Jeremy's Den: Signal Lost In All The Noise

The world is a horrible, miserable, desperate place

And our only respite will be boozing juiced oblivion

Or the blessed relief of death, so welcome to the show

(Jon Richardson, Ultimate Worrier: Modern Living, 2019)

Labour’s problem in Hartlepool has been that they’ve had a problem

Matching Peter Mandelson’s working class credibility

(John Pienaar, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

I guess that Labour spads are now watching polls closely, to identify the possible residual pockets of Brexit Party/Reform UK vote. Which they should if Keir Starmer is indeed preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. Which might take much more to materialise than Labour's current strategy, if the most recent polls are any indication. Then we must all remember that nothing of this would have happened if Theresa May had not totally fucked up her Brexit Deal, and dragged the UK into the totally unnecessary European Parliament election in June 2019. This, and this only, gave birth to the Brexit Party, which totally ridiculed the Conservatives, just seven months after its foundation. This election also conclusively turned the tide of voting intentions, and probably sealed Jeremy Corbyn's fate as much, if not more, as the controversies over Labour's anti-Semitism. It freed hundreds of thousands Labour voters from ancestral allegiances, over the one issue that dominated the political discourse for years, and made them legitimate targets for Johnson's opportunistic Conservatives. The Brexit Party bubble burst within six months, far quicker than the UKIP bubble before it, and the December election also shockingly burst Labour's bubble. Then Brexit's vote shares at both 2019 elections in each meta-region show they still had some backing around the Red Wall. Which is not surprising as they did not stand in Conservative seats at the December general election, but also a sign that Leave-backing Labour voters were still unhappy with their old party's Brexit equivocation. Which was as much Starmer's responsibility as Corbyn's, to be fair.

In December 2019, the Brexit Party polled above 15% in only 15 constituencies all over the UK. But the most ominous result, from Labour's perspective, is that the Brexit Party polled higher than Labour's margin of victory in 39 constituencies, 28 of them in Northern England, 5 in the Midlands, 4 in Wales, 1 each in London and Southern England. Hartlepool was one of these. If the Brexit vote dissolves into the Tory vote everywhere, à la Hartlepool, Labour is definitely fucked beyond salvage for the foreseeable future. There is right now every reason to believe it will, and the next generation will ask: "Red Wall? What Red Wall?". The Guardian's view on Labour's electoral future, or their conclusion that trends seen at local elections will spread to parliamentary elections, might sound a bit far-fetched for now, but stranger things have happened since 1832. So the whole situation is like a fucking time-bomb, and there probably aren't many ways to avoid the trap, unless Keir Starmer ups his game and learns to speak working-class. There is also massive irony in the fact that some of the most endangered seats are currently held by so-called "Blue Labour" MPs such as Jon Cruddas, who advocated the "faith, flag, family" strategy that failed so miserably already under Ed Miliband. Then Sly Keir will also have to admit that the Bright Young Things from Hampstead Heath are not the best-equipped to read the Andy Capps of this realm. Or the Scots. Not that we can expect that from the man who brought Peter Mandelson back into his Ninth Circle. The same Mandelson who once infamously said the Northern working class were Labour's forever because they had nowhere else to go. Well, now they have.

Labour keep on telling people off for getting it wrong

Instead of listening to the reasons they don’t like Labour any more

(John Pienaar, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

Labour has got an enormous job, it’s gonna need, if not a new leader

A whole new way of doing it, and possibly both

(John Pienaar, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

Another alarm for Labour is, or should be, how Keir Starmer does in the Preferred Prime Minister polling that is published at least weekly, and sometimes thrice weekly, by various pollsters. And it definitely does not look good. Fucking awful is actually an apter description. It's quite karmatic indeed that Bozo's fate might depend on Dominic Cummings's personal vendetta and how he can paint the First Minister of England as the mendacious buffoon he is. Though I'm honestly not holding my breath and don't share the Guardian's optimism. I tend to agree with that anonymous Tory MP who thinks it will all go away, again. So far, some of Bozo's supporters have switched to undecided, but it failed to benefit Keir Starmer, who is still on a downward spiral. There are also multiple signs that Keir's leadership, or lack thereof, has left many in Labour in complete disarray. There is massive irony in the Corbynistas now backing Andy Burnham in an hypothetical leadership challenge. Which of course is only second to Andy rebranding himself as the champion of grassroots progressivism, after his fights with the English Government about Covid delivered him a massive victory in the Greater Manchester mayoral election. This could create an interesting situation as Andy Burnham is no longer an MP, and some will unavoidably argue it disqualifies him as a potential party leader. Which is of course total bollocks as there is no rule anywhere saying this. What passes as a constitution in the UK is just a hotchpotch collection of bits and bolts that has no foundation in anything but unwritten conventions and Old Boys Club's agreements between the main English parties. Ironically, a precedent was set by the Scottish Conservatives when they had dual leadership between Ruth Davidson and Douglas Ross, even if it was just a temporary arrangement. But the person who least wants to see Burnham as Labour leader is probably Burnham himself, which makes the point moot.

