Westminster Projection - Was Supposed To Be Last Pre-Brexit Update

OldBrexit B-1 and NewBrexit B-15 also 40th Anniversary of James Callaghan's Demise and Neil Kinnock's birthday

You Can't Always Get What You Want 🔊

Historians will probably mark 18 March 2019 as the date when the Westminster System finally entered the Seventh Circle of Chaos when John Bercow's ruling left the English Government in rabbit-in-the-headlights mode for everyone to see. We have seen that one many times over but I can't resist one final rerun before moving on.

And it's a major understatement to say that the Prime Minister of England's speech two days later failed to restore confidence in her because nothing says 'strong and stable' like having 'the dug did it' as your sole talking point. And Jeremy Hunt pleading the Ross Thomson Defence on her behalf did little to help. Being under pressure 🔊 is part of the job description Treeza. Didn't David Cameron tell you this before you signed up? And to make your day even worse a petition to revoke Article 50 gathered over one million signatures in a matter of hours after your statement, more than a dozen times the number required for it to be debated in Parliament.

Over the next weekend, and amidst many frenzied headlines in the Sunday papers, the Night Of The Long Knives finally turned into a Wet Gunpowder Plot and we were back to square one: a weakened Prime Minister still unable to find a way out of the mess she had created. It says a lot anyway about the low level of expectations when Boris Johnson driving without a seat belt and Peter Theodore Alphege Rees-Mogg (or was it Thomas Wentworth Somerset Duncan?) attending a pseudo-Cabinet meeting make headlines, while one million marching in London for a second EU referendum and five million signing an online petition to revoke Article 50 appear as mere footnotes for most of MSM. Fortunately past Guardian frontpages are here to remind us Chaos was not born yesterday.

As Paul Kavanagh pointedly pointed out the other day when discussing the freak alternate reality where Sleekit is the Prime Minister's name, everybody who writes about politics these days is faced with a real risk of being overtaken by events in a matter of hours, and 27 March proved it beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Around lunchtime we had a sixteen-course Brexit-A-La-Carte being potentially debated in Commons and then by suppertime John Bercow cut it down to eight motions that were all defeated though a couple came close to winning. To make a weird day even weirder Theresa May then spoilt everybody's well-earned pink gin break when she announced she would unconditionally resign under one condition: winning a vote that is likely never to happen anyway. So let's sit back for a while and just focus on the usual issue: what does the electorate want this week?

Tumblin' Dice 🔊

Recent GE polls have taken yet another turn, this time against the Conservatives. Even the usually Tory-leaning YouGov polls show it with the Conservative lead shrinking from 11% a month ago to just 3% this week. Which does not mean Labour are doing better. They're not, LibDems and Others are. Note that Others in these polls do not include The Independent Group who are polled in a different sequence. Others' rise is mostly due to UKIP's 'moderate far-right' offshoot The Brexit Party, who are credited with up to 4% of voting intentions.

My current poll of polls includes the six most recent ones, fielded from 14 to 25 March. Super-sample size is 9,568 with a theoretical 0.97% margin of error. It delivers a 2% Conservative lead, slightly down from 2017. But LibDems now projected on 10% and the various shades of New Model Blackshirts also about 10% means that the next GE would not be a carbon-copy of 2017 and a number of upsets are to be expected.

We have been in that sort of uncertain territory before and experience shows we're closer to some variant of Camera Incognita rather than any 'strong and stable' outcome. I seriously doubt that the next Conservative PM, be it Johnson or Gove, would restore his party's credibility but that does not mean Labour would automatically do better. Clearly they have only themselves to blame for failing to gain the upper hand over the worst Tory Government in living memory and then some generations before that. Until they find a way to resolve their contradictions on almost every major issue they don't stand a sporting chance. And rehashing an oft-debunked forty-year-old myth will certainly not help either.

Labour's main problem is that voters don't trust them on the major issue of the day. According to the last YouGov poll, a huge majority (72% to 10%) think that Labour's position on Brexit has been unclear and confusing and (65% to 15%) that Corbyn would not be able to get a better deal than any Tory PM wannabe. Despite all the recent clusterfuck Tories are doing better on both questions: 65% to 19% on 'unclear and confusing', 59% to 18% on 'not getting a better Brexit deal'. And I am quite sure Labstaining on Joanna Cherry's motion that opened the door to revoking Article 50 will harm them more than it will help them, as more voters will be open to switching to LibDems in England, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland.

