The man is a lout, of course. A lout, a lecher, an anti-Semite, a racist and a bully
He is however more intelligent than he seems
We mustn't make the mistake of underestimating him
(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards, 1990)
© Peter Gabriel, 2000
I know that you think your policies are the best for the whole nation
Not just the rich, the strong and the greedy
And I don't believe the people is still behind you
The nation is desperate for a change of heart
You have already abandoned Wales and Scotland
Thousands of Englishmen live in cardboard boxes under bridges
I cannot believe the people are still behind such brutally uncompromising hard-right policies
(The King, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)
2021 did not start really well for Boris Johnson. Any positive impact the Brexit Deal might have had soon disappeared amidst the chaos caused by the influx of red tape that most businesses were unprepared for, with distrust also fueled by scientists casting doubt on the First Minister of England's long term ability to properly fight Covid, and economists predicting a double-dip recession in 2021. In the first week alone, we had a YouGov poll showing a tie in voting intentions between Labour and the Conservatives, and another one from Opinium showing Labour 1% ahead. Which was admittedly a wee smitch better than the massive survey conducted by Focaldata all along December, that had Labour 2% ahead. But massively worse than the very last poll of 2020 from Deltapoll, that had the Conservatives 5% ahead. Of course you're going to object that different pollsters, different methodologies, different house effects and all that. And you will be right, but the general public mostly overlook that, just see the proverbial 'headline voting intentions', and go Ouch For Boris. And it did not really get better for Boris after this, as the trends of voting intentions show. But Labour surging back ahead in a few recent polls is obviously not a prediction of the shape of things to come. It has happened already and then Tories bounced up again, the last time quite oddly before the Bozo Deal was announced.
The most surprising result in recent polls is that Boris Johnson still manages to end up ahead of Keir Starmer in 'Preferred Prime Minister' questions. But polls here are as contradictory as ever, with Opinium and YouGov steadily showing Starmer leading, while other pollsters have Johnson ahead. Things become more interesting when Rishi Sunak enters the competition, which only Redfield and Wilton have tested so far, and pitting just Johnson and Sunak against each other, not Starmer and Sunak. Conservative voters choose Johnson by a wide margin, but Labour voters would prefer Sunak at Number Ten. Which is definitely odd as Sunak's policies are definitely in line with the parts of the Tory manifesto Labour objects to the most. And also hints that Labour voters have missed the part where Sunak is more popular with the general public than both Johnson and Starmer, and would certainly prove a tougher adversary if he was to lead the Conservatives at the next election. Which might happen, or not. See my previous remarks on how Southeastern Surrey Tories might miss that opportunity and instead choose.... errr.... Michael Gove? Then I have said many times why I think Starmer is not doing better, so it does not need repeating. I think the core issue, and one that covers pretty much all of these reasons, is that the public tend to like men with principles and who stick to them. Like Sly Keir supporting Remain and sticking to it no matter what, without pandering to public opinion, or what he imagines public opinion to be. Not Sly Keir endorsing Lexit and supporting the poisonous Bozo Deal. Not Sly Keir giving in to the fallacious 'voting against the deal is voting for no deal' Tory propaganda, which he obviously knew, as a lawyer, had fuck all legal or constitutional standing, as has been repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated even before the vote. Have to up your game now, Keir.
Already speculations appear in the press about an hypothetical snap election in the near future. I agree that it is a distinct possibility but I don't think Boris Johnson will call it. Because he now has the Tory libertarian far-right going after him, the MPs Formerly Known As The European Research Group, who have now rebranded themselves the Covid Research Group. A very appropriate name indeed in both cases because they have never done anything like actual research into either issue, but are solely guided by their deeply and strongly held beliefs. A perfect fit for the dystopian Trumpo-Johnsonian Post-Truth Age, where "I don't believe you" is deemed an acceptable counter to rational thought. My best educated guess is that the snap election will happen after the next 1990ish Very Tory Coup, and will be called by the next First Minister of England (Rishi Sunak, anyone?) wanting to secure a personal mandate. Because it worked really well for Theresa May, didn't it? The Next Chosen One wouldn't even have to bother with repealing the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. It has been circumvented already, thanks to friendly tips from the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, so it can be circumvented again. Just make sure the SNP agrees on the date.
