Jeremy's Den: House Of Cards 2024 - JB's Birthday Update

Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit

(Virgil, Aeneid: Book I, Line 203)

Underpaid? Backbench MPs? Being an MP is a vast, subsidized ego trip

It’s a job in which you need no qualifications

Show them a map of the world and most have a job finding the Isle of Wight

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
Who suddenly find people taking them seriously
Because they’ve got the letters “MP” after their name
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)

It's been six months since the General Election, and I will come back to this soon. It's also been twelve weeks today since Boris Johnson told us that the United Kingdom could turn the tide of coronavirus in twelve weeks, provided we had mass testing and strict social distancing. What actually happened is that the same Boris Johnson couldn't wait that long and decided, after only seven-and-a-half weeks, that it was time to turn the tide of health policy and end unbearable infringements on our basic freedoms, mostly the unalienable rights to get pissed in packs and be terminally daft for life, while of course staying alert as the new slogan goes. I guess the lookouts on the Titanic were also told to stay alert and it worked really well, didn't it? Fortunately, all of Boris's ramblings about schools, support bubbles and what-the-fuck are for England-only consumption, and North Of The Wall we know better. On top of that it's also my birthday, which I won't comment on as it does not involve psephology, and (surely coincidentally) also Peter Dinklage's and Hugh Laurie's. In the meantime and totally out of the blue for the common folk, though not for these in Johnson's Ninth Circle, came the Big Story Of Last Month, Dominic's Escapade To Sunny Barnard Castle. We will surely never know all the gory details of what actually happened as Government policy is to shamelessly lie about it, and they already have retconned it more often than the Star Trek Reboot writers. One of the best moments was of course when Toxic Bully Cummings delivered his Durham Defence from Number Ten's Rose Garden, with the looks of a grumpy mortician at the tail end of a double shift where he had to embalm himself. There is no doubt the major fiasco has seriously dented the Tories' credibility as seat projections from general election polls show.

On the left is the seat projection I published here on 10 May, based on the last six polls available back then. Move to the right and you have the last three polls before the Cummings Asteroid hit SW1 and wrought havoc on Number Ten. Note that Boris Johnson and his assorted swarm of bumbling dimwits had already done a pretty good job at undermining themselves and lost a projected 38 seats over two weeks. But the juicy part was yet to come after PMQs and pressers turned into cheap sitcoms with the fake laughter track removed. First Tories lost another 32 seats basically overnight and again another 20 by the end of the week. That's the Cummings Effect for you: 90 perfectly viable virtual seats woodchipped down the pipes in a month. Not bad for a maverick spad whose lone previous achievement was funnelling massive amounts of dark money into a campaign to rig a referendum by all sleazy means necessary and beyond. Not even the Former Prince of Darkness Alistair Campbell did as well, as Tony Blair was wise enough for once to throw him under the bus before he could inflict terminal damage on the New Labour brand. Then of course you couldn't expect anything even remotely similar from Boris Johnson. The First Minister of England had no choice but squandering his already minute political capital on behalf of Cummings. Like it or not, Boris with Toxic Dom by his side is a blabbering buffoon with a script. Take away Dom and all that's left is the empty shell of the blabbering buffoon. And that was just the first week, it kept on getting worse. More on this after our break.

You don't plan sincerity, you have to make it up on the spot

(Alan Shore, Boston Legal: Fat Burner, 2007)

Morals? Invented by the power elite to keep the hoi polloi from enjoying themselves

(Denny Crane, Boston Legal: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2006)

We know Boris Johnson loves his classics and he proved it again lately when he revisited almost the full "Tommy" album from "It's a Boy" to "We're Not Gonna Take It" but kind of skipped "Listening To You". Then Boris might want to rewrite part of the story, as he is prone to do when he doesn't like the memories, as I have the sensation that '21 is gonna be a shit year for him right from the start, anticipating the twists and turns in Pete Townshend's plotlines. Then it would be daft to conclude that the song is over for Johnson, as only a massive rebellion on the Tory backbenches could achieve that and we're definitely not there. Yet. Then Arch-Brexiteer and Friend Of Dom's Danny Kruger, MP for Devizes, did his best to trigger just such a rebellion with his idle threats and attempts at bullying Tory MPs who openly called for Toxic Dom to be sacked. Now 45 of them have done just that and another 55 have socially distanced themselves from Cummings, with the frequent caveat that they're only relaying their constituents' concerns. And you can't withdraw them all the whip, can you? As Blabbering Boris would then lose his hard-earned majority. All bark and no bite, in true Borista fashion. For the record Schemy Danny inherited his seat, a Tory heaven since 1784 save for some Whig/Liberal interludes, from Claire Perry in return for her appointment as President of the now-postponed 2020 Climate Change Conference. Only for her to be sacked six weeks after the election on a flimsy pretence to cuddle.... aye, you got it.... Cummings. Anything to please Dominic.

