The Scottish Play - Act III of MMXX

My plan shows that Scotland is an equal partner in the United Kingdom
And it's full of marginal seats.... I mean depressed areas
(James Hacker, Yes, Minister: The Official Visit, 1980)

© Jon Anderson, Vangelis Papathanassiou, 1981

Scotland is a proud and unique nation
For three hundred years we’ve been occupied, labouring under the English yoke
Subdued, suppressed, subjected to an alien government
All the important decisions that affect us are taken in London
Have you any idea what that feels like?
It’s time to set the people of Scotland free
(Deputy Prime Minister Rory McAlister, Yes, Prime Minister: Scot Free, 2013)

So now we have two more full Scottish polls, or should I say five? Anyway YouGov surveyed Scotland on 24-27 April and Panelbase on 1-5 May, so that's two. YouGov polled Westminster and Holyrood voting intentions, while Panelbase polled the same plus IndyRef2, so that's five. For exhaustivity's sake, Panelbase also polled Stu Campbell's conspiracy theories and perennial obsessions, as he's the one who paid them and did not shy away from outrageously leading questions. Anyway, let's just focus on what really matters, that is everything that does not relate to Stu Campbell's personal fantasies. First the IndyRef2 voting intentions and here the trendlines (9-point rolling average) show a massive surge of the Yes vote from October 2017 to December 2019 until we reached a tie, then No bounced up back a wee smitch and then Yes did the same until now where we again have a tie. Which means that Yes, without any official referendum campaigning, overcame a 12-point No lead over 30 months, for which we have grassroots movements like All Under One Banner to thank. Bear in mind too that the Yes vote fell sharply between May and October 2017 as a direct fallout of the SNP's abysmal campaign for the 2017 general election. You can only dream of where we would be now if we had started from the 6-point gap we had before the 2017 campaign, instead of double that. Some might draw the conclusion that the SNP don't actually want independence and feel more gemütlich (Angus Robertson would get that one instantly) running a mildly devolved nation and whining every other day about the abusive English yoke. Not that I agree with that. Though, some days....

The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted, and sometimes revealed, sky-high levels of tension between England and Scotland, and also between England and Wales. This was not just the result of different approaches to devolution, but mostly the direct consequence of Boris Johnson trying to impose a highly centralized and quasi-presidential conception of government, which has proved controversial even within the Conservative Party. This could sow the seeds for a major constitutional crisis but how it will help or hurt the Scottish Independence cause remains to be seen. What we have right now is the predictions of six IndyRef2 polls fielded after the December general election: two ties, two Yes wins, two No wins and their weighted average reflects just that with Yes on 50.07% and No on 49.93%. Which means that, on the same turnout as in 2014, Yes wins by 5k votes. Or alternatively means there are even odds that Yes loses. Again. Which kind of reminds you of the second Quebec Independence referendum in 1995 when Oui lost by 1% on a 93% turnout, and the call for Independence was never heard or heard of again. Of course these are two radically different situations, though weather can be just as shite in Northern Quebec as in Shetland, and I wouldn't want you to believe I am drawing any parallel between the two, would I? Or am I? Just hoping Yoons never heard of Quebec, or think that you can get there through Calais. One can hope, can't he?

But it is also the point where the SNP have to brace themselves for a major reassessment of their own strategy. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we stick to Nicola Sturgeon's gradualegalistic approach that a Section 30 Order has to be obtained. That past pledges by former leaders are an accurate predictor of the shape of things to come, which of course you may doubt as much as I do. And finally that technicalities and practicalities mean that the referendum would be held fifteen months after the Section 30 Order being granted. With all these conditions fulfilled, the window of opportunity is two years into the next Labour government with the referendum held the next year. So, if Keir Starmer is good at his job, we get IndyRef2 in September 2027 and, if he is not, in September 2032. I won't even try to speculate what the state of Scottish public opinion could be that far away in the future. But I can speculate on how much time the Scottish Government will need to finally admit that Section 30 is a dead end: until the next time the current English Tory government tells them again to git tae fuck. And then, but that's a mibbe-aye-mibbe-naw situation, they will start seriously considering a solid Plan B that's already on the table right now, and that I have come to endorse, after some initial doubts, as the one way out until somebody comes up with a convincingly better scheme. Just call an advisory referendum without a Section 30 Order, which is not off limits as it's a general purpose provision that all referendums in the UK are advisory unless the specific enabling legislation says they are legally binding. Rely on the Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020 and wait for the English Government to challenge the move in court. There are even odds the Scottish Government would prevail and there is more honour anyway in genuinely trying and failing than in never trying at all.