When The Whip Comes Down 🔊

And here is what current polling would deliver. An unmanageable Commons with both main parties losing seats. Even if the DUP were still willing to support the bùrachy English Government the wobbly coalition would still fall 8 seats short of a majority. Not that this is Labour's fault in any way as they would do no better than in 2017. As we have seen already with that sort of close popular vote only the LibDems and the SNP would have reasons to celebrate. Even if neither of them would be in a position to unlock the loser-on-loser stalemate resulting from current voting intentions.

This kind of projected results might also be an incentive for the next Tory Government to bulldoze the 2018 Boundary Review through Commons at the earliest opportunity as the Great Gerrymander would deliver a Tory majority despite them losing votes. Bear in mind that, with Sinn Féin sitting out, the majority on 600 seats is 297 so Tories would end up with a one-seat majority. Which is not really safe but still better than 17 seats short. However unfair and counter-intuitive this may look it actually confirms Martin Baxter's analysis of the 2018 Review and that a close popular vote would maximize the Tories' Gerrymander Bonus.

My understanding of constitutional conventions is that all it takes to implement the proposed new boundaries is an Order in Council as subordinate legislation in pursuance of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 which amended the original Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. So the next PM will have motive, means and opportunity to push it through Commons quickly and fight the next GE, snap or not, on the new boundaries.

Time Waits For No One 🔊

On current polling 32 sitting MPs would bite the dust. Math says both Conservatives and Labour would be clear losers while LibDems and SNP would be clear winners. Though you might also count UKIP (or would it be the Brexit Party?) among winners as the oddities of FPTP would allow them to sneak back in in three-way marginal Thurrock.

Labour would indeed have very few reasons to be cheerful 🔊 on Election Night. Only PortiBalls Moment would be Amber Rudd losing Hastings and Rye but probably by less than 100 votes so even that one might fail and be just dust in the wind 🔊.

If such results materialized both main English parties would find themselves in an extremely awkward situation as the current Westminster chaos would be compounded. An interesting side effect would be that any government coming out of such an election would find it difficult to turn down a request for a Section 30 Order. The SNP gaining 10 seats from both Tories and Labour would mean a strongly strengthened mandate to seek Independence that a weak English government could not lightly brush aside. And if they did the Scottish Government would have a strong case to explore other paths to Independence after all options under English law had been exhausted. And, as I explained earlier, there are many.

Hand Of Fate 🔊

But Election Night might deliver some upsets as current polling would result in 71 marginal seats. Only 9 in Scotland, down from 20. But the close popular vote would also deliver a record 8 marginals in Wales due to a sharp decline in Labour vote and another 50 in England outside London.

So here we have one more level of uncertainty as Conservatives could bag another 33 seats or Labour another 26. Reallocating the marginals to the runner up does not make for more likeable scenarios than the average projection. The Conservatives' best case scenario would be somewhat like 'back to 2015'. But circumstances have changed a lot since and a deeply divided party would certainly be a recipe for more self-inflicted disasters brought only by petty parochial politics. At the other end Labour's best case scenario would bring us back to 1910. Which invites either a quick snap election hoping it would deliver something more manageable, which it did not a century ago. Or a dance with the devil 🔊. Uh…. a deal with the SNP, complete with our horns and tails.

To sum it up a snap GE held next week would not solve any problems or heal any wounds. Everything points to the two dominant parties quickly getting over it and back to their old ways. How they would manage with nobody able to form a strong and stable government is anybody's guess but it would be their problem and theirs only. They created the awful mess we're in, so up to them to sort it out.

Doom And Gloom 🔊

Public opinion is full of contradictions. The most recent IPSOS-Mori poll is full of examples. 86% are dissatisfied with the way the Government runs the country including 71% of Conservative voters. 65% are dissatisfied of the way Theresa May handles her job as PM including 32% of Conservative voters. Which triggers one obvious question: how can 39% of Conservative voters be happy with May and at the same time unhappy with the Government? Never mind, Conservatives are not renowned for consistency.

Besides 85% of all respondents think the Government had done a bad job at handling Brexit and 65% think May personally has. While 59% think Brexit will hurt the UK's economy over the next five years and 34% think it will last into the next ten to twenty years. Even worse more are confident Corbyn would get a good Brexit deal (21%) than trust May on it (18%). Yet the same voters who are unhappy with both the PM and the Government (and don't really trust them) are also ready to give them a fourth chance at doing even more harm than they have already done. I won't even try to figure out the ulterior motives here.

On a less gloomy note, the last Opinium poll has an interesting angle on how people see the main political leaders. They crosstabbed leaders' ratings with voting intentions, which tells you how leaders are seen by their own voters. And the results are quite enlightening.

