Jeremy's Den

I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking.

(A. A. Milne, War With Honour, 1940)

Everyone is fed up with Hungary and its behaviour.

(Waldemar Zurek, 10 February 2026)

Back to Very English Rock now, with Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti, widely considered their best album ever. Which is amusing when you consider than only half of it was actually original material, the other half being recycled outtakes, leftovers, from their three previous albums. Never mind, it has quasi-legendary status as one of the high points of classic rock of the 1970s, and it deserves it. Bonus tracks are six songs recorded live at London's now defunct Earls Court Exhibition Centre on 24 and 25 May 1975, available on the Led Zeppelin DVD collection and on the band's official YouTube channel.

Remember to click on the images for larger ones that will definitely look better.

There are now 45 days left before the general election in Hungary. less than Liz Truss' transient Premiership, and polling looks better than ever for the opposition Tisza Party, and quite calamitous for Viktor Orban's Fidesz-KDNP coalition. Even pro-government pollsters can no longer doctor their polls to hide that Tisza is well ahead, and very likely to oust the current Trumputinist government. Poland's beef with Hungary is about a former Polish Minister being protected from extradition by Orban, while he is facing 26 charges of embezzlement back home. The European Union's broader beef with Hungary is about Orban being the voice of Trump and Putin, a saboteur and traitor who undermines human rights in his own country and jeopardises aid to Ukraine. Both their problems will be solved on 12 April if the trends of voting intentions polls are accurate.

Orban's defeat would of course remove a massive thorn off the European Union's arse, but its significance would obviously be much bigger. It is the first real national electoral test for the Reactionary Internationale promoted by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin, and would be their first defeat. As such, it can only encourage all European nations to adopt a tougher stance towards both the United States and Russia, and that works for the UK too. If popular resistance in a small nation can defeat the juggernauts of fascist imperialism, just imagine what a solid alliance of European democracies can do. We already have had an example of that, actually, when European Resistance forced the Orange Baboon to miserably back down on Greenland. Losing Hungary would also be a severe blow for the Kremlin's Nosferatu as he would be left with only one agent within the EU, Slovakia, and their weight is quite insignificant. The last batch of Hungarian polls predicts that the election will not just kick out Orban, but also be quite a crushing defeat, unlike the previous snapshot that predicted a very close result.

What the Hungarian people expect from Tisza and its leader Peter Magyar is summed up in the party's full name, Tisztelet és Szabadság Párt, which translates into Respect And Freedom Party. They clearly want the full restoration of their country's democratic order, which Orban's authoritarian policies have endangered and weakened. Now the Hungarian judiciary are flatly refusing to abide by a presidential decree that would compel them to abort court cases against the government. This would have been unthinkable two or three years ago, and testifies both to the state of panic on Orban's side, and to bolder attitudes within the state apparatus itself, when the spirit of resistance to authoritarianism is boosted by the belief that this illiberal power will soon be wiped out. It is a clear sign that change is indeed coming when Orban's smears, intimidation and blackmail no longer work. A ray of hope amidst the bleak New World Order Trump and Putin so desperately want to impose on us all.

When it’s over, it’s over. That’s it. Pull down the shutters. Go home.

(George Smiley, Smiley’s People, 1982)

I don't need to waste time on historic issues, reasons why he began, all this bullshit he's raising with Americans, things about Peter the First, etc. I don't need it. Because to end this war and to go to a diplomatic way, I don't need all this historical shit. Because it's just a delay tactic.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 18 February 2026)

This week marks the fourth anniversary of Russia's savage aggression of Ukraine, a date which will live in infamy long after Vladimir Putin is gone and forgotten. YouGov have updated their classic trans-European polling, surprisingly early as the last iteration was just a month ago. It is nevertheless quite interesting, as it allows us to catch some intriguing changes in just a month. Oddly, YouGov slightly changed their panel between the two polls. Poland was surveyed in January, but not in February. Denmark was polled in February, but not in January. So my month-to-month comparisons will only include the other five countries in the panel. Which is already significant enough, as the combination of the five represents the bulk of Western Europe, including four of the five most important European Union member states. The first reassuring result is that all five countries want Ukraine to emerge victorious from the war Russia initiated.

Italy still comes out as the weakest link in the Coalition Of The Willing, but the proportion of supporters of Ukraine has increased in the UK and France, which is fucking good. The disturbing factor is that we have now to look further than Putin-bribed influencers and neo-Nazis for the root causes of Ukrophobia. Propaganda from within the Reactionary Internationale also matters, and that includes not just the Orange Baboon's MAGA mob, but also far-right political parties who are part of the Italian government. YouGov also probed their panels about what they think Trump wants, and the number of those who reach the obvious conclusion, that Trump is rooting for Russia, has sadly gone down. Even in the UK, and in every other country except Germany. Thinking that the Orange Baboon has no preference is fucking delusional, as he will always prefer and favour whomever is promising big financial gains for himself and his cronies.

This is worrying as a strong stance from our governments also depends on public opinions being aware of the basic realities of the alliances, and ready to support the necessary measures to defeat the pact from Hell between Trumpistan and the Russian Reich. But being delusional about Trump's true nature does not mean Europeans are leaning towards making the wrong strategic choices. YouGov's polling shows increased support for Europe choosing independence from the United States, and the protection of shared values that are clearly as alien to the current tenant of the White House as to his BFF at the Kremlin. Oddly, German public opinion has not moved one inch between the last two polls, while the other four countries have all moved towards more European independence, even the Ukrosceptic Italy.

Of course, actions speak louder than polls, especially over the key controversial issue of European rearmament. Poland stands out, as they have decided the biggest increase in military spending of the whole European Union, and are sending mixed messages. To modernise and expand their navy, they have ordered two state-of-the-art Swedish submarines to replace an outdated Soviet one, and three brand new British frigates to replace two second-hand American ones. But their Air Force has split its orders between the United States and South Korea, when they had the opportunity to buy French Rafale, which has been chosen by India to reduce their dependence on Russia, or Swedish Gripen, which has been selected by Ukraine to rebuild their own Air Force. One step in the right direction and one away from it, clearly emphasising that we still have a long way to go before reaching what should be the common goal of all European nations. Full military cooperation in the short term, before progressing towards full military integration.

I read no less history books than Putin. And I learned a lot. I know more about his country than he knows about Ukraine.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 18 February 2026)

In Zelenskyy, we saw a different kind of leader, a person who turned out to be incredibly brave, stayed and led his people in resistance to the Russian invaders. And here, it’s hard not to agree with him.

(Richard Moore, 15 February 2026)

Now, if we are ready to show independence, how far are we ready to go to counter Trump's policies about Ukraine? Garry Kasparov summed up the current situation quite neatly in a recent tweet. Both the U.S. and Russia tell Ukraine: “If you want the war to end, leave Donbas”. When your “ally” sounds exactly like your invader, that’s not diplomacy. That’s a sellout. Selling out Ukraine in return for juicy business deals has been Trump's constant position since his second Inauguration. Never mind that Russia cannot possibly provide the $12tn or $14tn they allegedly promised, sources vary, when their whole economy is worth just $2.5tn and crumbling. Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff has not been dubbed "Dim Philby" by European career diplomats for nothing. He is that rare combination of crass incompetence, total ignorance, abysmal stupidity and oven-ready treachery that plays directly into Putin's hands. That's why our governments must repudiate the very idea of a "peace deal" dictated by Trumputin, that would destroy and enslave Ukraine. Sadly, YouGov found that not all Europeans are ready for that.

