Jeremy's Den: July 2020

244 years ago today just after lunch, the Thirteen Colonies

rose against oppression and freed themselves from the yoke of tyranny

Well…. uh.… how shall I put this.... wasn't quite like that…. not even close

But there is a wee smitch of truth in every myth, or isn't there?

And.... uh.... pubs have re-opened in Berwick today.... just sayin'

I have a great belief in Britain, you know

We are not a nation of social workers or clients of social workers

We are not, please God, a nation of deserving cases

We are a fierce and proud nation and we are still, God willing, a nation to be reckoned with

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)

It is my conviction that we can do most good for Europe by being resolutely British

By showing Europe the way to go rather than trotting on Europe's heels

Europe has a great deal more to learn from the cradle of democracy than it has to teach us

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: The Final Cut, 1995)

It was bound to happen some day. Eleven days ago was the last of Boris Johnson's Covid-19 daily pressers, in which he admittedly was but the occasional guest star, and instantly The Guardian made their picks for the incoming 'Greatest Misses' DVD. Of course the First Minister of England had to host this last episode of the scheduled series himself and leave on a high note. Which he dutifully did by announcing that theatres in England would be allowed to reopen today, but would not be allowed to host live performances. Aye right, Boris. We have this kind of theatres in Scotland too, we call them cinemas. Odds are Series Two is already in the making and will hit the screens some time around the rumoured Equinox Reshuffle. Of course some parts will have been recast and it's safe to bet lockdown-flouter Robert Jenrick will be let go as his rendition of Corrupt Donor's Little Helper fell far short of becoming a crowd favourite. But we will still be treading familiar waters though, as Dominic Cummings has every chance of being retained as executive producer and chief scriptwriter. In the meantime, the Conservative Party's position in the general election polls has barely improved, as they still bear the scars of the Cummings Scandal and have something of a weekly quota of self-inflicted wounds. Even Boris Johnson's announcement of his "Build, Build, Build" master plan falls into that category, as the "live from the construction crew's locker room" setting left many quite flabbergasted. And that was before they discovered the £5 billion of extra funding are in fact no extra funding at all as it covers shovel-ready projects that are already funded.

Many observers have already made it clear that Johnson's Stimulus is in fact but a smallish RHINO (Roosevelt Hardly, In Name Only) package. Soon enough the people will realize that Johnson's New Deal is the same ad the Old Deal, and only a minute infusion of taxpayer dosh into laissez-faire capitalism. Of course Richard Desmond and his drinking buddies will welcome the end of 'newt counting' in the processing of planning applications in England, and are celebrating it at the local Wetherspoons on pints of warm Carling. Robert Jenrick certainly wishes it had been enforced a long time ago, as it would have saved him a fuckload of problems and a multi-episode PR disaster. But I guess the common people will not find sufficient incentives to 'bottle and swig their superhuman psychic energy', once they are done scratching their heads over what this mince actually means, or does not. Let's just wait until it dawns on them that Johnson's 'economic generational challenge' actually means the next generation will have to pay for this year's massive borrowing, that sent the UK's National Debt skyrocketing to an unprecedented all-time high in peacetime, and see how it impacts the Conservatives' electoral fortunes. For now, here is what the current rolling average of general election polls says. Based on the last six fielded between 18 June and 1 July, super-sample size being 12,005 and the very theoretical margin of error 0.89%. Of course it has been much worse for the Conservatives not so long ago when their lead over Labour melted down to just above 3%. Then the worst of an annus already quite horribilis might be yet to come as Boris's whole master plan now looks like standing his ground on quicksand, backed only by a confederacy of dunces whose brains went pear-shaped a long time ago.

