Jeremy's Den: January 2020

…. as in Post-Mortem to Post-Election Stress Disorder

Don't blame me, please, for the fate that falls
I did not choose it
I did not, no no, I did not
I truly did not choose it
(Peter Hammill, Darkness (11/11), 1970)

So 'tis this time of the year when the Realm's new motto is "Ein Volk, Eine Nation, Ein Führer". Which is just what happens when the now-elected First Minister of England has never apologized for a piece he published in the Spectator that advocated the final solution to the Scottish question, has made it clear that his one-nation Conservatism is nothing but Little England Conservatism, and sees a personal allegiance from his Cabinet Ministers and MPs as the foundation of his power. One of the oddities on Election Night was the Conservatives branding themselves as The People's Government, which Andrew Marr described as 'a bit French or possibly even Russian', and here he probably actually meant Soviet, as he reminded the Tories that 'we have a parliamentary democracy and the people are represented by all sorts of other people'. But don't expect Johnson to pay much heed to this self-evident truth. So after a brief moment of shameless cronyism, because there are only so many hermines that can be trinketed before the yearly supply runs out, he will go back to further Stalinist purges to make sure BorisSpeak becomes the official language of the UK. He already purged the party, now he's ready to purge the Civil Service and the state media that is not even Propagandastaffelish enough for his taste. Just give him one year and the UK will be a one-party state in anything but name with Dominic Cummings sending daily memos to all Ministers telling them what they are and are not allowed to say. Uh... wait... he does that already, or doesn't he?

So how the fuck did we get there? Difficult to name and shame pollsters this time as they did a better job than two years ago. Last day polling said Tories 43.8%, Labour 33.5% and LibDems 11.6% and we got (GB-wide only as this is where the pollsters polled) Tories 44.7%, Labour 32.9% and LibDems 11.8%. All vote shares right within 1% with just that little quirk that a predicted Tory lead of 10.3% turned into an actual lead of 11.8%. But the polls were a bit off in England outside London, where the election was decided as usual. Last Day polling predicted a 14.5% Conservative lead Doon Sooth and it ended up being 18%, more than enough to switch a score of marginals and explain why the predictors all underestimated the Conservative majority. The real test for the various prediction models and their solidity is what they predict when fed with the actual vote shares. The graph below shows the various projections by the models available online and also what uniform swing would have delivered. The deciding item is then the number of misses, calculated as the sum of the absolute values of differences between the predictions and the results, party by party. Here Electoral Calculus comes out as the best predictor by far with a score of 16, with my model a distant second with a score of 30 and Flavible a very close third with a score of 32. Though, in all fairness to them, Flavible come third only because their model got the SNP seats wrong by a wide margin and they did better than me for the English seats. Uniform swig is almost as good with a score of 36 while Election Polling is far behind with a score of 48. Now just let me bask in the spotlight for a wee moment as my own performance is definitely not bad for an amateur with no resources but himself. Especially as YouGov's and Focaldata's big MRP engines performed quite badly with a miss-score of 70 and 76 respectively, though of course their predictions were based on what polls were available two days before the election, not retconned with the actual vote shares.

Back to the real world, there are many oddities in this election's results. The LibDems' vote share rose significantly yet they managed to lose all seats they had gained since 2017 through defections and one by-election, and ended up with fewer seats than in 2017. Losing their leader's seat by a squirrel's hair was just another embarrassment for a party thrown into disarray. Labour managed to hold recently won ultra-marginals with increased majorities, think Canterbury or Portsmouth South, while the historic Red Wall fell apart from coast to coast, taking down iconic seats that had been Labour's even since before 1935, think Bolsover and its predecessor Clay Cross that had been in Labour's hands since 1922, or some that had been in Labour's hands since 1918 except for a brief interlude in 1931-1935 during the disastrous National Labour years. Or Tony Blair's Sedgefield which elected its first Labour MP in 1922 and had been a safe Labour seat continuously since 1935. It is a bit harsh to describe this election as Labour's worst since 1935, though it's mathematically correct, as the pattern here is more 1983ish. Had Bolsover and Labour's Scottish seats not fallen, Corbyn would indeed have matched Foot's performance. But Labour were indeed courting disaster last month with a manifesto even they did not seem to fully grasp. They had some 1,057 items for sale and all were priorities, except taking a clear stand on the one issue that mattered to disgruntled voters in their heartlands: Brexit. Procrasturbation can only take you so far, or can't it? To be fair Johnson also seemed to have a hard time remembering what the Tory manifesto actually proposed, except massive injections of freshly-printed dosh everywhere, but at least he stuck to the script on the two major soundbites: Get Fucking Brexit Done and No To Fucking IndyRef2. One worked and the other did not, and the one that worked was the only one that really mattered to harvest even the remoteliest plausible gains.

