85th Anniversary of the Night of the Long Knives, also David Lidington's 63th birthday and Rupert Graves' 56th
© Peter Gabriel, 1986
Signal To Noise 🔊
Recent GE polling is as erratic as it ever was and there is more than the usual 'house effect' (in-built bias in the pollster's methodology) at work here. In polls fielded since the European election the Brexit Party is anywhere from 18% to 26% and first party, no so sorry second party, and now that I think of it no again just third party. Labour are in the same waters between 19% and 27% and first, second or third depending on which goat's entrails you have handy right now. Conservatives too somewhere out there between 17% and 26%, though there is some semblance of consensus they could finally end up fourth party. LibDems too could come out fourth, unless they're first, or unless…. fuck it they could be anywhere, just pick the right poll. But not all polls can be wrong, some of them have to be right. After all Ipsos-MORI got the European election almost right, though they still overestimated the Brexit Party. But not all polls can be right either.
I think all the prognosticators out there should be humble enough to recognize this. Especially those who go on live TV for a fee and deliver strong definitive conclusions from just one poll. Not naming names here, just a random example. Then in all probability the next GE will humble them (us) all by going a totally different way from the best-argued predictions. Happened before and will happen again. After all what we can gather from polls now is just the difference between Conservative being woodchipped to 80 seats or honourably surviving on 180, with the Brexit Party either almost at Number Ten on 290 seats or back to obscurity on 20. This point being made, let's go back to the current batch of polls as they're all we have left after all is said and done, as they are the primeval clay our prediction golems are made of.
We've had eight polls so far fielded after the Peterborough by-election that saw the media's self-fulfilling prophecy of a Brexit Party gain narrowly defeated by voters. This batch are just as contradictory and disconcerting as anything we've had since the European election. You can see there is a difference of 6% to 14% between the highs and lows for each of four main contenders, which raises eyebrows when you realize some of these polls were fielded simultaneously but return very different pictures of public opinion. And I don't expect it to get better any time soon.
Family Snapshot 🔊
In a perfect world psephologists should be able to tell the signal from the noise in what polls tell us, or don't tell us. Only right now we can't as we are just as confused as public opinion. So the best of all bad choices is to rely on what you get from the weighted average of current polls and what you can make of this instant snapshot. Which is kind of redundantly repetitive but never mind. This is us-psephos' equivalent to the augurs' aves spicere and our best way to predict the past and replay the future, or the other way round, or whatever. My current super-sample is based on the six most recently published polls, fielded 9 to 25 June. Super-sample size is 11,099 with a theoretical 0.9% margin of error, though that means close to fuck all when individual polls deliver such different results.
What we have here is a bump in what was bound to be a major realignment. Both Labour and Tories are still predicted to hold about half of their 2017 voters. About 40% of 2017 Tory voters would switch to the Brexit Party and about 10% to the LibDems, which is probably representative of the proportion of Hard Brexiteers vs Soft Brexiteers vs Remainers in the Tory electorate. Polls also show that the Labour leadership, or whatever passes as one these days, totally misread their electorate. Right now just about 10% of their 2017 voters would embrace radical Leaverism and switch to the Brexit Party, while 20% would switch to the LibDems and 15% to the Greens to support their Europhile manifestos. But the Brexit Party's vote share is down 2% from ten days ago, though it does not signal the beginning of a downward spiral. Yet. But we have one poll with Brexit down to 12%, their lowest since before the European election. Time will tell if it is just an outlier or a harbinger of things to come. The breakdown of voting intentions by nation and region, based on what crosstabs pollsters publish, is also quite enlightening.
The Tories have started to somewhat regain lost ground in Southern Little England, though still massively challenged from both sides by Brexit and LibDems. Labour prove to be somewhat more resilient in the Northern Powerhouse as the Brexit Party snatches a greater proportion of the Tory vote than average, up to 60-70%, which is both enough to make the Tories irrelevant there, but not enough to endanger the most solid Labour strongholds. And although the Brexit Party are slightly down I just wouldn't write them off just yet, even if I stand by my prediction that they will vanish back to the backwaters of English politics in due course. Only just five weeks after their first electoral breakthrough seems too early for this.