This is a Scottish matter for the Scots to vote on, it’s none of your business
It’s up to us to decide whether we want to stay in the United Kingdom
The future of Scotland is a matter for the Scottish people alone
The English don’t care about Scotland one way or the other
When you gave us devolution, you gave us certain powers
You don’t like our choices, so now you’re having a wee tantrum
Threatening to go home and take your ball with you
(Deputy Prime Minister Rory McAlister, Yes, Prime Minister: Scot Free, 2013)

Being an MP is a vast, subsidized ego trip, it’s a job in which you need no qualifications
There are no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards
You get a warm room and subsidized meals for a bunch of self-opinionated windbags and busybodies
(James Hacker, Yes, Prime Minister: A Real Partnership, 1986)

Then both our favourite pollsters surveyed the voting intentions for the next general election. The House of Commons one, that is. Some might argue that this is irrelevant because we will be an independent nation long before it happens. But remember what I just said about 2027 and 2032. Then you can't rule out Dominic Cummings advising Boris Johnson that he should ride the Covid-19 'Rally Around The Flag' wave while it still lasts and call yet another snap election. Naw, just kidding. Though sometimes the craziest things do happen when you least expect it. Like Boris Johnson actually being the First Minister of England and not a grumpy backbencher relegated to obscure afternoon TV shows and page three of The Spectator. Anyway we've had two polls in quick succession so I will rely on the weighted average of voting intentions, as both paint a very similar picture. They say the SNP could duplicate the 2015 landslide and even the low point would be better than the 2019 election. The voting intentions here clearly show once again there is no coalescence of the Unionist vote around the Conservatives as they would get only marginally more votes than in December, and suffer another round of losses to the SNP thanks to the quirks of FPTP. What we have here is again the pro-Independence vote coalescing around the SNP, with Labour mostly contributing but even the LibDems too as they definitely face being relegated to extinct species status. The SNP kicking out the LibDems from all their mainland seats comes as no surprise, and Alistair Carmichael is definitely in the danger zone as he was in 2015, though Orkney and Shetland would be decided on a few hundred votes only and possibly even fewer. 

Now here is what my model predicts for the six current Conservative seats, with the projected winner's vote in red italics. It looks like it's definitely game over for Wee Andy Bowie in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, and a very close call for David Mundell in Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale. But I definitely won't rule out a comeback for Alister Jack in Dumfries and Galloway or Douglas Ross in Moray. These two could also be decided by some hundreds of votes and the SNP would definitely be safer if they convinced some more of the rump Labour voters to switch in both. As always, time will tell, but Keir Starmer might prove an asset for the SNP here rather than for desperate Labour candidates.

I have a hunch that Ian Murray too could qualify for extinct species status when the next general election comes around. Remember than Ian owes his seat to massive Tory tactical voting and Tory dark money, in a constituency that's actually a three-way marginal. So he might lose form both ends next time. His and Keir Starmer's unquestioning Yoonism is likely to alienate yet another bunch of Indy-leaning Labour voters, and the Conservatives might find it's the right time to throw Ian under the bus when they have a gambleable chance at bagging the seat. At this moment, let's just be satisfied by another massive vindication of the SNP as Scotland's first party. Beware though that we obviously have a 'Rally Around The Saltire' effect here just as UK-wide polls show a 'Rally Around The Union Jack' effect in England and Wales. Unlike the Holyrood election (more on this one below) there is more than enough time for this 'Covid Honeymoon' to die down before the next general election. And also more than enough time for the SNP to totally fuck it up, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as they are prone to do when they think it's in the bag. So maybe, just maybe, we do need worse polls along the way to make sure the SNP stay alert and put up a real fight. Just don't just take past voters for granted, as the 2017 precedent shows.