A leadership challenge in the short term is probably not Keir Starmer's main concern, though it possibly should be, and could come from where you least expect it to. Sadiq Khan might try his luck, even if his reelection as Mayor of London was lacklustre compared to Andy Burnham's in Manchester or Steve Rotherham's in the Liverpool City Region. And of course Khan's opponents would argue that he is even more a symbol of the out-of-touch ultra-woke metropolitan elite than Starmer on his worst days. Then Keir's biggest worry these days should be his lack of effectiveness as Leader of the Opposition. Many said that the public's positive appraisal of his forensic interrogations of Boris Johnson at PMQs would soon wear off, and it is exactly what happened as he seems unable to pull serious punches. As the saying goes, it doesn't look good if you can talk the talk but can't walk the walk. Then Sly Keir's problem right now is that he can't even talk the talk. At least not the one his potential voters are expecting. It says a lot that Keir's rating as Preferred PM is lower than Labour's voting intentions, while Bozo's is higher than Conservatives' voting intentions. To add insult to injury, Keir Starmer is not doing any better when polled against Rishi Sunak. It's interesting to see Wunderkind Rishi being the pollsters' favourite, and indeed their only alternative to Bozo, at a time when the Treasury's dominance on the whole political agenda has been seriously dented, by an odd mix of actual political choices and reality checks on the actual requirements of facing a major crisis. Not coincidentally, this coincides with some within Labour advocating what you could call "Council Keynesianism", in opposition to Brownite orthodoxy.

It's also interesting to note that no pollster is polling Keir Starmer vs Michael Gove as the Preferred Prime Minister. Sarah Vine and the Daily Mail may be rooting for Sleekit Mickey, but obviously the pollstertariat and the punditariat don't consider him a serious contender for the top rung of the food chain. Then we might be stuck with Rishi as the heir apparent for some time, as the Murdoch press realise that both Mickey and Keir are definitely the wrong horses to bet on. There might be some interesting fallout though after Dominic Cummings' last batch of finger-pointing about herd immunity. Maybe Sleekit Mickey will come out of it as the next tenant of Number Ten, being the only one left unscathed by Dom's strafing runs, for reasons I cannot even try and begin to fathom. Can you? But we just have to remember that it is another game of smoke and mirrors, where everybody lies, and everybody were up to their oxters in it, including Cummings himself as chief adviser to the First Minister of England. Then it might also end up as just another ripple on the ocean, and business as usual will resume, while the endless procession of sycophants are all over the media telling us what a good man Carrie's husband is. And we can sit back and watch while mandatory photo ID and the next Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies make sure that the Conservatives stay in power for all of eternity, the English Variant of the Thousand Years' Reich.

Rishi Sunak is not competent, he just seems competent

Because everyone around him is profoundly incompetent

If you were in a lift with ten people and one of them farted

You’d think “that’s disgusting”, but if you looked at the other nine people

And saw they had liquid shit dribbling out of the bottom of their trousers

You would think the guy who farted is a champion of decorum

Rishi Sunak is a lift farter in a sea of pant soilers

(Nish Kumar, The Last Leg, 2021)

Here’s the thing with leadership

Once you have seized power, really all you have to do is coast

And preside over the decline and blame others

(Richard Ayoade, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2019)

There is another poll Labour spads should study more closely, the one conducted by Savanta Comres between 7 and 9 May about what they call "party characteristics", but should be more fittingly described as people's attitudes towards the parties. Of course Savanta Comres totally fucked up the last instalment of their Scottish Tracker for The Scotsman, as I reminded you in my postmortem of the Holyrood election. But their general election polls do look more reliable, or at least not blatantly at odds with the findings of other pollsters. Their first batch of items are broadly about who is better represented by either the Conservatives or Labour. And, while Labour score reasonably well on a number of items, the Conservatives also do, and sometimes in a surprising way. Labour spads should be worried about a tepid result as "the party of the young" and a truly lousy one as "the party of aspiration". Both being items on which you want to score high if you plan on painting yourself as "the party of the future". Also intriguing is that almost as many voters think that Labour is not "the party of the working class", as who think the Conservatives are. Almost as bad as nearly a third of respondents thinking that the Conservatives are "the party of the left behind", despite their abysmal record on welfare and benefits. Definitely some rethinking to do here for Team Red. Now I doubt Labour's credentials as either "the party of the young", "the party of the left behind" or "the party of the working class" will be boosted by Sly Keir's bizarre decision to stand up for the posh toffs in his own backyard. Because nothing says "I'm a man of the people" as loudly as "step off the grass, oiks", does it?