Quite interesting to see that both Corbyn and May score in the low twenties on 'strongly approve' while the sum of all those disapproving more or less strongly roughly matches it. On the other hand Nicola Sturgeon's rating among SNP voters is quite flabbergasting and should put to rest all innuendo about the Great Leader being soon shown the door. Now and all joking aside, the less than stellar ratings of both major parties' leaders are not a good sign. Especially as both do much worse among the electorate as a whole than among their own voters. 

The Westminster System has failed the people and the people know it. And having Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab as credible PM wannabes certainly won't help. Neither will the spectre of Sleekit Gove waiting in the wings for the next one to stab in the back.

Play With Fire 🔊

Can the immediate future be even worse than the past few months? Unfortunately it can when both major English parties put partisan interest first, and factional interest within the party on top of that. Neither has proved able to offer credible solutions to the nation's problems. While MPs spend endless sittings voting on the minutiae of alternate Brexits everyone expected to be voted down, the economy is crashlanding and poverty is rising. Next will be another blame game about how could you be stupid enough to waste that much time to achieve nothing? Not really what an anxious and insecure nation needs.

All that happened over the last three years will leave behind deep wounds that will take years to heal if they ever heal at all. And Little England will have only themselves to blame. And the politicians they elected who spent all that time playing with fire and the worst instincts of the electorate with nothing serious and positive to offer. Fortunately Scotland has a way out of this and will go down that road soon. All it takes is us wanting it and making it happen.

Dare to be honest and fear no Labour

© Mick Jagger, Keith Richards 1966

Scotland's State Of Play - Last Pre-Brexit Update

Brexitocalypse B-10 also 370th Anniversary of the Abolition of the House of Lords (no kidding) and Mike Crockart's birthday

And here is the latest about Scotland's State Of Play 🔊

The big picture

Last time we had comprehensive Scottish polling was early December last year. Plus a substantial and statistically relevant subsample in one of YouGov's GE polls in early January. And now we have two new polls, one by Survation for the Scottish Daily Mail (fielded from 1 to 4 March) and one by Panelbase for Wings Over Scotland (fielded from 26 February to 6 March). Which give us a clearer view of where Scotland stands right now. Except when they don't.

Westminster polls

These results clearly show that Scotland is strongly in opposition to the English GINO (Government In Name Only as our First Minister called them) but also distrusts the shambolic and discredited Scottish Branch Office of the English Labour Party. Only constant surprise is how well Scottish LibDems do despite their obvious irrelevancy, probably just the odd side effect of the combination of pro-Union and pro-EU sentiments.

Here are the voting intentions based on the weighted average of the last three full Scottish polls, all fielded in 2019. Super-sample size is 4,209 for a theoretical 1.46% margin of error. UKIP's and Greens' vote shares are largely hypothetical as such results assume they both would stand in all Scottish constituencies, which won't happen if previous elections are any indication. So in a real election you should expect Conservatives benefiting from a smaller UKIP vote, while Labour and the SNP would both gain some votes from the hypothetical Green vote share.

The SNP up by 'only' 2.5% from 2017 might not look that good at first glance but remember the first party's vote share is not always the main factor. By how much they lead is usually much more significant. And here we have a larger lead for the SNP over both Conservatives and Labour than we had two years ago, with a direct strong impact on the seat projection. With 20 marginal seats and another 26 competitive ones at the last GE, even relatively small changes in the popular vote can have devastating effects.

Right now the basic projection from current polling has the SNP up 10 seats, their best result in a long time as recent polls show a noticeable improvement over what we had last year.

Even when the margin of error is factored in and marginal seats reallocated to the runner-up, worst case scenario for the SNP is still a net gain of five seats (six gained and one lost) while the best case scenario is an impressive gain of fourteen seats with no losses. Scottish Labour is definitely on a downward spiral again with only Ian Murray definitely sure to hold his seat, while Conservatives are likely to be hit by a yellow wave endangering a fair share of their 2017 gains. Only LibDems show some sort of resilience unless the tactical voting they benefited from in 2017 melts away next time.

And here is the full breakdown of the seat projections from worst to best case for the SNP.

The 'SNP Maximum' scenario shows how deep into current Tory territory the SNP could progress. And even this one could be an understatement as I wouldn't bet my shirt on Ross Thomson in Aberdeen South even if the math has him holding his seat by some 2k votes. I have a hunch his good friends in his own party will either deselect him outright, or let him stand and underhandedly undermine his candidacy. Both ways Boaby Snatcher is a goner.