Underpaid? Backbench MPs?
How can they be underpaid when there’s about 200 applicants for every vacancy?
You could fill every seat 20 times over even if they had to pay to do the job!
(James Hacker, Yes, Prime Minister: A Real Partnership, 1986)

Our Parliament is just a glorified borough council
We pay all our taxes to you, you take your big cut off them
Then you parcel our share into tiny little bits
And tell us what we are to spend it on, like pocket money for kids
We want our taxes to go to Edinburgh, not London
We’d pass some of the revenue on to you for central government expenditure, of course
But the rest…. The rest would be Scottish people spending Scottish money
In Scotland on Scottish communities for Scottish needs
What could be wrong with that?
(Deputy Prime Minister Rory McAlister, Yes, Prime Minister: Scot Free, 2013)

Finally we also have two brand new Holyrood polls. Before going into more detail about what they say, let's pause for a while to look at the trends in Holyrood voting intentions since the last election. Just below are the trendlines for the constituency vote first and then the list vote. What we have here is a strong correlation between the ups and downs of Conservatives and LibDems on one side, and those of Labour and the SNP on the other side. Again this goes against common wisdom that there could be some sort of Union Jack effect favouring the Conservatives. In fact, the Brexit Factor seems to have been a stronger explanatory variable here, and probably accounts for most of the LibDem surge in Europhile Scotland, and their later crashdiving when people came to terms with the fight against Brexit being now irrelevant. And here too we see the left-wing electorate switching back from the SNP to Labour as a consequence of the SNP's muddled 2017 campaign, and then pro-Indy lefties switching back to the SNP. Obviously Gordon Lamb House spads are also fully aware of this and would be delusional if they drew different conclusions from the same facts. The message is clear: managerial competence alone does not win elections, though it might help. But the people love visionaries much more than accountants. You've been warned, Nicola. 

What we have here is definitely a path to a massive SNP landslide, with all the caveats I already mentioned about the Westminster voting intentions. But with the election now less than a year out and little time for the Covid-19 effect to die down, I fail to see what could possibly derail it. Save an asteroid crashing down in Pollokshields or Alex Salmond's Book Of Revelations selling five million copies. Then I guess some in ScotGov's Ninth Circle have an updated version of the original Covid-19 slogan devised specifically for Big Eck's personal use: 'Stay Home > Protect The SNP > Save Oor Arses'. Just kidding. Now let's see what the weighted average of the last two polls predicts. What's quite amazing on this polling is that the SNP alone would get an 'impossible' 17-seat majority and the pro-Indy camp an unheard-of 25-seat majority, which of course Jackson Carlaw would deny constitutes a mandate to seek Independence. Even if the SNP, on the constituencies only, would outperform the Second Lab-Lib Coalition of 2003, and match the First Lab-Lib Coalition of 1999. Then of course this is the result of the Conservatives' massive toxicity in Scotland and the people of Scotland facing a simple no-brainer choice: who do you want to be the next First Minister? The incumbent who managed the Covid-19 crisis with proficiency, despite a few quite noticeable but quickly resolved fuck-ups, and humility? Or the former car salesman whose last two forays into private enterprise ended in administration and the still unsolved Mystery Of The Missing Paintings? And I will ask the SNP for royalties if they use these ones during the campaign, which they should. Of course this would be one-to-the-baws but I could live with that as I (for once) agree with Kevin McKenna that the SNP need a Tartan Cummings to counter the Yoons' shameless 1984ish goebbelsism.  