Support for helping Ukraine to the end has increased in the UK and France, and support for capitulation has gone down in Germany, but Spain and Italy favour a Munich scenario more than last month. It is obvious that the "negotiations" conducted so far have achieved jack shit, because the Russian Reich does not want peace, has never wanted it, and in encouraged by Trump finding it more convenient to blame Ukraine for every bump and pothole on the road to peace. Russia is specifically allergic to one of the key components of a genuine peace deal that would grant Ukraine real security guarantees, a European peacekeeping force on Ukrainian soil. Sadly, many European public opinions are still not fully behind this obvious option, reflecting the reluctance of some of their governments to "provoke" the genocidal fascists in Russia. Which is just the convenient cover for cowardice.

Oddly, Spain is the most supportive of the peacekeeping force, even if their government will have none of it. And it does not matter anyway, as Spain would be unable to contribute more than a token contingent. Now, the Great British Public is the most supportive among the countries that could actually contribute to that force, and we should be proud of it. I have kept track of all polls that surveyed it since it was first mentioned, and it shows that support is at its highest now, and opposition close to its lowest. I just hope that Keir Starmer will listen to the voice of the people, which is telling him loud and clear to not budge, and not to the faux pacifists and real Putinists who want us to do nothing. Because we cannot miss this opportunity to show Putin some resolve.

The peacekeeping force is real, mates, no shit. It even has a name, like one of Niall Harbison's street dogs embarking for a new life, the Multinational Force for Ukraine, or MNF-U. Multinational means that several countries are involved in it, and indeed there are. Two. Us and France. It even has a boss, even it has no staff and troops. Others, led by Germany, want a peacekeeping force stationed outwith Ukraine, so they are at no risk of ever shooting an orc, or even seeing one. German-style deterrence, I guess, again proving that Friedrich Merz is all bark but does not have more bite than the coward Olaf Scholz. But we must also not overplay our hand, which is why I totally oppose Bozo Johnson's latest rambling, that we should send British boots on the ground before a peace deal is reached and a ceasefire enforced. Now that would be fucking cretinous and a genuine provocation, for some very compelling reasons.

As Alexander Nevzorov wrote, no one but Zelenskyy has real experience fighting Russia. The Ukrainian president has a thousand flaws but his experience outweighs them.

(Richard Moore, 15 February 2026)

We thought the Ukrainians would struggle to hold off the Russians. However, we underestimated how bad the Russian army would perform on the battlefield.

(Richard Moore, 15 February 2026)

Now, if you don't see it already, let me explain why Bozo's plan is fucking bullshit. First, there is no "peaceful region" in Ukraine when the orcs are firing ballistic missiles, drones and kitchen appliances as far away as Lviv, just 70 kilometres East of the Polish border. Then, what the fuck does "non-combat troops" mean? There is no such thing as non-combat missions in a country where the aggressor has made the whole territory a war zone. Finally, where does Bozo want to put these troops? Along the border with Poland? Fucking useless. Along the border with Belarus? Now that would be inviting a Russian attack, most probably false flag, when they need just the flimsiest pretext to treat us as co-belligerents. Thank Dog, YouGov's Europeans are not dreaming awake like Bozo, and are fully aware of the possibility of another Russian attack on Ukraine, hypothetically in the ten years following the end of the current war.

The replies are slightly less pessimistic, but not really more optimistic, when YouGov shifts the focus to the likelihood of Russia attacking another country. We know that it is likely to happen in the near future because the Kremlin's Nosferatu has told us so. Many times. Putin is like a shark who cannot survive without moving, he cannot survive without permanent war. That's the lesson we should have learned from his 26 years in power. Mark my words, next stop is Narva. Nothing would be easier than the FSB organising a false flag operation with the help of Russian separatists within Estonia, just like Hitler did to justify the aggression of Poland in 1939. Then they already have the oven-ready narrative, the same one used to demonise Ukraine, about ethnic Russians being ostracised, marginalised and oppressed by the Estonian authorities. And they already have the Fifth Column among us to relay it. Just never say never. Too many of us did before 24 February 2022.

Bear in mind too that Nosferatu's appetite for aggression is not limited to nations immediately adjacent to the Russian Reich. He has already specifically threatened Germany, France and us. Maybe you are wondering why Russia would attack a nation that has a nuclear deterrent, American bases on its soil, or both. Then you must realise that this is not the right question. Because Putin in 2026 is a war-obsessed psychopath living in an alternative reality of his own making, just like Hitler in 1945, "why wouldn't they?" is the real question, and has been for some years already. This is why we must urgently stop thinking in terms of the most favourable or most likely scenario, but always in terms of the worst case scenario, and get ready for it. With that lingering interrogation at the back of our mind, about what our alleged ally on the other side of the ocean would do. Or wouldn't.

All Western leaders are lovely people, but they shine only in conversational genres. What’s needed now is a real gladiator, one who can gut his enemies and isn’t afraid of escalation and blood.

(Richard Moore, 15 February 2026)

We believe that real opportunities to end the war with dignity still exist, and the world’s ability to pressure the aggressor could significantly help ensure that a dignified peace replaces the war.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 21 February 2026)

Of course, YouGov had to ask it, because it has to be asked. What do Europeans think Trump would do if the Russian Reich chose to start another imperialist aggression? There are three options on the table here, plausibly from the most likely, attacking one of the Baltic states, to the slightly less likely but plausible, attacking Poland, and the implausible but not impossible, attacking "your country", meaning a country in Western Europe. What Trumpistan would be required to do is spelt out in the now famous Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, the casus foederis. Actually a watered down version of it, far weaker than the British and French commitment to the protection of Poland in the 1930s. All Trumpistan would have to do is taking such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. Which means that doing fuck all is an acceptable option, and that's exactly what the Europeans fear if the victim was "just" one of the Baltics.

It is quite revealing that the United Kingdom has such a low level of trust in the Orange Baboon intervening to defend a small nation on the Eastern Marches of the Alliance. Only the French are now less confident than us, though more of them remain cautiously on the fence. I guess we have started to think like Trump, that he will not do anything that is not financially beneficial, at least to the United States, and preferably to himself personally. And sending an aircraft carrier to the Baltic to defend Estonia certainly does not fit the profile, unless Estonia agrees to foot the bill. I am convinced this is exactly the kind of cynicism we should adopt permanently in our assessment of the Orange Baboon. And it seems we are actually doing just that when the hypothetical victim is Poland.

Again our level of trust in the USA has decreased and our level of distrust increased here too. The French agree with us but the Germans don't, which might be wishful thinking as Poland is fucking close to home for them. But even they consider an American intervention less likely than they did a month ago. It does not get really better when the hypothetical target becomes "your own country", and three out of five countries show less confidence in the USA than a month ago, including us. It is quite disturbing that we have now reached the point where only about half of Europe believe the United States would jump to the defence of their own country against a Russian onslaught, and more than a quarter think they would not. Contrary to common wisdom, an alliance is not as strong as the sum of its military forces, it is only as strong as the confidence between its members. NATO is a massive fail in that respect, and it's totally the United States' fault.

Emmanuel Macron was right, just ahead of time. NATO is brain-dead, and Donald Trump killed it when he turned an alliance based on a common goal and shared values into a protection racket. Now is the time for a new kind of alliance involving Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and all those ready and willing to fight Trumputin's New World Disorder. The Coalition Of The Willing assembled around Ukraine can be the blueprint for just that. If only we all choose to man up, stop being feart of our own shadow and appeasing the bullies. It is time to conjure more than our immense semantic skills for writing bland and half-committal communiqués. Never forget that to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven. A time to plant, a time to reap. A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together. For us, this time has come, just make sure our governments don't shy away from their responsibilities and make us miss that ship.