Holyrood polls

Obviously there is a lot of uncertainty about a future Scottish Parliament election, and the very real possibility it might completely reverse the 2016 result and annul the current mandate to seek a second Independence referendum. Which explains why the Scottish Branch Office of the English Conservative Party find it's the right moment to challenge the First Minister to hold a snap Holyrood election. While Tories may be emboldened by the 2018 polls that constantly delivered an Unionist majority even when the SNP remained by far the first party, the last two polls are more confusing as they massively contradict each other. Here are the voting intentions from both polls and the seat projections based on these.

It is obviously quite disturbing that two polls fielded almost simultaneously and with almost the same sample size deliver such amazingly different results: a 15-seat pro-Independence majority on one side and a 9-seat Unionist majority on the other. This can only cast doubt again on the reliability of polls in general, and Scottish ones especially as they failed to predict the actual results three times already. Holyrood 2016, Councils 2017, Westminster 2017. But I will go on a limb here and assume the weighted average of these two polls is somewhere near the electorate's actual state of mind. Based on this bold assumption, here are the voting intentions and seat projection I get:

The constituency seats projection show a number of current Scottish Government Ministers squarely in the danger zone or close to it. At face value Richard Lochhead, Roseanna Cunningham and Mairi Gougeon are projected to lose their seats while John Swinney would be just a few hundred votes away from losing it. Of the SNP's list MSPs currently in Government, only Paul Wheelhouse would possibly be threatened. Of course this is just the math and the personal factor in a real campaign has often gone against the math.

This result would be mildly disappointing for the SNP with a net loss of five seats but they would remain the first party and still the only one seriously able to form a government. The obvious downside would be having the pro-Independence majority saved by the Greens doing better than at the last election and also better than previous polls predicted. Obvious fallout would be the Greens feeling empowered to exert more pressure on the SNP on key votes and we already know this has not always produced positive results. On the other hand the silver lining would certainly be pushing the SNP to be bolder on Independence and the timing of the second referendum.

Finally here is the breakdown of seats by region this scenario would deliver. Some of the list results might appear counter-intuitive at first but that's what the math says. Only the messenger…..

Of course in the grand scheme of things the most important result is that this polling would confirm the triple-lock mandate on Independence: a majority of Scottish MPs, a majority of MSPs, a renewed Scottish Parliament vote in support of Independence. Unionists are proved wrong on all counts: the SNP are not bound to lose their dominant position and the next First Minister will be neither Ruth Davidson nor Richard Leonard. And there is still appetite for Independence, even inconclusive IndyRef polls show it.

Independence polls

The last true IndyRef poll was Panelbase's in December that delivered 47% Yes / 53% No to the standard question (Should Scotland be an independent country?) that was used in 2014 and the only one that can reliably measure changes in public opinion over time. We're none the wiser now than we were then as the latest Panelbase poll for Wings Over Scotland did not include this question. Nice and easy explanation is that Stuart Campbell did not instruct Panelbase to poll it, which is in itself quite amazing. But I have good reasons to suspect that it was in fact the other way round and that he instructed them NOT to poll it and substitute a qualitative question that says nothing about actual voting intentions.

When I questioned him on this Stuart Campbell offered only specious arguments like 'I asked what I am interested in and I have the answers' explicitely implying he is not interested in voting intentions for an hypothetical future Independence referendum. I am quoting from memory as he has since blocked me on Twitter as he can't stand contradiction or being challenged. But nuff said about Bathman and let's focus on what his £10k poll says or fails to say.

What Panelbase asked in March reads: Which do you believe would be better for Scotland? This is the exact same wording Panelbase used in December so it allows for a direct comparison. And the results are not really stellar as Independence vs No-deal Brexit went down from a commanding 18% lead to a meagre 4% while Independence vs Negotiated/May deal Brexit is stable on a less than impressive 6% lead.

Of course such a qualitative question has value on its own as an indication of public opinion's state of mind when faced with alternative scenarios, but unfortunately it says nothing about voting intentions. So the only valid assessment of voting intentions has to be based on earlier polls fielded between October and December 2018 which is like an eternity in a rapidly moving context. Here is what we had back then based on the weighted average of the last six polls:

Even if I considered Wings' Brexit options to be legit estimates of voting intentions, which I don't because they aren't, we still wouldn't have anything remotely like a Yesnami, with Yes still trailing by about 4% on the tweaked weighted average of the last six polls.

So my best educated guess is that we're still roughly where we were at the end of last year, with the 47% Yes found by Panelbase back then a credible basepoint. Which is a good result as we started the first referendum campaign with Yes trailing by 32% and shrunk that to 11% in two years. So just imagine what another powerful and inventive campaign might achieve when we start it trailing by just 6%. The future is in our hands. Let's just make sure there are no missed opportunities and no wasted time. Now is not the time…. to procrastinate.

And now what's next?