The comparison of Brexit Party voting intentions and UKIP's in 2014 still shows Brexit doing better right now than UKIP did five years ago. And the trend of their voting intentions is not a massive downward spiral yet. UKIP too had some weaker polls in the same timeframe in 2014 and still managed to make their presence felt at the 2015 GE. Changes in voting patterns also mean the Brexit Party now would bag more seats than UKIP did then. 12.6% meant just one seat in 2015, and then almost by chance. The same vote in 2019 would mean something like 10-12 seats. Bear in mind too the Brexit Party don't actually come from nowhere and didn't totally start from scratch. They're relying on a sizeable chunk of the erstwhile Tory electorate and will last as long as they hang on to it. Might go on for months then before they crashland and even a Johnson Premiership would not necessarily achieve this.
The comparison of Brexit Party voting intentions and UKIP's in 2014 still shows Brexit doing better right now than UKIP did five years ago. And the trend of their voting intentions is not a massive downward spiral yet. UKIP too had some weaker polls in the same timeframe in 2014 and still managed to make their presence felt at the 2015 GE. Changes in voting patterns also mean the Brexit Party now would bag more seats than UKIP did then. 12.6% meant just one seat in 2015, and then almost by chance. The same vote in 2019 would mean something like 10-12 seats. Bear in mind too the Brexit Party don't actually come from nowhere and didn't totally start from scratch. They're relying on a sizeable chunk of the erstwhile Tory electorate and will last as long as they hang on to it. Might go on for months then before they crashland and even a Johnson Premiership would not necessarily achieve this.
© Peter Gabriel, 1980
Down The Dolce Vita 🔊
On current polling Labour would serendipitously end up as the first party by a significant margin, but in a hung Parliament again. For quite a while now voters have made it a habit of challenging the 'strong majority' logic of FPTP, and I guess it will not end anytime soon with the 'political offer' clearly leading to a fragmented vote as seldom if ever seen before. So the prospective Labour PM, who might or might not be Jeremy Corbyn, would have a difficult task ahead as the most obvious Lab-SDLP-Lib choice of a coalition would bag only 301 seats, 22 shy of a majority. I guess nobody would gamble a minority government on such results as a divided opposition doesn't mean the government can get everything they want through Commons. Then Labour would have to strike some deal with the SNP, probably an upgraded version of the traditional confidence and supply, including a formal pledge not to get in the way of the Second Independence Referendum.
The most salient point here might be the Brexit Party down 62 seats on what I projected ten days ago and down 75 on three weeks ago, but also 119 up on what we had five weeks ago. All this does not mean we have seen Peak Brexit yet. Remember that some months ago we had the pendulum swinging back and forth between a Tory victory and a Labour victory, so predicting which way the electorate will go six months from now is clearly mission impossible. A lot will depend on the outcome of the Tory leadership contest, more on that below, but also on Labour's ability to finally up their game and make tough choices. And possibly also on Labour avoiding painting themselves into corners at every opportunity, as U-turning on matters of principle can be more damaging than having no principles at all.
Despite their slight fall in voting intentions, the Brexit Party would still bag more seats than the Conservatives in five of eight English regions, more than Labour in four and come out as the first party in three. Even with Conservatives regaining some ground in Southern Little England, the Brexit Party would still be the first party Doon Sooth by a hair, probably because the LibDems are still predicted to score big gains there capitalizing on a still strong Europhile vote. Again Labour and Tories can only blame themselves for this situation, the result of their failure to make the principled decisions at the appropriate time and deluding themselves into thinking they could get away with it for all of eternity. Having pulled the trigger five times unharmed does not make you a winner at Russian roulette.
Bully For You 🔊
On current polling 250 seats would change hands, the third largest changewave after 1945 and 1906, way ahead of 1997 when 'only' 185 seats switched sides. The summary of gains and losses confirms that Labour would prove more resilient than the Conservatives, but of course they did not see the bulk of their core electorate leaving them at the European election. In a normal functional world, losing 27 seats and being pushed back roughly to 2015 would mean Corbyn would have to resign. But in the weird environment we have now he would certainly get away with it and even be rewarded with a Premiership, as Labour would after all have won the election, even if it would be in the worst possible way. In fact the most embarrassing part for The Other Jeremy would be losing eight seats in his own Londoner backyard, including three to the otherwise doomed Conservatives.