Europe is actively engaged in the process of ending the war, and Europe’s role must grow. We will coordinate with our partners. Ukraine always defends our shared European interests.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 21 February 2026)

When we deal with Russia, we face a mentally unstable dictatorship that cannot accept that in Europe every life matters, human rights are important, and nations can be protected whether they are big or small.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 24 February 2026)

A lot of really weird stuff happened around the fourth anniversary of Russia's genocidal aggression of Ukraine. Trumpistan opposed a United Nations resolution supporting Ukraine because they care more about disruption to the oil trade than about the murder of thousands of children. Sergei Lavrov, Putin's geriatric Foreign Minister of 22 years, has delivered a statement to the official Tass Agency, which was already the propaganda wing of the Soviet Union regime, that Russia is addressing the challenges of a peaceful settlement, not setting deadlines. Of course they aren't, because they have no intention of ever reaching a peaceful settlement. This came just a day after the Kremlin spread the total fabrication that France, Great Britain and Liechtenstein were planning to deliver nuclear weapons to Ukraine. Which is of course just fucking bullshit, but obviously Nosferatu is counting on his bribed agents in the West, from Elon Muck to Benito Farage and George Galloway, to repeat the fake news loud enough for gullible cretins to believe it. But where do we think we will be a year out? YouGov asked us fifteen months ago and again this month, and there is a visible shift in our perspective on the war.

Fifteen months ago, we were split between the war still going on and Ukraine capitulating. Now we lean strongly towards the war still being fought another year out. Which is surely pragmatic, if not reassuring. YouGov submitted the same question to their American panel, or rather an Etch-A-Sketch of it, as they had to simplify it to just two options and more accessible wording for obvious reasons. Bear in mind that a third of American adults still self-identify as MAGA after 13 months of Trump 47, which is scientific evidence of a lower average IQ. A cultural heritage of Tom Clancy novels and Jason Bourne movies also makes them far less capable than us to grasp the subtleties and intricacies of international relations in a real-world setting, except perhaps Bruce Springsteen, so you definitely have to adjust the conceptual level of the poll accordingly. Our overseas siblings were also asked more often since the early days of the invasion, and now most opine they don't have a fucking clue what will happen in the next year. Which may be the best answer after all, the one made of caution, when you consider how badly their own government is handling that situation.

This does not mean that the American public have no opinion on what should be done in the here and now. Quite the opposite in fact. YouGov's most recent American opinion trackers show that only 39% approve of the way Trump is doing his job generally, which is abysmally low by US standards, and just 32% approve of his handling of the situation in Ukraine. A significant part of that is how the American public's view on military support to Ukraine has evolved over time. They were quite gung-ho in the early days, and it then fluctuated with an all-time low after the deplorable shitshow at the White House a year ago. It has fortunately improved since, and we now have 31% wanting to increase military aid and another 22% wanting to maintain it at its current level. I have a hunch, though, that they think the current level is higher than it actually is after Trump let all the Biden-era authorisations lapse. It is nevertheless still encouraging and evidence that not all Americans have lost it, even if their President totally has.

But the fourth anniversary of the most brutal aggression since the Nazis invaded Poland is also an opportunity to reflect on all the missed opportunities, and you see plenty of those in The Guardian's so-far-untold story of the months before the invasion. How the USA and the UK gathered tons of information about the Kremlin's Nosferatu's plans. How even their closest allies dismissed it as too far-fetched. How many in British public opinion rejected it because, ye ken, Iraq. How others, and that was me here, saw it as a beleaguered Boris Johnson trying to distract us with a Russian War Scare. How wrong we all were. Thank Dog many of us saw the light as soon as we heard of the invasion on that fateful 24 February, and have never ceased supporting Ukraine since. Sadly, too many are still stuck in the ways of obsolete Cold War faux pacifist groupthink, and the generation of delusion that followed the Fall Of The Wall. Let's not be caught in such fantasy again. Russia is our mortal enemy, hell-bent on destroying everything that makes Europe great. Destroying it before it destroys us is not aggression and warmongering, it's self-defence and survival.

I thank all the leaders who are in Ukraine and with Ukraine today, and who have supported Ukrainians throughout all these years of struggle. Global unity is stronger than any of Russia’s alliances. And as long as we all stand firm, we will surely secure peace for a normal life for our people.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 24 February 2026)

Today we take victory. Just like we did against the Vikings! Let us drive those barbarian invaders into the sea!

(Harold Godwinson, King & Conqueror, 2025)

Now immigration has again become a hot topic of uncivil discussion all across The Realm. Just because updated official statistics of net migration have been published, somebody polled it, found again that we don't know what we're talking about when immigration is involved, and all fucking Hell broke loose. By the way, that pollster who started it all was More In Common, and they again found a way to demonstrate that the Great British Public are really talking fucking bullshit out of their fucking arse about immigration, just because we have let far-right fabrications and dogwhistles infect our collective psyche. And they fielded a whole poll that proves it. Then you might want to check the real figure first, Not from a governement site, to avoid the usual far-right trope that the Deep State is lying to you, but from the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory, who know more about the reality of immigration than the British Union of Fascists ever will. And here is what we reply when asked if net migration has increased or decreased.

Of course, an earlier poll established that half of Britain have no fucking clue what "net migration" means, so that was summat of a trick question. Fortunately, the latest statistics cover July-to-June periods, so the most recent ones neatly coincide with Labour's first year in government. That's how we know that net migration was 924k in the first year after Boris Johnson made us leave the European Union's Dublin Regulation, another Brexit benefit, 649k in the year after that, and 204k in Labour's first year. A 78% drop from two years before and a 63% drop from the previous year. And yet Benito Farage and his new BFF Vigilante Bob Jenrick have convinced two thirds of us that illegal aliens are flooding the streets of St Mary Mead and Badger's Drift, because that's what their "citizen journalists" are reporting. When confronted with the real figures and asked what caused the lower numbers, most of us are left speechless or arguing that it was just an Act Of Dog, like the stuff your insurance won't cover after the yearly flood, and that Labour had nothing to do with it anyway.

Now you will have to explain me how Labour can at the same time be vilified for harsher policies against immigration, and claimed to have nothing to do with the decrease resulting from these very policies. Or, rather, don't as I actually don't give a fucking shit about excuses for voluntary stupidity. Because that's irrelevant in the long run if millions are more willing to listen to Farage's fabrications than to the truth laid out by academics for everyone to educate themselves. Which, in that specific case, would be a fucking great idea. And also what Labour should do, instead of sheepishly letting Reform play their tune unchallenged. Remind the people that the massive increase in small boat crossings and net migration skyrocketing to nearly a million a year are the direct consequences of Boris Johnson's policies, which were the direct results of Brexit. Benito Farage is the one responsible for that situation, so let him own it.

If foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they arrived, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might strive for certain goals in opposition to the people.

(Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1272)

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

(Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, 1883)

Of course, talking about the government's immigration policies requires that you do know what the government's immigration policies are. That sounds pretty basic, but we should never take anything for granted. Just remember earlier polls about "net migration", and the question that revealed that almost half of us haven't the fuckiest scoobie what it actually means. Or polls about the ECHR revealing that a majority of us don't know what its provisions are, and are ready to believe that they are what the far-right say they are. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but surely not when you are asked to make political choices that will impact our collective future for years. More In Common checked our knowledge of Labour's immigration policies and again found an astonishing level of ignorance.

