Jeremy's Den: Westminster Projection - A Tale Of Two Prorogations

Brexitocalypse D-26

83th Anniversary of the Jarrow March, also Bob Geldof's 68th birthday and Kate Winslet's 44th

Out There 🔊

General Election polling continues to be quite disconcerting even for those who still think the truth is out there. Recent voting intentions offer anything from a tie between Labour and Tories to a 12% Tory lead. If projected into seats that could mean anything from 280 Con-270 Lab to 350 Con-200 Lab. So your perception of the snap GE totally depends on which pollster you believe, or you might decide that the truth is somewhere in between and settle on a Tory single-digit lead. But then you might be at a loss deciding which digit and end up reckoning the best choice might be to trust no one, in which case the pollsters' dismal performance two years ago and four years ago might prove you right. There has been some movement over the last ten days as the updated trends show. There have been some tiny changes both within the Do-Or-Die camp and the Remain Camp, though I would not rate any of it as an actual reversal of fortunes, at least not until we know more about the outcome of the Brexit clusterbùrach. A deal, No Deal or extension will obviously be a major factor in shaping public opinion in the run up to the snap GE. More on this later.

An interesting phenomenon is that LibDems are again snatching away votes from Labour so that a tie between them for second place is not that implausible. Jo Swinson might have deluded herself into believing she radiates the scintillance of tomorrow's wonder (aye that's another quote and I'll let you take your wildest guess at where from) but she's still quite a distance from becoming PM Jo. I am not sure her newfound Revoke-Or-Bust stance will help as even the most determined Remainers will probably take a second referendum over Parliament taking back control of the outcome. She should probably not conclude that the LibDem surgelet has anything to do with this new stance, as I think the main factor here is Labour's shambolic Conference and their renewed failure to settle on a clear approach to Brexit. Kicking the can of worms down the road was a major factor in Theresa May's demise and there is every reason to believe it will also be one in Jeremy Corbyn's. Bear in mind too that Scotland will hold one of the keys to the election, as the demise of the Scottish Tories might make the difference between a Tory majority and a hung Parliament if the election is closer than current polling predicts.

And here the trends are definitely extremely good for the SNP. Whichever way you look at it, the SNP are now predicted to bag twice as many votes as the Scottish Conservatives, which would take them down to one to three seats and very possibly none. Meanwhile and equally importantly, polls predict Scottish Labour and the Scottish LibDems tied somewhere below 15%. On these numbers the LibDems might be able to unseat Stephen Gethins in North East Fife though I still rate this as highly improbable, and a couple of their own seats are not as solid as they may hope, just think Edinburgh West or Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. Labour losing about a third of their votes will lead to their Third Extinction after 2015 and 2016 and erase the unforeseen 2017 surge. Even Ian Murray's seat is no longer a safe one as Edinburgh Conservatives might choose to close ranks around their own candidate rather than again vote tactically for Murray. Time will tell.

The Battle 🔊

My current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones conducted between 24 September and 1 October, so all after Johnson's Supreme Court defeat. That's as fresh a snapshot of public opinion as you can get, or at least of what pollsters want us to believe about the public's state of mind. Super-sample size is 8,926 with a theoretical 1.01% margin of error. It might again be overestimating the Tory vote as three out of six polls were conducted by Tory-friendly YouGov, but that's all we have right now. Oddly the current rolling average is quite close to what we had a month ago when Commons reconvened. Only noticeable change is the Greens losing 2% while LibDems gained 3%. But this can't hide the alarming fact that pressure is building up both inside the Westminster kettle and outside. Things can change quite quickly at the start of the next Commons Session, maybe for better or maybe for worse. Crystal balls available on demand from John Curtice and The Guardian.

