Some psephologifying and random assorted thoughts on what future elections might have in store.
House of Commons, Scottish Parliament, Scottish Independence.
Make your pick and enjoy. Comment is free.
I must confess that, during the last few days before the election, I was worried that Scottish polls might prove as unreliable as before the 2014 EU election when they overestimated the SNP vote by 7% and underestimated the Conservative vote by 4%. I did not voice it though, as I had warned about polls possibly getting it all wrong already some time ago. And it certainly did not feel appropriate to repeat such a warning in the last mile before the vote, when the priority was to energize all SNP activists and all SNP voters and deliver at least three SNP MEPs. First a reminder of what the last batch of polls predicted, only recalculated on the actual 2019 turnout rather than the 2014 turnout I used before.
And now what actually happened. First important thing is that valid votes increased by 227.763 from the 2014 election and the SNP vote increased by 205.050, meaning the SNP bagged a mammoth 90% of all new votes. It's quite an understatement then to say that #ActiveSNP worked to perfection and beyond and all who took part in the campaign can be proud of what was achieved. Obviously quite a few, including myself, will feel a bit miffed that the SNP did not bag a fourth seat and that Margaret Ferrier will not sit in the European Parliament. But it was the result of a combination of factors, some of them unpredictable, and the SNP missed the fourth seat by 33.838 votes. Missing it by 500 would have been devastating, the actual result is just a wee smitch disappointing and takes nothing off the superb work done by all SNP activists and sympathizers over the last two weeks.
Then some others have many more reasons to feel devastated. First of all the Scottish Branch Office of the English Labour Party. Which looks more and more like a Twig Office by now. 9% is not just Scottish Labour's worst ever performance at an European Parliament election. It is also their worst overall since 1910 when they first stood in Scotland as The Labour Party. Same goes for the Ruth Davidson Team who scored their worst ever result in all recorded Scottish electoral history, that is since 1832. Some Tories would gladly take the whole UK back to Dickensian times and voters did just that to them. Well done lads and lasses.
What could possibly go wrong and went even worser
Just a casual look at the map makes my point. A vast ocean of turquoisish Brexit blue Doon Sooth with just a few traffic-light splotches every here and there. Then a yellow sea North Of The Wall with just two weeish orange islands to the Far North. So yes everything that could go wrong did and then some and beyond. Then I guess the Conservatives and Labour can only blame themselves for the multiple trainwrecks. So massively underperforming on already lousy polls is quite a feat in and of itself, and all the more remarkable when the two supposedly 'main' parties manage to achieve it simultaneously. Because it already happened like…. never.
Why Labour deliberately torpedoed themselves with shitloads of inconsistency is hard to fully grasp. Had it not been for Corbyn channelling his Inner Eurosceptic and missing every opportunity to actually listen to the people, including his own voters, events might have taken a decisively different turn. With the Conservatives already in tatters and Farage having nothing to offer but offensive populist demagoguery, they could have won this if their main concern had not been short-sighted internal parochialism. But they entangled themselves in a web of obfuscation and contradictions. Their loss. Guess the healing will take some time. It's quite different for the Conservatives. They expected the clobbering and were possibly quite relieved it wasn't even worse, like in zero MEPs. Only in a few weeks will they realize they just signed their own death warrant.
Now on to something completely different and a wee smitch of food for thought. Lets just wander through the mirror to a dreamworld where the LibDems, Change UK and the Greens somehow managed to stand on joint lists, however impossible, implausible or unbelievable it might look. It's my dreamworld scenario after all so I can do what I want, or can't I? This Coalition Of The Wishful would of course be an England-only thing because you can't include those Pesky Nats from Scotland and Wales in such a Grand Scheme, or else they might gain some more seats they would use as a mandate to destroy Our Precious Union. Anyway here's what the results would have looked like:
There's some irony here as United Remain would barely have dented the Brexit Party contingent but instead made both Labour and Conservatives look even more destitute than they are in the real world, and bagged just six more seats than LibDems and Greens combined at the real election. So, even if this was fleetingly an option under the guise of tactical voting, it would not have delivered such a dramatic change and the Brexit Party would still have emerged as the first party after the United Remain seats had been re-allocated to the various member parties. But it looked like a good idea a the time, or didn't it?
Did pollsters nail it?
In the run-up to the election we had a massive batch of polls, eight published over three days 20-22 May, with a grand total of 16,384 respondents. So it seems like a strong and valid enough basis for comparison with the actual results. Data are for Great Britain only as pollsters did not include Northern Ireland. So here is the comparison between what the last batch of polls said and the results:
I mentioned earlier that the 2014 polls closest to the election did not miss the actual result by much. This is not the case this year and sometimes by a significant margin. You must bear in mind that pollsters never publish their raw results but weighted results. The classic and basic weighting is based on demographics, region and recalled votes at previous elections. Then data are usually 'super-weighted' (or should I say 'over-weighted'?) by likelihood to vote at the next election. There are many weak links in the chain, with 'likelihood to vote' probably the weakest of all.
Anyway pollsters here missed the weight (pun fully intended) of the combined Europhile votes. They correctly saw a trend towards increased LibDem and Green votes but failed to grasp its magnitude. Missed by 7.5% total, which is way beyond the usual margin of error. And it has direct impact on the seat projections when these are allocated on PR. Incidentally I am always utterly flabbergasted by the way various media outlets perpetuate the urban legend that d'Hondt (or 'highest averages method', to give it its proper technical name) is 'complicated' or 'complex' while it is neither but rather basic maths. All it takes to make it work properly is to remember that 'average' here does not mean [ Votes / Seats ] but [ Votes / (Seats + 1 ) ]. Simples. Not exactly quantum physics, or is it?
Anyway here is the comparison between the seat distribution generated by the latest batch of polls (based on individual regional seat projections from the various crosstabs) and the actual result. For all 73 seats as we have now the official Northern Ireland results. Interestingly the third Northern Ireland seat switched from the UUP to the Alliance Party as I predicted, and the Alliance did even better on first preferences than the two available NI polls predicted.