Now it is quite clear to me that millions were not careful enough what they voted for, and Johnson's true First Hundred Days are bound to be the winter of their disillusion. They will soon discover it's safer to trust a snake with fangs at both ends rather than Johnson. Just don't think for even a nanosecond that Johnson intends to increase funding for the NHS out the goodness of his heart or because he genuinely cares. It is just a ploy to make the prey more attractive to foreign investors when the NHS will be on the table during trade talks between a weakened United Kingdom and Trump's high and mighty corporate donors using the US government as a front. Never forget what American Big Business actually mean by 'free trade': freedom to plunder. Another priority for Johnson is to repeal the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA), which of course has emerged as a top concern for the elusive Workington Man during the campaign, or has not, but what does Johnson really care? In my opinion FTPA was a major step in modernizing British politics despite its many flaws and self-defeating loopholes, and now Johnson wants us back to the days of feudalism when the Monarch could dismiss Parliament on a whim because they disliked the Speaker's choice of a wig. Then you could argue that there is no need to formally repeal FTPA as it has already been de facto nullified by the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 (EPGEA). A unique occurrence in parliamentary history when a secondary provision of an Act was used to circumvent the core provision of the very same Act, and the LibDems' and the SNP's everlasting shame as they were the ones who came up with that stunt in their haste to get an early snap election where both expected big gains and the possibility of a hung Parliament. Then the SNP proved the abler gamblers here as they did score the big gains while the LibDems failed miserably. Oddly Johnson at first rejected the idea as he was uncharacteristically trying to play it by the book and aimed for a clean dissolution on the 434 votes required by FTPA. Only after he failed thrice did he endorse the stunt into EPGEA. Quite ironically Labour then fell for it and shot themselves in both feet and the arse, choosing to back it and giving Johnson more than the proverbial 434 votes, on a bill that now required only a simple majority, while the SNP abstained because they disagreed with the proposed date. Because, ye ken, there are only two hours of daylight in Stornoway and Perth after 9 December. Strange days indeed in the last weeks of the 57th Parliament...

Of course Labour UK-wide have only themselves to blame for a defeat of Titanic proportions. Since 2017 the Labour leadership had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebrand themselves as the English Syriza or Podemos and instead ended up being Militant 2.0, so don't expect the calls for New New Labour to die down anytime soon even if a now not-so-reluctant Keir Starmer becomes the new leader, as was my hunch many moons ago, but then I'd never tell you that I told you so, our would I?. Then Owen Jones has the perfect explanation for Labour's crashlanding, aye the same Owen Jones who told us to brace ourselves for a 2017ish upset in the last mile. But what's not to love with 20/20 hindsight? Owen definitely has his own special way around the five stages of Kübler-Ross, provided of course the whole thing is actually a thing and not just a stunt for phony psychologists to get some dosh out of gullible mourners. Anyway Owen was both in denial and angry before disaster struck and then he sped past the next three stages to an unprecedented sixth one: comment. Bur even Smart Owen has a hard time finding a way to blame anything and anyone but Corbyn for the disaster. Though you can still blame the Tories and you wouldn't be far from the truth. Yet you could also easily make the case that this election oddly echoes the last line of King Kong, only slightly rearranged: Oh no, it wasn't the Tories, it was Treeza killed Jezza. Why is that? Just look again at my seat projections since I started this blog 18 months ago. I did not include all projections as it would have lethally cluttered the chart, but only a selection of about one per month, and even what this redux shows is quite mindbogglingly flabbergasting. Just look at the bar for 12 May 2019, just ten days before the European Parliament election was held and a massive shitstorm hit the fans.

