, all very civilly and respectfully, who wouldn't love to do that?

A lot has been said over the years about the systemic malfeasance of the board members, shareholders and managers of the water companies, electricity companies, oil and gas companies. But we must not forget that these sectors are supposedly regulated by independent bodies. Ofwat for the water and sewage sector, which has become the sewage sector with some water occasionally in it. Ofgem for the energy sector. It is common knowledge that both have failed massively in their primary mission, the protection of the consumers' interests. Instead they have become auxiliaries of the businesses they are required by law to supervise and, in Ofwat's case, knowingly complicit in the transition of English rivers into the world's largest open air sewer system. Not to mention the extortionate price hikes, which the government had no legal obligation to unquestioningly enforce, but nevertheless did. There is only one way out of this massive shambles of conflicts of interest, abolish both with immediate effect, sack all their staff with a life-long ban on filling a Civil Service or public sector position ever again, and put regulation in the hands of the appropriate departments under the direct authority of the Secretary of State. That would be Ed Miliband at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and Emma Reynolds at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Surely Nigel Farage would support this, as regulators were created to comply with European Union regulations, and no Brexiteer could oppose elected officials taking back control from unelected bureaucrats, or could they?

The EU is a bad project. It isn’t just undemocratic, it is antidemocratic. It puts in that front row, it gives people power without accountability. People who cannot be held to account by the electorate and that is an unacceptable structure.

(Nigel Farage, EU Farewell Speech, 2020)

John Symon Asher Bruce

(Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire, 14 May 1943 - Sudbury, Suffolk, 25 October 2014)

Jeremy's Den

26/10/2025

Where The Shadows Run From Themselves

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Where The Shadows Run From Themselves