At least pollsters got the SNP and Plaid Cymru right too, but these were the easiest to get. Then I am quite ready to consider that a number of voters had last minute second thoughts that polls could not properly capture, which might be admissible if the very last poll wasn't also the most off of all with Labour on 23%, Conservatives on 13%, LibDems on 12% and Greens on 7%. So all the more reasons to handle polls with care now more than ever. But of course the main concern here is Scottish polls, which have proved highly unreliable at almost every election for years and especially in 2014. So here is what we have:
Like in GB-wide polls there are multiple errors all over the place, the most noticeable being an overestimated Brexit Party and understimated LibDems. And I won't even mention getting the order all wrong between Conservatives, Labour and LibDems. But I just did, didn't I? Never mind because what matters here is the SNP vote and polls were remarkably close to the actual result. And as this was a PR election you can realistically expect the SNP to do better by a few points at an FPTP election where smaller parties (think Scottish Greens) would sit out most constituencies. This is important because it validates ex-post-facto all past polls that had the SNP in the low forties for the Westminster and Holyrood constituency votes, and in the mid-to-high thirties for the Holyrood list vote. Not to mention these polls that Unionists hate when they say the Yes vote is now on 48-49% and were uncoincidentally fielded by the same pollsters who also polled the EU election in Scotland-only polls.
Now on to something completely different, to end on a lighter note. I am totally chuffed that I don't have to roll back any of my comments about Change UK. The useful idiots were predicted to do poorly and they did even poorlier. Ending up trailing the SNP and barely ahead of the remnants of UKIP is certainly not what best befits Chuka Umunna's high self-esteem. And they achieved exactly what I predicted and beyond: channel the English Europhile vote to the real parties, LibDems and Greens. Guess that could be the final toll of the bell for a hardly-existant party with ectoplasmic ideology, and the hypothetical merger with the LibDems might well end up as a not-too-friendly takeover. Not that I will miss them anyway.
And now what?
Both Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford nailed it in the aftermath of the election. And Paul Kavanagh's take was both right on target and entertaining as usual. The people of Scotland have spoken and sent a crystal clear message. Now even the most pig-headed Unionists can't acknowledge it. Oh wait…. of course they can and they will, just as they always ignored anything that does not fit the never ending #SNPBad narrative. But is it bound to last long? This election clearly makes the case that Ruth Davidson's obsessive anti-Independence rhetoric does not work. And also that the SNP were definitely right to link stopping Brexit, Independence and European identity in the campaign.
Now that we have conclusive evidence that the SNP can actually bag 50+ seats at the next GE and possibly oust all Scottish Conservative MPs, and also that a renewed pro-Independence majority is the most likely outcome of the next Holyrood election, the SNP have all the reasons they need to stay on course on the path to Independence and act swiftly and decisively on the triple-lock mandate. Introducing framework legislation for IndyRef2 next week is the much welcome and much anticipated first step. Then the closer we get to a Halloween no-deal Brexit, the better it will get and the more likely it is the 49% Yes will morph into 50+. Nothing's gonna stop us now 🔊.
So now it is done. Graham Brady tried procrastinating as long as humanly feasible but that can of worms would not kick itself down the road forever and he had to open that infamous 'sealed envelope' from the rule-waiving 1922 Committee. Then came the last days of May🔊. Aye, I know it's not The Boss but couldn't resist. Few in Scotland will actually regret Theresa May, even Ruth Davidson once she is done with the ritual shedding of crocodile tears. Theresa May never had a clue what Scottish politics are really about or what Scots really expect from their elected representatives. But close to none do among leading English politicians. Jeremy Corbyn most obviously does not and don't even get me started on Boris Johnson. Just remember what he saw fit to publish in The Spectator fifteen years ago, and he did not mean it as a joke.
Back to business as usual, consider that the polls' trend was massively unfavourable for the Conservatives for a long time already and especially over the last two weeks in the last mile to the European Parliament election. What remains to be seen is how May's departure and Boris Johnson becoming PM would affect voting intentions. Survation polled this in their latest poll. 32% of respondents would be more likely to vote Tory with Johnson as PM, 29% less likely, 32% neutral and 7% don't know. So statistically a Johnson Premiership would not be a solid gamechanger. Remarkably (or not) none of the other 19 Tory PM wannabes was tested that way.
The real gamechanger recently is in fact the combination of the noticeable LibDem and Brexit Party surges. the LibDem surge was already apparent in the polls before the EU election became a reality, but has now reached such proportions that even Labour can no longer pretend not to see it. Compared to it the Brexit Party surge is less of an event as FPTP will as usual protect the incumbents. Remember that what really matters is not the number of votes per se but how parties compare to each other, in this case more to the point Conservatives vs Brexit. The Brexit Party would undoubtedly do better than UKIP in 2015 but it would take more than current polls predict to make them the second or even third party. The combination of Tories and Labour both nosediving and LibDems and Brexit both skyrocketing may have changed the voting patterns quite substantially, but you can still count on FPTP to dampen the effects. The longer-term trend of voting intentions since 2017 offers some interesting insights into the major undercurrents over the last two years.
Obviously both Labour and Conservatives suffered from their mishandling of everything Brexit. Making a dug's breakfast of it was the self-inflicted Doomsday Weapon on both and they both managed to detonate it. Earlier this year there was this fleeting moment when Change UK looked like being the next success story as they managed to dent both the Labour and LibDem electorates. Then they slumped back to low single-digit voting intentions as their potential voters realized how shallow they are and switched to the LibDems instead. Change UK might have helped energizing the Europhile electorate but they delivered it on a silver platter to the LibDems and to a lesser extent the Greens, which I basically find hilarious given the high hopes 🔊 they entertained initially. But then maybe a proper manifesto or even a proper logo might have helped or, now that I think of it, avoiding alienating all voters with a 'funny tinge'. Just saying.
The various somersaults of voting intentions in recent polls have added a new dimension of uncertainty to any prediction. What one poll says may be totally contradicted by the next as we have the Brexit Party anywhere between 10% and 25% at some point during the last three weeks, the Conservatives anywhere between 19% and 28%, Labour anywhere between 24% and 33% and the LibDems anywhere between 11% and 18%. This opens the door to a multiplicity of different combinations and vastly different seat projections. So the usual caveats about the reliability and volatility of polls apply more than ever. Anyway the rolling average is still the best tool we have, other than a virgin black goat's entrails, and here is what it says right now, based on the six most recent GE polls fielded between 14 and 22 May. Super-sample size is 18,336 with a theoretical 0.7% margin of error.