This is especially disturbing as Labour actually included six pledges in their manifesto, and all of them clearly defined a path to lower immigration levels by all means available, and even create summat of the proverbial hostile environment. That was in the public domain before we voted, for fuck's sake, and yet only a third of us get it right. It gets even more absurd when Moire In Common ask their panel, now fully aware that net migration has gone down, if it makes them more confident in the government's ability to "control immigration". Their wording, not mine. More of us are less confident than are more confident, even knowing what the policy actually is, and that the government did deliver on its pledge. Whatever your views on the policy itself, the level of denial and prejudice is fucking unbelievable. Especially, obviously, among Reform voters. Then we know what these want. A return to their fantasy of the White England of bygone days. Don't tell them that the first British-Africans arrived here during the Roman occupation, when England did not even exist yet, and some eight centuries before William the Bastard's French invaders.

It is quite striking that Labour's policies are so widely misunderstood, or misrepresented, mostly by the far-right. But the far-left is guilty too, like when they equated Keir Starmer's "nation of strangers" speech with Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood". I have watched it again recently, and reached the conclusion that Starmer chose a poor wording, but was not guilty of bigoted xenophobia. I have revised my initial assessment of that speech, which was quite negative, and now see this sentence as a warning against the risk of becoming strangers to ourselves, strangers to each other in a country that has lost its bearings. Not only because of the far-right's growing influence, but also because the multiculturalism we inherited from past generations is fast morphing into communitarianism, the juxtaposition of identity-obsessed communities that don't communicate with each other, with the far-left's active approval. If this was what Starmer meant, warning us against a society that becomes estranged with itself, and I do believe it was, then he was right.

You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

(A. A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh, 1926)

Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

(Ernesto “Che” Guevara)

Any rational debate about immigration is impossible because it is the place where two equally toxic ideologies collide. On one side, you have the loopy woke far-left who still entertain the very racist myth of the "noble savage", disseminated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, that all non-white non-Europeans are by definition good people that colonialism makes bad. On the other side, the foaming-at-the-mouth xenophobic far-right, for whom every migrant is a suicide bomber waiting to happen, or a serial rapist at best. If you admit that some restrictions on immigration are necessary, you are a fascist. If you consider that the government's restrictions are going to far, you are an accomplice of terrorism. No way we can progress to any sort of reasonable solution in that sort of climate. The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again, in Tony Blair's immortal words, but we will probably need some more years before the dust of toxic clashes settles. Nevertheless, More In Common found that there is a massive consensus, across all possible dividing lines, about what the first priority of an immigration policy should be.

OK, everyone agrees that we should focus mostly, if not exclusively, on stopping illegal immigration. Sorry if I sound like a broken record here, but even a broken record is right twice a day, this would be a given if we were still a member of the European Union, included in the Dublin Regulation or its successor, the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, that will be enforced next June. Even Green voters are part of this consensus. Given the numbers involved, actually stopping all illegal immigration would result in a negative net migration, fewer people entering than people exiting. And that's where we collide head on with that proverbial British trait, the uncanny ability to contradict ourselves. When asked if we think would be better or worse off with a negative net migration, the replies are all over the place. A plurality tend to think we would be better off, but it is neither overwhelming nor really convincing, as a significant number think we would be worse off, and not necessarily in the demographics you would most expect it from.

Of course, there is an oven-ready solution to achieve a negative net migration. Since the last statistics say we have a net positive of 204k, we need to convince 205k to leave the UK and never come back. And we already have the obvious target, the English Brexiteer pensioners who have already turned Benidorm into a British Overseas Territory. Losing another 205k of those would indeed be a Brexit benefit. Spain would probably not take any more, as they already have more than they can handle. But surely other sunny countries would be ready and willing to help us. All Keir Starmer has to do is negotiate a deal with the European Union, and convince France, Portugal, Italy, Croatia and Greece to take 41k of our surplus Brexiteers each. Just tell them we will pay for all the damage to bars and police stations on fitba nights. Simples. Problem solved. And it would surely work better than the "one in, one out" deal with France.

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

(Leviticus 19:34)

My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson.

(Tony Blair, 1996)

The name is Mandelson, Peter Mandelson. He has been the Realm's Great Matter for like four weeks now, and will be tomorrow's fish and chips for a long long time, especially as his well-publicised arrest is likely to preempt the news cycle for the rest of the week and ripple into the next. You know the fun part of the story? Mandy may have resigned from the House of Lords, which is fucking easier than resigning from the House of Commons, but he is legally still Baron Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy. Because, once a peerage has been created, it's for fucking life. Even the sitting Monarch cannot revoke a peerage, it has to be done by an Act of Parliament, and the last time it happened was in 1917. And you can't use that one as an umbrella act against Lord Guacamole, as it was specifically about crimes committed during World War One, and Mandelson wasn't in that one, as far as we know. Now The Hunting Of The Starm is in full swing, though he is never mentioned in the Epstein Files, unlike the Witchfinder General Benito Farage. But the Great British Public definitely think that Keir didn't handle the Mandelson Revelations well, and even Labour voters lean that way.

The Ghost Of Mandelson Past will definitely come back to haunt Keir Starmer for quite a long time. At least until the billionaire-owned mediatariat come up with another juicy headline to crucify him with. I don't expect that to happen until VE Day, when we have the full panorama of Labour's dive into the abyss at the previous day's elections. Then the headlines will write themselves, won't they? But some may bring up Mandelson again, as the reason why Labour crashed and burned through the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Surely Shitweasel will. Of course, Starmer apologised, and that is usually enough to receive absolution. At least the billionaire-owned fishwraps told us it was enough to absolve Jim Ratcliffe from being a fucking racist conspiracy theorist. But there is one rule for the fash, and one for the rest of us, innit? So More In Common found that, no, Starmer's apology is not enough for our forgiveness.

The interesting part is that a third of us think that nothing Starmer can do will ever be enough, including more than half of Reform voters. Surely we can use that against them when more information is released and Farage's ties with Epstein's networks are fully exposed. Which may not come form our own CPS, but from France, which is one step ahead of everyone else. Four separate criminal investigations are already underway down there, and a special task force of prosecutors has been appointed to go on a trawling expedition across all 3 million published documents. They will specifically search for references to French citizens but, given the networked nature of Epstein's activities, will unavoidably find non-French people involved in the same circles and in offences committed on French territory. Which totally opens the door to British citizens being charged or summoned to testify in French cases. Would be real fun if just one of those was a prominent member of our far-right. More In Common asked just two questions about Epstein proper, and then extended their probe to our feelings towards the "elites", whatever that actually means.

The problem with "elites" is that it is an undefined variable, to the point of being meaningless. It is also a favourite among conspiracy theories' fan clubs, most of them in the dark corners of the far-right, but some of them also residing within the loopy far-left. Even from More In Common's line of questioning, you get the feeling that you are facing some gaseous amorphous entity without clearly defined boundaries and content. You could almost think that the undefined "elites" are summat like the merger of SPECTRE and the Elders of Zion with the similarly undefined "globalists" that are obsessively denounced by those who want to impose their own New World Order of global fascism. I'm looking at you, Nigel Farage. Half of us actually believe in that conspiracist fairy tale of hidden puppet masters pulling the strings of every government, which is indeed quite worrying. Especially as it is widespread all across the political spectrum, with 61% of Reform voters. 51% of Labour voters and even 47% of Green voters buying it hook, line and sinker. We are so fucking fucked.