The only thing I take for granted is that nothing should be taken for granted. Until yesterday the Prime Minister of England was headed for a Third Meaningful Vote (MV3) that was widely known be illegal even under the loosest interpretation of generally accepted Parliamentary Conventions. Until John Bercow shot it down. Or not now that Steve Barclay argues that the vote should go ahead anyway because of changed circumstances and MPs having the unalienable right to change their votes. Wait wait wait…. aren't these just the arguments in favour of a second Independence referendum?

So the unlikely combination of May stubbornly pushing for a vote she would have lost and did not want in the first place until strongarmed into it by Commons last year, Bercow relishing in adding chaos to shambles using a four-centuries old rule and Barclay totally fumbling his arguments adds fuel to the case for a second Scottish Independence referendum. Did not see that one coming, I must confess. Let's hope this will make Keith Brown's prediction come true, though at the moment I don't totally share his optimism.

The weirdest part in the whole farce is of course May and Leadsom whining all over the place about Bercow blocking their Groundhog Vote that would have led to Groundhog Clobbering, when neither of them wanted a Meaningful Vote in the first place, did all they could to have Commons reject the concept and failed, and then postponed the first vote for a month without any substantially valid reason. Second most farcical aspect is that, despite multiple warnings, nobody in Government seemed to have the slightest clue what Erskine May wrote on the issue, only 175 years ago after all. While the whole of the UK should thank Bercow for preventing this:

© Drunk Wolf @DrunkWolfArt, 2019

So maybe we should wish the whole clusterfuck goes on for a while. At least that would keep the European Union amused at the sheer sight of the Westminster System collapsing and strongly boost England's position as the Number One Laughing Stock of the Civilized World.

With just ten days left before Brexit Day and neither a deal nor an Article 50 extension in sight, a snap GE might be the Conservatives' only way out, especially if the 1922 Committee moves the goalposts and kicks May out despite her 12-month stay of execution from last December. Another unlikely yet possible option is May losing a no-confidence vote, which might happen if the 21 Brexiteer-To-The-End Tory MPs go all the way down the road of their logic and abstain. They would not even need to vote No, their abstention would be enough to woodchip May by a handful of votes. Must be a real concern if even Laura Kuenssberg tweets about such an outcome. One can dream. Or can't he?

So stay tuned for further upsets and the next act of the Bercow Comedy Show.

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing

© Rory MacDonald, Calum MacDonald 1987

Westminster Projection - Next To Last Pre-Brexit Update

Brexit B-23 also 35th anniversary of the Cortonwood Colliery Walkout and 62th anniversary of Ghana's Declaration of Independence

Welcome To My Nightmare 🔊

Rewind to 1983. We all know why Labour lost that year's GE. Three factors: Michael Foot, SDP, Falklands. And there you go: we have Jeremy Corbyn and TIG. So could Brexit be, against all logic and all odds, morph into Theresa May's Falklands? Before you laugh your ass out at how far-fetched this is, have a look at the polls. Without and with the 'TIG Option'.

Of course this is not 1983 all over again yet. But things can change fast. The week before the Falklands War started polls credited the Conservatives with a 2% lead. When the war ended it had risen to 16% and would remain up there, give or take a few points, until the 1983 GE that Tories won with a 15% lead over Labour. This year's trend shows the gap between Tories and Labour is widening quickly and at such a pace you can't really know where it will end.

Even a MayDeal Brexit, which can only happen in the unlikely star alignment where both Toryxiters and Labour support it, would not save the day for Jeremy Corbyn. Because in that case Theresa May would get all the credit for making the best of the lousy hand she was dealt and saving the UK from a no-deal scenario that has only minority support among voters. Her Falklands.

A Runaway Train 🔊

The Prime Minister of England at first did all she could to delay a Meaningful Vote she knew she would lose. Now she has been force-pledged to hold three in as many days by 502 votes to 20. Her current Plan Z seems to be smokeandmirroring a gullible Labour leadership into supporting some not-that-much-of-a-deal MayDeal in return for a fuzzy promise to hold a second referendum that would anyway not have Remain on the ballot. In the unlikely event this works the PM could then say 'Sorry it was just an advisory vote so I will take it under advisement. Simples'. My best educated guess is that Starmer will see through the stunt even if Corbyn does not or pretends it's a good deal only to save himself from further embarrassment at the hands of his own MPs.