Pollsters now routinely crosstab the current voting intentions and the 2017 GE vote. The most recent such data clearly show the magnitude of the Conservatives' drive to mass suicide and also the ripple effect of the Europhile realignment on Labour. Tories losing nearly half their 2017 votes and Labour a third highlights how many voters have lost confidence in them both because of their Brexit shenanigans. Data here come from the last Panelbase Scotland-only poll for the SNP and from this week's GB-wide polls for the other parties. What the GB-wide data fail to show is the actual magnitude of transfers from other parties to the SNP, which are quite impressive too (4% of 2017 Conservatives, 19% of 2017 Labour and 11% of 2017 LibDems according to Panelbase's Scotland-only crosstabs).
With the SNP having the most faithful electorate of all and benefiting from significant shifts from other parties, Scotland once again looks like the island of cool sanity amidst the current Very English Game of Throes. The Brexit Party has made some inroads here in recent GE polling but part of it is certainly cross-pollination from EU polls fielded over the same timeframe, and anyway they switched only disgruntled Tory and Labour voters. The main trend still remains people rallying around the SNP and strengthening their position as the dominant party in Scotland and the best defenders of Scotland's interests. So much again for power-weariness and out-of-touchiness. Data for the English regions show very different patterns with the once dominant parties Doon Sooth both in pretty precarious positions. Bear in mind that at the 2017 GE Tories bagged a majority of the popular vote in the East Midlands, East Anglia, South East, South West and almost got it in the West Midlands. While Labour bagged a majority in London, North East, North West and got almost there in Yorkshire-Humber. So you can easily see the amount of self-inflicted damage for both in what used to be solid heartlands.
Interestingly there is also a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to tectonic shift in Northern Ireland too: the end of the DUP-Sinn Féin 2017 duopoly on Westminster representation probably in retaliation to the total breakdown of the power-sharing agreement, and a return to a 2015ish or 2010ish situation. The few Northern Ireland polls we have are not necessarily reliable but an overall assessment of the situation, including local elections results, points to SDLP, UUP and possibly the Alliance Party returning to Westminster at the next GE.
As might be expected, a confused electorate would elect a very divided House, again and again delivering a hung Parliament. Labour would probably not gamble a minority government on a 'socialist' Queen's Speech as odds are it would be voted down. So Jeremy Corbyn's first obvious option is talking to the next LibDem leader (Jo Swinson anyone?) and negotiate a coalition that would have a twelve-seat majority (328-316 with SDLP part of it and Sinn Féin sitting out). The price to pay for a deal would not be a confirmatory EU referendum as the next GE, however snap it is, has fuck all chance to happen before Brexit Day. This week departing Vince Cable has described his own party as 'green and social democratic' without the slightest hint of irony, so there may be room for agreement after all, or wouldn't there? Scrap tuition fees, anyone?
This projection also exemplifies the 'regulating' effect of FPTP on the emergence of new parties. But the breakdown of projected seats by nation and region also shows some cases where FPTP can help the resurgence of an old party who regains ground lost in previous elections. For example the LibDems would get an unprecedented 17 seats in the South West, more than they currently have in the whole UK, while the Brexit Party would get none on roughly the same predicted share of the vote there. One of the LibDems' most notable successes would be Cornwall where they would gain back four out of six seats, including unseating former Minister of State Sarah Newton, in a region that once was one of their strongholds before turning 100% Tory in 2015 and 2017. The LibDems would also stage an unexpected spectacular comeback in the South East, bagging more seats there than they did in 2010 before the Coalition fiasco sent them down the dark pit of oblivion. Well, almost.
Incidentally the comic relief story of the week, which is unlikely to have much influence on the next GE as it will probably flop long before that, comes from Chuka Umunna seriously considering an Alliance-like alliance with the LibDems just days after the Chukers rejected an United Remain Front at the EU election and then Heidi Allen outchuking Chuka with a proposal for a formal merger. Looks like Chuka and Heidi believe in the urban legend that says the SDP-Liberal Alliance was a success story and did tremendously well at the 1983 GE, rising from 11 seats to 23. Too bad this is just a myth that is perpetuated only because people get their numbers wrong. At dissolution in 1983 the Alliance did not have 11 seats but 43 (30 SDP, 13 Liberals) thanks to defections and by-elections since 1979. So they actually did not double their representation but lost half of it. Guess Chuka should also look up the details (like on my blog eleven weeks ago) and realize that the SDP went down from 30 to 6 seats while the Liberals went up from 13 to 17. Big Dug Eats Wee Dug. Always.
Under current projections 130 seats would change hands, the highest number since 1997 and the third highest since 1945. But both 1945 and 1997 were wave elections that signalled a major realignment in British politics while the next GE would be a different beast altogether. What we can expect now is not a decisive swing from one of the major parties to the other but an increased fragmentation of the people's representation. As the detail of gains and losses shows only the Liberal Democrats would come out of the fight as undisputed winners and the most credible kingmakers. The results would be a mixed bag for the SNP as they would strongly strengthen their position as the dominant player in Scotland, but lose third-party status to the LibDems with all the perks that go with it. Bugger.
The most Portilloish moments would obviously be Brandon Lewis, Chair of the Conservative Party, and John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, both losing their seats to the Brexit Party. While Lewis' fate appears to be sealed, Bercow might still save his seat if all parties actually sit this one out, unlike Greens did in 2015 and 2017, and also make sure none of their own stand as independents, but it would still be a close call. Other notable losses would include arch-macho reactionary Philip Davies in Shipley, and Oliver Letwin in the historically safe Conservative seat of West Dorset where the Liberal Democrats would overturn a 19k Tory majority. The Conservatives would surely also be miffed at losing such supposedly safe seats as Isle of Wight or Witney (David Cameron's old seat), but the two-pronged assault by the Brexit Party and the LibDems adds an unexpected layer of uncertainty and puts even safe seats in jeopardy. More on this later.
The Conservative front bench would also be taking major blows with 32 MPs on the government payroll projected to be unseated. Amber Rudd would still be the only Cabinet Minister going down, and now the Solicitor General for England and Wales, eight Ministers of State, ten Junior Ministers, five Parliamentary Private Secretaries, four Whips, the Tory Party Chair and two Vice-Chairs would follow her to the woodchipper. There is some irony in Theresa May's last reshuffle as both the former Solicitor General Robert Buckland, now a Minister of State, and the newly appointed Solicitor General Lucy Frazer would lose their seats. Labour wouldn't be totally spared either as five members of the Shadow Cabinet would lose their seats, including Shadow Secretary of State Sarah Champion.