It’s a war of attrition inside Downing Street. It can’t be long before a couple of cleaners also resign because they too feel a bit guilty about not warning Starmer that they had misgivings about Mandelson.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 9 February 2026)

Even by the political psychodramas of the past ten years, it’s fair to say Starmer has had the week from hell. Just one damn thing after another.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 11 February 2026)

More In Common nevertheless addresses some genuine concerns, that do have links with the Mandelson Connection and the very Upstairs Downstairs nature of a kingdom that has never ceased to be deeply classist, despite claims to the contrary. Make no mistake, classes still exist even if their delineations have changed since the Edwardians, and blood money now propels you to the upper tier more surely than blue blood. If you adopt a working definition of "elites" that singles out the combination of the very wealthy and the upper ranks of the politicariat, then you are really onto something that is more real and relevant than the fantasy of the Globalist New World Order. More In Common conducted their poll before Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested by Thames Valley Police on his birthday, solely for offences related to the business and corruption part of the Epstein Files. Although it does not cover the most obvious crimes, those related to Epstein's paedophile ring, it nevertheless contradicts More In Common's finding, that we strongly and consensually feel that the High and Mighty can escape the consequences of their actions when the hoi polloi can't.

Of course, we do not know how all this will end for The Paedo Formerly Known As Prince. The only certainty is that he will never face trial in the United States, unless Trump has him abducted like Maduro, as we do not extradite our own nationals. Of course, Big Brother Charles publicly wants the law to take its course, but this is hardly enough to dissipate the dark clouds surrounding the Royals after decades of protecting Andrew from scrutiny, and very belated steps to distance the rest of the Royals from him. Now we also want him removed from the Line Of Succession, though he is only 8th in line, so it would require some odd reboot of Kind Hearts And Coronets to get him anointed. Sadly, Andrew's spectacular arrest and the earlier fixation on Peter Mandelson provided an oven-ready excuse for the mediatariat to ignore an equally important subset of the Epstein Files. Nigel Farage's and Steve Bannon's involvement in a coup to oust Theresa May and propel Boris Johnson to Number Ten. Farage's and Bannon's involvement in far-right networks connected to Russia, to which Epstein was reporting and leaking sensitive information. This is the part that should be widely publicised, even if it further damages the public image of our politicariat, which the More In Common poll found already pretty bleak.

We have little faith in our elected representatives, and with good reason if you look back at the many corruption scandals of the last fifty years. Corruption, embezzlement and favouritism have been common traits of British politics long before Nathan Gill and Peter Mandelson, and nothing has happened since the Cash For Influence scandal and the Parliamentary Expenses scandal to stop it. Some heads rolled back then, but new heads soon popped up indulging in the same practices. Just ask Robert Jenrick. This is how you fuel the rise of equally toxic populisms on the far-left and far-right, and the perilous narrative that our only choice is between corrupt Putin-enabling fascism and irresponsible Putin-appeasing wokeism, neither of which would do any good. Is there a miracle cure, then? Fuck no, if you consider that the conspiracy theories about the "elites" and their influence go back several centuries, and gained considerable traction in the late 19th century. On the left first, denouncing the fat plutocrats emerging from the capitalist order spawned by the Industrial Revolution, and then on the far-right, weaponising it as part of their anti-Semitic propaganda. Nothing has changed, has it?

Apparently sacking your most trusted and loyal adviser is a sign of accepting responsibility. Go figure.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 11 February 2026)

I urge all my colleagues to come together, remember our values and put them into practice as a team. The Prime Minister has my full support in leading us to that end.

(Angela Rayner, 9 February 2026)

Angela Rayner surely has a way with words, just not always the right one. Praising Starmer for leading Labour to its end was probably not what she had in mind. Or was it? Anyway, all days amidst the fallout of the Mandelson Revelations were not awfully bad for Sly Keir. He lured The Traitors out of their burrows, Sarwar and Streeting, and managed to get the grandest of the Grandees circling the wagons. No mean feat in the poisonous atmosphere of early February. Nevertheless, the trendlines of generic voting intentions polls have marginally improved for Labour over the last two weeks. Of course, everybody expected the combination of the Epstein Files and the Mandelson Revelations to have a damaging effect on the Labour brand, and then we had the engineered and weaponised combination of the two against Keir Starmer. Who, we should always all bear that in mind, is not mentioned in the Epstein Files, while Nigel Farage repeatedly is. 41 times.

Polls would obviously look very different if the New Model British Union of Fascists had not been allotted 25% of the available airtime on the BBC, in open defiance of time-honoured rules, and was not relentlessly promoted by the billionaire-owned fishwraps and their cronies. Otherwise, people would take a very different view of that bunch of incompetent wankers who make it up as they go and can't even run a Council without breaking their core election pledges. If the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Reform were displayed daily in the media, would so many people still be willing to hand over the nuclear codes and the PIN to the Treasury's account to an accomplice of Putin, funded by the Trumpist Christo-fascist brotherhood? But the pollstertariat have nothing better to do than immerse us again in idle speculation about Starmer's future.

Of course, there is a background to that. A well-oiled narrative supporting the self-fulfilling prophecy, another one, that Starmer has no choice but resign. Before you object, this is definitely not a conspiracy theory. Simply because nothing is hidden. It is not about men in black meeting in a badly lit room in a subterranean level of River House. It is all in plain sight in the compliant mediasphere, from BBC News to the fishwrap formerly known as The Torygraph, which has seamlessly transitioned into The Reformgraph. Even the pretendy progressives at The Hipstershire Gazette and The TransScottish Pravda are part of the hunt now, like Javert hounding down Jean Valjean. Putting the cherry on top of the cake, the usually more restrained Independent has informed us, in a playful mode, that Starmer must stay at Number Ten at least until 18 March if he wants to outlast Rishi Sunak. It's like they're all having a fucking sweepstake on Starmer's date of resignation, and also want us to take part, as shown by YouGov's and More In Common's diligent polling.

And now we have Shitweasel lecturing us on the infinite wisdom of The Left, who always told us that it would end "like this". The only problem being that the full extent of "this" was not visible until the last episode of The Release Of The Epstein Files, barely a month ago. It's actually not Shitweasel's only problem, as his other one is himself, and what he wrote six years ago when Starmer became leader of the Labour Party. Too bad The Guardian has all of his rants readily available online since the first day he wrote for them. Back in 2020, Shitweasel had only praise and trust for Keir Starmer, we have the receipts. Of course, Starmer fooled him with his well-prepared, well-rehearsed and well-oiled lefty discourse just as he fooled all of us. Shitweasel is livid because he was played like a fiddle like everyone else, and his smug arrogance won't let him admit that he was wrong, just like the rest of us who did believe that Starmer was an Attlee-in-waiting. His public persona rests only on his alleged omniscience of politics, and that time he was fucking wrong and believed the lies, just like the lesser beings he is out to educate. He just can't retcon this and I'm fucking laughing.

One likes one’s perfidy to be subtle, don’t you agree?

(Roddy Martindale, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 1979)

You could put Kemi Badenoch on a fairground ride and she would still think she was in control of where she was going.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 11 February 2026)

In the early days of the Mandelson Debacle, Survation polled a select sample of 1,013 Labour Party members about their feelings for Keir Starmer and the now-departed Morgan McSweeney. This is indeed a fucking huge sample, as the same ratio to population would mean a sample of 195,000 for a GB-wide generic voting intentions poll. Even before the whole magnitude of the disaster had fully unfolded, this was already pretty bad. Only half of them thought Starmer should stay, and a third that he should go. 8 out of 10 also thought that McSweeney should either resign of his own volition, or be sacked by the Lider Maximo. Of course, these numbers reflect just the initial shock from the Mandelson Revelations, and the sacking of McSweeney has surely brought back some calm in Labour ranks. But probably not among the general population, which leaves the Starmer brand badly wounded, as his favourability ratings show.