I also simulated the best/worst case scenarios for the SNP. Quite easy to do with my algorithms by factoring the SNP 2% below/above current polling on both votes and the missing/extra votes going to/coming from the Unionist parties. Curent polling is so massively one-sided that even the worstest simulation still delivers an outright SNP majority, even if it would be a fragile one on just one seat. The bestest scenario would deliver more SNP seats than either of the Lab-Lib coalitions bagged in the Antiquity Of Devolution pre-2007. More evidence that the popular vote can indeed defeat the core purpose of AMS and you don't even need to game the system to achieve that. Just playing by the book and campaigning strongly and convincingly does it. The only thing the Pro-Indy Bloc would miss is a two-thirds majority. Which is not that important anyway as the only case where you need one is to change the electoral law, and you definitely want to stay a few bargepoles away from that particular can of worms. As you can be sure the Little Green Men would then pressure the SNP into 'STV For Holyrood', seeing how it superbly works for Scottish Councils, where post-election backdoor combinaziones have become the norm. So better forget it.

Just for fun, as it definitely has fuck all to do with anything, I was cyber-assaulted some days ago by one of the branches of the Cybernat Thought Police when I mentioned the UK and 'other countries' in a tweet. The only tweeps more annoying than the Woke Clan are the Vocabulary Nazis who have oven-ready function keys to save them the carpal strain of typing 'there is no such thing as Scottish Labour' or 'the UK is not a country' seventeen times a day. Just try 'other political entities asserting ultimate authority over specific geographical areas' instead of 'other countries', enjoy the Applebyan mouthful and get the fuck off of my cloud. Back to the matter at hand, current polling says that Conservatives in Scotland (because, ye ken, 'there is no such thing as Scottish Conservatives', even though they obviously are both Scottish and Conservatives) would hold only Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire. Which is ONE seat, not three, just have to say it for the benefit of geographically-challenged Dominic Raab. And, while we're at it, Dom, Calais is definitely NOT anywhere neat Ettrick. Even Jackson Carlaw would lose his seat and have to rely on the compensatory-seats-for-losers part of AMS. On these numbers, Labour would be reduced to a squad of 'unelected' MSPs and the LibDems would be almost wiped out from the mainland, with even Willie Rennie only one weasel's arse's hair away from being lyed-and-woodchipped in North East Fife. And it would certainly get much worse there for the Orange Tories if Oor Wee Wullie gave way to Squirrel Killer Jo Swinson's comeback. Note too that these results would be extremely good news for the SNP in South Scotland. With four predicted constituency gains and one open seat, they could easily accommodate all three incumbent list MSPs who would lose their 'unelected' seats, plus one hypothetical newcomer (insert 'sitting MP standing for MSP in Ayr' here, though this is pure speculation on my part) and an hypothetical returner (insert 'former MSP and more recently MEP' here and again it's pure speculation). And here comes the usual full breakdown of predicted seats by region:

A word now about the last supposedly big event in Scottish politics: the emergence of Colette Walker's Independence For Scotland party (ISP). And not coincidentally we are reminded of Margo McDonald's achievements as the iconic rebel against the SNP's leadership of her time. Not sure the writer sees the irony here in taking someone who rebelled against Alex Salmond as the role model for someone who would rebel against Nicola Sturgeon. But never mind as my part here is to assess the ISP's possible impact on the next Scottish Parliament election. Psephologyfying is a lot like CSIing: you don't have an opinion, you just let the evidence speak for itself. And in the case of the ISP, the evidence can lead you in many a contradictory direction. Let's say their baseline vote is about 1%, as polls predict for hypothetical pro-Indy minor lists, and then they gnaw their way up step by step, snatching 1% of the vote at a time from the SNP until they reach 13%, having taken 12% from the SNP, or one fourth of their predicted list vote. And the verdict remains the same as when I tested some 'third party' scenarios a while ago. On 2-3% of the vote the ISP have no impact whatsoever. On 4-5%, which is probably their most likely vote share, they do more harm than good as they actually reduce the overall number of pro-Independence MSPs. On 6% and above they do increase the number of pro-Independence MSPs but it's really a mixed bag as they would take seats from the SNP before taking any from the Unionist parties. And here we avoid a more embarrassing outcome only because the SNP would secure a majority on the constituencies only. So I tend to agree with 'Pipe And Slippers' Pete Wishart, just this once: don't take any chances and don't gamble the pro-Indy majority simply because you're not fully satisfied with the SNP. So vote Greens on the list if that makes you feel better, but don't come whining later if that enables them to hold on to their power of nuisance. And stay away from minor parties with unclear ulterior motives.