The recent Brexit Party surge would reshuffle the cartography of marginal seats to an extent the LibDem surge never achieved over the last few months. An exceptionally high 94 seats would now qualify as marginals, including 13 in Wales and 67 in England outside London. Interestingly the situation would be less volatile than before in Scotland with only four marginals instead of twenty after the 2017 GE. But Wales would look like an accident waiting to happen with a third of the seats qualifying as marginals and a Brexit Party wave threatening even supposedly safe Labour seats. Northern Ireland too would become a wee smitch less predictable with the return of a four-player or even five-player competition. Then again the true battleground would be England with the Brexit Party destabilizing both the Southern Little England Tory heartlands and the Northern Powerhouse Labour heartlands.
The Brexit Party would be the runner-up in 31 of the new marginals and it does not take that much of a leap of faith 🔊 to see all of them going to the Brexit Party and then some. Actually some recent polls predicted just this kind of configuration and worse. Just figure out the Brexit Party rising by another 4% to 23% while Labour and the Conservatives both slump by another 2% to 25% and 22% respectively, which is by no means an impossible or even implausible situation, and the Brexiters grab 100+ seats. You've been warned, though the warning actually extends to England and Wales only. For Now.
The recent Brexit Party and LibDem surges mean that neither Labour nor the Conservatives can realistically set their sights on an outright majority anymore. In fact the reallocation of marginals after factoring in the margin of error delivers some counter-intuitive results. FPTP can behave in paradoxical ways when handling the kind of new configuration we have here: the Brexit Party doing strongly in a significant number of both Tory-leaning and Labour-leaning marginals. To put it as clearly as possible, if Labour overperforms the polls, the Brexit Party would lose fewer Brexit-Labour marginals than they would gain Conservative-Brexit marginals. Ir works the other way round, or more precisely as a mirror image, if Labour underperform, and this time compounded by massive losses from Labour to the Brexit Party in Wales.
If Conservatives overperform we get a deadlock with Conservatives as the first party but unable to form a viable government coalition even with support from the LibDems. And in this case the only option left for Labour would be a Lab-Lib-SNP coalition, which won't happen for so many reasons it would take another article to list them all. Unless of course PM Corbyn thinks radically outside the box, grants a Section 30 Order hoping IndyRef2 fails and the 'once in a generation' thing becomes 'once in a lifetime' as it is probably what it would take the SNP to recover from such a blow. Then again it won't happen and Corbyn would more probably gamble on a confirmatory snap GE to sort out the mess, like Wilson did in 1974
At the other end of the range of possible futures, Labour just slightly overperforming would open the door to a more solid Lab-Lib coalition. Solid of course only as long as you believe LibDems can be trusted with keeping their end of any bargain, which a totally different story.
There is a lot to be said about the very concept of 'safe seats'. First of all of course that it can be highly volatile and deceptive, if you just remember how many safe seats Labour held in Scotland just five years ago, which looks like an eternity ago now. Right now current polling strongly hints that the notion that any seat can be considered safe for any length of time is a thing of the past with the Brexit Party reshuffling the deck in a dramatic way. First let's compare the Conservative seats' rating on the SLLM scale after the 2017 GE and how they are rated now. The chart is rescaled to 100% regardless of the number of seats in each category for easier reading.
Out of 244 supposedly safe Conservative seats, 36 are now predicted to switch to another party and only 10 would still meet either of the two 'safe seat' criteria: an outright majority and/or a 25% and above lead. And the damage is even worse in the other categories. Moving on to Labour now, they would lose only 9 of their 222 reportedly safe seats from the 2017 election. Which does not mean they should feel safer overall as only 57 of their predicted seats would still meet the criteria. Of course both parties can only blame themselves as they jointly opened the can of worms that led to the Brexit Party emerging as a credible alternative for hardline Leavers, and the Liberal Democrats and the SNP as the major rallying points for the true Europhiles. And there is no end in sight and no truly predictable outcome for the realignment we see happening right under our eyes as Brexit and its many fallouts will be the centrepiece of British politics for at least another decade, if not another generation.
Now you might wonder how this can happen but it is actually rather easy to figure out how a supposedly safe seat can turn into an embarrassing liability. Let's say the Tories held the seat on 56% of the vote in 2017 with Labour bagging 28%, which is something you will undoubtedly find in the real world and meets both 'safe seat' criteria. Then factor in the Brexit Party tsunaming into the constituency like a demented pack of hellhounds and managing to snatch away half the Tory vote, which might sound far-fetched but can (and possibly will) happen in many a Little England backwater if polls are to be believed. Then you are left with a perfect three-way marginal with Labour possibly just a rabbit's ear away from an unlikely gain. If you really believe it's just a pipe dream just look at what current polls predict for the Tory heartlands Deep Doon Sooth and think it through.
Three days already since the European Parliament election has come and gone, and still a few hours before we know what happened. There is this pesky European Union rule that says no official results can be released until the last vote in the last country has been cast. Which makes the deadline today at 11pm Central European Time, or 10pm BBC time if I get the time-zones right. Then for the next EU election after Brexit we won't have to bother with those shitey EU rules. Uh…. wait… wait…. seriously? Naw just kidding though I wouldn't put is past some of the batshit-Brexiteers to think just that. Final official results will not even be available before tomorrow noon-drams time in Scotland as the Western Isles are a work-free zone on Sabbath. Then everybody's worst nightmare except Boris Johnson's comes true.
There is little doubt the New Model Blackshirts will come out as the first party in the Divided Kingdom. Soon Nigel Farage, the poundshop Oswald Mosley with a German passport who fancies himself as Oliver Cromwell 2.0, will barge in on BBC claiming Britain now has the inalienable right to deal with the rest of the world on WTO rules only. And at that point the rest of the world will palmface in bewildered disbelief and switch to a Benny Hill DVD because it conveys a better image of the UK they had come to love and respect before it turned itself into daily laughing stock. Only Mauritania will send heartfelt greetings to Nigel as they would be the UK's sole trading partner in the WTO-only dreamworld. The predicted disaster will be totally on the Three Riders of the Brexitocalypse. The British MSM for shamelessly and desperately sucking up to Nigel Farage for months because he always steals the show and delivers juicy soundbites. Theresa May for making kicking the can down the road the only clear guideline of a failed policy. Jeremy Corbyn for failing to acknowledge that channelling his Inner Brexiter was never a proof of true leadership. Then some outside the Brexitocracy Bubble are not without flaws either. Caroline Lucas switched to Anglo-centrism in her desperate quest for an United Stop Brexit Front. And don't even get me started (again) on Change UK who unwaveringly support a People's Vote except when it comes to seeking a fresh mandate through Commons by-elections, and couldn't even be bothered to get themselves a proper logo, let alone a proper manifesto.