Change UK, or Whatever-Fucking-Name-They-Plagiarized-Last-Week, and UKIP no longer register even on the Mariana Trench sonars as most pollsters, that is all except Opinium, no longer even bother including them in their prompts, so they're now bundled with the Monster Raving Loony Party (Official) and the Birkenhead Social Justice Party (aye, that's an actual thing) in 'Others'. Then the sad truth is that, contrary to Owen Jones's wishful thinking, 'for the many, not for the few' does not quite cut it. What Owen rightly identifies here is that Johnson is successfully painting the Tories into the 'anti-elite' with his populist People-Vs-Parliament rhetoric, but Owen fails to bring it to its logical conclusion. Corbyn is doomed as long as Labour fail to get their message through, as they look more preoccupied with internal power struggles than with doing the right thing at the right time. Arguing that Labour's best hope is some brand of class-based populism as opposed to the Tories' nationalist populism falls far short of being convincing. First because Owen fails to define what class-based populism would be. Also, and possibly more importantly, because Labour, and especially the Parliamentary Party, is still home to a meaningful post-Blairite faction whose base instinct is to summarily reject anything class-based because they deny classes even still exist. Surely change will come, but probably not this year or even the next.

The regional breakdown of the last six polls is just as damning for Labour as it was ten days ago and shows very little movement except from a slight improvement for the LibDems all across England, just as the rolling average does. Labour may have recovered slightly in London but they are still deep down the pipes in Scotland and have lost Wales. Even the heartlands in the North and Midlands are now just fuzzy shades of distant memories. There is a pattern here worryingly similar to what happened in the post-industrial American Northeast when Donald Trump snatched Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Working class voters easily switch to supporting right-wing populism when they lose hope of a better future under a left-wing government. The point had already been made with the rise of the National Front in France in the 1980s and 90s and it's not too late for Labour to listen and learn. Yet.

Balance Of Power 🔊

On current polling my model once again predicts a hung Parliament, and this time the Conservatives would need a deal with both the DUP and the Brexit Party for a workable majority, but a fragile one on only 10 seats. Now we are close to this twilightish zone where a handful or even a couple of seats could decide what kind of coalition we would get. Just fancy Aberdeen South being the tipping seat that takes the Tories one seat above the majority line. Quite scary, isn't it? For completeness' sake Electoral Calculus's Advanced Regression Model would deliver a 12-seat Tory majority, but they freely admit their updated algorithms deliver a slight bonus for the Conservatives. Interestingly their own assessment of probabilities somewhat contradicts their prediction, as they assign only a 38% probability to a Tory majority and a 12% probability to a Labour majority, leaving 50% probability to various shades of a hung Parliament, including 4% for the extreme scenario where no feasible majority emerges from the election and all that's left is yet another snap GE.

Now all pollsters routinely poll voting intentions as if the election was held tomorrow, which leaves the results open to questioning as even polls conducted on the same days deliver vastly different results. Electoral Calculus also point to the huge discrepancies between recent polls, which make a solid prediction of the election's outcome quite risky. But there is a common conclusion to all polls: Labour have only a 25% probability of becoming the next Government, whether on an outright majority or through a Labour-led coalition. Obviously you can never say never as never is a long long time in politics, but Corbyn at Number 10 is far from a really plausible outcome right now. And won't be as long as Labour do poorly in what used to be their historic heartlands.

Losing ten seats in Wales and eleven in London is a clear sign of Labour's current problems, compared to which losing six Scottish seats, or possibly even all seven on a really bad day, is only a mild embarrassment. But losing another ten in the Midlands, sixteen in the North and being pushed down to third party in the South is also evidence to a deeper crisis and a widening rift between Labour and the electorate. Their situation is somewhere between hopeless and terrible and there is no short-term cure to this. Of course such dismal results would end Jeremy Corbyn's leadership and start an interesting contest to succeed him. I guess that Tom Watson has now kicked himself out of the contest over his part in the 'institutional stupidity' Operation Midland and that leaves the post-Blairites without any credible candidate, unless you count Hilary Benn or Stephen Kinnock as such. Then I fail to see any serious candidate emerging from Momentum Central, so my best educated guess is many would find Keir Starmer the best possible compromise between duelling factions, especially as two thirds of Labour members view him favourably according to a recent poll. Time will tell.