Aye, you got it right. Early May polling predicted a massive walloping for the Conservatives and Labour gaining more seats than in 2017. Of course this was before the hyper-tsunami of anti-Corbyn propaganda in the Tory-cuddling billionaire press, at a point where Theresa May was so discredited that Corbyn's PMability rating almost matched hers, and also before LibDems started mantraing their 'neither nor' that actually meant 'neither Jeremy nor Corbyn. Just take a deep breath and let it sink in that, if the general election had happened then, Jeremy Corbyn would be PM, Ed Davey Deputy PM and Ian Murray Secretary of State for Scotland (naw, just kidding here), and the SNP would already have strongarmed the Lab-Lib coalition into granting a Section 30 Order. Not to forget the added bonus that, in this alternate reality, Ruth Davidson would actually have skinny dipped in Loch Ness after the SNP cleared the 50-seat hurdle. Then the European Parliament election, the one that could have been avoided, totally reshuffled the deck and sent the mechanics of disaster into motion. At first polls showed that people tended to duplicate their European election vote rather than actually state how they would vote in a general election, triggering speculation that the English Conservatives might suffer the same fate as the Canadian Conservatives at the end of the 20th century. Even on Mayxit Day at the end of July, a Lab-Lib coalition remained a very plausible outcome, then the Brexit Party vote plummeted to UKIPish levels. But as long as it stayed at 2015 UKIP level, a hung Parliament was still the predicted outcome, which might explain why the LibDems and the SNP were so eager to get a quick snap election. Oddly the much publicized Boris Effect actually reached its full impact only after Parliament voted for dissolution and the Brexit Party vote foundered further to 2017 UKIP level and the rest is history as The Resistible Rise Of Alexander Boris became irresistible. What 20/20 2020 hindsight tells us is that Labour would be better off today if they had helped May pass her Brexit Deal (which was admittedly awful but definitely less so than Johnson's that will pass anyway now) before the end of the first Brextension, and then triggered a vote of no-confidence and a late spring or early summer snap general election. But allowing May to kick the can of worms down the road twice too many sealed their fate. And ours.

This election was also devastating for the LibDems and deservedly so. Now the narrative is that they did not do that bad as they lost 'only one' seat, in a stunning replay of comments about the Alliance's performance in 1983. And todays' comments are as misleading as back then. Just remember that LibDems had 21 seats on Dissolution Day so the net result is that they lost half, and the detail is worse as they held only 8 of 21 and partially compensated with two gains from the Conservatives and one from the SNP. And if you look back a few months it is clear the LibDems suffered a major case of Midas In Reverse: everything they touched turned to shite and it got even worse after Jo Swinson took over from Vince Cable. They tried to attract Labour and Conservative defectors en masse so they could rebrand themselves as the English Macronists but only eight succumbed to the sirens and in the end all of them lost even after switching to different seats deemed more easily winnable. Then they tried to frankenstein a Remain Pact but it again failed miserably after showing cracks on day one when a number of Welsh LibDems refused to stand down for the 'separatist' Plaid Cymru, and then it gained only one of the 60ish seats where it actually happened: Richmond Park. But you could argue that this particular seat would have switched anyway and you would certainly be right. And in the end it did not matter the least as Zac Goldsmith came back through the out door as an unelected hermined expenses scrounger, as befits the First Minister of England's drinking buddy.

Textbook case of Unite To Remain's trainwreck is Brecon and Radnorshire, the much publicized LibDem by-election gain, that switched back to the Tories on GE day. I said quite clearly at the time that this poster gain was in fact nothing more than a Potemkin gain, an illusion only supported by misleading PR, and the general election proved it was just that. There is also a massive dose of irony in Tom Brake, the LibDem spokesman on Brexit, losing Carshalton and Wallington to a 27yr old Tory NHS worker. Brake was the longest serving LibDem incumbent standing in this election as he had represented the seat continuously since 1997 but of course it voted 56% Leave, strongly against the overall trend in London and the Brexit factor was enough to defeat him on just a 2% swing. But the election also leaves a stain on the LibDems: Kensington, the constituency where Grenfell Tower is located, switched from Labour to the Conservatives by 150 votes with Tory-turncoat-turned-LibDem Sam Gyimah bagging 9k votes after a smear campaign against Labour incumbent Emma Dent Coad. There are many things for which the LibDems will never be forgiven and this is one of them. But you can also enjoy the thought that some born-again Libdems like Philip Lee, Sam Gyimah and Chuka Umunna managed that memorable feat of losing two seats at the same time: their old seats stayed with their old party while they failed to gain their new seats of choice. So now it's: Bye bye Jo, Bye bye Sam and Chuka, Blame your emptiness, And I'm not gonna cry.

Hey Jo! Gotcha!

Now expect Boris Johnson to break an arm patting himself on the back for getting Brexit done when his amended worse-than-May's Brave New Deal is passed by Commons. Though in the real world nothing will be done and everything will remain to be done after 31 January. And when the economy collapses because of Johnson's inept handling of the Brexit transition period, we're going to be told that more austerity is needed and that we're all in this together, like Tories always say. Which means pretty much the same as when Bruce Ismay told the steerage passengers they were all in this together aboard the Titanic. Unless of course Johnson insists on delivering on his massive spending pledges without resorting to the Magic Money Trees in the now reconquered Kensington Gardens but instead borrows from the usual loan sharks on international markets. After all Tories have already successfully increased the national debt from 70% of GDP at the end of the 2009-2010 financial year, the last under full Labour control, to 84% in 2018-2019. Now Johnson can easily do better than this and increase it to above 100% at the end of his term, thus beating the record currently held by France, and we all should definitely be happy to beat France in any sort of competition, or shouldn't we?.