Now it's been almost three weeks since the Guardian and Mirror outed Cummings for his Durham Escapade, so public opinion have had time to process it, digest it and incorporate it in the never ending story where Boris doesn't look good. The current English Government is already filed under 'Stuff Legends Are Made Off', and not one of those with 'Happily Ever After' tagged at the end. Just remember that Jack the Ripper too is a legend, in his own special way. And what passes now for a Government is definitely one-of-a-kind in a history full of one-of-a-kinds: a motley crew of camel-hooved fly-by-nights and weasely chancers, who can't even get their cover-up stories straight and don't realize all they have left is deniable plausibility. So, twelve weeks after Boris said the story would be wrapped up in twelve weeks, the UK has the highest death toll in Europe, and England, Boris's exclusive responsibility, the highest death toll per capita in the world. That's what happens when you make up policy on the hoof and are better at gagging your own scientists than at listening to them. But of course it's still better than if it had been worse and we should all thank Boris and Dominic for falling short of 500,000 deaths. Then the polling debacle I mentioned earlier was just a part of a staged process, meaning of course 'happening in stages' and not 'faked' in the Michael Gove fashion. Consider that Tories, all by themselves and without Toxic Dom's help, had already managed to shrink their lead over Labour from 26% to a measly 12%, just the actual December result, in a month before their Septimana Horribilis. Then Toxic Dom brought it down to 5-7% and it slipped downhill again afterwards to 2-3%. Enough to make a hung Parliament a credible prospect again, and the possibility of a Labour minority government less of a drug-induced fairy tale than it looked just six weeks earlier.

The trends of polls definitely look like the Ghost Of Jeremy Corbyn and all his bad luck spells have now been exorcised, as New Militant has given way to New New Labour under Sir Keir Starmer, CPS, ME. Guess it's just time now for Please-Call-Me-Keir 2.0 to upgrade from forensics to badass politics, no matter how enjoyable his merciless CSIing of Blabbering Boris at PMQs is. Even the Guardian says so, more or less. Because, ye ken, even Boris bumbling like Laurel does not make Keir Hardie. Hardly. Then the weighted average of the last three published general election polls, fielded between 3 and 5 June, definitely looks good for Labour. I confess I was a wee smitch mischievous here as I selected only the last three instead of the usual last six, just for the fun of hammering home that the Conservatives have reached their peak bottom. For now. Labour trailing by barely 3% is similar to the 2017 popular vote and a timely reminder that Hardy Keir can do as well as Jeremy Corbyn at his first general election. Then the Conservatives in 2005 also came within some 3% of Labour, and Tony Blair still bagged a 64-seat majority, so the math is not always what it seems to be, depending of where you start from. Which does not change the fact that the Tories' prospects right now are somewhere between the shallow end and the deep end of the Marianas Trench.

But of course Sir Keir deserves fuck all credit for this miracle cure to Labour's travails. All he has actually done, if anything, is that Sun Tzu thing about "sitting on the dock of the bay, watching the corpses roll away" that Alex Salmond loves to quote too. We all know The Dom Did It and Sly Keir knows it too. Which is why he went all softie on Johnson here when others called for Cummings to be sacked on the spot, including even 45 Conservative MPs totally unimpressed by Danny Kruger's wooden-sabre-rattling. Because the longer Demonic Cummings stays, the more egg Johnson has on his face and the more time New New Labour have to come up with something akin to an actual New New Manifesto. Simples. But Keir should also let his Twitter followers remind him that the slogan is definitely not 'Black Lives Matter But', even if it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth that slave traders were once pillars of their communities. And aye, before anyone shouts it across the schoolyard, in Scotland too.

It begins with a blessing and it ends with a curse

Making life easy by making it worse

My mask is my Master, the trumpeter weeps

But his voice is so weak as he speaks from his sleep, saying

Why, why, why, why are we sleeping?

