Jeremy's Den: December 2019

27/12/2019

The Scottish Play - Act VI and last of MMXIX

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow.
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

A lot of this article will be devoted to the post-mortem of the General Election in Scotland. Which fits the Shakespearian title as there is always someone dying at some point and the other characters spend the best part of the last act commenting on it. An aside first about the Neale Hanvey situation, which is quite tricky for the SNP, so let's get it out of the way and move on. His past posts were really shameful and offensive and the SNP's vetting process was definitely at fault here, but he looks sincerely contrite and has made what look like genuine amends. Of course the SNP is not the Roman Catholic Church and contrition does not grant absolution. But I have no doubt he will and indeed should be reinstated after a reasonably long period in the decompression chamber. And, before they even start howling at the moon about it, Scottish Tories are the least legitimate to take shots at the SNP about this when their own revered UK leader is an unrepentant racist white supremacist, the only trait he actually shares with his idol Winston Churchill, and CCHQ steadily ignored all calls to tackle racism, antisemitism and islamophobia in their own ranks and are in total denial about it.

One obvious lesson from the Christmas Shopping Spree Election is that Scottish polling was much better this year than it had been 30 months ago. This was also the case for GB-wide polling but that's another story that will be told later. Our problem, mine anyway, was that the traumatic experience of 2017 led us to believe that polls could only overestimate the SNP vote, and that we should be ready for an even worse result than the very last poll predicted. Only it absolutely did not work that way this time. In fact the very last poll, conducted by Survation in the last two days of the campaign, was quite close to the result and slightly underestimated the SNP. And the one that had the closest seat projection to the actual result was Ipsos-MORI's, conducted almost three weeks before the election. Then it takes a combination of both to actually see what I believe are the two main lessons from this election. First the Unionist vote failed to coalesce around the Conservatives, contrary to what many including myself expected, as they actually lost a fair number of center-right Europhile votes to the Liberal Democrats. The few cases where the Conservatives gained votes (7 seats out of 59) probably have more to do with the Brexit factor in Leave-heavy areas than the Union factor, and anti-SNP tactical voting too in a handful of seats. Best example of the Brexit factor is Banff and Buchan, where the Conservative vote increased by 2.2% and is now the only Scottish seat with a Conservative majority of the popular vote, and was also the only Scottish constituency with a Leave majority in 2016. Best, or worst, example of Unionist tactical voting is of course North East Fife with its 10% swing from the Conservatives to the LibDems, which you can't possibly explain by the Brexit factor alone.

Labour's campaign fell mostly on deaf Scottish ears, as is exemplified by the number of seats with a 7% to 10% swing from Labour to the SNP. I see this as evidence that independence-leaning center-left voters got the SNP's message loud and clear and voted both for the party most able to defend Scotland's best interests against a hard-right Tory government, and to strengthen the mandate for Independence. One striking example is Edinburgh South West which turned from a SNP-Con marginal to a strong SNP hold, with a 12% swing from Labour to the SNP. Another is Ochil and South Perthshire where the Conservatives lost though bagging the same number of votes as in 2017, but there Labour lost 6k votes while the SNP gained almost 8k. You can also see a revealing pattern in Glasgow where the SNP (+26k votes) benefited from both the increased turnout (+16k) and Labour's slump (-9k votes). Also ten SNP MPs were elected with an outright majority of the popular vote two weeks ago compared to none in 2017. Best case here being probably Pete Wishart holding his seat on 50.6% of the popular vote, symbolically 0.1% higher than in 2015, when he nearly lost it 30 months ago. Yet another striking example is Alyn Smith gaining back Stirling on 51.1% of the vote when Steven Paterson had gained it for the SNP in 2015 on 'only' 45.6%. But there you can probably also factor in a very personal judgment on Stephen Kerr's subpar performance as constituency MP.

One of the keys to the SNP's success was increased turnout. The sharp drop of the SNP vote in 2017 was for the most part the consequence of SNP voters not showing up then because the SNP's campaign was shambolic and unconvincing, the main black spot being the lack of conviction about Independence. It worked the other way round this time despite some embarrassing statements in the later stages of the campaign, notably Nicola Sturgeon stating that a vote for the SNP 'need not be a vote for Independence'. Which may have been a good way to attract a number of former Labour voters but totally contradicts later statements that the results strengthen the mandate for Independence. Another interesting point is how the votes evolved from 2017 to 2019. Of course we don't have stats based on the actual results and probably will never have. But Ipsos MORI and Survation crosstabbed 2019 voting intentions with the 2017 votes. Below is the chart of transfers based on the average of the two polls, which is of course only an approximate picture, but probably the best we have and will ever have. Major points here are that the SNP had the most faithful electorate of all, and also scored big among 2017 non-voters, which covers both genuine new voters who were not eligible in 2017 and 2017 abstainers who came back to the polling place on 12 December.