This covers only Starmer's ratings since he became Prime Minister. but he never received stellar ratings in popularity polls even before that. Even during Rishi Sunak's rapidly crumbling Premiership, we had mixed feelings about Starmer, and polls were split roughly three ways between favourables, unfavourables and neutrals. Survation also surveyed us, the whole adult population of Great Britain this time, not just the few remaining members of the Labour Party, about what Keir Starmer should or could do to get on our good side again. And there is actually very little. Interestingly, there is connection in there with my earlier points about immigration. Expressing support for asylum seekers would actually weaken Starmer, which says a lot about the contamination by the xenophobic far-right narrative. But the rest is hardly better.

This is definitely a Catch-22 situation for Sly Keir. Moving to the left would not make the Great British Public more supportive of him. But neither would moving to the right, or staying where he is. So what the fuck do we expect him to do? I can't help feeling sorry for Starmer, as this is so fucking unfair. There is nevertheless a winning combination in that poll's findings. Be more principled, more sincere, bolder and more compassionate. And now this makes me feel sorry for ourselves. How deluded can we be to expect any of that from any politician? Can any of you name just one politician who combines these four traits, or even just three of them? I think Alex Salmond did, but even he had his momentary lapses of judgment, and I really can't see anyone in the current batch coming even close. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, really. And if the Parliamentary Labour Party think that changing horses midstream will make their prospects better, they are so fucking wrong. The devil you know and all that, mates. Meanwhile, the low-profile Merlin Strategy performed another polling oddity, asking us which of the current political parties will still be around in 2029.

Just for fun, I have added the birth years of our currently most prominent parties. Most have several as they doctorwhoed through multiple regenerations, and the last date marks the birth of the current incarnation. We are generally confident that our current Pillars Of Democracy will weather the adverse storms coming from the East and West, and still be alive and kicking by the time we vote again. All except, possibly, Your Party, about whom we are far less confident. Which sounds fair, as you could actually wonder if that runt of the litter wasn't actually stillborn. Which would certainly have been more humane that what is in store for them, simultaneously exploding and imploding in the convulsions of a multi-front civil war of excommunication, the favourite pastime of the holier-than-thou far-left obsessively fixated on ideological purity.

Why bother to go through all the pain and uncertainty of replacing the leader, when it’s much easier to control the one you’ve got into doing what you want?

(John Crace, The Guardian, 10 February 2026)

There are some people in recent days who say the Labour government should have a different fight, a fight with itself, instead of a fight for the millions of people who need us to fight for them.

(Keir Starmer, 10 February 2026)

Today's Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones, fielded between 13 and 23 February by the hitherto unknown Good Growth Foundation, YouGov, More In Common, Find Out Now, More In Common again, and YouGov again. That's a super-sample of 12,996, roughly the combined displacement of two County-class destroyers of the 1960s, and it's predicting a significant slump for Reform UK. Even Find Out Now, who had Reform leading by 14% a month ago, have them down to a 10% lead now. So that's the British Union of Putinists down below 30% of the popular vote and less than 300 predicted seats. Just when you thought that the fash-cuddling mediatariat was right after all, and Benito Farage's irresistible ascension could not be stopped, there but for the grace of Dog it is, stopped dead on the tracks while the train of fate is fast approaching. Or summat. 8.4% of the popular vote and 86 projected seats below their peak, back in September.

But how did that happen? How did the people decide to tell the punditariat to fuck off with their self-fulfilling prophecy of doom? It may have been the farcical and utterly disastrous kickoff of Farage's imaginary Shadow Cabinet, more cringeworthy than even the calamitous launch of the gone-and-forgotten Change UK seven years ago. It is quite a feat to sound more deranged and hatemongering than Donald Trump on immigration, but they did it. Or it may have been Vigilante Bob channeling his inner Kwasi Kwarteng and U-turning on what was one of Benito's most solid commitments, signalling the return of one of Bob's Articles of Faith when he was a Tory. Kill the poor, or summat. Or it could have been Zia Yusuf, the fantasy Shadow Home Secretary who has never even stood for election, promising to import ICE to the UK, as if we haven't suffered enough already from imported American shite. Amusingly, YouGov tested a whole array of "tactical voting" hypotheticals just after Reform's absolute shitshow, in the shape of, "whom would you vote for if only Party X and Party Y had a chance to win where you live?", and absolutely everybody would beat the fash. So much for "next year at Number Ten", Benito.

Now Labour are belatedly embarking on a much needed reform of the funding of political parties, which is definitely not as sweeping and revolutionary as they want us to believe. Right now, foreign individuals, though legally banned from donating to British parties, can do it through the convenient fiction of donations by UK branches of foreign companies. The proposed legislation will not close that massive loophole, just make it a wee smitch less easy to use it. All the purveyors of dark money have to do is separate the UK-registered subsidiary's accounts from those of the Mothership, which they probably have done already anyway. And then change a few names on office doors so that the company's leadership is made to look 100% British. The real solution is to make all corporate donations illegal, which would have gone a long way towards cleaning the stables, and it's fucking incomprehensible why Labour did not do it, when they know that the alleged "big reset" will not prevent Elon Muck or the Kremlin's Nosferatu feeding the New Model British Union of Fascists more blood money. Such fucking wankers.

You’d have to be watching the fake news BBC to not know that Britain is going to hell in a handcart. Small businesses are dying. Big businesses are leaving. People are having to pull their own teeth out.

(Liz Truss, The Liz Truss Show, 5 December 2025)

I have read everything about Scotland. It is the Garden of Eden, isn’t it?

(Irina, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 1979)

There is a corner of Scottish politics I rarely explore, as it is the Halley's Comet of democracy, the one that comes back to our attention least often. Council elections. Yet there is a lot to decode from what happens in our Councils during the five years of their term, the only one that can never be cut short by a dissolution and a snap election. Defections, resignations, demotions and by-elections in Councils are the discreet musculospasticity of democracy. It is not a given to keep track of changes in composition, as neither Ballot Box Scotland nor the Councils' Wokopedia pages are ever totally up to date. So you have to crosscheck with the Councils' own official websites, or with the parties' web sites. That's how I found out how many Scottish Councillors have actually defected to Reform UK, as BBS and Wokopedia were both a few behind. And there has been quite a lot of movement indeed. Labour and the SNP have been mostly hit by Councillors giving up on the party and sitting as independents, and the Conservatives, as you might expect, by defections to Reform. The next elections are scheduled for May 2027, and we can surely expect the English Nationalist Party to put up a fucking show to get some beachheads here.

The fuckteenth plot twist in the sad saga of Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa is surely a metaphor for summat, but I have yet to decide what exactly. Surely BBC Scotland could make a six-part fact-inspired fiction of this, the story of a Scottish ferry that took longer to build than an American aircraft carrier 29 times her size, and now has to be patched with bits ripped off her sister ship, that will take longer to build than a British aircraft carrier 23 times her size. And don't even get me started on the cost overruns. 22% for the Yank carrier, 52% for the Brit carrier, which was already fucking scandalous, a whopping 290% for the Scottish ferries, not counting the shipbuilder's £45m debt written off by the Scottish Government to avoid bankruptcy that would have left the ships unfinished, and the additional costs induced by the shipbuilder's nationalisation. Fortunately for the SNP, very few of us actually give a shit about that abject failure, and Labour have given up on using it as a campaign theme, as they have their own shit to sort out. So the SNP have every reason to feel serene, as the evolution of the seat projections for the incoming Holyrood election favours them immensely. Not bagging a majority, but that becomes irrelevant, immaterial and inconsequential when you have five competitors fighting for the remainder of the seats in complete disorder.

