Jeremy's Den: Westminster Projection

Seventy-nine years ago today an obscure French general spoke on the BBC and it made history although almost nobody actually heard it live
Also 35th Anniversary of the Battle of Orgreave and Paul McCartney's 77th birthday

Out Of Control 🔊

What's the big story now? Definitely not Change UK or Continuity Change UK or What The Fuck UK folding tent as they're the only party in recorded history whose take-off was a crash-landing and their dismal performance both at the European election and in GE polls demonstrated beyond any doubt it would have taken miracles 🔊 to keep them alive for any length of time. Some of them now joining the LibDems is the obvious career choice. Chuka Umunna earlier said that LibDems can't be trusted and now he has proved he can't be trusted so it's a perfect fit, or isn't it? Obvious irony here is that it makes Streatham the only seat in the whole UK that will be a Labour gain from LibDems when Chuka moves on to the greener pastures of Richmond Park or Twickenham. Expect Heidi Allen to see the light 🔊 too and follow soon as joining The LibDems is the only way she can hold her South Cambridgeshire seat after substantial LibDem gains there at Council elections and the European election.

We have had ten new GE polls since the European Parliament election and all send the same message. Now we have the Brexit Party solidly implanted among the major players and the Liberal Democrats strongly coming back in the wake of their European election success. All of which could have been avoided if both Labour and Conservatives had not fallen into the trap of gutless inanity over Brexit and had at some point decided to quit wasting time 🔊 and make some principled and meaningful choices. How Conservatives managed to lose all semblance of connection 🔊 with Leave voters and Labour with Remain voters, and both could only sit bewildered watching these voters flock to the Brexit Party and the LibDems, never ceases to amaze me.

The longer-term trends of polls since the 2017 GE show it in quite a brutal way. Labour and Conservatives both started to lose ground some time before the European election became a reality. At first it was just a matter of LibDems snatching some votes from both but it just took the LibDems to 10-12%, enough to make somewhat of an impression but not enough to seriously challenge the Blue-Red duopoly. Then the European election acted as a catalyst and truly brought the roof tumbling 🔊 down as voters saw it as an outlet for their frustrations with both the government and the opposition. In the light 🔊 of what happened to UKIP between the 2014 EE and the 2015 GE, I still don't believe the Brexit Party can hold on to 20-25% for more than a few months and will probably fall down to some 15% soon enough, which would see them probably bagging no more than 12-15 seats, but I think the LibDems are here to stay as a stronger third party in a more divided political landscape.

Then we shall never forget and never forgive that the current mess if totally on the Conservatives who always put factional interest within their own party before national interest. Totally on David Cameron for holding an unnecessary and divisive EU membership referendum and then making it binding when the authorising act said the exact opposite. Totally on Theresa May for her unique blend of dishonesty and incompetence, and kicking the can so far down the road that it made the European election unavoidable when nobody wanted it. Totally on the half of Conservative Party members who did not even vote for their own candidates and propelled the New Model Blackshirts to first party when they did not even exist six months ago.

Don't listen to the Nasty Party whining there is no way out 🔊 of the current clusterbùrach except by making it even worse with a No Deal Brexit and WTO rules. Where we are now is fully of their making and they shall be held accountable. Electoral annihilation might just be the bright side of it. Just remember Nye Bevan's words and realize how little has changed since he spoke them.

Which Side Are You On? 🔊

On current polling the Conservative vote share has fallen by roughly the same amount the Brexit Party now bags. While the Labour vote has fallen by roughly the same amount other parties on the center and left, from LibDems to Greens, have gained. Of course this is quite a simplification as voters have actually crisscrossed from party to party all over the place in more complex patterns. More remarkable is that the Greens' voting intentions have increased 340% on their 2017 vote share, LibDems' 160%, Plaid Cymru's 50%, SNP's 15% while Labour's dropped 45% and Conservatives' 53%. Now don't tell me there ain't no Brexit Effect out there. My current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones fielded from 4 to 14 June with a 10,244 super-sample and a 0.94% theoretical margin of error:

Some pollsters also publish crosstabs of voting intentions by nation and region and these show that there are no more heartlands all over England, just a multiplicity of borderlands 🔊 which might swing one way or the other on just some hundreds of votes, and not always the way you'd expect from past results. With the Brexit Party predicted on a double-digit vote share everywhere except Scotland and Northern Ireland, where they have zero presence anyway, all that Labour and Conservatives alike can hope for is a modicum of damage control.