Corbyn might in fact be dragged out of embarrassment against his will as right now Theresa May's latest stunts seem to have only triggered some Midas In Reverse 🔊 effect. Labour MPs from Leave-voting constituencies have already dismissed the Northern Potemkin Villages scheme as 'too little too late'. And Tory MPs went ballistic because not enough bribes would go to already affluent towns in their Little England constituencies. Unions have also been quick to see through the gaping loopholes in May's newly-made-up commitment to protecting workers' rights and will have none of it. So with Labour refusing to be part of a fake deal over a fake deal, the MayBot's only option would be to brace herself for yet another Commons defeat of Titanic-on-Iceberg scale.

Unless of course Mogglodytes principledly wuss out on the first vote and principledly support the Maydeal that was principledly unacceptable just last week, which would make the other two votes irrelevant. Treeza was right, it was always about taking back control and now she's taking back control of you, Jake. Because this is the only way the PMofE can save her sorry ass now after weeks of making it up as she walked us up the garden path over the cliff edge and into the frying pan. Otherwise futile pretendy efforts at delaying No-Deal-Crashxit are likely to be as efficient as tocolyticking Rosemary's Baby. Extending Article 50 is no longer an option now that France and Spain ruled it out unless there is Meaningful Change on England's side. So the runaway Brexit train is now on a straight course to the inevitable and predicted accidental crash-landing into the Brexiceberg.

Working Up A Sweat 🔊

Right now Conservatives devote all their energies to snatching the Most Incompetent Minister Of The Week from Chris Clusterfuck Grayling but he has too much of a head start for others to stand a sporting chance. Though Karen Bradley now has a clean shot at the Most Vile Award. Meanwhile it's back to I'm-All-Right-Jack mode in Brextrigger-happy Little England where recent polling project Tories leading by 9%, 1.3% up from 2017. Of course Labour being predicted 5% down from 2017 in Scotland, 8% down in London and a massive 10% down in Wales does not really help them either. My current Poll-of-Polls includes the six most recent ones fielded between 18th of February and 1st of March. Super-sample size is 9,539 (theoretical margin of error 0.97%) and it points to a 7% Conservative lead overall.

It is definitely a no-win situation for Labour with a sizeable chunk of their Scottish voters switching to the SNP, and quite a few switching to UKIP in the Northern Powerhouse heartlands where Labour would fall below 50% of the popular vote when they bagged 55% in both North East and North West in 2017. Worse for Jeremy Corbyn, Labour would also fall from 55% to below 50% in his own backyard in London, this time with Europhile ABC1s switching to the LibDems. And this does not even factor in how many would switch to TIG if they manage to get a significant number of candidates standing there.

Incidentally YouGov just released the findings of their latest 'Best Party on Issues' poll. On ten major issues which party do people feel would handle them best? This one is also not good for Labour. Note though that, depending on the issue, None or Don't Know get 36% to 44% and other parties combined 9% to 21%. Major outliers being Immigration (UKIP third best on 13%) and Brexit (None third best on 15%). And if you strip down the results to just the Tory-Labour one-on-one here is what you get, which goes a long way to help figure out why Tories are still ahead in GE polling after all these years: 

Labour are considered the best party to handle the issue on just three out of ten. Though you might consider the list of issues a wee smitch biased as it does not include Welfare/Benefits on which Labour would certainly have done better than the Conservatives. But even so Labour are weaker on most of what will probably be the main battleground issues in the next campaign. And there is no doubt MSM will manage to make Tory favourites like immigration, law and order or defence appear more important than they truly are in the public's mind. Nothing beats a revamped Project Fear to make sure votes will go 'the right way'.

Elected 🔊

Based on current rolling average here is what Commons would look like on the current 650 seats and on the infamous 600-seat Great Gerrymander. With Sinn Féin still not taking their seats, Conservatives get a 34-seat majority on current boundaries and a 53-seat majority on proposed new boundaries. This would be slightly better for the Conservatives than a return to 2015, mostly because the SNP would not gain back all the seats lost in 2017, theoretically leaving Scottish Tories with 11 seats unless special local factors say otherwise. Just think Ross Thomson or Kirstene Hair.

But there is some version of the Law of Diminishing Returns at work with the Great Gerrymander, as counter-intuitive it may look at face value. Martin Baxter at Electoral Calculus made this case in his analysis of the 2018 Boundary Review. Notional 2017 results say Tories would have bagged a 20ish-seat Gerrymander Bonus and current polling says it's down to 10ish. Because a 7% lead allows them to go deeper into Lab-Con-Marginals territory and already bag easy gains there. Just what the Gerrymander was designed to achieve. Simples.

