Jeremy's Den: Westminster Projection - Prorogation Equinox Special

Day Fourteen of Prorogation and Brexitocalypse D-38
Also 39th anniversary of Bob Marley's last concert, Bruce Springsteen's 70th birthday, Adam Price's 51st and Augustus' 2082nd

That's how it all started three weeks ago. Boris Johnson's first Commons vote and first defeat. The Conservative Party started the day with 311 MPs and then there were 289 after Philip Lee histrionically defected to the LibDems and the Gang of Twenty-One were kicked out of their party. The next days we witnessed Johnson's second vote and second defeat, and right on its heels Johnson's third vote and third defeat, then Johnson's fourth vote and fourth defeat, Johnson's fifth vote and fifth defeat and finally Johnson's sixth vote and sixth defeat. 100% down so far, a record much difficult to break. Even Theresa May did not take so many blows in so little time. And there would have been more if Parliament had not been prorogued. Alas poor Boris, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

This mini-week of Commons sitting was most definitely the gift that kept on giving Johnson headaches. I have a hunch that he retrospectively regrets not having gone Full Monty on prorogation and gone for six weeks instead of five, not reconvening Parliament at all until 14 October. After all suspending democracy for a handful more days would not have substantially changed the legal challenges against prorogation, and would have spared him that septimana horribilis of continued humiliation. Especially the most embarrassing moments on the very last day: John Bercow announcing he will retire but not before pissing off the Tories some more, and MPs re-enacting the final minutes before Charles I's prorogation while singing various songs and brandishing vengeful signs. Best moment being just after Bercow's resignation speech when he receives a standing ovation from opposition benches while Tory MPs are obviously reluctant to join because, you know, Big Cummings Is Watching Ye. Only unknown here is whether or not a longer prorogation would have infuriated public opinion to the point of altering the trend of recent polls, which remain both ambiguous and flabbergastingly good for the Conservative Party.

Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits on one and other side, sets all on hazard. Right now it's no wonder some MPS are incredibly cautions and even worried about an incoming snap GE, as shown by Labour tangoing about the issue. Then what are politicians supposed to stand for when the punditariat can't make head or tail of what's happening and make a pig's ear of their comments? It's certainly a sign of the times when the Guardian publish a long-winded piece to basically tell us they don't have a fucking clue what could happen. And John Curtice once again stating the obvious, when ordinary lads had got the point days ago already, is in fact not that much of a surprise as dabbling in obviousnesses is his trademark. As one of my twitter followers quite aptly said: Reckon if ye removed the word 'IF' from his ramblings a 5 minute expert analysis could be reduced to a few seconds of a guy hanging upside down wearing blindfold throwing darts at a revolving board. Meanwhile some in the media have rediscovered this self-evident truth that polls shape public opinion as much as they measure it, which is nothing more than a psephologification of the time-honoured observer effect known to physicists for as long as physics have existed. This might also be a pre-emptive strike against polls being as fucking wrong this year as they were two years ago, three years ago and four years ago, so the MSM can say 'look, told you so, the dug did it'. Surely you're all old enough to remember the last time pollsters got a General Election (almost) right, and aye that was nine years ago. As always the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but English newspapers.

Back to business, for the moment the First Minister of England seems to have found new rope with which to hang himself, which includes chickening away from a handful of hecklers and being rabbit-in-the-headlighted when confronted about poor NHS performance in London, and you never know which wall Dominic Cummings has advised him to butt heads with next. Not that Johnson can't count on Labour to help as the only thing necessary for the triumph of Johnson is for Corbyn to do nothing, at which he has proven expertise. All of this obviously leaves public opinion quite puzzled as the most recent polls show. Upside here is that, whatever your narrative, you will find a poll to support it as pollsters find anything from a 15% Tory lead to a 1% Tory lead. Downside is that nobody can reliably guess where we're heading as such polls could deliver anything from a 60-seat majority for the Tories to a hung Parliament with Labour emerging from the chaos as the first party. So here is what polls fielded during and after Commons' Last Stand have to say:

The longer-term trends also convey some interesting information that might dampen the Moon-high hopes of some party leaders. First of all the Conservative vote share has flatlined on about 33% for the last three weeks after the Boris Bounce, as Nigel Farage sits on a seemingly unassailable 13%. Which is roughly what his previous New Model Blackshirt outfit got the last time they registered on the electoral radars. Which is definitely a problem for the Tories as it took one EU membership referendum to nuke UKIP into irrelevancy but a hypothetical second one might now very well send the Brexit Party skyrocketing again. PM Jo should also pay attention to the polls that say she's still a long from becoming PM Jo as the LibDem vote flatlined on about 18-19% for about two months now while Labour steadily snatched back votes from the Greens over the same period. The recent LibDem surgelet and Labour slumpelet might well be only temporary and just post-Conference ripples that will die down when the Snap Election becomes a reality and Labour finally find a way to up their game past procrasturbation. Meanwhile the SNP are still polling about 4% of the UK-wide vote, or some 40% and more of the Scottish vote.

The infamous Remain Pact is on the Guardian's table again and apparently on nobody else's. If by some miracle it happens, it's doomed to be an England-only thing as it would obviously include a pledge not to stand against sitting MPs from any party taking part in it, which totally rules out at least the SNP and possibly Plaid Cymru signing up. Why the fuck would the SNP write off six to eight possible gains from Labour and the LibDems and allow muppet Unionist MPs to limp on delivering nothing but predictable SNP-bad talking points? And why would Plaid Cymru write off a couple of possible gains from Labour? Should not and will not happen. English Remainers should also remember that the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election was far from the heaven-sent outstanding success they claim it to be. Of course the LibDems gained the seat but by a much narrower margin than anyone expected. And the only measurable effect or the Remainer Pact was that many more potential Brexit Party voters than expected switched back to the Tories. Tactical voting works both ways and probably better when it's not organized from party HQs. Odds are the United Brexiteers will get their pact serendipitously anyway if polls show a Labour surge, because voters will choose to make it happen and local branches will see to it, without their respective HQs having to publicly admit it's happening, while Remainers would still be struggling with implementing their own pact up to Election Day.

My current Poll'O'Polls is based on the six most recent ones for which all data and crosstabs have been made available, which keeps out the very last YouGov and ComRes that surprisingly predicted the Tory lead going sharply down, but it will only make Labour look better next time. Super-sample size is 10,285 with a theoretical 0.94% margin of error which means sweet fuck all anyway when polls are as contradictory as they are lastly. As you might expect from the trends in recent polling, there is little change from three weeks ago and it still looks awful for Labour. Not that the Conservatives would have any reason to get all cocky about such results as (almost) winning an election on just a third of all votes cast would be an all-time low since a smallish modicum of democracy was injected into the British election process in 1832. Only Tony Blair came close with 35% of the popular vote in 2005. David Camron did a wee smitch better on 36% in 2010 and 37% in 2015, with the magic of FPTP working spectacularly to his advantage when he got an undeserved majority in 2015.

This stagnation in voting intentions probably shows people are still on the fence and expecting some major upset to happen before they decisively switch their vote one way or the other. This week might very well be the long-awaited moment when this happens. Stay tuned to news from London and Brighton. The Supreme Court's ruling on prorogation and its fallout, the Labour Conference and its fallout, these might be the gamechangers. Only problem here is they will probably work in opposite directions, one hurting Johnson and the other hurting Corbyn. Karma still a bitch whichever way spads try to spin it.

The breakdown of voting intentions by nation and meta-region within England is as bad as ever for Labour. The pattern is quite clear with Labour reduced to their Core Faithfuls even in historic working class heartlands. When all you have left is Momentum members and anyone who would vote for a turkey with a red rosette on, you know you're in for some fucking trouble. The Scottish Twig Office of the English Labour Party being driven deeper into oblivion is one thing, but losing Wales, the Midlands and (almost) the Northern Powerhouse tells another story of impending doom and gloom. Just remember Jeremy Corbyn first made an appearance on the national stage in 1983 and now Labour are bound for their worst showing in any election since that exact same year. Karma coming full circle for worser or for worst.

On such polling Snap Election Night wouldn't be Labour's to paint the town red. But neither would it be Conservatives' to paint it blue. Instant fallout would certainly be Corbyn's resignations after taking Labour back to the days of the longest suicide note in history and Michael Foot's Battle of the Somme. You would have to go back to 1935 for an even smaller number of seats and 1918 for a lower share of the popular vote. But Boris Johnson would have a bad night too with the Conservatives doing just one seat better than Theresa May in 2017 and still having to rely one the DUP for a semblance of a majority, whatever the cost in extra funding for Northern Ireland outside Barnett. Then you obviously cant rule out the projected four Brexit Party MPs (Hartlepool, Penistone and Stocksbridge, Rother Valley, Thurrock) also lending a hand to the final unleashing of the Four Riders unto the country. Or else PM Jo might volunteer herself for sacrifice in return for a better ministerial car than Nick Clegg's and the promise of another referendum on Alternative Voting.