One of the earlier competitors have pretty much daleked themselves out of the picture by now. Thanks to the indefatigable James Kelly, in between two episodes of his perpetual spat with Stu Campbell, we know that the Alba Party is now past disintegration, and decomposing under our bewildered eyes faster than Starmer's Premiership. This is really sad, as Big Eck's legacy deserved much better than seeing the party driven into the ground by inept leadership cuddling faux pacifist Hamas-huggers and faux socialist Putin-enablers. The implosion seems now complete, with Kenny MacAskill's unilateral decision to deregister the party and not compete in the incoming election. Many of us guessed that something fishy was afoot when he became leader, and smelt a rat when Ash Regan decided to leave the party. They were right, of course, and this is a pathetic story of missed opportunities, when a solid anchoring as no-nonsense pro-European social democrats could have transformed a fringe party into a serious player, given enough time. RIP Alba, too bad that leaves only Reform to shake the tables and disrupt the status quo now.

Sarwar’s campaign may not be saved by cutting the cord that lashes him to a zombie regime in Downing Street, but it has to be worth a try.

(Rafael Behr, The Guardian, 11 February 2026)

It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.

(Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, 1945)

Of course we now have three additional Full Scottish, as expected. But some of the stuff came from where I least expected. From More In Common, who were here surveying just a week before, then from Norstat, who had released their previous probe four weeks earlier, and finally from Find Out Now, who let a more reasonable two months elapse between two polls. Then I guess The Sunday Times pays Norstat well to keep an eye on us and our moods, just for the intense pleasure to headline on Scots supporting Anas Sarwar's POV that Keir Starmer should resign because of Lord Guacamole. I wonder if someone could dig up the full list of bad decisions, ill-advised choices and cretinous statements Anas has made in the fifteen years since he inherited his MP seat from his father. Guess that would be fun to read. But what have these new polls taught us? In a word, fuck all, That was definitely not £25k each well spent for their sponsors, as the trendlines of Holyrood voting intentions have barely moved.

The changes from the same pollsters' previous probes are within the margin of error, and they have nothing to say that contradicts the global picture drawn by the sextet of polls fielded earlier, in the forty days since Russia tried to murder Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Ireland. Totally unrelated, obviously, but I do have to remind you of what the Russian Reich is capable of, don't I? Just channeling my inner Cato here, mates. Now, back to our main plotline, if you look at individual polls one by one, the biggest fluctuations are with the Labour, Green and Reform votes, and the last batch of three are no exception. Do we have the proverbial shy voters in each camp? Or is it just random variations? No fucking clue, mates. Tossers to the left, wankers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with plonkers.

Now, are these new polls rally totally useless or do the seat projections from them shed a new light on what is likely to happen on Election Day, 70 days out? Well, to cut a long story short, More In Common and Norstat were fucking useless, as they trod really familiar waters and didn't throw anything new into the broth. But Find Out Now slung a live grenade into the haggis as the combination of exceptionally poor performances for Labour and the Conservatives and Reform's very unevenly distributed votes in their regional crosstabs predicted a very unexpected and worrying situation. Reform UK bagging ten constituencies, predominantly across the rural parts of the three Northern regions, at pretty much everybody's expense, except the LibDems. But if you take a step back from the gory details of the parties' individual performance, the big picture does not change too dramatically from one week to the next.

The SNP are again vastly ahead, the English Nationalists are again the largest opposition group, Labour are again going down the drains. Nothing to say, nothing to hear and nothing to see here, mates. All of this is so undifferent from earlier polls that The Scottish Pravda's column on their own poll has pretty much written itself. They don't even need AI for that, they just have to change the date and a few numbers from the previous one and reprint it. But, at the end of the day, we do not have a massive pro-Independence majority coming out of any poll, because there are no genuinely pro-Independence parties left. So the conclusion remains the same. First Minister Stephen Flynn, after disposing of all remnants of the Swinney era in a way that would defy the skills of any CSI unit, will knock at the red door and negotiate a coalition with anyone who opens it. Stephen just has to wish that Anas Sarwar does not resign under pressure, because otherwise he would have to deal with the current Deputy Leader, Jackie Baillie, and that is something I would not wish on my worst enemy. Not even on Vladimir Putin.

Theories give way to conclusions once all the evidence is in. I am merely thinking about the next piece of evidence.

(Sara Sidle, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, 2000)

You and your party are intellectually and morally bankrupt. It’s time for you to go and you know it.

(The King, To Play The King, 1993)

YouGov seem to have a very keen interest in what is happening in Wales. They have been there for Full Welsh polls seven times since Senedd Cymru passed the new electoral law on VE Day 2024, with only the Conservatives opposing it. That's one third of all Senedd polls conducted in that period, just by that one pollster. It is indeed quite interesting as they thusly offer us better than a series of snapshot of Welsh politics, but more like the film of a stunningly evolving situation. The main background is, of course, how voting intentions for the next Senedd election have dramatically shifted over the last two years. The 2021 result here is the aggregate of the constituency and list votes.

You can see clearly now how Labour lost its grip on Wales, after a century of domination. And also the rise and decline of Reform UK, paralleled by the continuous rise of Plaid Cymru. Plaid Cymru and Reform UK are now pretty much in the same positions Labour and the Conservatives occupied in 2021, and that is a real tectonic shift, that nobody expected when Labour decided to change the electoral law. The sequence of seat projections, from several different sources, shows quite vividly the combined impact of the shifts in voting intentions and the mechanics of the new electoral law.

It is quite striking that Plaid Cymru is predicted to be just a handful of seats away from a majority, or even fewer than that, on just a large third of the popular vote. Welsh Labour obviously knew what they were doing when they proposed a proportional system, guaranteed to get support from everyone to the left of the Tories, while perverting it by holding the election is multiple six-member constituencies, a sure way to make it actually non-proportional and grant the leading party a disproportionate harvest of seats. That's just the basic effect of highest averages method, and Labour surely did the maths, while the other parties failed to do so and did not identify the consequences. It is just massively ironic that the same mechanism, that was designed to grant Labour a dominant position, is now working quite conspicuously in favour of Plaid Cymru. It's indeed a tribute to the competence of Labour's election geeks that the system is working exactly as intended, and totally the political brains' fault that they never imagined it could propel another party to power in a safely dominant position.

Come on, no one has been this low in the polls and come back to win an election.

(Henry Collingridge, House Of Cards, 1990)

I’ve been out door-knocking too but I won’t post on here what people had to say about you as you might go running off to the police again.

(Lucy Powell to Matt Goodwin, 29 January 2026)

The Gorton and Denton by-election, which you may have forgotten is happening today, has left all of the metropolitan media bubble puzzled. Thank Dog for that, as we were spared three dozen columns of punditificating by poshies who wouldn't know where Manchester is if their chauffeur didn't have the route programmed on his GPS. Voters will have to pick one of eleven candidates, which is definitely a fucking farce, but by-elections always attract assorted loonies, don't they? The novelty here is that the looniest of the lot are not the ones you would think at first sight, but some advancing masked as "serious" candidates. Interestingly, Reform was non-existent in G&D at the 2024 locals, but still managed a reasonably high result at the general, when both shades of the Hamas-hugging Putin-appeasing loopy far-left also showed quite a presence. Most pollsters have avoided G&D like a maggot-infected cadaver, so all we have is Find Out Now's bogus poll of 52, a later poll by Omnisis coming back after 18 months of abstinence just for the occasion, a last-minute multi-option poll by Opinium, a tweet by Owen Shitweasel Jones that prompted the Greens to tell him to shut the fuck up, and projections from my learned colleagues in psephology and myself. Nothing conclusive, so the fishwraps would be well-advised to have as many headlines and articles ready as Roger Waters' Pigs. IYKYK.