These crosstabs again demonstrate that the combination of the LibDems staging a strong comeback among Remain-leaning voters and the Brexit Party snatching away Leave-leaning votes from both Labour and the Conservatives spells doom for both formerly major parties. Then the Brexit Party is their very own jointly-created Frankenstein Creature. In a rationally-managed cycle of events it should never have come to life 🔊. Yet it has and then swirled into hyperdrive 🔊 to heights never reached before by UKIP. With the added irony that Labour's and Tories' shenanigans also strengthened the SNP in a way they certainly never expected.

Showdown 🔊

On current polling we would have yet another hung Parliament with Labour coming out as the first party by a nose. But the increased fragmentation would put Labour in the awkward situation of having to seriously contemplate a solid deal with the SNP. Numbers don't lie: a Lab-SDLP-Lib coalition would bag just 282 seats, 41 shy of a majority and deals with the Greens and Plaid Cymru would not take them past the post. While some sort of contract with the SNP would take the Lab-led coalition to 335 seats, a 26-seat majority opening much better perspectives. Then this would still be less embarrassing than the Conservatives' rude awakening 🔊, falling below 100 seats for the first time in their history and way below the previous low point of Balfour's 131 in 1906.

Such results would be an outstanding success for the Liberal Democrats as bagging 74 seats would be their best performance ever and, if we go further back in time 🔊 to the days of the old Liberal Party, their best since 1923 and their second best since 1910. Quite a feat for a party that the Coalition mistake left for dead just four years ago. They also show the SNP should not put any limit to their ambitions, more on that later. The breakdown of projected seats by nation and region illustrates the amount of damage sustained by both Labour and Conservatives, even where their long-held seats were supposed to be relatively safe.

The changes in voting patterns are even more striking when you compare the 2017 results and the current projection for the four commonly-used meta-regions outside Scotland. The Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats scoring significant gains across the board 🔊 has a distinctly different impact on the number of seats Labour and Conservatives can expect, if current polls correctly predict the election results, when regional contexts come into play.

Despite serious losses, Labour prove to be more resilient almost everywhere, holding 73% of their seats in the North, 81% in Midlands and Wales, and even gaining a few in the South. For once their sinkholes in many areas prove useful in resisting the Brexit Party surge as a majority of Leave-leaning Labour seats would be held. Only notable exception is London where the rise of the LibDem vote is bound to hurt Labour more than the Tories, and so much for 'positive ambiguity' working with affluent ABC1s. Meanwhile the Conservatives are reduced to almost fringe status all over, losing 75% of their seats in the North, 57% in Midlands and Wales, and a stunning 82% in the Southern Little England where the two-pronged assault from Brexit and LibDems proves successful beyond either's wildest dreams 🔊.

Winds Of Change 🔊

On current voting intentions 314 sitting MPs would bid their sometimes long-held seats sayonara 🔊, fewer than in my last projection but still a massive all-time high, 47 ahead of 1906 and 35 ahead of 1945, the current record-holder. The summary of gains and losses just confirms the kind of challenge the two formerly major parties would have to face. Which of course comes as no surprise when Labour and Tories combined are predicted to get the same share of the popular vote as the Brexit Party and LibDems combined (42.7% vs 42.9%). So that assaults from both the center and the far-right can only be successful.

I will again spare you the full list of fatalities and just offer a summary of where the 'Before' seats are predicted to go and the 'After' seats predicted to come from. Interesting noticeable change here is LibDems predicted to lose one seat for the first time in ages; Of course this is Streatham, which they inherited quite by chance anyway, and is predicted to switch back to Labour after Chuka Umunna sails off to a safer LibDem-held or prospective LibDem seat somewhere else in London. But LibDems would still be massively successful just the same 🔊. On the other hand, Election Night would not be that good for Labour who would lose fifteen members of the Shadow Cabinet including Scottish luminaries Paul Sweeney and Lesley Laird.

Despite Conservatives doing slightly better than in my previous projection, the frontbench and government payroll would still pay a heavy toll. Gone would be Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, de facto Deputy Prime Minister David Lidington, Paymaster General Jesse Norman, Attorney General for England and Wales Geoffrey Cox, Solicitor General for England and Wales Lucy Frazer, Leader of Commons Mel Stride. Plus nine Secretaries of State (Amber Rudd, Matt Hancock, Jeremy Hunt, David Gauke, Rory Stewart, Penny Mordaunt, Greg Clark, David Mundell and Stephen Barclay), nineteen Ministers of State, fifteen Junior Ministers, ten Parliamentary Private Secretaries, five Whips and three Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. Add to that the current Chair and three Vice-Chairs of the Tory Party, the two current Acting Co-Chairs of the 1922 Committee (Charles Walker and Cheryl Gillan) and its former Chair (Graham Brady). Speaker John Bercow and the Tory Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing are still both predicted to be unseated by the Brexit Party.