The second batch of questions is more about the bigger picture, and how voters think the parties fare on a number of generic issues. And these ones deliver some really damning results for Labour. The Conservatives outpoll Labour on all items you can spin positively, most of the time with a significant margin. The worst is that 61% of respondents think Labour have lost their way, including 57% of their own voters. Even SNP voters have a more positive opinion, with "only" 53% thinking Labour have lost it. This is of course linked to the commonly-held belief that Labour lack both a credible leadership and a clear sense of direction. Not that the Conservatives really do better, with respondents equally split about them on both items. But Labour's dire performance still make the Tories look somewhat good by comparison. Which sheds a worrying light on the voting intentions. People are not actually choosing whom appears to be the best at the job, but whom would be the least bad of two unsavoury options. This can actually be a winning situation, as Nicola Sturgeon did win an election while sending the subliminal message that "at least we're not as bad as the other lot". The Conservatives can't demonise Starmer in the same way they demonised Corbyn, so that sort of messaging could work too, with an electorate that appears to be driven more by resignation than enthusiasm.

Now there is one item missing from the poll's list: Labour represent people like me. But you can easily figure it out from the crosstabs on some of the key items. And none of it looks really good for Labour. 29% of Leave voters and 51% of Remain voters agree that Labour represents all of Britain, with 61% and 41% respectively thinking they don't. Not really a resounding success with either camp, and the Leavers' position will be more of a problem in future elections. Just think of Batley and Spen, who voted 60-40 Leave just days after Jo Cox's brutal murder, and how some in Labour are already spinning a by-election defeat there as the end of Starmer's leadership. Just as worryingly, 57% of Labour's 2019 voters think the party have lost their way and 33% think it doesn't have a leadership they can believe in. Also 41% of the 18-34s think the Conservatives are the party of young people and 45% think they are the party of aspiration, while only 53% and 55% respectively think it also applies to Labour. Again not a ringing endorsement from one of the key demographics Labour need to win any future election. Next stop is Batley and Spen, a Labour seat since 1997, that voted 43% Labour, 31% Conservatives and 18% UKIP in 2015. Then 56% Labour, 39% Conservative and 2% UKIP-in-disguise in 2017. And finally 43% Labour, 36% Conservative and 15% combined UKIP-in-disguise and Brexit in 2019. By-election there is on 22 July and it does have the ingredients for a repeat Hartlepool. Though of course the Conservatives have more than enough time for some massive fuckups that would save Labour's arse. Or not.

It's not only that we're not in the room

We don't even know where the room is

(Anonymous Labour insider, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

People should win things because they’re good

Not because everyone else is more rubbish

(Tom McNair, Being Human: Sticks And Ropes, 2013)

The trends of voting intentions remain extremely negative for Labour, and even more so when you factor in the regional crosstabs in England outside London, and I will come back to that in more detail later. There are even quite a few polls predicting that the Conservatives would do just as well as in 2019, while Labour would again lose a few votes here and there. The trendlines show Labour leaking from both ends, losing a few to the Liberal Democrats and more than a few to the Greens. Both of which are of course beacons of liberal progressivism. Naw, just kidding. And we again have The Guardian indulging in some wishful thinking about the Conservatives standing on feet of clay, which sounds like pissing down the wrong tree in the wrong forest. Of course, the Conservatives' contradictions will some day come back to bite them in the arse. But it happened to New Labour only during Tony Blair's second term, and you could argue that the clock has been reset by the 2019 election, so now the deadline is something like six or seven years out. Besides, what hurt New Labour most was not the public becoming aware of their contradictions, which had already happened during Blair's first term. It was the Iraq War and the bundles of lies peddled by Labour about it, and even then losing votes did not result in losing the next election. It took another full term, and then probably as the result of power-weariness more than anything else. Transpose that onto the current situation, and Johnson might not last as long as Putin, but quite possibly longer than either Thatcher and Blair.

As I hinted earlier, my current Poll'O'Polls shows no massive change from the 2019 results. If anything, we just have the weeest of swings from the Conservatives to Labour. Which in reality is more like the cumulative effect of swings from Labour to the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the SNP, while the Conservatives have a near zero-sum-game mix of gains and losses, depending on which nation and region you're looking at. What I have here is the aggregate of the last four polls, coincidentally all fielded on 27 and 28 May. The super-sample is 5,714 with a theoretical margin of error of 1.3%. Compared to the 2019 results, the increase of the Greens' vote share is quite close to the fall of the LibDems' vote share. But this definitely does not point to a direct transfer from one to the other. There are more subtle patterns at work here, with voters crisscrossing from one party to the other in pretty much all possible directions. The only surprise is that the instability actually helps the Conservatives, as most of the movement is between parties in the center or the left of the compass. There might even be an even bigger time-bomb for Labour in there. The Conservative vote is definitely an acquired taste for many in former Labour heartlands, which I can't call the Red Wall any more as it is now in no better shape than the Berlin Wall. Anyway, we have seen many instances where acquired tastes stick, and people never look back and regret changing course. Like when you switch from omnivore to vegan. After a while, you no longer miss cheese and eggs, because you don't even remember how they tasted like, or do you?