(Kevin Ayers, Why Are We Sleeping?, 1968)

"Thank God he didn't bring his brother"

Rome may have been built in a day
But it took only a trumpet to bring down the walls of Jericho
(Bernie Wooster, Jeeves And Wooster: The Ties That Bind, 1993)

Soon the English Government will be working triple shifts to Get No Deal Done, which has been the plan all along for Brexit Fundamentalists and their business associates eagerly waiting to cash in on their offshore tax-haven investments playing against the pound. And it's the moment Guardian chooses to publish as news something the lot of us have known for two full months already: that the English Government will use Covid-19 as a cover-up for the massive Brexit fallout. Of course the English Government will again spin their strategy, or utter lack thereof, into yet another fairy tale about Taking Back Control. Then how could they possibly take back control of the UK's fate when they have already lost control of the narrative?

Current polling shows that the electorate is definitely not moving on from the fallout of the Cummings cover-up, no matter how hard the First Minister of England wishes they would. And it might get even worse for him shortly as pressure mounts for a real investigation. Then Boris still has the option of using unrepented lockdown flouter and billionaire's crony Robert Jenrick as scapegoat, though that would probably neuter no more than a couple of news cycles before the people refocus on Toxic Dom. Right now the usual team of predictors reflect just that even if they vary on the extent of the damage. But even the least unfavourable projection is pretty damning for the English Conservative and Unionist Party and their Colonial Branch Offices. Then Tories have their heads buried so deep in the quicksand of denial they probably don't have the fuckiest scoobie what just hit them in the arse and how to actually move on from it. My own projection is quite amusingly close to what I had at the end of March 2019, which is an eternity, a Prime Minister and a Big Bang ago in British politics. Of course fifteen months ago the LibDems still showed up on the radars and not just on the sonars, and we had just a weeish SNP surge compared to the big one we have today. But the projected seats for Tories and Labour were quite similar, just two months before the totally unnecessary and avoidable European Parliament election of 2019 rocked the tables and turned the boat, its aftermath eventually sinking both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. So here's what we have this week:

My own projection is a radical departure from the one I published a month ago, with Tories down a projected 95 seats from then. It relies on the last three UK-wide polls for the whole of England including London, as we haven't had a London-only poll in three months. On top of it I factored in no changes in Northern Ireland, as they haven't been polled at all since December, and the results of the most recent Welsh and Scottish national polls from YouGov and Panelbase respectively. For the Scottish seats I did not rely on the very last Panelbase poll only, the one that predicted 58 SNP seats. Instead I used the weighted average of the last two Panelbase polls and that's still a whopping 56 SNP seats, which is.... uh...… more realistic? Though you can argue that's me going down the "58 can't happen because it has never happened yet, but 56 can because it already has" road that is usually a trademark of the cautious punditariat, but I definitely can live with that. Anyway the overall result is disturbingly close to 2010, only with the Liberal Democrats' and the SNP's positions reversed in an almost perfect mirror image. Meaning there would be absolutely no way Boris Johnson could wriggle his way out of the debacle with a makeshift coalition, though that would not necessarily be the last we'd see of him before the Downing Street gates bump his arse on his way out.

Remember Edward Heath burrowed himself for four days at Number Ten in February 1974, and Gordon Brown for five days in May 2010, until they both had no choice but bowing to the inevitable. Guess Boris Johnson would definitely want to beat them at it, even if he had to commandeer the Cabinet War Rooms and a truckload of chlorinated chicken for sustenance. And Boris would probably be right to gamble for time as the former Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales wouldn't have that strong a case here. A hypothetical Labour-led Rainbow Min Coalition would bag only 269 seats, or at most 277 if the DUP supported it for the sheer pleasure of exacting revenge on Boris for his many betrayals. A Rainbow Max coalition including the SNP would definitely be a stronger and safer option on 325 seats and the weest of majorities, but I just can't hold my breath on it actually happening. Because Sir Keir would have to do the unthinkable, the only move that could make Ian Murray and Jackie Baillie formally defect to the Conservatives: strike a deal with the SNP for confidence and supply in return for IndyRef2 being held some time before the Sun turns supernova. Though the full extent and cartography of predicted gains and losses, and hopes for a few more, might incentivize him to do just that. On current polling numbers, the direct projection says 65 seats would change hands, which is in fact not that much for an election having the potential to dramatically change the direction of the country, and here we go with the full fatality list.