As usual, other predictions models deliver different results from the same polling data, but nothing spectacularly different from what we had on previous projections. Flavible's result is the average of their projections from the six same polls as they don't have a 'Make your prediction' option as Electoral Calculus. Again Flavible find an unexpectedly high number of LibDem seats and 61 is only the watered-down version as some of their projections predict as high as 88, which I don't think will happen. Then Electoral Calculus' revamped Advanced Regression Model still many more Tory seats than anyone else, which I also find unlikely. Anyway we probably have just a few weeks to wait before we know who is right and who is wrong, and by which margin the wrong ones missed the actual result. Best educated guess is that it will be by quite much as happened already in 2015 and 2017, and I stick to the conclusion that we will get at best a manageable hung Parliament and can't yet rule out an unmanageable one that would lead straight to another snap GE.

One of the big unknowns is what will happen to MPs who resigned their party's whip, were withdrawn the whip or switched parties. So far we have three Labour MPs and three Conservatives who switched to the LibDems. And the House of Commons official stats list 39 independents of all shades (five with The Independent Group For Change, formerly known as Change UK, three with The Independents and thirty-one with no new affiliation so far). And this might just be the beginning if future upsets like a lost vote on the Queen's Speech trigger further Cummings-influenced purges. I certainly don't put spilling more blood on the rooftops of Matthew Parker Street past Boris Johnson, in the name of ideological purity, no matter what the shockwave and backlash might be, as long as it makes Dom happy.

All of this makes predictions harder as the results in these 39 seats have become more unpredictable, and 39 is more than enough to make or unmake a majority. Local situations differ wildly. Odds are Philip Hammond in Runnymede and Dominic Grieve in Beaconsfield would be re-elected as independents if they choose to stand again, which I guess is more likely for Grieve than for Hammond. Conversely Amber Rudd will probably not survive as an independent standing against an official Tory candidate, making Hastings and Rye a very likely Labour gain. Others are gambling their future on their likelihood to be re-elected as LibDems, which might work (Lee, Wollaston) or might not (Umunna, Gyimah, Smith, Berger) but this is of course more educated guess than actual fact-based prediction. As for the thirty-one unaffiliated independents I will do what other prognosticators do: basically pretend it did not happen and all these seats are still held by the party who won them two years ago. Of course the overall voting patterns would no longer apply to these seats but I have failed so far to find a better approach. Working on it.

On current polling 113 sitting MPs would be sent back home by their constituents, about the same as in 1880, 2010 and 2015 though with different consequences. As you might expect from the seat projection the summary of gains and losses and their cartography are quite similar to what we had three weeks ago. Plus ça change…. Of course Labour holding fewer than 200of their current seats and making tiny serendipitous gains only in seats that were theirs in 2017 confirms that they are in bad shape indeed. But the Conservatives would be wrong to gloat as their projected gains would just about cover their projected losses. Once again the big winners would be the SNP and the Liberal Democrats, and don't forget the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, who would spectacularly confirm their recent surge at other elections and possibly signal a tectonic shift in Belfast politics.

Again there would not be many changes on the Government benches or the Labour frontbench. There would not be any embarrassing PortiBalls Moment as the only defeated Cabinet Secretary would be Alister Union Jack, and we all know he is both useless and expandable. Only downside for Johnson is that, with eleven Scottish Tory MPs sent packing, he would have either to recall David Mundell, something I wouldn't definitely rule out just yet, or else appoint John Lamont, who has proved as innocuous as an MP as he was as an MSP but might still serve as an obedient useful idiot of Unionism. Johnson might then find some solace in Oliver Letwin going down as my model predicts, even if it is probably not a done deal as the LibDems would have good reasons to withdraw their already selected candidate against him and save his ass. PM Jo might just feel inclined to do so. Labour would lose only their internationalist socialist Shadow Secretary for Scotland Paul Sweeney and three minor Shadow Ministers. Nothing terribly damaging here, at least not in the context of a night of many too many losses.