Lay Down And Die, Goodbye 🔊

If the Snap GE was held tomorrow 41 seats would change hands. Including a net loss of 32 (technically 33) for Labour and a net gain of 25 for the Conservatives. And there are many reasons why the results could be even worse for Labour. TIG is only one of the factors here and might not even be the most destructive one. Voters switching to UKIP or LibDems might be less visible but might have more impact by depriving Labour of key votes in marginals. Voter apathy in the face of certain defeat should not be brushed aside either.

Ironically ex-Labour MP Fiona Onasanya is now predicted to lose the Peterborough seat she gained by just over 600 votes in 2017. Odds are she will actually lose it earlier than next GE and that Conservatives would gain back the seat in a hypothetical by-election. Also predicted to go is Angela Smith in Penistone and Stocksbridge. Technically that would be a Conservative gain from Labour but I could not resist the pleasure of highlighting this as the first projected TIG loss this year. Surely more to come.

Changing Arranging 🔊

This batch of polls would deliver 51 marginal seats, two thirds of them in England. Oddly Conservatives would be in a weaker position now despite doing better on the popular vote, with 29 marginals at risk and only 16 prospective gains. Labour would do better with 16 marginals at risk and 22 prospective gains. And for the first time in a long while UKIP, or whatever they call themselves now like Brexit Party or Friends Of Tommy, could stage a comeback in Thurrock, once a Labour stronghold turned three-way marginal over the years.

From a wider perspective than just the classic definition of marginals, 137 seats overall can be considered competitive to some degree, about the same proportion as in 2017 (21% now and 23% then). Fewer seats would now rate as safe but a massive 63% still fit the definition.

In many ways this situation says a lot about the age-old powerplay between the two main English parties and the implicit deal not to hurt each other too much in successive boundary reviews as both Conservatives and Labour enjoy a higher than average proportion of safe seats (68% for both). Something that would come to an end when the Great Gerrymander is implemented.

Reflected 🔊

Even alternate scenarios factoring in the reallocation of marginals are highly favourable to the Conservatives. Worst situation for them would be the Tory-DUP coalition just three seats short of a majority. Which would be uncomfortable but still manageable with a defeated Labour torn apart by a renewed civil war and the choice of Corbyn's successor. In that case sustained Labstain would be one of the keys to survival for the next Tory government. But it is far from the most likely outcome.

My best educated guess though is that current Labour infighting and the TIG factor would swing the pendulum even more in Tories' direction than the math says. And even if they don't, back to a slightly 'improved" 2015 result would end the need for DUP support anyway and give the next Tory PM a free hand on basically everything. With Soubrynistas gone and Mogglodytes pushed back into irrelevance, Little England's One-Nationers would rule again and the worst could be expected. Like the Invasion of the Chlorinated Chicken just days ahead of NHS being franchised to American HMOs. You've been warned.

Long Way To Go 🔊

When the Tiggers broke free the purpose of the stunt was quite clear: snatch away enough post-Blairite votes to corner Labour into an humiliating 1983ish defeat and have them throw Jeremy Corbyn overboard. Then the last Opinium poll for The Guardian shows it is not going quite according to plan. The previous Opinium poll included only the TIG-in option while the new one has both TIG-out and TIG-in and here is what they say:

So Opinium find both Conservatives and TIG slightly down while Labour and LibDems are both slightly up. More important they now find more potential TIG votes coming from the Conservatives than from Labour, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole scheme. To be honest the Opinium poll might be something of an outlier as we now have a pool of seven polls testing TIG on the ballot and the average of these sends quite a different message with half of TIG's potential voters coming from Labour. Guess we will have to wait for another batch for a better understanding of the situation.

Point is that Guardian-Observer come out as the main propagandists of English Macronism and their own regular pollster says it's not really working, while other pollsters are not sending a clearer message with TIG anywhere between 8% and 18%. As I already pointed out it is quite challenging to include TIG into the algorithms of a seat projection model as we have no idea where they would actually stand and who the actual candidates would be (more Labour defectors or some new blood). Best educated guess is that three of the current Tiggers would make it on the own merits (Umunna, Soubry and Gapes). The other six ex-Labouristas would almost certainly go down as they would have faced deselection anyway and a really good result would probably add no more than 3 to 6 seats, possibly with the other two ex-Tories biting the dust too.

Chris Leslie might boast that Tiggers are here to create 'something new that the majority in the mainstream of British public opinion can support', they're not quite there yet as mainstream public opinion does not seem to see them as the visionaries who will shape A New England 🔊. Around the time the SDP and then the Alliance were formed in 1983 polls credited them with 19% to 33% of voting intentions, significantly more than today's polling credits Tiggers with. And they ended up with 25% at the 1983 GE, third party breathing down Labour's neck but even then that made them only a distant third in number of seats. The run-up and aftermath of the 1983 GE also tell a lot about what might happen to the junior partner in a hastily-crafted alliance, if Tiggers ever think some sort of pooling of resources with LibDems might be a good idea.