The only silver lining for Boris will be that he will finally Get No Deal Done in time for the New Year and possibly even for Christmas, as was always planned and he gambled his presidency..... oops, sorry.... uh.... premiership on it. He has set his life upon a cast and he will stand the hazard of dice. And that'll be the day Europe says 'Bye, Bye, Oafs' and Dominic Raab finds out White Cliffs Matter, sure as fuck they do. Now that Boris has put a tiger in the tank, he will definitely prove that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, to use one of his catchphrases. And the oven-ready PR plan has been fully rehearsed already, if nothing else has. Just blame it on those pesky unelected bureaucrats in the European Parliament who wouldn't let Boris renege on the pledges he made to get his Worse-Than-May's No-Deal Deal through Parliament, thanks to that snap election he never really wanted, but then the Liberal Democrats and the SNP strongarmed him into it, or didn't they? Just as these pesky European bureaucrats will leave him no choice but to grudgingly accept the No Deal Deal Tory donors and Jacob Rees-Mogg's business partners have been expecting for so long, so they can at last cash in on their offshore investments against the pound. But of course that will have no adverse effect at all on the economy as The Covid Did It. Or didn't it?

It's not all Queensberry rules with Europe, you know

Occasionally, one needs a bit of pepper on the gloves

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: The Final Cut, 1995)

I used to think you were an honourable man but I don't think that anymore

You and your party are intellectually and morally bankrupt

It's time for you to go and you know it

(The King to Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)

Of course an important part of the electorate's decision making is how they feel about the two top contenders for Number Ten. Jeremy Corbyn was never much of a player here as even Theresa May outpolled him two-to-one, and the Tory-cuddling media made sure he was trampled underfoot by Boris Johnson. But Keir Starmer is in a totally different league as he humiliates every week at PMQs a bumbling Johnson who has become a world-beating specialist in handbrake turns amidst peak hour traffic and can't even get his own lies straight. Which is quite the problem with lies: you have to remember the ones you said last week if you want this week's new stash to sound even remotely well-rehearsed. Boris obviously can't and it makes him look like a goldfish suddenly bereft of a bowl, definitely not what you would expect from someone so well versed in Josef Goebbels's principles. Starmer now coming nose-to-nose in the Preferred Prime Minister polls, or even a noselet ahead, is quite a verdict on the First Minister of England, who has already reached the bottom of credibility, but is still digging a hole and putting the earth back in behind him. I guess this goes hand in hand with Johnson plummeting from a peak +39% net approval rating in early April to -6% now, when Starmer bags a +27% net rating which is not even his peak.

But now we know Starmer has surprisingly inherited Corbyn's uncanny ability at scoring own goals, and even managed two in one day. I guess the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey will have more consequences than Sly Keir expects, as there are still about sixty hard-core Corbynistas in the Parliamentary Labour Party and they will definitely not move on. His outright rejection of another Scottish Independence referendum will in many ways close not just a chapter, but a whole book. Labour was born in Scotland and now Labour in Scotland dies its final death. First they lost the voters, now they lose the members. The SNP should grant Sly Keir lifelong honorary membership for eliminating the competition in the center-left quadrant of the political compass. I must confess I was just being cutely witty when I dubbed Starmer's regime 'New New Labour', but it turns out I was quite spot on as he has now shown his true colours, including his infamous outburst on live TV about the 'Black Lives Matter moment' that was worthy of Dominic Raab. Future polls will tell how Starmer's lurch to the right will affect his popularity and credibility, but it seems to work so far. For example, the evolution of the Conservatives' lead over Labour in voting intentions is quite similar to the Johnson-vs-Starmer trend.

It is not unusual for the governing party's support to go down early in a parliamentary term. In fact all sorts of situations have been seen in the past, and the winning party's lead down from 12% to somewhere between 4% and 6% in six months would never have made headlines in the past, the Government of the day might even have seen it as mildly satisfactory. What makes the current situation unique is that you do not often see the governing party's support skyrocket and then plummet the way it did for the Conservatives since the December election. The Conservatives have probably bounced back a little during the BLM protests because riots at the fringe of some demonstrations triggered some reptilian law-and-order gag-reflex in some parts of the electorate. But it was short-lived as the many failures of the current English Government can't be ignored for long, when each news cycle brings more of them into the spotlight. Boris Johnson might be "fit as a butcher's dog and full of beans", which is quite a weird way to describe your own condition, but the English Government have now been reduced to a herd of Stonehenge-Apocalypse-grade shit-gibbons only able to deliver a daily inverted pyramid of piffle, to quote the First Minister of England himself, in a different context of course. But this will end soon because, ye ken, Nostradamus prophesied that Boris Johnson will sack Dominic Cummings, be replaced by Michael Gove after a backbench rebellion, and then Gove will call a snap election midway through the current term and lose it. No shit, Nostradamus really said that.