The Last Battle 🔊

Under current polling 119 sitting MPs would be defeated, midway between the 2010 and 1892 elections. Coincidentally both of these also delivered a hung Parliament. 1892 is even more interesting as the Liberals came out of the election as the second party but nevertheless formed the next Government with the support of the two Irish National parties. Of course any similarity with a possible alternate outcome of the Snap Election of 2019 is pure coincidence. The summary and cartography of gains and losses are again pretty damning for Labour whose 'gains' would only be theoretical as they would take back only seats they won in 2017 and have since lost to defectors, and then not even all of them as John Woodcock's Barrow and Furness would switch to the Conservatives and Angela Smith's Penistone and Stocksbridge to the Brexit Party. There is also something quite simple at work here, that Owen Jones again fails to mention in his latest 'the dug did it' defence of Labour's policies. Labour's main problem is not, and has never been, LibDems gaining Lab-Lib battlegrounds because there are too few of them to decisively swing the election. The relevant factor here is LibDems snatching away enough Labour-Remain votes in Lab-Con battlegrounds as in London where eight seats would switch from Labour to the Tories and only three from Labour to the LibDems.

Bear in mind though that the Conservatives would also fare poorly, with their gains from Labour barely covering their losses to the LibDems, and actually falling a couple of seats short. This is painfully obvious in their Southern Little England heartlands where they would lose 21 seats to the LibDems, fully half of their overall losses UK-wide and two thirds of their losses outside Scotland. Thirteen Tory Grandees would lose their seats, including nine on the Government payroll (paid) and three on the Government payroll (unpaid). Not a major dent as twelve is just 7% of the current Government payroll and most of the losers are definitely expendable by Johnson's standards.

Some minor stars of the backbenches would also get the axe like Tory Anne-Marie Morris of 'nigger in the woodpile' fame, Labour's Jess Phillips of 'imported wives for disabled sons' fame, Mary Creagh of 'let our planes bomb Syria' fame and Sarah Champion of 'Paki sexploitation problem' fame. Some others (Jared O'Mara, Kate Hoey, Gloria de Piero,...) would be spared the humiliation of losing their seats only because they have chosen to stand down but Labour would lose the seats anyway. The Conservative Rebels and defectors would not do too well either with almost all their seats predicted to be held by Conservative official candidates, save perhaps for local factors saving some of them in the few Tory-Remain seats. Early defector Heidi Allen and late Rebel Oliver Letwin are even predicted to be unseated by the LibDems, unless some unlikely local deal saves them.

Wings Of Fortune 🔊

Current polling would deliver 61 marginals, 45 of them in England and including 22 seats that are predicted to change hands. This is not a very high number but the battleground would as usual extend far beyond the marginal seats. Another 130 are predicted to be decided by 4% to 10% so about 30% of all seats would be more or less competitive. The level of uncertainty would be the same for Labour and the Conservatives,, with 21 and 23 marginal seats respectively, but potential gains would be bigger for the Conservatives finishing second in nine non-Labour seats while Labour would finish second in only two non-Tory seats. The alternate scenarios you could get after reallocating the marginals have not changed significantly over the last few weeks as the Conservatives would be the first party in all cases.

The Con Max scenario leaves little to imagination or interpretation with the Conservatives bagging a 29-seat majority allowing them to stay in power without any outside support. Only warning here is that Johnson II would start with the same number of seats as John Major in 1992 but the Conservatives lost all by-elections held during the 1992-1997 Parliament and had to seek support from the UUP to pass legislation. The Lab Max scenario is more interesting as it opens the door to some creative combinations of alliances, with Jo Swinson relishing in her newfound role as kingmaker. On 641 seats after Sinn Féin and the Speaker factored out, a Brexit Pact including the Conservatives, the Brexit Party, the DUP and the UUP would bag 300 seats, 13 short of a majority. I count Sylvia Hermon out of this, though she supported Theresa May in her only vote of no-confidence, as she is a solid Remain supporter and would never support a hard Brexit government.

This does not mean that a Remain Pact would be a success as both likely combinations (with or without the SNP or the LibDems) would fall below 300 seats. The only sure way to success would be a Labour-led Rainbow Max coalition, however implausible this looks. Whoever would be Labour leader then would have to assemble a Huge Tent coalition including both the LibDems and the SNP, which is as likely to happen as Hinkley Point C being finished on schedule and on budget. Guess this is way above even Starmer's negotiating skills. Then the least unlikely coalition would probably be Con-Lib not involving any other party, a rerun of 2010 in which you can fancy Jo Swinson following in Ramsay McDonald's footsteps and becoming the Prime Minister of a coalition in which her party would be the lesser partner. Happened once so don't be so sure it can't happen again, with LibDems pledging to dampen and mitigate the fallout from Brexit, and Swinson being a more acceptable figurehead than any Conservative in the eyes of the EU, which would matter in the predictably protracted post-Brexit divorce settlement horsetrading.