It says a lot about the bizarre state of the Scottish political debate that the first question the wannabe-MSPs are asked is not 'Do you think an Independent Scotland should rejoin the EU?' or 'What should be Scotland's currency after Independence?', but 'What is your take on GRA reform?'. I guess you already know what's mine, so I won't bore you with repeating it. Let's just say I think of lot of the arguments from the Woke Clan should be filed under 'crapchiatry', as do much of the ramblings of post-hippie Californian tenured professors who have way too much time on their hands and several too many bad acid trips under their belt. Then the SNP have only themselves to blame for this, as nobody put a crossbow to their head and threatened to machine-gun the dug if they did not modify the Gender Recognition Act 2004. When you open a can of worms, expect them to come back to bite you in the arse. I would hate it if the fate of Scottish Independence was to be decided by where a telephoneboothload of activists stand on gender self-identification, on the shelved-but-not-deepfrozen 'a woman is a man because she says so' bill. But you definitely can't rule out just yet that it will not happen. And be careful with double negatives too. So maybe, just maybe, at the end of the day and all things considered, we do deserve to be, in Rent Boy's immortal words, 'colonized by wankers'. Because we too are wankers, just a different blend. 

Scotland is not at all that remote
It's that pink bit about two feet above Potters Bar

(James Hacker, Yes, Minister: The Official Visit, 1980)

© Robert Burns, 1791

The State Of The Union - WC-Day Special

Eighty years ago today, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of England and Colonies for the first time.
His second term, eleven years later, made him the very last Prime Minister born before the Forth Bridge was built.
But WC-Day was definitely not WC's Finest as it was also the day Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg while England barely noticed as they were too busy invading Iceland at the same time.

© David McWilliams, 1967

additional verse by Marc Almond, 1991

We Conservatives are planing through the spray of a lifting wave
Rising upwards and onwards into the sunlight of tomorrow
(Andrea Riseborough as Margaret Thatcher, The Long Walk To Finchley, 1959 election campaign)

© Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 2020

God writes paperback books in his underwear.
And like all writers, he churns out draft after draft.
My world? This world? Nothing but failed drafts.
And when he realizes that they're flawed, he moves on and tries again.
Because he doesn't care. Not about you. Me. Anything.
(Dean Winchester, Supernatural: Nihilism, 2019)

During the pollsters' unusually long post-election retreat earlier this year, I sought solace in the 'Our Friends In The North' DVDs which, believe it or not, I had never seen before. It was quite fun to see Christopher Ecclestone and Daniel Craig made up as some Spinal Tap impersonators and Mark Strong with hair and looking like a young Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 1970s episodes. And of course Eccleston's 'Young Corbyn' look in 1979 was priceless even if it was unintentional as Corbyn was a complete unknown when the series was filmed. There is an interesting side-plot in there when voters openly say they'd rather have the Tories in charge than Militant, and already back then a number of supposedly safe seats were lost by Labour. Bis repetita…. Then of course real-life events have now moved on a few episodes past that.

We're back to the Dark Ages

Anything's possible except the things we really want

(Our Friends In The North: 1974)

Today, five months after Their Friends In The North have again taken one big fuck of a drubbing, Keir Starmer has finally become Labour's Fearless Great Leader. Which comes as no surprise to me as I saw this coming from far away and far ago if you remember my earlier articles. First I singled him out as a credible Deputy PM to a victorious Corbyn when polls hinted at a Labour-led hung Parliament, which was just a year ago, admittedly an eternity and a generation in British politics. Then, when it became clear Labour were doomed to lose and Corbyn to resign, I had Starmer as the compromise candidate that could coalesce all factions. And now Sir Keir, as he reportedly begs people to not call him, has won by rebranding himself as the Great Unificator of post-Blairites, post-Brownites and post-Momentumers, which of course lends credibility to the theory that the once-reluctant Starmer has not just morphed into an ambitious Starmer but was indeed playing the long game all along. Someday someone will write a book about how he slyfoxed his way to the top rung of the food chain, but right now the question that matters is: will Starmer be the next Tony Blair or just the next Neil Kinnock?