There were lots of good moments during Election night so it's kind of hard to select one in particular. Let's just say that the second best moment was probably the mildly embarrassing one when John Curtice 'mummified himself with caveats' (BBC One Scotland's comment, not mine). It's true that we have gotten used now to Curtice laboriously waffle-piffling his way through several minutes of bumblingly non-committal gobbledygook that he could sum up with just "I don't have a fucking clue" and save everybody's time for more relevant comments. How a lad so obviously out of his depth can still pass as an authority and harvest hefty consultant fees for his every TV appearance is way beyond me. John Curtice, or the Boris Johnson of psephology. Or should it be the Russell Brand of psephology? Your move....Depending on whether you consider piffling waffles or gobbledygooking the worst offence. And the best moment of Election Night is definitely a tie between the look on Jo Swinson's face when it dawned on her she had just lost her seat for the second time, and her whole political career with it, by a squirrel's hair, and Nicola Sturgeon's reaction to the news, which Nigel Farage found 'graceless and nasty' because of course he has always been tasteful and kind in his comments about his adversaries. Not-PM Jo should definitely not have listened to Boris The Used Ministerial Cars Salesman. And it's not like she wasn't warned.

There is a lot to say about Scottish LibDems and none of it is good. Or did you really expect it to be? There was this running joke about Jo Swinson during the campaign: the more people see her, the less they like her. Now it turns out those who did not see that much of her, like her former constituents in Kirkintilloch and Milngavie, liked her even less so she became the shortest-lived LibDem leader of all time and the shortest-lived for any party except UKIP. Bye, bye, Jo. And of course this election was once again proof of the Scottish LibDems' hypocrisy and duplicity when they solicited tactical Brexiter Tory voting to unseat Stephen Gethins in North East Fife. So the LibDems are political whores? What a surprise indeed. And what a fucking shame when you remember Stephen was the first SNP MP to actively support the LibDem-sponsored People's Vote when other SNP MPs like Pete Wishart and Angus MacNeil expressed strong doubts about it, and he is the strongest Europhile of all SNP MPs of the Class of 2015. But don't expect any modicum of consistency or dignity from the LibDems, or did you? Seriously?

Common wisdom has it that we have never been so close to IndyRef2, then as I said already on a different matter, we have never been so close to the Sun turning supernova too. Of course things will be moving fast soon as the First Minister of Scotland has formally requested a Section 30 Order for the New Year. And just as with all New Year wishes, you may ask but you may never get. The bolder than expected request, for a permanent transfer of constitutional powers rather than a temporary one, definitely makes sense in the context of a framework legislation designed to cover all referendums and not just IndyRef2. I don't expect the First Minister of England to agree but another important part of Nicola Sturgeon's post-GE strategy is shifting the burden of proof. Meaning the Scottish Government does not have to prove they have a mandate but the English Government has to prove that they don't. Which of course will not change Boris Johnson's or Jackson Carlaw's talking points, but is a good way to attract 'soft No' voters who won't support Johnson's total disregard for democracy. Getting Indy Done has now become a case of 'an irrepressible force against an unmoveable object' as the soundbite went on Election Night. Bear in mind the support for Independence has not gone down despite some bumps during the campaign and the trend of polls shows that it's again a statistical tie, while polls as far back as last summer suggest that 'getting Brexit done' on Johnson's terms could shift enough voters to Yes to deliver a win. The whole point now is not to fall for the once-in-a-generation diatribes from the Unionist right, but to conclusively move the Overton window: the English Government has to justify why they are ready to trample democracy underfoot denying Scots the power to make their own decisions about their future, and even some Tories are now beginning to argue just that though of course none of the Scottish ones.

The Yes movement now has some unexpected allies who have sensed the wind is shifting, so their political stance shifts too. We have former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish, former Labour Minister Malcolm Chisholm, COSLA President Alison Evison, Ged Killen and Monica Lennon openly supporting a second Independence referendum, while Paul Sweeney advocates federalism and Kezia Dugdale is just one dog's hair away from actually supporting independence. I venture we can expect a number of such conversions over the coming months. Just pay attention to the details of what Neil Findlay, a federalist too in the vast array of contradictory options within Labour, just said. Contrary to The National's caption, he did not say independence is wrong per se. He said that it would be wrong to hold IndyRef2 before Brexit, which leaves the door wide open to supporting it after Brexit without contradicting himself too obviously. Last upset is now Daniel Johnson calling for Labour to have 'more control over independence' whatever this actually means. Though I suspect this is just Tricky Danny launching a preemptive bid to become the next Branch Office Manager after the next Holyrood election. Richard Leonard needs some time to mull over his various options, and I feel he has little choice but reluctantly backing holding IndyRef2. Of course the real change would be allowing his MSPs and Councillors a 'free vote' and just sitting back while some of them come out as Yes supporters. Don't rush to the conclusion this won't happen as Red Dick backing IndyRef2 was a complete impossibility just two weeks ago and now it's on the table and I venture up to a fifth of Labour's current elected representatives will sooner or later join the Yes Camp. Just sit back and watch. And enjoy the massive irony in all these conversions, that make sense only if Labour in Scotland become independent first and cuts all ties with their Unionist Head Office.