Lure Of The Wild 🔊

One quick detour to Scotland now. Mentioning Independence at every opportunity has kind of become Nicola Sturgeon's and Ian Blackford's Carthago delenda est. Fine with me as long as it boosts the Yes camp's morale and pisses off Yoons. Which brings me to Scotland in Union (SIU) again making asses of themselves by releasing a new poll, and it makes me wonder who paid for it as they're supposed to be bankrupt. They have commissioned three polls from Survation so far in November last year, April and September this year. They have thrice polled the proverbial appetite for a second Independence Referendum, obviously hoping the results would support their claim that there is none, and it spectacularly backfired. Here is what we have, with timeframes translated into years rather than the qualitative wording used in the poll. This is an approximate scale for the November poll as it did not use the same post-2021 timescale as the other two.

The November results are not directly comparable with later ones as they included a 'before Brexit' option that is now irrelevant as it specifically referred to the original 31 March deadline. What is relevant is how the number of people thinking there should never be another IndyRef has changed over time, that is going down ten points in as many months. Which kind of blows up the first lock in SIU's self-appointed mandate to deny Scotland the right to freely choose our future. Also the number of people supporting IndyRef2 during the current Holyrood term, so pretty much on Nicola Sturgeon's timeframe, has increased by 7% and now almost matches the number of refusers. And we now almost have a majority supporting IndyRef2 within the next five years. SIU's findings about the referendum itself are just as interesting. SIU insist on using their rigged and massively manipulative 'Leave' or 'Remain' wording instead of the 'Yes' or 'No' question used in the 2014 referendum and by all other pollsters. Even so the result also backfires with support for Independence up 2% between April and September, roughly matching what the real polls also found. And here goes the second lock in SIU's double-lock mandate.

It is obviously over-optimistic to say the Union is dead when, to paraphrase Frank Zappa, it just smells funny. But Unionists should not count their chickens before they come home to roost. Still waters run deep in glens, straths and lochs and Scottish public opinion is shifting towards Independence, ineluctably if admittedly slowly. What the SIU poll has demonstrated is that appetite for a second Independence referendum and support for Independence have both increased this year and the Yes movement is definitely building on this. All Under One Banner has predicted 250,000 marching in Edinburgh today, which would be a momentous record-breaking event. Now early reports say more than 200,000 marched, so more marchers in the National Capital on one single day than in all the 2018 marches combined, give or take. This says a lot about the current state of Scottish public opinion and should incite Unionists to tone it down some notches as time is definitely not on their side.

Into The Future 🔊

Britain Elects obviously liked the polling of alternate realities they commissioned from ComRes in early September, so they tried another one just two weeks after the first, in the poll they conducted on 18 and 19 September. The baseline is as usual the standard question on how people would vote 'if there were a General Election tomorrow'. And now we have six alternate timelines labelled quite laboriously as 'The deadline for the UK to leave the EU has been extended beyond the 31st of October 2019', which I suppose means the election would happen before 31 October, 'The UK has left the EU with a deal on 31st October 2019', 'The UK has left the EU without a deal on 31st October 2019', 'The UK has left the EU with a deal after a period of extension beyond the 31st of October 2019', 'The UK has left the EU without a deal after a period of extension beyond the 31st of October 2019' and 'The UK revokes Article 50 and remains in the EU after a period of extension beyond the 31st of October 2019'. Quite the mouthfuls so take a deep breath and have a look at the voting intentions in all these alternate realities.