Du règne Anglois l'indigne dechassé

Le conseiller par ire mis à feu

Ses adherans iront si bas tracer

Que le bastard sera demy receu

(Nostradamus, Century III, Quatrain 80, 1558)

Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure, to hide the flavour of their own incompetence

(Tyrion Lannister, A Song Of Fire And Ice: A Clash Of Kings, 1999)

The seat projections from the current polls are of course far less damning for the Conservatives than what we had three weeks ago at the peak of the Cummings Scandal. Which does not mean that Boris Johnson is safe in the long run, as there are also lots of ambiguities and uncertainties in current polls. They show different trends between England and the devolved Nations, and also between London and the rest of England. Conservatives have lost the upper hand in Wales where they bounced to first party in some polls earlier this year, do poorly in London and abysmally in Scotland. But they still have a strong base in England as the latest batch of polls are far less favourable for Labour than what we had a month ago. Since my last projection the Conservatives' lead has increased by a measly 1.9% overall, but by a more significant 3.6% in England outside London, which directly translates into far fewer losses. The regional subsamples within England, with all the usual caveats, also show that Labour have not lost much ground in the North and South in the last few weeks, but are definitely struggling in the Midlands where the Conservatives have unexpectedly bounced back to a convincing outright majority of voting intentions. So the seat projections from the usual models now say that Johnson could hold a tiny majority of seats.

On current polling, my model says 48 seats would change hands, ranking this election between 1987 and 1992, which were just setbacks for the Conservatives, though the latter was quite miraculously so. But on such numbers, Boris Johnson would find himself in a much trickier situation than John Major in 1992. It took Major almost the whole term to lose a 21-seat majority so it's fair to predict it would take Johnson far less time to lose a 4-seat one. There are more similarities here to Harold Wilson's situation after the October 1974 election when he started with a 3-seat majority and lost it two years later. Seats that were previously held by Labour for a long time and fell in 2019, but are currently predicted to be held by the Tories, like Sedgefield, Workington, Barrow and Furness, Bolsover, West Bromwich West or Blackpool South, would be the most likely to switch back if a by-election was held in the near future. Then if you want a reference to an election everyone is old enough to remember, the current projection is quite close to 2015. Which is not a good omen when you realize it was the focal node in the space-time continuum where all the omnishambolic clusterbùrach started, and worse is still to come. Bear in mind though that there still is a potential of about fifty truly marginal seats, and another hundredish that would be won by slightly larger but still uncomfortably close margins, so an alternate timeline might still emerge in due course.

Even in their best case scenario, the Conservatives would not duplicate their December performance. You might even see a Sign From Heaven Above in Conservatives in that case matching Tony Blair's performance in 2005, which was the beginning of the end for New Labour. The best case scenario for Labour would be Back To 2010, with LibDems and SNP again Back To 2015 instead. Which again would leave Keir Starmer with only two options: negotiate in good faith with the SNP, or deliberately keep the Tories in power because, ye ken, standing up for the mythical concept of Oor Precious Most-Successful-In-The-Whole-Galaxy Union is more important than standing up for the people of this Union. Of course Sly Keir still has a third option: stop obsessing about a fantasy 16 seats in Scotland and seriously go after the really winnable extra seats elsewhere. Only sure thing is that New New Labour will not find their extra seats in Scotland, now that they have managed to alienate pretty much everyone North Of Gretna except the Morningside Polo Club. Sly Keir probably believes that unquestioning Unionism could result in a zero-sum game with Scottish voters: Labour would gain as many from the Conservatives as they would lose to the SNP. But it could rather be a totally different zero-sum game, the one where Labour end up with zero Scottish MPs after the next general election. So long, Merry Ian….

We are, please God, a nation of very fierce bad rabbits

(Beatrix Potter and Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)

A man of state needs helpers, little elves and sprites to do his bidding

Even unwitting pawns who don't know who they serve

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards, 1990)

As Trumpistan celebrate the UDI they deny others, some useless and irrelevant trivia.

Only one American President was born on Independence Day: Calvin Coolidge in 1872.

Three died on Independence Day: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both in 1826

on the Fiftieth Anniversary, and then James Monroe in 1831. Class dismissed.

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