Despite all the positive signs from various sources, I believe more than ever that there is little hope of IndyRef2 being held before the end of the current Holyrood term. Nicola Sturgeon obviously knows it too, she is too well versed in the antics of English politics to have missed this, and I have a hunch she is actually counting on it helping to build a stronger case for Independence in a future campaign after the next Holyrood election, as playing the long game while maintaining a strong stance looks like a smart strategy now. We have had two Holyrood polls in early December from Panelbase and YouGov, both also polling GE voting intentions in the same survey. So how they fared on the GE voting intentions is an indication of which one is the most likely to fairly represent current Holyrood voting intentions. Panelbase predicted the SNP on 39% at the GE, so 6% off and clearly outside margin of error, and YouGov had them on 44%, so just 1% off and within margin of error. Which is the reason why I will rely on the YouGov poll only. As you can see it projects into a 'renewed, refreshed and strengthened mandate', as Nicola Sturgeon phrased it on Election Night, with the pro-Independence majority on 71 seats against 58 for the Unionist parties, and the SNP remarkably bagging more seats than all Unionists combined. It also predicts another significant blow for Labour, returning one third fewer seats for these luminaries who couldn't find their own ass with both hands and a hunting dog. And this would benefit both the Liberal Democrats as the emerging junior partner of the United Unionist Front, and the Scottish Greens who must once again face the contradiction in gaining seats by attracting anti-SNP voters. Then the good news is of course that the SNP would be only one seat down, no mean feat after three consecutive election victories and twelve years in power. Many parties all over the world would welcome such results.

Such polling will of course revive the old debate about Both Votes SNP, which is widely understood to mean the SNP going after Green list votes to switch Yellow-Green to Yellow-Yellow en masse. Of couse I would welcome Both Votes SNP. We almost got it in 2011 and it delivered the only SNP majority so far. But simulations from current voting intentions show that it could backfire, delivering only a tiny SNP majority and reducing the projected overall pro-Independence majority thanks to the twisted quirks of AMS. An alternate path is for the SNP to win a majority on the constituencies alone, which never happened. The path to 62 constituency seats looks rather easy at first glance as it entails only holding all current 59 seats and unseating all 3 Labour constituency MSPs. But even this is not as easy as it seems as current polling shows the SNP is in the danger zone in Perthshire South and Kinross-shire (Roseanna Cunningham's seat) and Edinburgh Southern (Labour Daniel Johnson's seat) might be a tougher nut to crack than expected. Then the road to 65 implies gaining Edinburgh Central, Aberdeenshire West and Ayr, the three most vulnerable Conservative seats, and this is far from a done deal. So the SNP might find it more convenient to choose a more diverse strategy, going after all the other parties in both the constituencies and the regional lists. That's my simulation in the chart below. The changes in the other parties' vote shares are all well within the margin of error of standard polls and the cumulative effect on the SNP vote would be like the best of both worlds: a one-seat SNP majority, as on current polling it's highly unlikely any scenario could get them past 65 seats, and no weakening of the overall pro-Independence majority.

Now it's up to the SNP to make it work, with this kind of strategy or another that would deliver similar results. Wiping out Labour from the constituencies is the easy part, though all three will probably come back in through the outdoor as list MSPs, and the SNP should also keep their eyes firmly on the most obvious prize: Edinburgh Central. Which is eminently doable if a major figure with strong ties to the Capital City stands; and aye I'm thinking Joanna Cherry here. Only bump on the road could be the Little Green Punks again fielding a vanity candidate in a seat where their only hope is to not lose their deposit. Unless of course they back down because they have learned the lesson from their massive and deserved failure at the general election: voters don't like backstabbers especially when they could jeopardize a shared goal that is much bigger than anyone's inflated egos. With the Scottish Tories in disarray after their massive general election defeat, gaining Colonel Ruth's seat would be a major step towards their demise and the Harvie Party should know better than to stand in the way.

Of course triple-locking the triple-lock is just one step and then the SNP must refine their strategy. Holding the predominantly Unionist media accountable for all falsehoods and misrepresentations is OK but telling them how to do their job is not the smartest trick in the book. Besides sounding patronizingly arrogant, just try to figure out how our very own John Nicolson would have reacted if he had received such summons from the Conservatives or Labour during his time at the BBC. Then don't make too much of the alleged similarity with Québec because there isn't one. Québec never was an independent nation for centuries before being annexed through fraud and deceit by a greedy colonial power. And Canada is a federal state, not a Union-cum-Devolution though their division of powers is arguably more favourable to the federal government than in the United States or even Germany. The SNP should also not rely too much on the well-rehearsed soundbite that 'Tories make the case for independence for us' as a number of voters might think otherwise, and it might even not always be true. I also think the SNP should avoid basing their campaign on the negatives of the Union as it would offer Unionists oven-ready counter-arguments. Concentrate instead on the positives of Independence and refine your talking points about the future currency and the future relation with Europe. And this is the moment when I wish to remind the SNP that rejoining the EU is not the one and only option. Joining EFTA should also be on the table as I strongly believe it would have as many upsides and fewer downsides than EU membership. And above all don't be distracted by Unionist stunts and win the fucking referendum. Or else the allegedly once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve independence will become a very real once-in-a-lifetime.

My lifetime.

Hang out our banners on the outward walls.

The cry is still: "They come!".

Our castle's strength will laugh a siege to scorn.

Here let them lie till famine and the ague eat them up.

Were they not forc'd with those that should be ours,

We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,

And beat them backward home.