The full cartography of gains and losses again says the Tory frontbench and the Government payroll would be decimated. Which is metaphorically right but technically wrong as 'decimated' means 'one-in-ten down' and here we're speaking more like a quarter or a third depending on which perimeter of the Government payroll you consider: legally constrained or discretionary, 'paid payroll' or 'unpaid payroll'. Aye, 'unpaid payroll' is actually a thing, just look up Parliamentary Private Secretary and you'll see how a 'payroll' is actually not always a payroll, and how you can be on the 'payroll' without getting paid. Simples. On current numbers two Law Officers (which is indeed the proper wording for a few high-ranking ministerial posts such as Attorney General or Solicitor General, not a toff way of describing coppers), five Secretaries of State (Amber Rudd, Stephen Barclay, Penny Mordaunt, Greg Clark and Matt Hancock), sixteen senior Ministers (including David Lidington, Geoffrey Cox and Liz Truss), eight junior Ministers, six PPSs and seven whips would lose their seats.
On the bright side (for them) Jeremy Hunt, David Mundell, Liam Fox and Rory Stewart would hold their seats this time, if only by the smallishest of margins. Other big names like Graham Brady, Sam Gyimah, Dominic Raab, Stephen Crabb, Justine Greening, Mark Harper and Grant Shapps would also be unseated, most of them by the Brexit Party. Another notable Conservative loss would be Rushcliffe, Kenneth Clarke's seat in various incarnations for almost 50 years, but his successor would be the one losing it. And it would be quite fitting if Clarke's last vote before dissolution happened to be against confidence in PM Johnson, thus triggering the snap GE.
Of course Labour too would suffer some significant losses. Ten members of the current Shadow Cabinet would lose their seats, eight of them to the Brexit Party and two to the SNP (the usual losers Paul Sweeney and Lesley Laird). Other notable Balls moments would hit Yvette Cooper, Dennis Skinner (unless he chooses to retire before the snap GE but Bolsover would turn Brexit-blue anyway), Kate Hoey, Jon Cruddas, Welsh veteran Albert Owen and former PM-hopeful Ed Miliband. Much less of a Yorkshire Chainsaw Massacre than in previous projections though, with Labour managing to hold more than 200 of their current seats. The one extinction event would hit Change UK, or What The Fuck UK they're called at the time of the election, with the only two possible survivors being Chuka Umunna, but for a different party and a different seat, and Heidi Allen if she too defects to the LibDems soon enough.
© Peter Gabriel, 1986
Flotsam And Jetsam 🔊
The current batch of polls would deliver 173 marginal seats, more than double what we had after the 2017 GE, with 132 involving the Brexit Party either as the projected winner of the projected runner-up. In many areas Brexit-on-Anyone have displaced the traditional Blue-on-Red and Red-on-Blue as the most common form of battlegrounds. This also illustrates one of the Brexit Party's weaknesses: they often find themselves in close competitions because they don't rely on a long-established electoral base, but for the most part on defectors from another party's historical electoral base. Just the kind of voters who will flock back home in the proper set of circumstances, as happened not so long ago with UKIP. I'm again not saying it will happen en masse tomorrow but Peterborough was a warning sign that it is actually already happening on a small scale, and later polls have confirmed it.
The alternate scenarios we can deduct from this cartography of marginals are less risky for Labour than for any of the right-wing parties, even if sometimes counter-intuitively so. In their best case scenario, a Lab-SDLP-Lib coalition would be up to 332 seats, a 22-seat majority, and would not even have to ask the SNP for support. Which would be the SNP's worst nightmare scenario as there would be no way to blackmail Labour into a Section 30 Order or even DevoMax. But the Brexit Party doing better than expected and on 200+ seats would revive plans for some sort of RainbowMax Alliance involving anyone between the Conservatives and Sinn Féin. This could bag up to 332 seats, a 19-seat majority, and would fall apart without the 52 SNP seats. In which case the SNP would be wrong to seek a Section 30 Order as the obvious bargaining chips would be Full Fiscal Autonomy and full devolution of welfare first, with full devolution of constitutional powers to follow, effectively abolishing Section 30 by making Holyrood the sole Masters of the Independence Timeline.
At the other end of the spectrum, a Brexitory Alliance with DUP support would bag only 301 seats, thirteen short of a majority. Which is only theoretical anyway as such a coalition has about a frozen dick's chance in Hell of ever happening. Even in a rump Conservative Party reduced to fewer seats than ever in its history, odds are enough sane minds would remain to prevent just that scenario.