On current polling only 60 seats would qualify as marginals, which is quite low when compared to recent past elections. But about another 120 would be decided by less than 10% and so can be considered as somewhat competitive. It is still possible that some expected upsets would not happen and some unexpected ones would on Election Night, as this was pretty much a pattern in recent elections. You never know who voters would want to save by rat's ass' hair and who they would want to send packing against all odds. Based on this cartography of marginals the alternate possible results would not be more satisfactory than the direct projection.

Labour doing even worse than polls predict would propel the Conservatives to 343 seats, a comfortable 41-seat majority with no need for any gaffe-prone outside support. At the other end of the range, we would probably not get any workable coalition. A Con-Lib deal would get a convincing 349 seats while a Lab-Lib-SNP deal would bag a shakier 326 to 334, depending on which smaller parties agree to go along for the ride. But is either really likely to realistically happen in the current confused atmosphere? Methinks not. So everybody back in the saddle for an early 2020 Snap Election. 1910 and 1974 all over again, only faster. This is the fucking 21st century, or isn't it?

The Nasty Party may have gone all Donner Party but don't write them off just yet. Or just do. Quite obviously Boris Johnson's and Dominic Cummings' legerdemains will work only as long as people resign themselves to being but gongoozlers to their own demise. We might not have to wait that long before the Boris Bounce landslide morphs into a backslide. Or might we? Probably to shed a modicum of light on the whole clusterbùrach, Comres recently tired their again at exploring the electoral multiverse. Baseline question is the seemingly now ritual 'what would you do if that fucking snap GE we have been expecting for fucking months was finally held tomorrow?' or something to that effect. The alternate timelines being: before 31 October with the UK still in the EU (obviously, or maybe not that obvious if it needs being explicitely spelt out), after 31 October after an Article 50 extension, after 31 October after Brexit on a deal, after 31 October after a No-Deal Brexit. The four options pretty much cover what might, or might not, happen and they deliver quite flabbergasting results.

There are some bizarre phenomena (or should it be 'phenomenons'? Then I guess both are correct as the word comes from both Latin and Greek, as Boris Johnson would surely know) at work here. The predicted Labour vote share is roughly steady across all scenarios on 27-28%. But so is the English Remainer Pact (Labour + LibDems + Greens) vote share on 50-51% and also the LibDems + Greens vote share within the Pact on 22-24%. On the opposite side the Brexiteer vote share (Conservatives + Brexit Party) is also roughly the same on 43-44% across all scenarios. Which means that the very different seat projections do not result from shifts from one camp to the other, but rather from weird zero-sum games within each camp, the Conservatives' fortunes being determined by how many of their voters switch to the Brexit Party and the LibDems' by how many switch to the Greens as Lib-to-Lab switches appear to be marginal at best. The seat projections from these scenarios are just as flabbergasting as you'd expect.

Comres' baseline here is more favourable to the oppositions than the current rolling average but as usual what matters is not the numbers per se but the differences between the various alternate realities. Boris Johnson would not get a majority after a Halloween Crashout because public opinion at large would want to reward irresponsibility and incompetence but because it would nuke the New Model Blackshirts. Johnson does not need Nigel Farage's support, he should even vocally reject it as it would drive away a number of moderate votes. All he needs is Farage's voters and a 'successful' Brexitocalypse would achieve just that. Then some people might want to think twice about their vote now that we know, thanks to Channel 4, that the sole purpose of a No Deal Crashout is to give Crispin Odey (and quite possibly Jacob Rees-Mogg too through his partnership with Odey in juicy offshore investments) a free hand at selling England by the pound and making a fucking truckload of dosh out of it. A lot of course also depends on how public opinion sees the party leaders and the most recent favourability ratings are also quite damning for Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn and Johnson definitely don't have a name recognition problem with only a small number of voters having no opinion on them. Swinson remains quite an unknown quantity with more than a third of voters having no opinion but some of the crosstabs should definitely ring an alarm at Labour HQ. The crosstabs here are by social grade and current voting intentions, not the 2017 vote. First warning for Corbyn is that he is less popular among his own voters than Johnson and Swinson are among theirs, though surprisingly one in five LibDem voters see him favourably. What might hurt him more is that he is less popular among the 'working class' than both Johnson and Swinson, a possible explanation for Labour's current poor performance in Wales and the North. I must confess I sometimes feel sorry for Corbyn. Sure it's no fun being the Leader of the Opposition when your likeliest post-election coalition partner says she won't have it and does her best to make it impossible anyway, your Deputy Leader never misses an opportunity to undermine you every time he opens his mouth and your most devoted supporters light fires all over the place without worrying how the fuck you can possibly douse them. Then you asked for it, Jeremy Bernard, or didn't you?