12/12/2019

An Dubhlachd Election - E-Day Ambient Update

Christmas Shopping Spree Election Day
56th anniversary of Kenya's Independence and 4th anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change
Also Bill Nighy's 70th birthday and Will Carling's 54th

Big Day 🔊
© Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, 1975

So today is the big day, at least for the 3,322 candidates and their dogs and also my last attempt at making sense of this general election. The idea is to use only the on-the-day polls, which are in fact conducted on the last two or three days of the campaign and surface on social media on Election Eve or Election Day itself around 6AM. So this year we have six on-the-day polls in store. There were seven in 2017 and just one in 2015. But once again the big news is a brand new real Scottish poll, conducted by Survation on Tuesday and Wednesday. Before sharing its results, I have to remind you that Survation also published the very last full Scottish poll before the 2017 election. Back then it was the worst of twelve post-Dissolution Scottish polls for the SNP, but also the one closest to the actual result though it still overestimated the SNP and underestimated the Conservatives. So all things considered I'm inclined to trust this one anyway and it does paint a better picture for SNP than what we had yesterday, as you can see from the voting intentions and the possible distributions of seats. Fun part is that the Little Green Men are doing awfully poorly, 0.8% of the vote split between 22 candidates means 22 lost deposits. But they asked for it, didn't they?

I have also selected a sample of Scottish seats to watch tonight, which is purely arbitrary though you will find some here that have been mentioned in the media too. 22 seats are on my list, which might look a bit much, but that's what I think allows you to cover all the angles or the what-went-wrong and the what-went-right, and does not mean that what happens in the other 37 seats is irrelevant. There might be some upsets in these too, you never know. The vote shares in the table are my own projections, not even cross-checked with YouGov's MRP data. Text in bold dark red shows seats projected to change hands. Bold numbers on a solid background indicate the projected winner, while light backgrounds indicate the predicted runner-up.

I guess my list covers enough seats, and not just the main ones predicted to change hands, to assess who won the one-on-one fight between the Conservatives and the SNP, plus some juicy side stories. Will Glasgow definitely turn yellow or will a couple of red spots remain? Will the Tory tactical vote fail Ian Murray and make him vulnerable? Will John Nicolson stage a comeback in East Dunbartonshire... oops, sorry, meant Ochil and South Perthshire... just a slip of the tongue, wasn't it? Can the SNP actually unseat Jamie Stone and Christine Jardine, and why not Jo Swinson too? Could Labour do so badly that Martin Whitfield not only loses his seat but also finishes third behind the Conservatives? And how the fuck will the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath bùrach end? You have my best answers in the table, not sure all will come true. But had to try anyway.

Just Another Day 🔊
© Brian Eno, Peter Schwalm, 2005

This day won't be remarkable for the couple of millions who have not registered to vote or the 25-30% who have but won't move their asses to the fucking polling place, hopefully fewer in Scotland than in England, as they will whine about the results first thing tomorrow anyway. Don't get too excited at the reports of strong early turnout as it was to be expected when the sun sets before teatime, and even just after lunch in some parts of Scotland if some of our MPs are to be believed. This might be the most important election in a generation but don't expect a record turnout as the last time it was officially above 70% was in 1997. The day-to-day plot of voting intentions is not that good for Labour when you compare it with what we had in 2017. There was indeed a Labour surge during the campaign but they underperformed most of the time while the Tories caught up with their 2017 vote over the last two weeks. So a 2017ish upset at 10PM is probably out of the realm of plausibility now.

The last Poll'O'Polls for this election reflects this. It includes the final six polls, conducted over the last three days by six different pollsters (BMG, Kantar, Deltapoll, Opinium, Panelbase and Survation). YouGov are conspicuously absent here but they probably decided they had nothing meaningful to say after they released their final MRP prediction on Tuesday. The final super-sample is 14,867 with a theoretical 0.80% margin of error as pollsters again went for bigger samples in the probably vain hope they would get better results than in 2017.

So we end up with the Conservatives leading by 10% over Labour, when the final 2017 estimate was a 7% lead and the actual result a 2.4% lead. But don't read too much into this. There is obviously still room for surprises before Huw Edwards takes the stage and the national average can't reflect all local situations as we have already seen quite often in earlier elections.

Here Come The Warm Jets 🔊
© Brian Eno, 1973

On the Last Day polling average my model predicts a 40-seat Tory majority. Which is pretty distressing but an improvement on what we had yesterday. The bizarre quirks of FPTP mean that the Tories have not just lost a handful of Scottish seats but also a handful of English seats as the tiny changes in the relative strength of parties here and there switched some marginals.

The other prognosticators have also published a final update to their predictions. They mostly also show a slight drop in the number of predicted Tory seats over the last week. What remains to be seen is whether the two MRP predictions will be more accurate than the rest as YouGov's was in 2017. One exit poll to go, please...

So the First Minister of England might find himself in a more precarious position than expected after the election. The many unknowns mean that he is probably closer to a 1992ish outcome than a 1983ish one and it did not end really well for John Major back then. Johnson may have eradicated one form of rebellion with his Stalinist purge of the last true Europhile One-Nationers but you never know where the next blow might come from. Could be from the ERG cultists when he totally fucks up the final Brexit Deal and ends up with some monstrosity that makes even Steve Baker throw up his jam-first scones. We'll know soon enough.