Perspective 🔊
In their never ending quest to feel the pulse of the Conservative Party in all sorts of ways, YouGov recently fielded a poll of 892 Conservative Party members, which is probably as close to a representative sample you'll ever get. Aye that's the poll that says 46% of Conservatives would be happy with Nigel Farage as the leader of their own party. Kind of a calibration of the overall level of craziness here. Some parts of this poll have received widespread coverage, and I will dissect the juiciest bits later. But first the respondents were asked whether or not they see the other parties as a threat to the Tories. With some unexpected results.
Tory members are correct in identifying the Brexit Party as the main threat and Labour as a somewhat lesser threat, at least for the time being. But we have seen earlier that current polling is quite unstable and it would take very little for the levels of threat to be reversed. Then I am surprised to see a solid majority considering the LibDems are not a threat when polling shows them neck to neck with the Tories for third place, harvesting a significant number of Tory seats all over England and especially in the South. Also only a quarter naming the SNP as a threat is a surprise when you have Scottish polls and seat projections in mind. YouGov crosstabbed this with the meta-regions, which might provide some useful insights as perception is circumstantial as you certainly know, meaning local factors can alter it. Only the data say these factors don't actually have that much of an impact, statistically speaking.
More Southern Tories than average considering the Brexit Party a threat makes sense after the European election, and with seat projections showing this is where the Faragists are likely to massively snatch away Tory seats. The Scottish Tories' perception makes less sense unless you admit they think UK-globally and not just Scotland-oriented, as the Brexit Party are not a first-tier threat to Tories in Scotland. They're too weak to bag any Tory seat but just strong enough to be a second-tier threat, meaning they would take away enough of the Tory vote to switch ten seats at least to the SNP, and possibly all thirteen. Same goes for the way Scottish Tories perceive Scottish Labour. Quite obviously Scottish Labour these days are not a threat to anyone but themselves, except under some very special circumstances (more on this below). They have lost all sense a direction and would not find their way in the Glasgow Subway even if you gave them a map, and wouldn't know their ass from their head if they didn't have it handed to them by Nicola Sturgeon every week at FMQs.
Tories everywhere seem to have a hard time taking the LibDems seriously, except by a narrow margin in London. Then polls show that LibDems are probably more a threat to Labour than the Tories in London. LibDems should also be taken more seriously in the South where they're predicted to emerge as the third party after the Brexiteer shitstorm takes the heaviest of all tolls on the Little Englander Tories. Finally only 39% of Scottish Tories considering the SNP as a threat is also quite counter-intuitive when current polling show the SNP's lead has risen from 8% to 20% and a few polls even predict Tories falling back to third place behind Labour. Which of course is also a sign of the very bad shape both are in.
© Peter Gabriel, Horst Königstein 1980
Burn You Up Burn You Down 🔊
When I thought pollsters were all just going through the motions, YouGov had their Black Mirror moment with this bizarre idea to poll not ourselves but our future selves in alternate timelines. Four of them actually, all set in the spring of 2020. Now just fancy a snap GE happening then and how you would vote if Boris Johnson was PM and Brexit had happened as planned, or if it wouldn't have happened. Then try to figure out how you would vote a year from now if Jeremy Hunt was PM and if Brexit had happened, or not. That's what YouGov did and the results are quite enlightening. Common wisdom among Tories is that Johnson is their best choice to survive a snap GE and that failing to deliver Brexit would kill them. The YouGov poll supports this broadly, but then not quite, and has some surprising details too.