If we're going to be ruled by Tories
Let's be ruled by proper Tories, not Tories in drag
(Our Friends In The North: 1974)

Of course the overall picture supports the latter, like in 1983-2019 and Foot-Corbyn and Kinnock-Starmer. Then it is very unlikely now that the handling of Covid-19 could end up being Boris Johnson's Falklands, when even The Times rips the English Government a new one. Johnson is definitely in a very precarious situation even if the Tory-sucking billionaire-owned fish-wrappers spin Covid-19 into a tour de force by Oor Boris, single-handedly taking Britannia from the humiliation at Dunkirk to victory in the desert sands. 'Remember The Alamein', as they say in Texas, or whatever. Boris might think he has the oven-ready scapegoat for any mishap in Matt Hancock, who definitely graylinged himself into redundancy when making a dog's breakfast of PPE procurement and made-up tests statistics. But it's highly unlikely that even throwing Tigger Matty under the bus will be enough of a response to public calls for a thorough investigation into what happened, and what did not. And the incoming Brexitocalypse won't help either when people realize the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is the Brexit runaway train coming at them at flank speed.

© Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 2020

But despite all the Tories' abject failures, Starmer's dilemma over the next few years will be: can history repeat itself? Which it doesn't except when it does. And then first time's a tragedy, second time's a farce and third time's a charm. Just what happened to Labour in the olden days after the 1983 debacle: 1987 a tragedy, 1992 a farce up to and including the BBC's exit poll, 1997 a charm. Now Starmer definitely needs the electorate to be kinder to him than they were to Kinnock. If he doesn't make it on the first or second strike, he won't get a chance at a third strike and some younger slyer fox will thatcher him into the woodchipper. Remember Tony Blair was only 30 when he was first elected in 1983, the Year Of The Blue Flood, and nobody would have wagered a farthing on him becoming Labour's Leader eleven years later. There's one just like him biding their time on the backbenches right now, and what Blair got by serendipity, bribes and blood oaths after John Smith's death, the Next New One will get by playing no-quarter hardball. And we know now that some within Labour will stop at nothing to take down a leader they don't like, even if that means harming the whole party. You've been warned, Sir Keir.

If you and your New Labour Party sound any more like the Tories
They'll sue you for plagiarism
(Our Friends In The North: 1995)

But Starmer has more pressing issues on his hands, like dealing with polls that paint England a constant deep sea blue like the eyes of a scallop, and now Wales too. Which was far from the likeliest situation back in January when all Labour had to face was a waffling buffoon with 'What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander' as his Brexit strategy. You did forget that one, didn't you? Yet it did happen, no shit. Then Sir Keir can blame Comrade Jeremy for the drawn out leadership contest, and the rather convoluted wording of Labour's 2019 Rule Book (Chapter 4; Clause II, Section C.iv) that effectively means that anybody who wanted to stuff the electoral register had more than enough time to do so. Not that it helped Momentum in any way. And by the time the leadership contest at last ended, Covid-19 had reared its ugly head and brought an end to Britain As We Knew It. It proved to be quite a trap for Keir as he chose to go into 'constructive criticism' mode rather than fire full broadsides at the startling incompetence of the English Government. Obviously Labour don't want to be accused of politicking a national emergency, even when the Conservatives do it day in day out and get away with it. And now the trend of general election polls shows what 'rallying around the flag' actually means. 

