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
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