Taking Tiger Mountain 🔊
© Brian Eno, 1974

So this last update says we have 73 seats changing hands and 78 marginals. 73 changes is the same as what sealed Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979 and her 43-seat majority back then also almost duplicates Johnson's predicted 40-seat majority. Quite an omen. Now let's have a last look at the full cartography of gains and losses and the alternate outcomes after redistribution of the marginals.

There's little change here from yesterday. A hung Parliament still remains a plausible result, but so does a 1983ish Conservative landslide. But the slightly reduced number of predicted Conservative seats in a hung Parliament opens the door to a new interesting option. A Labour-led Rainbow Min coalition (Greens-SNP-PC-SDLP-Lab) would bag 301 seats to Johnson's 306 so he could be ousted if the DUP chose to support Corbyn as they have hinted they might. Quite an interesting prospect even if it would be more likely to boil down to which brand of ministerial cars PM Jo likes best. As Always.

The Great Pretender 🔊
© Brian Eno, 1974

Less than three hours to go now until Huw Edwards reads out the exit poll and jaws drop to the floor. Or not. Only the punditariat's won't as they told us so, whatever the outcome, because this election was so unpredictable and we did tell you so, didn't we? Then we'll have the First Minister of England waffle-piffling his way through even his victory speech and promising he will uh.... get.... uh... Brexit... scoff... done, because that's the will of the seven people he met during the campaign. And Not-PM Jo will explain us why the LibDems did really well though they end up with fewer seats than on Dissolution Day and aye, she congratulates Amy Callaghan on her 2-vote victory and naw, she won't challenge the result in court and aye, she deeply regrets having massacred even more unsuspecting vowels than innocent squirrels during the campaign. Just before Keir Starmer comes out of hiding to read Jeremy Corbyn's resignation letter and farewell address.

But of course the worst part is that the First Minister of England will be in a position to go on pretending he is a leader. And we will be left wondering how the fuck he could get away with more lies than all other candidates since 1832 combined. The worst will be still to come obviously when the pretendy PM totally botches everything he touches and our only hope becomes that his corporate handlers will finally decide enough is enough and end up frankensteining a less buffoonish replacement. Might take years though and in the meantime he would have broken up the Precious Yoonion. Johnson as the best hope for Scottish Independence and Irish Reunification. Stranger things have happened.

But right now just brace yourselves for the Great Disturbance In The Farce at 10PM sharp when all prognosticators go FUUUUCK, those fucking pollsters fucked up AGAIN. Because, ye ken, energy fools the magician.

Marshall your forces, O great generals
The cost of victory exceeds the cost of defeat
(Andromeda, episode So Burn The Untamed Lands, 2004)

11/12/2019

An Dubhlachd Election - E-1 Flash Update

The Day Before Doomsday
83th anniversary of Uncle Teddy's abdication and John Kerry's 76th birthday

I'm Eighteen © Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith, 1971

Black Juju © Dennis Dunaway, 1971

Welcome To My Nightmare 🔊
© Alice Cooper, Dick Wagner, 1975

GB-wide polls are again popping up at a sluggish rate so the main event is again a new full Scottish poll, this time the last one Panelbase conducted between 3 and 6 December. It has received only low profile coverage in The National, probably because it's again quite disappointing for the SNP. Only caveat here is that Panelbase is usually the least 'SNP-friendly' of all pollsters who field real Scottish polls. But even them overestimated the SNP vote in 2017 so there is every reason to carefully consider what they have to say right now, which is mostly the Conservatives closing the gap with the SNP and the array of seat projections delivering only a minor success for the SNP. What was once seen as the worst case scenario for the SNP (45 seats) has now become the best case scenario. The silver lining is that only one SNP incumbent is really endangered (aye, Stephen Gethins in North East Fife) but the downside is that the Conservatives are doing better than expected and could easily spin a minor setback, like losing 'only' Stirling and Gordon, as clear support for their arch-Unionist stance. And of course would be even louder if the SNP failed to clear the 40-seat hurdle, which can no longer be brushed aside as a totally implausible outcome. The key seat here is Lanark and Hamilton East as losing it in addition to my worst-case scenario would take the SNP's headcount down to 39 and signal a very bad Election Night indeed.

Now there may be some explanations for this in the SNP's campaign itself. Though not as disjointed as it was in 2017, it lacks real direction. I thought we had a deal that the SNP would stop trying to save England from Brexit against their will, focus on Independence and hammer the Tories about their mishandling of reserved matters. And now we have Nicola Sturgeon publicly admitting a second EU referendum could happen before IndyRef2 if Labour are the next government, and also that a vote for the SNP 'need not' be a vote for Independence. Which is, whichever way you look at it, totally shambolic and at odds with the earlier campaign strategy, especially as it also allows the other parties plenty of wiggle room to hit at the SNP over their handling of devolved matters. Was a recipe for disaster in 2017 and still is today. Then we also have the 'situation' in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath that could easily turn into Nightmare On Bennochy Road: a split pro-Independence vote and Labour underperforming so the Tories sneak in through the back door and bag the seat on barely 30% of the vote, in what had been Labour territory since 1935. Back to the big picture, the updated trends of GB-wide polling remain surprisingly good for the Conservatives.