Years Ago 🔊

Tiggers should definitely take some time off to sit back and reflect on what happened to the SDP. At its peak SDP had 31 MPs after Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins gained seats from the Conservatives in by-elections, and that fell to 30 when Bruce Douglas-Mann lost Mitcham and Morden in a self-inflicted by-election. The only time the governing party won a by-election since 1960, a feat that wouldn't be repeated until Tories accidentally gained Copeland in 2017. And a good reason why Tiggers won't seek a renewed mandate through by-elections: the only SDPer who had the honesty to risk it lost by double digits and a 10% swing against him.

Now look at the 1983 GE stats. Where the 30 SDP MPs came from and what happened to them. Two chose to retire because their seats had been abolished in the Third Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. Also because of boundary changes seven of them stood in a different constituency from the one they represented before dissolution. Which did not prevent a major disaster as only five of the 28 incumbents who stood again were returned to Commons. A sixth seat was added when newcomer Charles Kennedy gained the newly established Ross, Cromarty and Skye from notional Conservative incumbent Hamish Gray in one of few upsets that year and became Baby of the House at 23.

I guess that puts to rest the old common wisdom that the Alliance did spectacularly well at the 1983 GE, more than doubling their number of seats from the 1979 Liberal intake. In fact, thanks to defections and by-election gains, the Alliance had 43 MPs on dissolution (13 Liberals and 30 SDPers) and lost almost half of them when they returned only 23 MPs. Fucking good reason why Tiggers should avoid a LibTig pact: the Alliance benefited brain-dead Liberals (rising from a notional 11 or an actual 13 to 17 seats) and not the SDP who lost 80% of their seats.

Let me tell you about a story now, a tale of glory and power 🔊. A Tale Of Three MPs. Rewind to 1974. Back then the London Borough Of Islington had three Commons seats: North, Central, South and Finsbury. All three elected Labour MPs with outright majorities and double-digit margins. Fast forward to 1981. All three (North's Michael O'Halloran, Central's John Grant, South's George Cunningham) defected to the SDP. For the record Dunfermline-raised Cunningham is the one who introduced the infamous '40% amendment' to the Scotland Act 1978 that would eventually lead to James Callaghan's demise and propel Margaret Thatcher to Number 10. Then forget Islington South as it does not play any part in the rest of the story. 

Fast forward to the 1983 GE and Islington Central is abolished by Boundary Review so John Grant finds himself without a seat. Chooses the easy way out and moves to Islington North to challenge sitting MP and fellow SDPer Michael O'Halloran. Against all logic SDP deselects O'Halloran, who leaves the party and goes on to stand as 'Independent Labour', and anoints Grant for the upcoming GE. Guess what happened: both bite the dust and a high-profile far-left newcomer, imported from neighbouring Haringey on his impeccable Bennite credentials, gains the seat back for Labour just two weeks after his 34th birthday.

Aye you guessed right: Jeremy Corbyn. And the rest is history. Whether it's truly a tale of glory and power or just a tale of power is up to you to decide. No doubt though Young Jezza ticked all the right boxes to become a Bennite Wunderkind. Just sayin' and now back to the business at hand.

Hello Hooray 🔊

Some day the show will begin and they've all been ready for ages. When exactly is anybody's guess. Rumours about the long-awaited Snap Election Of 2019 come and go. Even the recently predicted date of 6 June does not look like a plausible option anymore. The English Government will find itself entangled in the post-Brexit fallout no matter what form it takes. Urgent problems will certainly be of the same magnitude, if not the same nature, in a no-deal or in a bad-deal situation and running down the clock will no longer be an option then even if Theresa May has definitely honed her skills at it. So the snap GE would have to be put on the backburner for a while.

Main reason Theresa May would have to call a snap GE anyway is that she never pledged anything but standing down before 2022 and this would not apply if a snap GE was called. And a snap GE victory would give her grounds for reneging on the pledge, or even cause the 1922 Committee to eat humble pie and ask her to stay. Favourable polling is also an obvious incentive to go down that road and cash in on Labour's sorry state. The gamble might pay off even more if further MPs jump ship to TIG and if the snap GE happens in a few months, when most of the instant Brexit fallout will have died down after people realize there is no turning back and Little England Brexiteers revelling in their 'success' boosts the Tory vote.

So brace yourselves for more uncertain times ahead and stay tuned for further upsets.

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley 
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain for promis'd joy

© Neil Slorance, The National, 2019

© Alice Cooper, Neal Smith 1973