The only weakness is that YouGov did not specify which kind of Brexit they have in mind, but I have a hunch respondents took it for granted it would be a No Deal. Which makes it even more amazing that any sort of Brexit could be considered even remotely 'successful' when the light at the end of the tunnel here is actually the train rushing towards you and your only chance at survival is to get the fuck off the track. So here are the voting intentions in the four scenarios. Which are of course totally different from what you get in regular polls as they explore the 'here and now' instead of hypothetical 'there and thens':
So common wisdom is right on one count: Boris would do better than Jeremy, though 34% can't be considered a massive and convincing success, being 9% down on the 2017 result that was already considered pretty bad for the Conservatives. And what common wisdom totally misses, as it doesn't address it, is that changes in voting patterns would first and foremost benefit the LibDems who would basically triple their vote share, regain third party status, and appear as a more credible opposition than a still 'positively ambiguous' Labour. Seat projections also deliver some surprising results as what matters is not always how many votes you get, but also how far ahead from the nearest opposition you are. So the magic tricks of FPTP would deliver this:
Even in a Johnsonite 'Brexit Unbound' dystopia, the Conservatives would lose ground compared to what Theresa May achieved in 2017. Johnson's Premiership would probably end then as the best he could do would be 315 seats if deals were reached with both DUP and the Brexit Party. But, even with the Faragists reduced to a UKIPish share of the vote, you certainly could expect a number of 'moderate' Tories to stand in the way of such alliances and then it's Bye Bye Boris. Not that it would make things any easier for PM Starmer (remember we're in an alternate timeline here) as he would still need a Rainbow Plus Alliance, involving everyone from left to center and their dogs, and thus end up with only 326 seats, an uneasy eight-seat majority. The aftermath of a Huntian Brexit Unbound would be quite devastating for Tories, falling below 300 seats, but a Labour PM would still need to include the SNP in any sort of coalition. Truly ironic.
The projection of a Failed Brexit snap GE are consistent with the worst of the current 'here and now' polling and would deliver an unmanageable mess. The combination of the Brexit Party gaining Leave-leaning seats all over the place from both Labour and Tories, and the LibDems capitalizing on the Europhile vote to hurt Labour even more, and probably beyond what their ambiguities actually deserve. In this sort of situation you can easily imagine Nigel Farage dumping his MEP seat and standing for MP in the hope of becoming PM as the 'natural leader' of a Brexit Crazy coalition. Polls show that Tory membership would not be averse to such an outcome, but the real question is how many of their MPs would actually support it.
YouGov's poll also shed an interesting light on what would happen in London. Of course this is based on subsamples and alternate realities, so must be taken with quite the pinch of salt. However there is one thing in common with recent 'real world' polling: Labour doing quite badly in Corbyn's own backyard with again the LibDems making significant progress in the Capital of England that voted 60% Remain three years ago. The oddities of FPTP mean that it would not always translate into massive gains in seats, but sometimes it would if stars properly align. Here are the voting intentions and seat projections for all four scenarios:
A Borisified 'successful' Brexit would take the Conservatives to first place for the first time since 1992. While Europhile ABC1s would help the LibDems seriously denting Labour's strongholds, taking them to a level never seen since 2005 in the fallout from the Iraq War, when some deluded themselves into believing the LibDems were some progressive libertarian alternative to a right-wingish authoritarian New Labour. In the Failed Brexit options, Brexiteers would gain Dagenham and Rainham from Labour under PM Johnson, Jon Cruddas' seat. Under PM Hunt they would also snatch Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) from Labour, Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), Uxbridge and South Ruislip from the Conservatives. The massive karmatic irony here being of course that the last named is no other than Boris Johnson's very own seat. No doubt PM Hunt would love that and maybe that would be some solace after also losing his own South West Surrey seat to the Brexiteers.
What the multiverse says about Scotland is less dramatic and can indeed be seen as a natural evolution of what current 'real polls' say, with all scenarios just solidifying the SNP's dominant position further, around 45% of the votes. Even so the seat projection still has the SNP in the familiar 50-55 seats range and the LibDems firmly entrenched in their current four seats with the remote possibility of gaining a fifth, with both Tories and Labour a wafer away from obliteration. Oddly only the Boris-Brexit option would save two Tory seats, Lamont's and Mundell's, though with such wee margins that 'skin of their teeth' doesn't even start to describe it.
Here the total vote for pro-Independence parties would be close to 50%, which does not actually mean much as pro-Independence parties bagged 51.5% of the vote at the 2015 GE, eight months after IndyRef had been lost by 11%. So try not to read too much into this and consider it only one of many positive signs down the road to IndyRef2. Yes rising to 53% if the Borisverse becomes reality and a continued Pro-Indy majority at Holyrood, if recent polling is to be believed, are indeed more important and more conclusive than the GE voting intentions in whatever version of an uncertain future.