A word now about a very serious issue that cost Labour dearly: antisemitism. First let's make it clear that I consider antisemitism to be an absolute abomination that must be absolutely eradicated. Then what happened in the UK cannot be solved by a black-and-white approach about who holds the moral high ground and who doesn't. Left-wing antisemitism is not a new thing, it existed already in the 1930s when 'Jewish finance ruling the world' was a favourite cliché for both Stalinists and Nazis. More recently, left-wing antisemitism is the direct consequence of extreme antizionism and unquestioning support for the Palestinians. So I do believe this specific kind of antisemitism exists within Labour, but I also believe it was grossly exaggerated for political gain as even Luciana Berger was unable to build a watertight case about the alleged 'institutional' Labour antisemitism, or even prove that Corbyn himself is an antisemite. Don't forget too that even the minutest allegation of antisemitism, however unfounded in most cases, is systematically weaponized against those who simply oppose the policies of Israel. So a serious debate is tainted by obfuscation and deliberate misrepresentation, culminating in Corbyn being labelled a supporter of terrorism, which he obviously never was. Bear in mind too that the not-unintended consequence was to shut down any honest investigation into racism, homophobia, islamophobia and antisemitism in Conservative ranks.

Let me just say that the Tories shamelessly playing the 'Labour antisemitism' card all along the campaign was definitely a low point. Michael Gove's victory speech, opening for Johnson in the wee hours of Friday the Thirteenth, was probably the most disgusting example of electioneering a very sensitive issue, when he claimed that British Jews 'should never have to live in fear again' of a Labour leader who 'embraced anti-Jewish terrorism'. Then subtlety and adhering to the truth have never been Sleekit Gove's fortes, or have they? I further think there is no antisemitism in stating the obvious fact that a number of 'representative' Jewish organizations in Western Europe and North America are in fact propaganda outlets for Likud and far-right Israeli expansionism. Or in stating that a number of British lobbyists act as paid agents of a foreign political party which means, as long as said party is in power, paid agents of a foreign power on British soil. Of course this is not just an Israeli thing, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and American Big Business also have their lobbying networks in the UK to exert pressure on Parliament and Government, but at least they don't use alleged antisomethingism as a smokescreen to demonize their opponents. The claim by Likud-sponsored pressure groups that antizionism equates antisemitism is preposterous as Zionism is an ideology, not a religion or an ethnicity, and as such is a legitimate target for scrutiny, criticism and debate. Likewise calls for the UK government to criminalize the boycott of Israeli products, which unfortunately might succeed, is also unacceptable as organized boycott is a legitimate strategy to fight human rights violations and has been successful used against other countries in the past. And I'll leave it at that for now, or more likely forever.

Back to the fallout of the general election, voters in Northern Ireland also sent a clear message that was obvious already from the trend of polls, as I pointed out in earlier posts. The most obvious part is that Republican MPs now outnumber Unionist MPs for the first time ever, something I mentioned as a distinct possibility when commenting on the most recent NI poll, and has now happened. But as usual there is more here than meets the eye at first glance as voters actually sent a more comprehensive message. One that has nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with local politics. The end of the DUP-Sinn Féin duopoly signals massive discontent with the breakdown of the power-sharing agreement that has resulted in Stormont now shut down for three years. Another part of the message was overshadowed by Sinn Féin unseating DUP Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds but the SDLP's rebirth also signals growing discontent within the Republican community at Sinn Féin's abstentionist stance. Republican voters, who are also massively Remainers, deeply resented not being heard in Westminster during the endless Brexit debate and came to the right conclusion that only the SDLP can be their voice. The massive 18% swing from Sinn Féin to the SDLP in Foyle is the most obvious sign. Sinn Féin can consider themselves lucky to not have lost South Down to the SDLP too, as a number of potential SDLP voters probably switched to the Alliance Party there. That the results were something of a best-case scenario for Sinn Féin and a worst-case scenario for the DUP can't hide the fact that both received a strong warning from the electorate to change their ways, or else...