Quite unsurprisingly almost two thirds of the changes would be former Red Wall seats in the North and Midlands switching back to Labour. It also looks like the Scotland Office is definitely cursed as the current Secretary of State Alister Jack, former Secretaries Alistair Carmichael and David Mundell, the current Minister Iain Stewart and the former Minister Douglas Ross would all lose their seats. Not a good day either for Boris Johnson's 'vision for the Union' as the newly-anointed Minister for the Constitution and Devolution Chloe Smith would also go down. Labour making most of their inroads outside Little England means that most of the fatalities would be rookie backbenchers from the Class of '19 who are probably considered expendable anyway. But Labour would still score a handful of noticeable hits on the Conservative frontbench with Business Secretary Alok Sharma, formerly Amber Rudd's sidekick at DWP, Science Minister Amanda Solloway and Deputy Chief Whip Stuart Andrew also kicked out. Unseating 1922 Committee Chairman Graham Brady and ERG Deputy Chair Steve Baker would be added unexpected bonuses. But of course Labour should certainly set their sights higher to make the most of what polls predict could happen in England, behind and beyond the Red Wall. More on this after our break.

Why is it that when one man builds a wall,

The next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?
(Tyrion Lannister, A Song Of Ice And Fire: A Game Of Thrones, 1996)

No man chooses evil because it is evil, he only mistakes it for happiness
(Mary Wollstonecraft and Horatio Caine, CSI Miami: A Horrible Mind, 2006)

Now a closer look at what polls predict for England outside London gives clear hints about what Labour's strategy should be in the coming months. I have left London out here because, Keir, I've a feeling London is not in England anymore. The wizardry of voting patterns in the Imperial Capital has a life of its own, which is quite different from what you find even in the neighbouringest boroughs of Little England. But what polls show across the other three meta-regions of England is Labour on the way to recovery. They have already almost made up for lost blood in the North and Midlands, and even gone a wee smitch beyond that in the South. The LibDems holding their ground much better down there might be a factor, as it also deprives the Conservatives of much needed centrist voters who might also start to like Sir Keir.

My updated projection of English seats reflects just that, with Labour already reclaiming almost all the Red Wall seats lost six months ago, and even making some unexpected inroads in the South. Of course this is only the beginning and Labour must do much better to reclaim Number Ten. Keir Starmer might already be miles ahead of Neil Kinnock's 1992 result in the South, but he's still a far cry from what Tony Blair achieved even at low ebb in 2005. But getting the best of all worlds could be something of an ideological challenge, inasmuch as Hardy Keir actually has any ideology at all. Now he has to talk radical and internationalist enough to hold the youth vote, yet centrist enough to swing Little England's middle class and BritNat enough to consolidate New New Labour's restored grip on the Northern working class who voted for the Brexit Party in May and for the Conservatives in December last year. Now the lad who slyfoxed his way to the top rung of post-Momentum Labour probably has it in him to do just that. Provided the posh Surrey-raised Knight In Light Red Armour can motivate all the right foot-soldiers in all the right places.

Of course these projections show that Demonic Cummings has helped Labour only through the easy part, reclaiming the chunks of the Red Wall that crumbled down last December. And since Labour definitely can write off permanently these Feeble Forty Scottish seats lost in 2010, here comes the hardest part of the game: taking back at least the English seats they bagged in 2005 and lost later, which is 58 above their current prediction for 2024 and does the trick. Then, on a projected 312 seats UK-wide, Sly Keir could count on SDLP support and would just have to subjugate the remaining LibDems, the Greens, the Alliance and Plaid Cymru. Gathering this Rainbow Min Coalition could certainly be easily done, easier than for Gordon Brown in 2010 anyway, and spare Keir the awkward face-to-face moments with those pesky ScotNats. After all, if Labour can potentially bag an extra 51 seats on top of last December's result with outside help only, they certainly can bag another 58 and then some if they mobilize all their own resources. Or can't they? The English Government might not have sent coronavirus packing, but English voters might be in the mood to do just that to Boris Johnson, on a one-way ticket to Carrie's and Dilyn's £1.3 million mansion in Camberwell.

Forsan miseros meliora sequentur

(Virgil, Aeneid; Book XII, Line 153)

Jeremy's Den

11/06/2020

House Of Cards 2024 - JB's Birthday Update

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