© Peter Gabriel, 1982
Digging In The Dirt 🔊
Survation also polled a hypothetical multiverse, though not the same one as YouGov. They tested their baseline results against what would happen (or not) if the PM at the time of the election was Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid or Rory Stewart. Despite the last three being out of the picture now, it's still fun to see how the Tories would have fared under their leadership. The impact of each of them on the Scottish vote is also quite interesting and sometimes downright surprising. As no date for the election was specified, unlike in the YouGov poll, let's say this is a snapshot of what would happen at a Halloween snap GE after a lost no-confidence vote. Caveat here is that the Survation poll is more favourable for Labour than most others. If the next GE matches it the hypothetical Lab-SDLP-Lib coalition would bag 326 seats, an 8-seat majority. So they would not need the SNP but could choose to play it safe by bringing the Greens and Plaid Cymru into the coalition for 332 seats overall, a 20-seat majority. Anyway here is what the poll predicts in the various multiverses, voting intentions first and then seat projections:
First surprise is that neither Johnson, Hunt not Gove would have any significant impact on the Labour vote and the reshuffling would take place within the Tory-LibDems-Brexit love-and-hate triangle. Tories would only bag more seats in the BorisVerse because they would almost nuke the Brexiteers out but that would still leave the Lab-led coalition on 323 seats, or 332 in the extended mix, almost same as the baseline. And so much for Boris The Defender Of The Realm against the Socialist Hordes. But then all the contenders are here predicted to lose the election, only the magnitude of the walloping would differ. PMs Javid and Stewart would have only made the disaster more conspicuous with Labour doing better on the popular vote and the Lab-SDLP-Lib coalition bagging 377 seats in the SajidVerse, a mighty 100-seat majority, or 361 in the RoryVerse, 'only' a 61-seat majority. Then on to Scotland where the variants of the Blue-On-Blue Murder also have some surprises to offer.
The poll's baseline is less favourable to the SNP that other recent polls, but the quirks of FPTP nevertheless turn it into a massive SNP victory with Scottish Tories kicked out into oblivion. For once Team Ruth would fare better in the JeremyVerse than in the others. But of course that was before IrnBruGate and Hunt denying further FCO support to the duly elected First Minister of Scotland, and would anyway have delivered just one Tory seat (John Lamont's, not David Mundell's). Ironically the BorisVerse and the RoryVerse both have the SNP doing less well than overall polling predicts, but not because Team Ruth would surge. Quite the opposite in fact as Labour is boosted in both cases above their 2017 vote share, and would save their seats or even gain a couple, which will not happen in the real world. Scotland has already chosen, and none of Johnson's, Hunt's or Corbyn's stunts is likely to change this.
© Peter Gabriel, 1977
A Wonderful Day In A One-Way World 🔊
So now IT is done. It's not exactly The Day The Aliens Landed or The Second Coming Of The Antichrist, but it surely comes close in popular perception. Did I mention that perception is circumstantial, or didn't I? Aye, I definitely did, oops. After Ruth Davidson's first choice and her second choice were kicked out of the race, it's down to Johnson vs Hunt. And I suspect both of them secretly wish the other is Ruth's third choice, if she even has one. And this amidst massive speculation that the Conservatives indulged in #ToryElectionFraud even at their own leadership contest. Can't help it, it's in their nature.
So now the writing is on the wall: PM Boris. For once the self-fulfilling prophecy has every chance to self-fulfil. Unless of course recent 'private' events add a dimension pf psychodrama, melodrama or pure drama to the forthcoming hustings. This may actually derail Johnson's campaign as it raises character issues he obviously does not want to address, and many earlier comments about his (un)suitability for the job and his (in)competence have been quick to resurface. Of course Jeremy Hunt will never use that in his campaign, or will he? Oh, he already has, bugger. Then the saner elements in the Nasty Party might also ponder the wisdom of picking as leader a man who was sacked from Michael Howard's Shadow Cabinet for publicly lying, from the Spectator for incompetence and from the Foreign Office for various occurrences of conduct unbecoming. Or they might not. A fiver on 'not'.
© The Guardian, Chris Riddell 2019
Whatever the outcome, the worrying part about this is by whom the decision will be made. An unspecified number of Tory 'paid-up supporters', some sources say 160k and others say 140k, and all confirm a recent influx or radicalized elements. Most of them the typical Tory white male elderly Southern Little Englander who voted for the Brexit Party at the European election. Wonderful day indeed when May's successor is crowned and anointed three weeks or so from now. Might as well have just asked Nigel Farage who he wanted at Number Ten.