The baseline results are significantly better for Labour than the polling average, which is a constant for ComRes polls. And again what matters most are the differences between the scenarios, not the numbers per se. Interestingly we have here what you might call the Johnson Scenario (No-Deal Brexit), the Corbyn Scenario (leave with a deal after extension) and the Starmer-Swinson Scenario (remain in the EU after extension) though admittedly Sir Keir would get that through a second referendum and PM Jo would get it through a Commons vote to revoke Article 50. The results are partly counter-intuitive: of course the Johnson Scenario would deliver a massive Conservative success by vaporizing the Brexit Party, and Starmer-Swinson would spell doom for the Conservatives with a massively revived Brexit Party, but also a surprisingly unconvincing result for the Remain parties. Finally the Corbyn Scenario is quite a mixed bag with the Conservatives surprisingly doing better and the opposition less well than on the baseline. Presumably this is because respondents implicitly assumed Johnson would still be in charge and would deserve some lesser reward for getting Brexit done after all. It would be interesting to replay the same scenarios but with the explicit hypothesis that a caretaker Government would be in charge after the extension. Let's see now what sort of seat projections my model delivers on all options.

I find some of the above results counter-intuitive. Johnson would probably suffer a backlash if he applied for a Doomsday extension and got it but I think the magnitude of it is overestimated as a number of people would still give him the benefit of the doubt until Doomsday. The point is moot anyway as it would require the snap GE being held between the 19th and the 31st, and the probability of this happening is about a few nano-percent North of fuck all. Then there is little difference between exiting with a deal and No Deal Crashout. If Brexit happened as scheduled, Johnson would get his reward for getting it done and a majority in both cases. The situation would be more tricky if Brexit happened after an extension, then I guess in that case the LibDems would be ready to help a 'reasonable' Johnson-less Tory government as it looks like something PM Jo has always been ready to do. The other counter-intuitive result is what would happen after an extension and Article 50 revoked. There would be no Revocation Bonus here and a possibly explosive situation with the only viable majority being Lab-Lib-SNP, quite the recipe for another crisis and another snap GE. But there is more to this story as another, and more worrying way, to interpret ComRes's findings is to recalculate the different scenarios from the current projection based on the most recent polls instead of Comres's more Labour-friendly baseline.

Caveat here is that the differences between the alternate realities would probably be less spectacular if the Conservatives started from a more favourable baseline, though you never know as the current situation remains both confusing and likely to deliver unpredictable outcomes. Now in this more pessimistic approach, Johnson's Brexit Bonus would be tremendous. If he delivered it before Doomsday he would do better than Blair 2005, Thatcher 1979 and Thatcher 1987, and almost as well as Thatcher 1983. A 130ish-seat Tory majority would spell doom for Jeremy Corbyn and probably for Jo Swinson too as she would fall far short of her 100-seat target. Doomsday postponed to after an extension would bring a lesser reward but a 30ish-seat majority without need for outside support would still be a flabbergasting vindication of Johnson's Do-Or-Die strategy. Finally the tweaked Revocation Scenario would be fuckloaded with irony as the Revocators would be more than twenty seats shy of a majority even in the Rainbow Maxest configuration involving all the small pro-Remain parties. The unlikely Rainbow Min of Lab-Lib-SNP would be 30ish seats short. Meanwhile a not so implausible Brexit Pact of Con-Brex-DUP-UUP would bag a 42-seat majority, probably on a pledge to overturn Revocation, fulfilling the wishes of their people if not of the people. But fortunately all this is just alternate realities that won't materialize but don't rush to the conclusion that the real world will deliver an outcome in which we will all live happily ever after; Just not yet.

What these scenarios tell us is that the timing and context of the snap GE will be a major factor in shaping its result, which we already knew. Meanwhile public opinion is very ambiguous on the issue according to a recent YouGov poll. People oppose a snap election before 31 October 40-39 with 21% undecided. Then they support one being held after an Article 50 extension 42-34 with 24% undecided. Not a ringing endorsement for either though waiting after an extension is a weak preferred option. Then there is one scenario pollsters never tested: a snap GE after Boris Johnson being dismissed by Elizabeth Windsor. Grapevine has it that the Crown is seeking legal advice on this in case Johnson refuses to abide by the law and fails to actually seek an extension, or does while actively sabotaging it. The Monarch sacking the Prime Minister would be quite a shocking upset as it hasn't happened for 185 years and it would be quite out-of-character for Elizabeth Windsor to actually do it, but you never know what can happen in these strange days we're living. Even the seemingly impossible can no longer be ruled out.