The Tory vote has admittedly reached a plateau for some time now, but Labour is failing to actually catch up even with more potential LibDem voters switching. As always there are massive contradictions in recent polls. Once undecideds removed 59% are dissatisfied and 41% satisfied with the way Johnson handles his job as PM, while 68% are dissatisfied and 32% satisfied with the way Corbyn handles his job ad Leader of the Opposition. Yet the guy with a -18% rating on performance has a +16% rating on the PMability scale and roughly a 70% probability of winning the election with an outright majority. And the same people who now rate the NHS as a more important campaign issue than Brexit are also willing to grant Johnson a five-year lease on Number Ten when he's the one oven-ready to sell off the procurement of pharmaceuticals, the keyest component of the whole system, to Trump's Big Pharma donors who will raise prices threefold and even eightfold on some rare drugs. Go figure...

The Nightmare Returns 🔊
© Alice Cooper, Bob Ezrin, 2011

There was some bad news in this week's polling for Labour when YouGov released their last pre-election full Welsh poll. The previous one, fielded two weeks ago, showed Labour in better shape than before and still projected to hold a majority of Welsh seats. Now the Conservatives have almost closed the gap in voting intentions and Labour are predicted to lose eight of their 2017 seats. There is a symbolic dimension in this too as it shows the Far Western Pillar of the Red Wall in North-East Wales totally crumbling down. Five of the expected Labour losses (Aylin and Deeside, Clwyd South, Delyn, Vale of Clwyd, Wrexham) are within the boundaries of post-industrial Clwyd who would become a completely blue blob on the map for the first time in.... well.... forever.... as it never gave the Tories a full slate even in the olden days when it was Denbighshire and Flintshire, and not even during the Thatcher era.

Meanwhile, my updated Poll'O'Polls is still pretty worrying for Labour. It includes the last six ones conducted between 5 and 10 December. Super-sample size is 14,378 as pollsters went for bigger samples in the last mile, with a theoretical 0.83% margin of error. I deliberately did not include the massive surveys published by Focaldata and YouGov yesterday as both were conducted to feed their respective MRP models over a longer period and don't represent a snapshot of current public opinion, if any poll ever does. The massive samples do not mean they are less right or more wrong, or whatever, than others or that their tiny margins of error actually mean anything. Being right might very well again prove to be just lucky guess. Anyway here's what we have in the Poll'O'Polls....

As you might expect, pollsters contradict each other about the predicted Conservatives' lead over Labour. ICM and Deltapoll find it has gone down since their previous survey, while BMG, Survation and YouGov find it has gone up, and Savanta-Comres say it's either up or down depending on which one of their older polls you pick, as they conducted two simultaneously last week that delivered different results. All this is not really helpful overall. Especially as the rolling average has moved only very slightly, by roughly 1% in Labour's direction, and is now predicting the Conservatives leading by 8.5% overall and 12% in England outside London. Guess a repeat of the 2017 upset was always too much to ask anyway....

Elected 🔊
© Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith, 1973

On such voting intentions my model predicts a 58-seat Conservative majority. This is slightly better for the Conservatives than three days ago because the seats they lost in England are offset by better results in Scotland and Wales. Never underestimate the colonies. Other prognosticators have updated their own projections and all that were published over the last week point to a Conservative majority, though they differ on its magnitude and mostly see it under 50 seats. The massive Tory majorities predicted by Forecast UK and Flavible definitely look like outliers here, especially when you remember Flavible's past record of wildly outlandish predictions.

Of course the most anticipated and most commented update is YouGov's new and last MRP estimate. Everybody in the commentariat remembers that YouGov were the only ones predicting a hung Parliament in 2017 though their seat count slightly underestimated the Tories and overestimated Labour and the SNP. So you might want to conclude that the Tory majority will be more solid than the 28 seats predicted by YouGov, and this is obviously possible. But you also might want to believe that a hung Parliament is still possible, and YouGov's published results also open the door to this possibility as what they actually say, after factoring in the margin of error, is that the Conservatives would bag 311 to 367 seats, and Labour 206 to 256. Focaldata, using their own version of MRP and a different data set, reach pretty much the same result. So expect the actual result to be weighted against the punditariat's best educated guess of a 30ish-seat Tory majority. That's real life media for you, lads.

Lay Down And Die, Goodbye 🔊

Under current polling we would have 78 seats changing hands, close to what happened in 1964 and 1900. One that brought a new government to power and one that was more a game of musical chairs barely changing the status quo. And we would also have 69 marginals. But of course the complete cartography of gains and losses and the possible alternate scenarios are pretty similar to what we had three days ago. And I again agree with YouGov's MRP: we could have a hung Parliament though it would certainly take one big fuck of a miracle to get it.

And of course the hung Parliament would soon deliver the New Coalition. Now it has finally dawned on Arlene Foster that Johnson is genetically engineered to lie even if you just ask for the time. So we can safely rule out any new Con-DUP trade deal even if the Irish Custom-Booth-In-The-Sea Frontstop that so angered Foster has fuck all chance of being implemented even in the unforeseeable future. So as always expect the LibDems to do the right thing: put personal interests over general interest and lend a hand in delivering Brexit. And Johnson's best stunt would be to buy them off with the promise of e second EU referendum and then actively campaign to defeat them, just as Cameron did with the Alternative Vote referendum. And of course never forget to lie through your teeth at every TV appearance, it worked so well already there's no reason to change strategy. So we're all fucked..... and some would actually love it.