On The Threshold Of Fire 🔊

On current polling 157 seats would rate as marginals, 124 of them in England outside London. This is again more than in my previous projection and more than double what we had after both the 2015 and 2017 elections. Due to the added uncertainty built in the new voting patterns, the dozenish seats that fell out of the 'changing hands' bucket went directly into the shadowlands 🔊 where most seats are up for grabs and might randomly switch to any of the four major players. Here is the cartography of marginality we have now:

Like I did last time I will not even try to go through the million 🔊 or so possible permutations but just concentrate on what might happen if the Brexit Party vote wanders to the edges of the margin of error, regardless of what happens in the seats not involving the Brexiteers. Which would still leave 120 of the 157 marginals in the battleground and deliver vastly different possible futures.

The Brexit Party underperforming would allow a better-than-rump Conservative Party to survive and live on to fight another day. Ironically the theoretical Lab-SDLP-Lib coalition would still fall a few seats short of a majority. Even a mini-Rainbow coalition with the Greens and Plaid Cymru would deliver only a two-seat majority so the necessity of some deal with the SNP would not be totally off the table. At the other extreme a Brexit-Tory alliance would make it by 27 seats, or wouldn't. I can't rule out the possibility that thirtyish Tory MPs would defect to not make it happen, thus paving the way for a major crisis and another snap GE. The 37 who voted for Rory Stewart today being the obvious ones.

The Sky Is No Limit 🔊

After all the doom and gloom Doon Sooth, what's happening in Scotland is quite the refreshing sight, sweeter than honey 🔊 for sore eyes. The SNP is still doing very well in polls and we know now they can be trusted as they got the SNP result right at the European election. So it's safe to assume that the SNP would bag slightly above 40% at a forthcoming GE, which would translate into 51-55 seats given the increased scattering of the Unionist vote after the LibDem and Brexit Party surges that can be seen in Scotland too, though to a much lesser extent than in England for the Brexiteers. There has been only one GE poll of Scotland after the European election and here's what it says:

These voting intentions come from the Lord Ashcroft exit poll fielded on the day of the European election, which also polled voting intentions for the next GE. Oddly this poll has been dismissed by some as it did not have a randomly selected sample but polled 10k of the 37% who bothered to get out to vote on 23 May. I think dismissing it on these grounds is a bit rich when you consider standard polls are routinely double-weighted on demographics and likelihood to vote. Here Ashcroft offers a massive sample of people who actually did vote so I guess it's just as good as the convoluted weighting by likelihood to vote used otherwise, and just as reliable if not more. And the Scottish subsample was 965, almost as many respondents as Scotland-only polls who usually have around 1k respondents, so again just as reliable and good enough for me anyway. Yet another reason to validate the Ashcroft poll is how it compares with the result of the European election:

What we have here is quite similar to what we see in the most recent UK-wide polls: the Brexit Party losing some ground as a number of Tory and Labour voters switch back to their original parties but not bringing them back to their pre-EE levels; LibDems quite close to their EE result though slightly down; then the Scottish variant with the SNP snatching some votes off the Greens which looks quite logical in the context of a FPTP election. And here are the seat ranges these voting intentions predict, factoring in the usual margin of error:

It's not far-fetched to predict Scottish Tories are now headed for a complete wipe-out. Their U-turns and inconsistencies have made them just as irrelevant as Scottish Labour. Even in a Brave Tory World only David Mundell and John Lamont would hold their seats by a hair. Labour would not fare better with only Ian Murray possibly holding his seat. Though it's far from a done deal as he would still need the same kind of tactical voting as in 2017, which might not happen with the Tory vote going down in Edinburgh South the same way as it does all over Scotland.

LibDems have brighter prospects if polls are to be believed, but I have major doubts about two seats my model allocates them. I don't see them gaining North East Fife from the SNP as their major Europhile talking points would fall flat against Stephen Gethins, probably the most dedicated Europhile of all SNP MPs. Also Edinburgh West is far from a safe LibDem seat. The 2017 LibDem gain was a combination of three factors: tactical voting, fallout of the Michelle Thomson situation, a not-too-impressive SNP candidate who had already managed to lose the almost coterminous (or should that be coextensive?) Holyrood seat a year before. Not necessarily in this order. At least two of these factors won't be repeated in any future GE so the SNP gaining the seat back is fully within the range of plausible outcomes.