To get the bigger picture, we had a sudden frenzy of polling in the last mile before the election with no fewer than eight polls published in three days, 20 to 22 May, which was borderline TMI even for completist anoraks. Here are the voting intentions anyway, on the weighted average of the whole batch of eight, and the breakdown by nation/region. The weighted average is a GB-only result as the main pollsters do not include Northern Ireland which has been polled twice by a Belfast-based firm. The most recent Scotland-only, Wales-only and London-only polls are also included in their respective projected voting intentions.
The breakdown by electoral region shows how deep Farage's New Model Blackshirts have penetrated into both Labour and Conservative traditional territory. Add to that the remarkable and recent surges of both Liberal Democrats and Greens, even in regions where you would least expect them to do well, and you have the roadmap for a joint disaster for the two major English parties. The overall seat projection and its breakdown by electoral region only confirm this, with a three-pronged assault from left, center and right squeezing most of juice out of Labour and Conservatives alike. Tories were expecting it and must be psychologically prepared for it, but Labour are surely not as they obviously expected their two-faced approach to Brexit would help them. But it didn't and the projected results once more prove that you can't have it both ways. The only reward you get from being two-faced is a mighty slap with a wet dead fish on all four cheeks.
For the record other seat projections published elsewhere might somewhat differ from mine, as my overall seat projection is the sum of the individual seat projections for each of the twelve electoral regions. I strongly suspect that many others who publish seat projections do not do it this way, which is the right way, but instead allocate seats globally as if we had just one big constituency. I have this hunch because a national projection, instead of the sum of regional ones, is the only way you can steadily find UKIP bagging any seats at all and the SNP on only two seats.
Now if anyone deserves a special mention in the light of this campaign and the projected results, obviously it is Change UK, as never in living memory was such abject humiliation so neatly snatched from the dropping jaws of outstanding success. If the main goal from the start was to embarrass Labour by driving centrist Europhile voters away from them, it obviously worked beyond anyone's wildest expectations. But what Change UK so masterfully achieved was not to channel all these votes to themselves but to the Liberal Democrats who come a pig's ear's hair away from becoming the second party at this election, and also to the Greens who not so long ago were doomed to lose all their MEPs and are now projected to almost double their number, while Change UK will bag exactly zero seats. Awesome.
Then what did polling say about Scotland? Based on the weighted average of the Scottish subsamples of the last two YouGov megapolls (619 and 796 Scottish respondents respectively) and the latest Scotland-only poll from Panelbase (1,021 respondents), voting intentions still look quite good for the SNP who would also benefit from a fragmented Unionist vote.
The seat projection based on these voting intentions looks pretty straightforward if you trust the math: three SNP MEPs, one Brexit Party, one Labour and one Liberal Democrat. But there is more than meets they eye at a casual glance. The sixth Scottish seat looks like a free-for-all with four lists finishing within les than 1% of all votes cast. So I certainly don't rule out a fourth SNP MEP. Obviously I won't rule out a second Brexit Party MEP or a Conservative one either. All things considered it looks pretty good for Alyn Smith, Christian Allard and Aileen McLeod and I venture even odds on Margaret Ferrier bagging a fourth seat for the SNP as she is barely 3k votes away in a quite crowded field.
Right now all we can do is sit back and relax, keeping fingers crossed. I just hope the polls will be about right, especially the Scottish ones, and that the actual seat allocation will come close to my final projection. Just so I don't have to roll back too much of my comments when doing the post-mortem. Especially miffing would be SNP missing the fourth seat by only a handful, or the Change UK useful idiots managing to bag even one lonely seat. On second thoughts the worst shocker would be the first 31 Scottish Councils having the SNP miss the fourth seat by 1,000 votes and Na h-Eileanan an Iar switching that to SNP bagging it by 1,000 at lunchtime tomorrow; Definitely bad for the faint of heart. Just a few more hours to wait then.
And the Very British GE Circus will go on anyway so stay tuned for further broadcasts
Time to live, time to lie, time to laugh, time to die Take it easy Baby, take it as it comes Time to walk, time to run, time to aim your arrows at the sun
'So what are we going to have today, Prime Minister?' the maître d' softly asked. 'Dare I suggest larruping for starters? Then a healthy clobbering with a side-order of fresh walloping maybe?' Because this is just how bad the Conservatives' electoral prospects look like right now. And May's own prospects look even bleaker as the swarm of Tory PM-wannabes from Boris Johnson to Rory Stewart (aye, THAT Rory) are sharpening their knives. And my prediction that the 1922 Committee would waive the rules and annul her 12-month reprieve from last December is becoming likelier by the day to become reality. Unless the 1922 Committee don't have the baws for it and backbenchers take matters directly in their own hands no matter the fallout. All it would probably take is 158 Conservative Associations passing a no-confidence motion in May and she would have to go before the end of the current Brextension regardless of her own views on the matter. Unless of course of she is finally strongarmed into an 'amicable termination' to avoid losing face.
Thirteen polls in an inexorable sequence 🔊 since early April have Labour leading by anything from 1% to 10%, with only two predicting a tie. Which, believe it or not, is the longest (almost) uninterrupted sequence of Labour leads since July 2017, and then it was probably just buyer's remorse while now it looks like not just a phase but a true reversal of fortunes. The irony of course is that Labour owe little if anything to themselves but rather to the new kids on the block: Change UK and the Brexit Party. And part of it to the LibDems and the SNP too, like it or not. The most thrilling part is to try and guess how many seats the Brexit Party and Change UK can bag under voting patterns that are starting to look more 2015ish than 2017ish. Change UK will probably learn the hard way that defector is a close synonym to traitor in voters' minds and go down the SDP way, with just two of them surviving and possibly four at most. The Brexit Party on the other hand have nothing to fear and while current polling awards them zero seats, it would take very little for them to better UKIP's 2015 performance and bag two or three seats by surprise.
The two main English parties have little to celebrate as recent polls still have them crashing and burning at both ends 🔊 with their lost votes spread all over the place. But thanks to the magic of FPTP they would still bag 85% of seats on barely 60% of the popular vote so sure they're all right, Jack. Remember this comes just after local elections that saw one councillor elected on 18.7% of the vote in an eight-way contest, the lowest ever vote share on record for a winning candidate since Bede collated the minutiae of Britannia's country life 🔊. So pretty much everything is possible including upsets from some independent candidates as in East Devon (highly likely) or even South West Surrey (still unlikely but who knows who voters will seriously want to send packing?).