Of course there will be the wee matter of the no-confidence vote, which anyone from the Greens to the LibDems will want to trigger as soon as the next PM is appointed. And it does not look good for him. With Chris Davies unseated and no by-election likely to happen in time, Commons are down to 638 voting members, which go down again to 634 on divisions with the tellers also not voting. And the theoretical headcount is 321-313 if the DUP and Sylvia Hermon still support a Tory PM. Or 310-313 if they abstain. Tory defectors are not even needed to take a Brexit-crazy PM down, though you could possibly get a dozenish withdrawing the whip to achieve just that, and having them would make the matter safer in case a few Labour MPs suddenly have cold feet. And then straight on to a snap GE some time in late October, between the Conference Season and Halloween. And of course no Hallowexit as the EU would then grant a further Brextension to clear out the mess. Awesome.
Of course there will be the wee matter of the no-confidence vote, which anyone from the Greens to the LibDems will want to trigger as soon as the next PM is appointed. And it does not look good for him. With Chris Davies unseated and no by-election likely to happen in time, Commons are down to 638 voting members, which go down again to 634 on divisions with the tellers also not voting. And the theoretical headcount is 321-313 if the DUP and Sylvia Hermon still support a Tory PM. Or 310-313 if they abstain. Tory defectors are not even needed to take a Brexit-crazy PM down, though you could possibly get a dozenish withdrawing the whip to achieve just that, and having them would make the matter safer in case a few Labour MPs suddenly have cold feet. And then straight on to a snap GE some time in late October, between the Conference Season and Halloween. And of course no Hallowexit as the EU would then grant a further Brextension to clear out the mess. Awesome.
© Peter Gabriel, 1980
Downside Up 🔊
Just when you think Conservatives can't amaze you more than they have already done, here they come. With the afore-mentioned flabbergasting YouGov poll that got Ruth Davidson's knickers all bunched up. Much has already been said about it but it's still worth coming back to the most impressive results for a moment. YouGov chose to poll Conservative Party members' attitudes on five items: Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, Scotland leaving the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party being destroyed, significant damage to the UK economy. First question seem innocuous enough, reading 'How happy or unhappy would you be if each of the following happened?'. Which I summed up as Happy and Unhappy.
But this is obviously just the baseline calibration question meant to assess how many are definitely batshit-crazy and how many can still claim to a modicum of sanity. And it does not start really well with 5% happy to see their own party destroyed and 6% happy with significant damage to the economy. The 2% who would be happy to see Corbyn as PM are probably the Rory Stewart supporters, and we know how little they actually matter. Interestingly support for Scottish Independence and Irish Reunification, with no further qualification and no strings attached, is already in the double digits. Then Ruth Davidson should now worry more about the 7% of her own members who would be happy with Independence rather than about 26% overall who would be. But the best is yet to come.
In a rather convoluted wording, respondents are then basically asked whether or not they would consider each of the five events an acceptable trade-off to see Brexit delivered. Here the only red line (pun intended) is sending Corbyn to Number Ten. Everything else is seen as acceptable if it means it would get Brexit done, which only testifies to the real amount of batshit-craziness within the current Conservative membership. Scottish Tories appear relatively more sane than average, but barely on some items. And a quarter of them would still agree to break up the Union as a condition for a 'successful' Brexit. Statistically speaking this would mean 3 of their MPs and 7 of their MSPs would agree to Scottish Independence, while 5 MPS and 11 MSPs would accept Irish Reunification. Guess Ruth Davidson should start a serious in-depth investigation on this.
The irony of course is that they will certainly get all of them in the long run as European Union leaders are openly opposed to any further Brextension beyond Halloween and ready to gamble a No Deal Brexit. Then I can't avoid mentioning that YouGov reached a new level of oddity when asking Conservative Party members how they would vote if they lived in the Land of Oz. And it does look like a serious question, or doesn't it? Anyway 67% would vote Tin Man and 14% Scarecrow. You just have to wonder who else the 19% undecideds would pick: Cowardly Lion or Toto? Food for thought indeed. And next time Ruth Davidson shows up on live TV whining about how she won't let 'them' destroy Oor Precious Yoonion, the host will have a ready-made legitimate question: who are 'they', Ruth? Do you target the SNP or English Conservatives? Popcorn moment.
For now just sleep on it and stay tuned for further broadcasts
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain for promis'd joy
© Peter Gabriel, 1986
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