So now it definitely looks like the UK is gonna serve a five year sentence without the possibility of parole. The last day of the campaign was a fitting end to all this clown show. Johnson's PR team telling ITV to fuck off while the First Minister of England ran for a fridge to hide was as hilarious as it was appalling. And now the blond buffoon will actually be elected and get a mandate to do what he does best: lying and waffle-piffling without any serious challenge from the Tory-cuddling state media and daily fish-wrappers. And so all will be fine for the billionaire corporate oligarchs as the dishevelled clown attracts all attention and they can freely puppetmaster him from the shadows. You know who they are: the garbage press owners and tax-evading entitled expats who brainchilded austerity and Universal Credit. The kind of lads who watch I, Daniel Blake weekly over their Sunday afternoon pink gins because it proves how successful they were: the masterplan was to make peoples' lives miserable and it worked beyond expectations.

And remember there is no such thing as the light at then end of the tunnel and there never was. All there is are the headlights of the runaway train coming at you at flank speed. Just don't whine, you asked for it.

Some more almost live coverage tomorrow. Just stay tuned.

You know the way to battle a lie?
With the truth? No, with a bigger lie!
(The Good Wife, episode Death Of A Client, 2013)

08/12/2019

An Dubhlachd Election - E-4 Flash Update

Four Days Until Doomsday
39th anniversary of John Lennon's murder and 28th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR
Would also have been Jim Morrison's 76th birthday

The main recent event in the polling universe is of course YouGov's new Scottish poll, conducted between 29 November and 3 December and polling both Westminster and Holyrood voting intentions. Let's just say for now their Holyrood polling would return a pro-Independence majority and I'll come back to it after the General Election. YouGov's polls of Scotland have in the past steadily been the most 'SNP friendly' of all, be it their full Scottish polls or the Scottish subsamples of their GB-wide polls. This is not the case here as their findings are within margin of error of what Ipsos MORI found ten days before. So their data project onto a 10-seat gain for the SNP as I still rate Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath as a Labour hold despite the overall collapse of the Labour vote. But the Conservatives bagging almost the same vote share as in 2017 makes the SNP-Con battleground quite competitive and potentially uncertain. Here we have four predicted SNP gains (Angus, Ayr Carrick and Cumnock, Gordon, Ochil and South Perthshire) and four predicted Tory holds (Aberdeen South, Banff and Buchan, East Renfrewshire, Moray) decided by less than 4%. Where these seats go will tell whether we have a minor SNP success or a major one, and as always turnout will be the key, though I don't expect anything as bad as my earlier DoomSNP scenarios. Just to be on the safe side though, remember every vote counts until 10PM on Thursday.

The influx of new GB-wide election polls has slowed down over the last few days, which is quite surprising so close to Election Day. Only the now mandatory batch of Sunday polls delivered some fresh perspective. You have to wonder if pollsters think that it's already in the bag for Boris Johnson and that further polling is irrelevant. The day-to-day plot of voting intentions tends to support such views as it again shows Labour definitely underperforming when compared to the 2017 polls. This is something we have seen before this year and it only confirms two of the main points routinely raised by pollsters: the Conservatives have successfully managed to squirrel the Brexit Party vote away from their competitors but have probably reached their peak when current voting intentions match their actual 2017 vote share, while Labour still haven't gained back enough Remain voters from the LibDems and now need a more massive surge in four days than they achieved in 2017 over two weeks. Good luck with that.

In 2017 the Conservatives led by 21% on Dissolution Day and by 1% on E-5 (within margin of error of the actual 2.4% Tory lead on Election Day), Labour had closed the gap by 20% in 45 days. This year the Conservatives led by 11% on Dissolution Day and 11% on E-5, massively more than in 2017 and more worryingly Labour have failed to close the gap in 30 days. And the longer gap between dissolution and the election is certainly not the one factor that explains why Labour are doing so blatantly worse this year. Now there is renewed speculation that pollsters might fuck up as massively as they did in 2017, part of it bordering on conspiracy theories. Which conveniently overlooks basic facts: the very last batch of 2017 polls (those conducted on E-2 and E-1, 6 and 7 June 2017) got both the Conservative and LibDem vote shares right within margin of error. Only grossly underestimating the Labour vote made them look awful when a predicted 50ish-seat Tory majority turned into a hung Parliament. But if pollsters are wrong this year by the same amount they were in 2017, that would take the current Labour vote only to about 38%, still 3% short of their actual 2017 vote. And I definitely think this would possibly deliver a 2015ish result for Labour and not a 2017ish one. Better than current projections but still not enough to totally rule out a Tory majority.