I have honestly no fucking clue which way this one will go, and neither has anyone in the punditariat, even the usually omniscient Polly Toynbee. But, if it is genuinely a lost cause for Labour, it would be great if the good people of Gorton and Denton pulled a Caerphilly on the fash and gave it to the Greenies. If you can't get what you really want, go for the lesser evil. Now, as Reform have been thrown off balance by their own parachuted candidate's incompetence and cowardice, you know what the mediatariat should do? Would do if they did their job instead of promoting fascism for juicy headlines. Grill Benito Farage about the Brexit Black Hole, the £95bn a year lost to the Treasury because of the lost GDP. You know what we could do with that? Increase the defence budget by 50%, give the NHS an extra £500m a week, more than Vote Leave falsely promised we would get as a Brexit benefit, and raise international aid to 1% of GDP, more than the United Nations' standard. And we would still have enough change to cut income tax by 2% across the board, or by 6% if we selectively allocated it to just the households in the basic rate band, or the three lower bands in Scotland. Just ask Benito how he feels about being the root cause of us not having the means to do all that. Now that would be a fucking juicy headline.

Matthew Goodwin's dramatic last minute withdrawal from last night's hustings just shows what we already know. He is a snowflake.

(Andrew Western MP, 11 February 2026)

The small things are very important in politics. You can trip up, fall flat on your face over the most unexpected things.

(Peter Mandelson, The Independent, 4 February 1996)

The English North and Midlands illustrate quite dramatically Labour's downfall. The most striking point is that Labour's share of the popular vote did not go up spectacularly in these regions between 2019 and 2024. It even went down in the North West. Labour actually lost 420,000 votes in the North, and secured their landslide-by-default only because the Conservatives lost 1,580,000. Not all of them switched to Reform UK, who gained only 730,000 Northern votes, and massive abstention on the Tory side was also a key factor. It was even more spectacular in the Midlands, where Labour lost only 80,000 votes while the Conservatives lost 1,470,000 and Reform gained 770,000. These numbers show how fragile Labour's victory was, a situation the media and the party itself tended to overlook in the immediate aftermath of the election, and is now biting them in the arse with a vengeance.

Interestingly, the Northern Greenies are again pushing the fucking cretinous narrative, dutifully relayed by The Hipstershire Gazette, that there is nothing between them and the fash, so the Battle of Armageddon will be a Clash Of Titans between them. It is also quite interesting to see that any reference to the imaginary "trans rights" has been erased from the Greenies' official public discourse, though it remains one of the pillars of their manifesto. They know that the less they say about it, the better for their electoral prospects, as it is a total fucking vote-killer, a high-octane repellent for both the white working class and the mostly socially conservative Muslim electorate, which they both absolutely need to win the Gorton and Denton by-election. Of course, our beloved first-past-the-post amplifies the changes in voting patterns, this time favouring Reform like it favoured Labour in 2024, but to a lesser extent than it did in earlier snapshots. If the Greens prevail in Gorton and Denton, we will need to scrutinise the next batch of polls, to see more clearly if it is just a one-shot deal, or a harbinger of a Reform Reflux.

But what we have learned from the 2024 election also hints that a Reform victory, if it actually happens, would be just as fragile, and plausibly even more, than Labour's last time about. If the thickest and gulliblest among us propel the Clacton Führer to Number Ten, Dog forbid, it will definitely be on fewer votes than Labour bagged in 2024. I don't even need to check on Wokopedia to tell you it would be the lowest ever vote share for the winning party since real elections exist in the UK. 1948, in case you wonder, when the strict one-person-one-vote principle became the law of the the land for the first time. I guess Friday's post-Gorton columns are writing themselves already now, in two versions just as Bozo Johnson did about Brexit, a green one and a turquoise one, as we won't possibly need a red one. Honestly, I would be happier to see The Guardian jubilating and celebrating than The Telegraph, Owen Jones rather than Dan Wootton. Same old scene. Pinch your nose and go for the lesser evil when the alternative is obviously so much more monstrously abhorrent.

I think what the people really want is a savage lurch to the right. Some of these backwoods men have been coming on like the Ku Klux Klan.

(Geoffrey Booza-Pitt, The Final Cut, 1995)

Are you a proper fascist? What’s your big achievement, eh? Standing outside Jewish bakeries in Golders Green, sneering at the bagels?

(Michael Jericho, Jericho, 2005)

There's a wolf at the door, so it is time for a serious national conversation about benches. Or so says The Hipstershire Gazette, in full Nero-rearranging-the-deckchairs mode. They probably wouldn't have mentioned it if the bench debate had not started in Bristol, the hub of Green Rule in the once Blue and still Leafy South. The Greenies are still doing pretty well in some parts of the South, though some specific requirements have to be met for them to thrive in their newfound natural habitats, like the hipsterised High Streets of university cities or the pockets of conservationist nimbyism in rural Middle England. Amusingly, Shitweasel seemed worried that the Greenies could be caricatured as muesli-eating hippies, which they obviously aren't. First, muesli is totally passé, quinoa rules now. Second, the hippies did have a positive contribution to society. But the key factor remains that the Liberal Democrats, though they have lost votes on 2024, are still holding enough to be a significant dam of resistance to the Reform infestation.

You would think that the Clacton Quisling would be discredited, again, by what Ben Wallace called his "cheap stunt" over Diego Garcia. Which was actually anything but cheap, as it involved flying by private jet to the Maldives, 1,300 kilometres from the Chagos, or 800 miles in old money. That's roughly the same distance as from Land's End to John O'Groats, and you can't even see Diego Garcia from where Benito filmed his clip, on a yacht off the Maldives. But I fear his followers are as thick and gullible as Trump's, and will buy the whiny narrative that he is again the victim of the elites' globalist system, or whatever. Fortunately, there are limits to the efficiency of that strategy of perpetual victimisation. It looks like it works less well in the South than it once did, with the LibDems still managing to preserve their harvest of seats from 2024, while Labour and the Rump Tories are in total meltdown down there too.

Of course, the real headlines should be about the complete incompetence of Reform-led Councils, who have no idea how to make a budget, and keep reneging on their campaign pledges. You vote Reform for tax cuts, and then get tax hikes that are not even enough to secure the Council's finances and avoid short-term bankruptcy. The latest example is Kent County Council's totally shambolic budget, that the billionaire-owned mediatariat cautiously avoid mentioning, because they are under standing orders to never mention anything that could hurt the chances of a Trumputinist government in London three years from now. Every bit of honest coverage shows Reform as the party that prioritises appearance over substance, the narrative over reality. This is the same media strategy as the Orange Baboon and Nosferatu, which should be enough to raise massive red flags, not just in the South, but all over England. Sadly, the majority of the establishment media have given up on any pretense of honesty, as their shareholders want them to be a propaganda machine for the Bargain Bin Führer. But three years is a long time in a country where a week is an eternity in politics, so there is still enough time to defeat the British Orban. We just need the non-loopy left to become less parochial and unite.

It's not our job to know why, it's our job to know how. The more the why, the less the how. The less the how, the more the why.

(Nick Stokes, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, 2000)

Four years on, never forget, never forgive

Russia recognises Donbas as a part of Ukraine, does not have any

claims on Ukrainian lands, does not have plans of any attack.

(Anatoly Antonov, 20 February 2022)

Jeremy's Den

26/02/2026

The Story Was Quite Clear

The Story Was Quite Clear