All political leaders should recognise that they have a sell-by date
And they should leave the stage while people are still clapping
(Chris Patten)
© Peter Gabriel, 1980
Loyalty is supposed to be the Conservative Party’s secret weapon
Well, that’s an illusion, quite frankly
People in politics should determine their exit as well as their entrance
Most politicians don’t, they hang on to the bitter end and regret it
(Kenneth Baker)
The mid-January instant snapshot of voting intentions is based on three polls, the last ones for which we have the full reports and crosstabs: one from YouGov has Labour 1% ahead, one from Opinium has Labour 3.4% ahead, and the final one from Redfield and Wilton has the Conservatives 2% ahead. Here we have a supersample of 5,705 with a theoretical margin of error of 1.3%. These three polls cover the period from 13 to 18 January, the best approximation of the current state of public opinion. All three pollsters see a swing from the Conservatives to Labour, compared to the very first 2021 polls that were conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Bozo Deal. Comparison with the December polls, conducted before the Bozo Deal, is trickier as the three pollsters see different patterns of change here, though none is really good for the Conservatives. On average, projections deliver a 15-seat lead for the Tories, instead of the tie we had just before the Bozo Deal. Still a hung Parliament with again some sort of "damned if you don't, damned if you do" situation for the English parties, and even more so for Labour. Just as usual, we have this massive Tartan Elephant in the room, that the Labour leadership wouldn't quite know how to handle. On current numbers, Sly Keir would have to ride the yellow tiger to get into Number Ten, but he could lose enough MPs in doing so that he would never reach further than the gate on Whitehall. A catch-22 of intergalactic magnitude if there ever was one, with or without the mixed animal metaphors. The circus would be fun to watch, wouldn't it?
The seat projections are a wee smitch better for the Conservatives than what I had just before Christmas, or what the massive Focaldata survey predicted. Which is quite predictable when the weighted average of the supersample shifts from a 2.2% Labour lead to a 0.8% Labour lead. But that doesn't mean the situation after an hypothetical general election would be better than last month for the Conservatives, or even for Labour. Of course, if the general election was fought on managerial competence only, as the Scottish Tories advocate for the next Holyrood election, it would deliver vastly different results. Or wouldn't it? Anyway, a number of Conservative big or biggish names, in an out of government, would lose their seats: Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers, Graham Brady, Amanda Solloway, Chloe Smith, Alok Sharma, Robert Buckland, Steve Baker, etc... Plus of course the Scottish Supine Six, the whole lot of them. And Boris Johnson himself would see his majority in Uxbridge cut by half. Ironically, former LibDem leader Tim Farron would also lose his seat, the only Conservative gain on current polling, and would probably take that as an act of God. But with this Poll'O'Polls, we also have 42 ultra-marginal seats that could radically change the post-election landscape, depending on which way they go, and here's what the range of seats would look like.
All the alternate scenarios suggest that the two main English parties should actually wish for Scottish Independence to happen soon. Of course a Rump Commons for a Rump UK would not offer the same range of hypothetical post-election possibilities, as it would lack a powerful third party pursuing their own course firmly in opposition to the Tories. But it would remove the thorn in the English Establishment's side that the SNP have proved to be over the years, even when they did nothing serious to earn that distinction. And would make England's domination of the 'British' Parliament even more obvious than it already is. Remember what I showed you a long time ago: the party who comes first with Scotland in the UK is always the one who would benefit the most if the election was held without Scotland. Basic maths, which only illustrates a self-evident truth: the battleground is England, that's were elections are lost or won. Which of course was mostly false when Labour bagged 40ish or 50ish Scottish seats, and is reason enough to never let them bag them ever again. Labour. Seats. For 'them' and 'them'. Then, as I said already, the majority in Rump Commons would be 296 seats, or just 293 if Sinn Féin still wouldn't take their seats. The Conservatives would have easily reached it at all elections since 2010, and wouldn't have needed the Coalition that year. But it is clearly not out of reach for Labour as they achieved it and better thrice under Tony Blair. So the remedy that might save Labour in England is the same one that will kill them in Scotland: become Blairite again to seduce the Home Counties' middle class. Ironic, isn't it?