Today's Poll'O'Polls includes the last six ones, conducted between Austerlitz Day and Pearl Harbor Day by five different pollsters (SavantaComres twice for two different clients and delivering different results, Panelbase, Opinium, Deltapoll and the ever-present YouGov). Super-sample size is 11,287 with a theoretical 0.92% margin of error, and it barely shows any change from three days ago, with Conservatives leading GB-wide by 10% and by 13% in England. And it's not really a case of outliers cancelling each other out though they actually do. But rather every new poll shows barely any movement from the previous poll by the same pollster, whatever their supposed bias is; Even the Guardian has to admit it's too little and too late for Labour though some of their readers are still desperately looking for signs of life.

One factor definitely working against Labour is Jeremy Corbyn himself as Johnson still beats him roughly 3-2 on the PMability scale. Which is quite similar to voters admitting they like the schoolyard bully better than the headmaster, and that would never happen or would it? There's a lesson in this: it's more efficient to bumble your way through incoherent waffle-piffling than to give serious answers to serious questions. And the host would probably shout over you anyway if you tried to be the adult in the room, just ask Nicola and Jeremy (The Other One).

Now a lot will have to be said during the post-mortem of this election on how the media handled two hot issues: Labour antisemitism and Tory islamophobia. The Tory-cuddling media were so eager to smear Corbyn and whitewash the Conservatives that they did not care they were treading into very dangerous territory. First they made islamophobia look like a very minor offence and then they made an alleged 'Jewish vote' something of a reality as long as it hurt Labour, while the very concept of a 'Jewish vote' is one of the pillars of real antisemitism. They played with fire and will get away with it. Says a lot....

If the actual election plays out the way current polling predicts, the one real upset on Election Night will be the LibDems actually ending up with fewer seats than on Dissolution Day. Which proves one of the current common wisdom points about PM Jo: the more people see her, the less they like her and the ghosts of dead squirrels glance down at us from the hereafter with vengeful grins on their faces. Then we will have a 54-seat Conservative majority as my model projects, or possibly anything between a 40-seat and an 80-seat Conservative majority as other models predict on the same polling data. So Johnson would do better than Heath in 1970, Thatcher in 1979, Major in 1992 or Cameron in 2015. Quite a feat to write his children about, once he figures out how many letters he should send, for someone who reached his Peter Principle peak as an absentee editor for The Spectator.

Here we have 77 seats changing hands, which might sound like a small number compared to real tsunami elections. But not every election has to be The End Of Civilization As We Know It and a similar number of changes was enough to take Harold Wilson to Number Ten in 1964 or Margaret Thatcher in 1979, which was definitely not her landslide election, 1983 was. And again we have Labour here back to a 1983ish number of seats. The cartography of predicted gains and losses is again merciless for Labour with 21 incumbents going down North of the Red Wall and another 14 in the Midlands.

So don't expect any Portillo Moments in the wee hours of Friday The Thirteenth. And no Balls Moments either as most of Labour's frontbench are entrenched in deep sinkholes, and aye I still do love those mixed metaphors. Unless you count on some really upsetting upsets like Jo Swinson or Dominic Rabb being unseated, which would not be undeserved but is also not that likely. Then I guess this election will again prove rebellion and defection don't cut it with voters as none of the best known rebels who are still standing will be re-elected (Grieve, Gauke, Milton, Field) and neither will the most prominent defectors (Lee, Soubry, Leslie, Umunna, Gyimah). So those who chose to hit the road and head for greener pastures, be it retirement or the £100k-a-night have-dinner-with circuit, probably made the wisest choice. For fuck's sake even Bercow would have been endangered by an official Conservative challenge in true blue Buckingham.

Current polling would spawn 73 marginal seats and the alternate possible outcomes look pretty similar to what we had three days ago. And all pretty bad for Labour as they all mean some variation on Back To The Future. 1983ish on the median projection, 1923ish on the Con Max scenario and just 2015ish on the Lab Max scenario. Then the question would be: would Jeremy Corbyn stay as leader if the result was just as bad but no worse than what Ed Miliband achieved? Genuine question though I can't remember any case when a past Labour leader was granted a third chance at losing a general election.

Making the 'Con Min' scenario become reality would require slashing the Conservative lead to about 4-5%, slightly higher than the final 2017 margin because changes in voting patterns would work marginally in favour of the oppositions in a number of marginals. And once again we would have this loveable situation where PM Jo would face the existential dilemma between doing the right thing or getting the right car. Which she would have to solve in the time Huw Edwards would need to read out the exit poll, and we surely have no doubt about her final decision once she gets over the prospect of daily meetings with Voorhees Johnson as his Deputy First Minister of England.

My real regret this week is that we will never see the First Minister of England interviewed by Andrew Neil as he had Stanley send a note saying he can't come today, nor any other day for that matter though he found time for some entertainment shows, so Paisley Andy is preparing to pitbull an empty chair on Tuesday. Which I doubt will be enough for a 30-minute show but might be fun to watch for a shortish moment. Then all that will prove is that Johnson can be trusted on just one thing: avoiding any questions about his untrustworthiness. There is every reason to believe a fucking lot of people will have a rude awakening on Friday. But buyer's remorse and regretting not having voted won't help, now's the time to choose: get the fuck out to vote and kick out the Tories. Or else....

You weren't there for the zombie invasion in Finchmere
It died down after they were barred from the local pub
(Midsomer Murders, episode Send In The Clowns, 2019)