As always the key to the next GE will be getting voters out to the polling places. It worked superbly, and honestly much better than I expected, at the European election with 90% of the increase in turnout going to the SNP thanks to the superb work of the #ActiveSNP network, so there is every reason to be optimistic for the forthcoming GE once it is clear for all the electorate how high the stakes will be. Then Scotland will have a strengthened mandate for independence and can tell Tories how wrong they were to try and deny us our right to decide our own future, now is the time 🔊 and we've been waiting for this for too many years 🔊 so fuck it and let's go 🔊.

We all have a song, life is the dance
And right or wrong, we will all take the chance
Now is the time, the time is right
We've got no reason to wait, let's do it tonight
This is the night, tonight is the time
Bring the dream to life and let it shine
© Grace Slick, 1989

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over 🔊

Five weeks now until we know who the next Prime Minister of England will be. Probably Boris Johnson unless some unlikely United Front of Anyone-But-Boris emerges. I don't believe it will but then you never know what you can expect from a contest where Rory Stewart of all people stands out as the champion 🔊 of sanity and responsibility. Then the other PM wannabes are too busy listening to the sirens from America 🔊, whose only goal is to put everything on the table in a future trade deal including the NHS as Donald Trump said, though he obviously doesn't even know what the NHS actually is, and make as much money as possible on the backs of the British 99%, all to benefit the American 1%. Because the American HMOs and Big Pharma would never share the millions they would steal from the British oiks with the British 1%, that's for sure 🔊, or would they?

In the short term the next Prime Minister still has the option of proroguing Parliament until after Halloween, which would be borderline unconstitutional as the English Government would then have no choice other than using the Royal Prerogative to secure a No Deal Brexit. Which would inevitably be challenged in Court as the Supreme Court has already ruled the Royal Prerogative could not be used to invoke Article 50 and it could obviously be argued it set a precedent for all similar matters. But the heart of the matter would be in the way suspending Parliament could be spun for the benefit of public opinion: as the first instance of dictatorship in the UK since the days of Oliver Cromwell, and even Boris Johnson might want to avoid that sort of controversy.

Of course the constitutional outrage can happen only if Johnson survives a no-confidence vote. The SNP will definitely seek it and all Labour have to do is whip their MPs into supporting it if they are really serious about kicking the Tories out. Then odds are Theresa May's wafer-thin majority in the last confidence vote would be overturned as it would take only a handful of Tory defectors to defeat Johnson, even if the DUP still supported him, and head straight into a snap GE before year's end. Again the 37 who voted for Rory Stewart are the obvious ones and it would take only a fourth of them to switch the result against Johnson. So in an odd way the MSM's current self-fulfilling prophecy might end up both fulfilled and unfulfilled: Johnson would become Prime Minister but his Premiership would last even less than the Wellington Caretaker Administration, the shortest in history.

In the long run the Conservatives may suffer the same fate as befell the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC) a quarter of a century ago. After two consecutive terms as a majority their vote share plummeted from 43% to 16% at the 1993 Federal Election, strikingly similar to what polls predict for our own Conservatives right now. They were left with only 2 MPs and were displaced as the leading right-wing party by the Reform Party, a relatively young party as they were founded in 1987, and one with a populist manifesto quite similar to UKIP or the Brexit Party. To cut a long story short, after the PC again did poorly at the 2000 Federal Election, they agreed to a merger with the Canadian Alliance, as the Reform Party had rebranded itself in the meantime after a number of PC members and even a few local branches defected to it, which was a de facto takeover of the rump PC by the Alliance and gave birth to the current Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), on a distinctly more populist and radically conservative manifesto than the 'Red Toryism' of the old PC.

The trick worked as the reformed CPC under Stephen Harper, himself a former member of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, went on to serve two terms as a minority government and one as a majority government before being heavily defeated by Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party in 2015, but is bound for an upset comeback later this year in the wake of Trudeau's self-engineered downfall. A similar scenario could happen in the UK in the fallout of a major election defeat, as a number of Conservatives are openly not averse to some kind of rapprochement with the Brexit Party on a deliberately hardline manifesto, or even letting Nigel Farage hijack 🔊 their own party, even if that means losing some handfuls of 'moderate' MPs to the LibDems. Just a hunch though. Time will tell.

The future ain't what it used to be, as the saying goes, so stay tuned for further upsets and count on me 🔊 for more updates

I'll tell you a fact of life: change is inevitable
(Paul Darrow as Kerr Avon in Blake's 7, episode The Web, 1978)

Jeremy's Den

18/06/2019

Westminster Projection - 18 June 2019 Update