No man ever steps in the same river twice
For it's not the same river and he's not the same man
Everything changes and nothing stands still
(Heraclitus)
© Peter Gabriel, Jill Gabriel, 1978
The mob is primarily a group in which the residue of all classes are represented
This makes it so easy to mistake the mob for the people, which also comprises all strata of society
While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation
The mob always will shout for the "strong man", the "great leader"
(Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianism)
And now a short aside and a kind of conclusion, about the post-mortem of the American elections. Not a comment about the most recent events, but just a comparison between what prognosticators predicted and what actually happened. And it's not a pretty sight. All overestimated the Democratic wins, and sometimes by a wide margin. Though a few underestimated Joe Biden's performance in the presidential election, which is why the average of the last day predictions is so close to the actual result. Though, to be honest, the majority opinion was that most of the tossups would go to Biden, so the average is a wee smitch misleading. Same applies for the Senate, where the majority trend was 52 Democrats to 48 Republicans. Oddly, most predicted that both Georgia seats would switch to the Democrats, a funny case of being right while being wrong. The House of Representatives projections were the worst, as they were based on a mix of generic nationwide polls and specific district polls, all of which proved to be massively wrong. The district-by-district polls, which I included in my own projection, were the worst. The bulk of them predicted that marginal Republican seats would switch to the Democrats, and the exact opposite happened, with Republicans neatly culling a dozen Democrats in marginal seats. The least wrong prediction was for a status-quo, each party bagging the same number of seats as in 2018, end even that was not even close to the actual result. Note that, as unbelievable as it sounds, one seat (New York's 22nd District) is still officially undeclared. Both candidates have requested recounts that delivered different results, and the seat is now the subject of a court case that is expected to drag on for some time.
My own predictions were not far different from what others said, though they were not quite as bad. I predicted Biden would get 320 electoral votes, which is indeed better than American pundits Nate Silver and Larry Sabato predicted on the last day. But I still got three states wrong: Florida and North Carolina that I allocated to Biden, Georgia that I allocated to Trump. My Senate prediction was 52 Democrats to 48 Democrats, which is also not that bad compared to other prognosticators. But here too I got three seats wrong: Iowa and North Carolina that I predicted switching to the Democrats, the Georgia regular election that I predicted as a Republican hold. My prediction for the House of Representatives was also quite a long way off: 244 Democrats (with a possible range of 214-258) to 191 Republicans (with a possible range of 177-221). So the actual result is really close to my worst case scenario for the Democrats, and there is massive irony here. If I had relied solely on my usual algorithm mixing uniform swing and proportional swing, based on nationwide generic polls, and totally disregarded the district-by-district polls, the result would have been 228 Democrats to 207 Republicans. Which would have been closer to the actual result than any American pundit predicted, and shows how badly wrong the district-level polls were. Guess I will have to take that into account for the 2022 midterms. Which promise to be quite tricky as they will be fought on new boundaries, after the mandatory redistricting cycle based on the 2020 census. The tricky part here is that US media do not publish notional results of the previous election, as UK media do. So there is a massive amount of wild guesses in any predictions for the first election after redistricting. Might be fun to try though.
And the moral of the story is: don’t go looking for morals in stories
If you want a message, fuck off down the post office
(Ian Dury)
© Peter Gabriel, 1986