So the Local Elections in England and Northern Ireland have come and gone. As expected Conservatives took a massive drubbing and Labour a mild thumping. Fun part is that both Labour's Remainers and Leavers blame the losses on Corbyn's ambiguity on Brexit. While both Tory Remainers and Leavers blame the losses on May's futile attempts to strike an half-arsed deal with Corbyn. Then numbers don't lie (just only when they do, as I said before) and the election results are quite clear. Here's what we got (2014 LE results for Northern Ireland and 2015 LE results for England, as these were the seats up for election this time, and the notional count after boundary changes and some English councils merging):
Clearly there is a message in these results. Yes you get it: nothing shouts 'go on with Brexit As Usual' like Tories losing a quarter of their seats and UKIP four-fifths of theirs while LibDems more than double and Greens more than triple theirs. Or at least that's what Theremy Cormay heard. Never mind they're the only ones who did. They're the ones in charge so they can't be wrong. Or can they?
May and Corbyn have catch-22ed (or should it be caught-22?) themselves into a corner between rock and a hard place with their Mission Impossible Brexit Deal. Half and possibly more of Labour MPs want a permanent customs union and a confirmatory referendum but hardline Tories will have none of either. Then the EU is likely to reject a temporary customs union as implementing it outside the Single Market would create more problems than it would solve, and why the fuck bother with that anyway as it would not last beyond the ever likely snap GE. Besides any Maybyn deal would be voted down by all truly pro-European parties in Commons, a 62-strong voting bloc that would stand in the way of any unlikely compromise.
Voters are rightly puzzled by all this and it shows in the current voting intentions. Polls now have Conservatives in the mid-to-high twenties which would be their worst showing at any general electionin like…. forever. I say worstest since 1832 but only because I don't have electoral statistics any earlier that this, and anyway even lower than at the Blairwave elections of 1997 and 2001. Weighted average of the most recent polls has Labour in the low thirties, the kind of vote they bagged in the past only when losing elections, and the lowest for any winning party since…. try a wild guess…. you get it: 1832. Then denial is not just a river in Egypt. Or is it?
In the same 'flabbergasting missteps' category, I can't avoid mentioning three SNP Grandees (aye that's you Stewart, Angus and Alyn) offering Unionists yet another #SNPbad angle of attack on a silver platter, and in an anti-Independence paper to add insult to injury. Whose only excuse was that they dealt with Unionist abuse too. Which you can see for yourself took a whole smallish paragraph at the bottom of ten times as many lines devoted to 'cybernats'. And before I forget, the Herald's writer says he is pro-Independence, guess another 'proud Scot but….'. Could it be too that Our Grandees feared backlash from readers if they had published the same piece in The National? Just as I thought 🔊 things could only get better for the SNP, they might well have scored the own goal that will prove me wrong.
Useless (well, actually useful in this case) trivia: 'bob' here stands for 'BoB' as in 'Battle of Britain'. Hence the relevancy (sort of) to general election stuff. Simples.
My current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones fielded from 17 April to 7 May. Super-sample size is 10,995 with a theoretical 0.91% margin of error and it points to Labour leading by 5.7%. Of couse we already know that under current voting patterns, as inherited from the 2017 GE, Labour need more than this 🔊 for a majority. But only one recent poll predicted Labour bagging the double-digit lead they need, and the freshest ones are quite a mixed bag in that respect. For completeness' sake you should be aware that two other polls have surfaced from the same source on Twitteryesterday with some upsetting results, but I will not use them until I have the opportunity to read the full crosstabs directly from the pollsters' sites.
If there is something 🔊 specifically worth highlighting in all the current polling, it's obviously the combined Labour and Conservative voting intentions at their lowest for the last 75 years. Even the peak-LibDem and peak-UKIP elections don't come close. Besides, and unsurprisingly from where I stand, Change UK fail to be the major game-changers they hoped to be and don't stand a sporting chance at upsetting the system the way the Liberal-SDP Alliance almost did in the 1980s. Then of course the Brexit Party might become the year's sensation 🔊 by unfortunately finding themselves in the perfect position to become the upsetters Change UK fail to be.
There are some reasons to take current polling with just the weest pinch of salt. There has been a wave of EU election polling recently and more often than not pollsters include both the EU election and the GE in the same poll. Which I think leads to some amount of cross-pollination between the two sets of answers, possibly leading to overestimation of the Brexit Party in GE voting intentions. This notwithstanding there is still a disturbing similarity between UKIP in 2014 EU results vs 2015 GE results on one side, and Brexit Party in current EU polling vs current GE polling on the other.
The current weighted average of voting intentions again delivers a hung Parliament though it's progressively getting better for Labour. Same old 🔊 but we never tire of it, or do we? Main caveat is that polls rely on the assumption that all parties listed in their prompts would field candidates in every constituency. It surely will not be the case for UKIP and the Greens, and possibly neither Change UK nor the Brexit Party will have the required number of candidates or the resources needed for a full-blown UK-wide campaign. Projections also implicitly assume that the main voting patterns have not been disrupted substantially by new parties barging in almost out of the blue 🔊 and already bagging about one fifth of the popular vote. But only an actual election could tell us whether or not voting patterns have really changed, and in what way. So let's just wait and see, and do with what we have for now.
While there is ample evidence that a post-Brexit Tory government would only be driving the country backwards 🔊 to some Victorianish-cum-social-media times, what would happen under a Corbyn Premiership is still far from clear. Corbyn's status changing overnight from The Great Pretender 🔊 to Number Ten's Tenant might be a mixed blessing as he would have first to overcome the various rifts within Labour, and then would undoubtedly struggle to assemble a strong and stable government coalition. The LibDems are at face value the likeliest coalition partners and would certainly make the most of the leverage they would have to extract some major concessions like a second EU referendum that would go beyond confirmatory and be a complete reboot. At least that's what a recent YouGov poll says.
On current polling, again only the LibDems (number of seats up 142%) and the SNP (up 49%) would have a really good time 🔊 on Election Night. But the SNP should not take anything for granted yet, even with voting intentions above 40% and bagging 50+ seats thanks to a more fragmented Unionist vote. The Dundee North East by-election should be taken as a serious warning. It's fine to celebrate gaining back an SNP majority on Dundee Council but it was much more difficult than could possibly be foreseen. The SNP first preference vote fell by almost 7% from the 2017 election, and below 50% for the first time in that ward since STV is used for Council elections.