If the December election had something of a 1983ish or 1935ish flavour, current polls have definitely switched to something 1931ish when Labour's best hope is to achieve something vaguely 1964ish as 1945ish is quite clearly well beyond firing range. Clearly Starmer going all forensic on whoever pretends to be Prime Minister at any given PMQs is not enough. Sly Keir might well look like he will conclude his weekly quota of questions with 'The prosecution rest their case, Your Lordship', switching from civilly barkey to calculatedly bitey would be a welcome change. Especially when the SNP repeatedly indulge in futile attempts to Get Brexit Delayed. Which everybody with half a functional brain knows won't happen, because Boris has said it won't. And in this case as in many others, the only No vote that matters is Number 10's. It offers Labour a golden opportunity to reaffirm themselves as the 'real opposition' over the 'little shits', as the sorely missed Dennis Skinner called them. But then it looks like this opportunity will be sorely missed too.

This is like watching a lion raping a sheep, but in a bad way

(Ollie Reeder, The Thick Of It: The Rise Of The Nutters)

The weighted average of the six most recent polls sends the same message as the trends I mentioned earlier. The Conservatives would miss the 50%-of-the-popular-vote target by a Chinese bat's hair. But then they have made it a habit of missing targets recently, haven't they? What all these polls also have in common is a massive drop of the Liberal Democrat vote, which definitely has a karmatic dimension embedded. The key here is 'moderate' right-wingers switching back to the Nasty Party because, ye ken, Boris Got Brexit Done, so there's no point in opposing it anymore, and he is the best Defender Of The Realm. Then you also have the SNP bouncing back to a majority of the Scottish popular vote, stumbling only on a weird Tory resilience among the EU-subsidized fishing and farming communities who still haven't got the memo about how Boris's oven-ready Brexit will definitely fuck them to the hilt and beyond. Edward II also believed he was in for a treat, until.... So here is what the polls say and what selected prediction models make of it:

So the good people of England are ready to hand a part-time Prime Minister and full-time con-artist a larger majority than any of Margaret Thatcher's and almost as commanding as Tony Blair's. Which is actually not as amazingly daft as it seems. First being comfortably dumb is like an aeons-old trait of the English gene pool. Then Waffling Boris is definitely a master at triggering all the Pavlovian responses from after-drinks speeches double-dipped in English exceptionationalism. Which works beyond expectations even when he evokes the Dunkirk Spirit and all the oiks forget Dunkirk was actually one of many humiliating setbacks on Winston's watch. Then Bumbling Boris is not one to miss any warlike metaphor, even when it's totally devoid of any meaning for the 21st century. But the 20th century was so much better, wasn't it?

It may be the Mother Of All Parliaments but the Tories have their hands up her skirt
(Our Friends In The North: 1987)

The most amazing thing actually is that Labour can't gain more from the current situation, probably because they don't even really try. The current English Government are a swarm of waffling chancers who thrive on failure as long as they can play the blame game, and have conclusively proven themselves to be an ensemble cast of pimples on the arse of mediocrity, as inspiring as the house wine at a suburban Indian restaurant. But possibly Labour don't want to succeed a government for whom home is where the heartlessness is. I can sympathize with the feeling that they hate to have to step into the Tories' shoes but only after the Tories have shat in them. But Labour is also desperately misplaying the weak hand they have been dealt. For some unfathomable reason, Sly Keir thinks now is the time for kowtowing to English nationalism, which might bring back some of Their Voters In The North, or not. But will most certainly backfire with their voters in cosmopolitan London and the few, not the many, left in Scotland. Not surprisingly this is just what the most recent polls show, with Labour and Tories nose-to-nose in London and a steady leaking of pro-Indy Labour voters to the SNP in Scotland. So Sir Keir's only hope now seems to be public opinion at last seeing the light and coming back at the Tories with a vengeance. Might happen, or not....

This government is maimed but it can't be shamed, it will be fucked
(Cal Richards, The Thick Of It: Episode Sixteen)

© Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 2020

Every seat-sniffing little shitbag that's ever filed a byline is gonna be questioning you
Cause now it's in the fucking public interest, isn't it?
And they're gonna hit you with every shit they can find
You're gonna be spread out there in front of them like a trollop in the stocks
(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It: Episode Two)

© Melchior Franck, Jim Connell, 1889