But of course the Big Twenty-Twenty Constitutional Showdown will not be about Irish Reunification, the so-called Border Poll. It will be about Scottish Independence. We all know that both Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson can be.... uh.... reactive given the proper incentives, so expect something like High Noon At The OK Corral unless it turns into Alien Vs Godzilla or whatever. And aye, Godzilla is one of the good guys, at least the reboot says so, or doesn't it? Anyway it will be interesting to see what comes out of a confrontation between a true believer in English Exceptionalism, coupled with a very English version of 'manifest destiny', and a true believer in Scottish Universalism, though I don't really expect it to reach that level of intellectualism. I fear it will end up closer to a bar brawl than a debating society session. Speaking of debates, we definitely need one between their Secretary of State for Scotland and our Secretary for Constitutional Relations, and I can't wait for the next day's headlines on how they kept barking at each other during the Jack-Russell confrontation. Aye, that's a lousy one but I definitely couldn't resist. Now Johnson has promised to love-bomb Scotland, whatever than means beyond the hypothetical £3.3 billion of Barnett consequentials mentioned in the fairy tale Tory manifesto. But are we really to trust that 2020Boris is any different from 2004Boris who implicitly endorsed 'comprehensive extermination' of the 'verminous race' of 'tartan dwarves'? Then we could also dare him to make good on having Hadrian's Wall refortified to pen us on the other side, as James Michie put it, before he realizes that would mean Scotland annexing Carlisle, most of Northumberland and Newcastle. But I certainly wouldn't bet a tenner on a Johnson-Sturgeon debate happening anytime in the foreseeable future. Johnson probably has an uncontrollable unconscious fear of Scots as he already chickened out of an interview with Andrew Neil. And he surely knows he would be drowned and quartered, quicklimed and woodchipped by Sturgeon in less time than it takes to say 'Our Precious Union Of Equals' so he has no incentive to risk a one-on-one he would lose because, ye ken, though she be but little, she is fierce.

We walked alone, sometimes hand in hand
Between the thin lines marking sea and sand
Smiling very peacefully, we began to notice that we could be free
© Peter Hammill, 1970

BBC One Scotland described the incoming constitutional trench-war as 'an irrepressible force applied to an unmoveable object' twice on Election Night after it was confirmed by multiple declarations that the SNP had done extremely well and ousted more than half of Scotland's Conservative MPs. Now we could have a debate within the debate about what is really the unmoveable object. Johnson's resolve to trample democracy underfoot again and refuse to even discuss a Section 30 Order? Or Sturgeon's determination to make the voice of our people heard through a peaceful democratic process? The irrepressible force is certainly not that of Johnson's willpower as he is known to U-turn, bully or manipulate rather than confront strong opposition head on. You might also want to know what Oor Jimbo Murphy, the luminary who wouldn't find a haystack in a noodle factory, has to say about the election and Scotland's future. Then watch him desperately waffle-piffling while being grilled by Andrew Neil during BBC One's (England version) Election Night coverage here between 3:26:30 and 3:31:45. It's quite hilarious especially when Jimbo tries to play the Paisley card and Neil hits back with 'just answer the question' in an exasperated tone hinting he actually means 'answer the fucking question, you fucking moron'. Hilariously embarrassing and again Jimbo has egg on his face and the yoke's on him. Aye, lame one again but couldn't resist. You might also enjoy Andrew Neil grilling a half-awake Kezia Dugdale later on Election Night here from 0:21:40 to 0:24:35. Always fun to see Tory Andy playing devil's advocate about IndyRef2 and making former Branch Office grandees look and sound like eejits, though his earlier test run with Theresa May (here from 2:12:20 to 2:14:45) wasn't bad either. Back to the immediate future, I hope the impromptu AUOB March in Glasgow will successfully prove that the will of the Scottish people is indeed the proverbial irrepressible force. Will Glasgow this time outperform Edinburgh where some 200k marched on a memorable 5 October last year? Now that would be really massively great if it happens. I have nothing further to add for now to what I said about the incoming fights a week ago, just bear in mind the IndyRef2 vote is the one we can't afford to lose, and yet it definitely also is ours to lose.

By the way, in case you wondered, there has not been any new poll since the election. Three weeks on and nothing, and I've turned fucking cold turkey now, quite a feat for a vegetarian. Our usual Band of Pollsters are probably still recovering from the shock of not having been devastatingly wrong again, or maybe they can't find a suitable sample with all these jolly Englanders holidaying on Mustique. For the record, at the same point in time in 2017 we already had four new voting intentions polls and all predicted a Labour victory. But that was just typical buyer's remorse polling. Just sayin'

For of all sad words of tongue and pen
The saddest are these: it might have been
(John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller, 1856)

Jeremy's Den

02/01/2020

An attempt at a PM to PESD....

We Must Be Dreaming