It is also quite a powerful warning sign that the SNP candidate bagged transfers only at a sluggish pace and failed to clear the quota until Count 5, resulting in the election being decided only on Count 6. Which means that the SNP bagged the seat only thanks to 469 transfers from Labour on the last possible count. Food for thought and reason to treat the upcoming elections, whether EU or snap GE, as challenges rather than opportunities. Because SNP voters have this disturbing thought pattern: it's my party 🔊 and I would do anything for them except perhaps bothering to vote when it looks like it's in the bag already. Don't say I did not warn you.
Current polling predicts that 102 seats would change hands. Which is quite a feat as out of twelve General Elections held over the last 45 years the 'Hundred Changes' hurdle was cleared at only three and nine 🔊 delivered far fewer shifts, ranging from 27 to 73. The three that topped the current projection: 1997 (185), 2010 (115) and 2015 (111). Of course 2015 is the outlier here with the SNP accounting for 50 of the changes, and remarkably the other two marked the beginning and the end of the New Labour Era. And I don't even mention the all-time record set in 1945 with a massive 279 seats changing hands. Now what we have in store for the next GE is quite a mixed bag and nothing like a tsunamish change as the full breakdown of gains and losses shows.
Labour are still far from the notional 61 gains and actual 69 gains they need for a majority. Apart from the unavoidable losses to the SNP in Scotland, they're not doing too well in Wales and London. In Wales Plaid Cymru is doing better and could gain at least one seat from Labour (Ynys Mon surely, Llanelli next most likely), while the Brexit Party is on the way to becoming a credible threat in a couple of seats with a strong Eurosceptic C2DE electorate (think Neath or Islwyn). There is a different pattern is London where Change UK will quite certainly hold two of their three seats in Corbyn's backyard and LibDems would snatch enough solidly pro-EU votes form Labour to make them lose their surprise 2017 gain in Kensington back to the Tories. But the main thing 🔊 here is that even avoiding the predicted losses in London and Wales would still not hand Labour a majority and some coalition deal would still be necessary with the LibDems having the same strong leverage. Even Labour holding all their Scottish seats would not cut it so maybe they will listen and go after Tories in England rather than after the SNP.
But Labour might find some reasons to celebrate in the full list of predicted losers which again includes quite a number of Tory frontbenchers. Amber Rudd is more than ever predicted to lose her marginal seat in Hastings and by a much larger margin than she held it by in 2017. Then she might want to try her luck in neighbouring Eastbourne where LibDem Brexiter Stephen Lloyd would definitely go down if challenged by an official candidate from his former party. Apart from her, three Ministers of State, the Solicitor General for England and Wales, nine Junior Ministers, four Parliamentary Private Secretaries, four Whips and two Vice-Chairs of the Conservative Party would lose their seats. Not that bad.
Interesting additions to the body count this time would be Graham Brady, yes THAT Graham, the current Chair of the 1922 Committee who took a long time making up his mind on whether he should stab May in the back right now or next week and somehow managed to do both; Steve Baker, the ever petulant Vice Chair of the European Research Group who threatened to vote against May in an upcoming no-confidence vote in Commons once it became clear none would happen again; and finally Craig Mackinlay whom you probably have never heard of but was first Acting Leader and then Deputy Leader of UKIP at the end of the previous millennium before he realized the grass was greener on the Tory side of the fence.
Can't conclude this section without mentioning that our very own Scottish Tories would lose no fewer than three Parliamentary Private Secretaries out of the four swept away in the whirlwind 🔊. Colin Clark, bagboy to Amber Rudd. Luke Graham, bagboy to David Lidington. Andrew Bowie, bagboy to Theresa May and the wannabe Secretary of State for Scotland we're all happy we never had.
Current polling would deliver only 54 marginal seats, not a high number compared to previous elections. Which makes it all the more surprising that a few supposedly safe Tory seats now fall into that category. Then this is a configuration where the swingometer has moved deeper into Tory territory, where Labour are predicted to overturn a 6k Tory majority in Dover and LibDems a 15k Tory majority in Yeovil so nothing should be taken for granted or as a complete surprise. My model also says that Brexit Party on 15% average means their lowest constituency vote share would be about 6% and not have that much of an impact, but their highest would be around 30%, still too low to get them a single seat but potentially a real gamechanger, and in most cases this would hit Tories harder than Labour. Meanwhile Change UK, on 4% average, would have a more evenly distributed vote in the 3%-5% range outside constituencies they currently hold, simply because the average predicted vote is too low for differentiating factors to alter it significantly from one seat to another. So let's just have a look at the current list of too-close-to-decisively-call seats.
Interesting Tory names in the close-to-the-woodchipper list include Mark Pawsey, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the First Secretary of State. A neat trick that allows Treeza to have TWO bagboys all to herself, Bowie in her incarnation as PM and Pawsey in her incarnation as FSS. Also Mims Davies, Under-Secretary of State for Civil Society and Loneliness. Naw I kid you not, the position really exists and that's one more MP on the government payroll. Simples. And they're not the only ones close to the exit as a grand total of three Ministers of State, three Junior Ministers and one Bagboy now find themselves in soon-to-be-unsafe seats.
But of course the biggest upset could happen in Rushcliffe, Nottinghamshire. A place you certainly have never heard of unless you're anorak enough to know it's Kenneth Clarke's seat, which he gained from Labour in 1970 and has held ever since without interruption, even bagging outright majorities of the popular vote at the last three GEs. But with the Brexit Party predicted to do extremely well all over the East Midlands he could lose up to a quarter of his voters and come extremely close to being unseated by Labour. If that were to happen he would be the first Father of the House in the whole recorded history of Commons as we know it (that is since 1801) to go for any reason other than death, voluntary retirement or being hermined out to make room for a younger buck. Clarke will be 82 by the time of the next scheduled GE and I don't see him accepting a peerage from the current Government so I guess his best option is retiring, selling his Memoirs to the highest bidder on the promise of some juicy as-yet-unreleased insights into the Thatcher and Cameron premierships (because nobody gives a rat's fuck about any insights into the Major premiership), and letting his party sort out the mess they created that puts even safe seats in jeopardy.