Chamber Of Horrors 🔊

Commons again turned into a freak show after the early end of the unlawful prorogation. The First Minister of England duly plaid his part in the farce, again demonstrating he is a delusional pathological liar, technically one of the symptoms of psychosis. Other symptoms may include incoherent speech and behaviour that is inappropriate for the situation, and we've seen a fucking lot of that too lately. Not that Johnson is anything like Westminster's Freddy Krueger, though he does sometimes display some alarming psycho-killer traits. He's more like the Norman Bates of English politics. Able to lead a modicum of a normal life with the occasional backstabbing every now and then, but thinks he is hiding Britannia in full regalia in his basement when all he has is just a plastic skeleton dressed in one of Peter Gabriel's old stage costumes. Worst part is that he is now the prisoner of his own designs. All causes shall give way, he is in blood stepp'd in so far that, should he wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er. So now he has appointed himself Defender of the True Brexit Faith and seems undeterrably determined to accomplish the mission in a way that makes Captain Bligh look like a bleeding heart. Mark me, it won't end well.

Owen Jones is definitely right to denounce both-sideism again, and he would be welcome to take the same stance in the cybernats vs cyberyoons controversies, but delivering this to the Guardian's readership is pretty much preaching to the fucking choir. I guess public opinion now is probably split three-ways: one third definitely at ease with HateSpeak, one third definitely disgusted by it, one third technically on the fence but agreeing with both-sideism. Unfortunately there are many reasons why the English Government, and not just their First Minister, will not stop revelling in inflammatory language. Both Jacob Rees-Mogg and his former sidekick Steve Baker have admitted their concern is to win back Tory voters who have switched to the Brexit Party, and they have now little more than three weeks to achieve that. So expect the road to Do-Or-Die to be paved with further warlike metaphors and below-the-belt attacks on the oppositions. They worst may be yet to come. Standing orders are to pander to the New Model Blackshirts and aping their words and postures is part of the game. And don't expect Johnson to be reined in by the new Commons Courtesy Pact. He surely already has expert legal advice from the Attorney General that the Chief Whip has no mandate to commit the Government to such a pledge, and that it is an unacceptably unlawful infringement on the Nasty Party's unalienable right to be nasty. Classic Dom.

So now we have it: the Second Prorogation of 2019.Even if Johnson has given prorogation a bad name it does not deserve, this one was always bound to happen. It's a legal technicality: legally the Session opened in June 2017 is still ongoing as prorogation was ruled void and of no effect, so Parliament had to be lawfully prorogued before another Session could start and a Queen's Speech be staged. Simples. So, with 14 October set in stone for the State Opening Wankfest and the Queen's Speech, because we wouldn't want to inconvenience Elizabeth Windsor by postponing it, Johnson had no choice but to suffer the humiliation of seeking Assent for this year's second prorogation (which legally would be the only one as the first one has been given the damnatio memoriae treatment by the Supreme Court and is legally deemed to never have happened) as soon as he came back from the Manchester Clown Show. So now Commons will disband at the end of business on the 8th, as Dominic Grieve suggested and I predicted ten days ago, for just a technical pit-stop. Simples. And this time Black Rod can wipe that exasperated 'shut the fuck up tossers so I can finish my routine or I would shove a fucking racquet up your arse if I did not know some of you sorry wankers would actually love it' look off her face as it will undoubtedly be quieter and devoid of any poorly rehearsed attempts at re-enacting the days of Charles I. Now if Elizabeth Windsor were of a facetious mood, she would grant Assent for Prorogation Reincarnate only if Johnson pledged in writing this will be the last one this year, save for the pre-Snap GE dissolution of course. But she won't, or will she?

For a fun ending, just enjoy Rory Stewart's resignation from the Conservative Party and his public reading of a 1982 letter from Eton's Headmaster to Boris Johnson's father, which says a lot about how the First Minister of England ended up being the entitled wanker we so love to hate.

Remember you always can expect the unexpected to happen, so stay tuned for further broadcasts

Outwit them by stealth or by deceit and they will grin and bear it

They might even admire you

Defeat them by acting honourably and they will burn for revenge

That's something cricket doesn't teach you

Jeremy's Den

05/10/2019

Westminster Projection - A Tale Of Two Prorogations