Then you have all these pesky journos demanding Labour have a firm and clear stance about Brexit when they should be rejoicing Labour has never been closer to having one. Or not. Or maybe after the election then. Because of course the election will not be fought on Brexit, it will be fought on the abolition of Ofsted and private schools, or won't it? And having a strong and stable stance on anything has never helped anyone win a fucking election, or has it? The sad truth is that Labour are now heading to a divisive Conference, whatever John McDonnel might say about 'not mistaking democracy for division', and will probably end up with a wide range of divisive propositions and yet no proper Manifesto, especially if they pass contradictory motions like committing to Remain while not committing to Remain. Not the surest way to an election victory, especially if their Conference triggers a massive rift about Corbyn not ruling out not taking a stand in a hypothetical future EU membership referendum. Bully for them.

What happens now depends completely on the Supreme Court's ruling, which I hoped we would get around suppertime today but now we know it will be at 10:30 BST tomorrow. Just in time to make headlines in the lunchtime news and make the First Minister of England lose his appetite, for solid food if not for power. The Court inquiring about the practicalities of recalling Parliament has been taken by some as a hint they haven't ruled out ruling against the Government, but you can also make the case that it is not the case. The Court might find the practicalities impractical and conclude that letting prorogation stand has some merits too as the worst damage has already been inflicted and there is little Parliament could do now anyway with the Queen's Speech and all the surrounding hoopla becoming Number Ten's top priority. Then of course the Government have hurt their case by explicitely not ruling out not abiding by the law or a Court ruling, which might alienate some of the judges. Johnson might find that dancing on a constitutional volcano amidst a major national crisis definitely does not quite cut it, and that failure to take the Court seriously could give them an incentive to rule against the Government and hasten the ends of their tenures. Just a few hours left to wait.

If the Supreme Court indeed rules against the English Government it will not just be a devastating blow for the First Minister of England. It will also have some interesting side effects, some of them loaded with irony. First we have already seen Johnson fussing about how recalling Parliament and rescheduling the Queen's Speech ahead of the planned date would be an inconvenience for Elizabeth Windsor. But Elizabeth gets her hefty paycheck from taxpayers' money so she is the people's servant, not the other way round, and the people don't give a rat's fuck about her being inconvenienced by the necessities of the democratic process. More to the point Johnson's point here is moot. Because if the Court rules that prorogation was unlawful, then legally it never happened and when Commons reconvene it will still be within the Session that started in June 2017. So ironically prorogation being unlawful means that Johnson would have to get Assent for another prorogation anyway, and I'm not sure Elizabeth would purr down the line at the prospect. And this time Johnson would be wise to prorogue for like five days and not five weeks, say from 9 October to 13 October, and so the scheduled Queen's Speech on 14 October stays as planned. Simples.

The second ironic side effect would be that Labour would be able to remain in Brighton without any unfinished Conference business, no matter how much damage they might inflict on themselves, as Commons are unlikely to be recalled earlier than Thursday at best. But Johnson would be under huge pressure to recall them speedily anyway, so the Conservatives would have to cancel their trip to Manchester. So we won't even have the opportunity to poke fun at Sajid Javid's surprise announcement of £35bn of extra government spending next year, all funded from the money-trees in Epping Forest. Then I guess we would not miss much anyway as nobody expects anything significant from a Tory Conference these days and at least we would be spared further outbursts of anti-immigration rhetoric and unimaginative variations on the Do-Or-Die mantra. Their loss, not ours.

England hath long been mad and scarred herself and it will take time before civil wounds are stopped and peace lives again, so stay tuned for further upsets and updates.

What is the cost of lies?

It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth

The real danger is that if we hear enough lies

Then we no longer recognize the truth at all

(Prologue to Chernobyl, episode 1:23:45, 2019)

Jeremy's Den

23/09/2019

Westminster Projection - Prorogation Equinox Special

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