In line for an upset drubbing too would be Welwyn Hatfield, Hertfordshire. And the anoraks have it: Grant Shapps' seat, I heard you shouting it. For some reasons I don't really care to explore, East Anglia is predicted to have the strongest Brexit Party vote of all Little England, and indeed of the whole UK. So all Labour have to do here is sit back, hold on to their third of the vote and wait until the Brexit Party snatches away enough Tory votes to turn a supposedly safe seat into a winnable marginal. Labour might be in an even better position here as they held the seat from 1997 to 2005 so it's not like nobody there remembers what a Labour MP looks like. And I guess some Tories too would not shed a tear at the sight of Shapps going down 🔊.
The Alternate Commons you get after factoring in where the marginals could go remain favourable to Labour. Their worst case scenario would put them in an possibly awkward situation with the hypothetical Lab-SDLP-Lib coalition nine seats shy of a majority, and Labour cursing those fucking Sweaty Sock Jocks who wouldn't give them back the seats they're entitled to. Then minority governments can and do work and Labour might get away with it as the SNP would never do anything that would allow Tories to stage an unlikely comeback. Labour would still have the option to bring Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Change UK aboard on some sort of confidence and supply or non-agression pact and could thus pass critical legislation on a razor-thin majority. Their choice.
At the other end of the spectrum Labour overperforming polls, which appears to be the most likely scenario, would put them just three seats away from a majority without having to rely on LibDems. And even just one seat away with SDLP and possibly Sylvia Hermon coming to the rescue. Though strictly speaking it might not be Labour overperforming that much, but rather the Brexit Party overperforming to the point they send the Torytanic straight to the bottom for good. Which might very well have been Nigel Farage's Master Plan since the beginning. There is a case to be made that Farage does not need three dozen MPs to exert extreme influence on British politics. All he needs is the Conservative Party weakened to such an extent that he can spin the Brexit Party as the only serious alternative to 'socialist' Labour. Which is what we already see happening, or don't we?
Theresa May might have thought once there were only upsides in kicking the can down the road. But there is one fucking big downside too from her perspective: EU Parliament elections, that once were in doubt, will now happen no matter what and promise to deliver yet another iceberg across the bow of the Torytanic. Conservative voting intentions have fallen by almost two thirds since the first hypothetical EU election polling in January and by half since holding the election became a serious option in March. Of course the dominant trend is Tory votes massively leaking to the Brexit Party whose vote share has tripled since they were first polled in early April. Then why would anyone bother to vote for a party that can't even be bothered to publish a manifesto? 🔊 We have two polls fielded in the first week of May by Comres and YouGov and both point in the same direction, with the Brexit Party coming first and the Conservatives a distant third with LibDems breathing down their neck as the weighted average shows:
But these voting intentions also leave a bitter-sweet 🔊 aftertaste for Labour who would barely do better than in 2014. Seeing the Brexit Party tearing the Conservatives several new ones in Southern Little England is one side of the story, and does not even benefit Labour as the most dedicated pro-Europe voters Doon Sooth choose the LibDems, who would more than regain the votes they lost in these regions between 2009 and 2014, or even Change UK. Labour would also face strong competition from the Brexit Party in the Northern Powerhouse regions, which was to be expected as the Eurosceptic working class vote simply shifted from UKIP to the Brexit Party, and sometimes beyond that, like in the North East where Labour would now finish second in an almost perfect mirror image of the 2014 vote. Outside England, Labour would also lose quite a share of the pro-European vote to Plaid Cymru (up 3% from 2014) and the SNP (up 10% and here part of a wider pattern seen in other polls).
The seat projection based on the regional crosstabs provided in both late April polls shows that the Brexit Party would outperform 2014's UKIP and benefit from both the quirks of the highest averages method and a fragmented pro-European vote even in Remain-leaning areas. Exhibit A is the Greens losing all their three seats though not doing massively less well than in 2014, but simply because the LibDems and Change UK would snatch away enough votes to push Greens out of the allocation of seats, most spectacularly in the South East where Greens would lose half their 2014 votes.
YouGov have also tested the option of a Remain Pact including LibDems, Greens and Change UK, but in England only and ironically using the 'under one banner' catchphrase. Though I guess the irony was kind of lost on them. And they have good reasons not to extend such a dreamworld pact to Scotland and Wales. Under current polling Remainers would have to rally under Plaid Cymru's banner in Wales and that would switch one seat from the Brexit Party to Plaid Cymru. Clearly they would have to rally around the SNP in Scotland, which might be a drawing-and-quartering offence in someone's book, and that would switch one seat from the Brexit Party to the SNP. But of course it's much better to leave these seats with the New Model Blackshirts rather than hand them to those Pesky Nats on a silver platter. You know these people, they would turn that into 'support for Independence'. Fortunately pollsters know what's best for those oiks in the Colonies.
Tous ces moments perdus dans l'enchantement, qui ne reviendront jamais
Pas d'aujourd'hui pour nous, pour nous il n'y a rien à partager sauf le passé
Theresa May is certainly a woman of many talents. It is just a shame 🔊 that the only one she definitely lacks is the talent to lead. To quote Our Fearless Leader never in living memory, and then some generations before that, has an English Prime Minister displayed such a perfect blend of dishonesty and incompetence. Yet she will never be held accountable and pay the price. As a reward for her dismal failures and wrecking the Conservative Party, her successor will hermine her into Baroness May of Maidenhead, however weird that sounds.
Whatever she sells 🔊 these days is neither bought by public opinion nor by her own party. A recent poll had a record 92% of respondents thinking the English Government made a dug's breakfast of Brexit, and there is convincing circumstantial evidence of backbenchers engineering a Conservative Associations' uprising to oust her in case the 1922 Committee are not bawsy enough to circumvent the rules and do it themselves.
However close Theresa May be to her political sunset 🔊 we still don't know what shape it will take. The 1922 Committee might finally be convinced that setting a timetable for her departure by mutual consent might be a wiser choice than ousting here right here and now. Not because she might do better in the next few weeks than she did in the past two years but because all other available PM wannabes would be terrible at the job, all nineteen of them. Just try to picture McVey and Barnier in the same room and you get the gist.
So May could very well end up being that unique species of a politician: a lame duck PM by default. Which would probably increase the likelihood of a snap GE happening in the short term. May would probably not be in a position to make it happen but her successor might take the gamble even on unfavourable odds. Snap GE as the root canal of British politics: it will hurt like fuck but let's do this anyway as we can only heal afterwards. Or so they might think….
Events are moving fast again so keep the alarms on and stay tuned for further broadcasts.
Only those who will risk going too far Can possibly find out how far one can go