Unsurprisingly some are using Labour's abysmal performance in recent elections and current polls to promote proportional representation (PR). Unsurprisingly too, this is relayed by The Guardian, who also advocate a "progressive alliance" to muddy the waters just a wee smitch more. At face value, that is bringing back a bigger variant of the Unite To Remain alliance at the 2019 election, which was an utter fucking disaster. Remember that the only success of this hotchpotch alliance was gaining Brecon and Radnorshire at a by-election in August 2019, and then predictably losing it back to the Conservatives at the general election. And, while there was a fuckload of fanfare and gloating about the gain, especially in The Guardian, all the ones involved were remarkably silent about the defeat four months later. And now they can't even make it work again for the next by-election in Chesham and Amersham. It's even a bit pathetic to see three prominent English MPs pleading for it, again in The Guardian, when they know it won't happen and there's nothing they can do about it. Then if you want an update on the mischiefs of PR, just look at what's happening right now in Scotland, where the electoral system is only partially proportional. The Scottish Greens are basically blackmailing the SNP into reneging on some key manifesto pledges, in return for votes on the budget the Scottish Government would have got anyway, and it totally makes my point. PR is not about offering a fair representation of the people's choices, it's about giving hyperactive minorities a free pass at blackmailing the majority into policies their electorate never voted for. Just saying.

Keir Starmer is the perfect husband

You just wouldn't want to have sex with him

(Anonymous Labour insider, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

We keep seeing videos of people saying “it’s time for a change”

“It’s time for a change, I voted for a change, I voted Tory”

They’ve been in power for eleven years now

It’s not a great change, is it?

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

You might expect that voting intentions so close to the 2019 result would also deliver a very similar seat projection. And you would be right. At the end of the day, the Conservatives would end up with a net loss of four seats, and Labour with a net gain of one. Which is oddly reminiscent of the pattern seen at the 2001 election, when New Labour cruised to a second landslide, against an unconvincing and ineffective opposition led by a bland leader who inherited his position at the wrong moment. This would lower the Conservatives' working majority from 87 to 79, which are the right numbers when you remember you always have to factor out the Sinn Féin MPs. Of course you also have to factor out the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, but there are two each for the Conservatives and Labour, so that does not change the majority. This pedanticish technicality being now behind us, the projected results would also widen the rift between Scotland and England, with the SNP ending up close to their 2015 landslide. But that's a story in itself and I'll come back to that later. Things are not looking too good for the Preshoos Yoonion in Wales either, with Plaid Cymru projected to increase their vote share to 15% and gain Ynys Mon from the Conservatives. Plaid Cymru's challenge is obviously to switch and hold that part of the electorate that vote for them at the Senedd elections, but return to Labour at the Commons elections. Though they would also need a more evenly distributed vote, as even 20% at a Commons election would only get them six seats, as they are either very weak or even non-existent in many constituencies.

Based on the current weighted average of voting intentions, we would also have twenty-six Conservative marginals and fourteen Labour marginals that could deliver a slightly different result with only a wee swing in voting intentions. If all the Tory marginals went to either Labour or the SNP, the Conservatives would end up with 335 seats and a 27-seat working majority, oddly similar to the uncomfortable situation John Major or post-Coalition David Cameron found themselves in. But of course the odds are not in favour of that happening. Even if it did, there is little to support a scenario where Labour would then enjoy a succession of by-election gains that would reduce the Conservatives to a minority government, as they managed between 1992 and 1997. And there is also no reason to believe the next First Minister of England, whoever he is, would gamble all on a snap general election that could deliver a 2017ish setback just as plausibly as a 2019ish landslide. The precautionary principle would definitely rule here, even for a party that so miserably failed to abide by it during the pandemic. And if you want some more useless trivia that proves that politics go round in circles. this projection says the Conservatives would bag 157 more seats than Labour. Which is the same number by which Labour outnumbered the Tories at the 2005 election, 355 to 198. Don't tell me it's all just coincidences. Or is it? Just bear in mind that 2005 was considered a lousy result for New Labour, while something similar would be considered quite a success for Bozo. Not every song remains the same.

The future used to be something people got excited about

That tells you everything you need to know about the world

(Jon Richardson, Ultimate Worrier: The Future, 2019)

The song Gab famously never played at the 2009 Oscars ceremony

They asked him to do a one-minute digest and he told them to fuck off

There’s times I think maybe we should just blow up the world

Like in Star Wars when Princess Leia sees her home planet destroyed

She’s a bit sad but part of her is also like

“Yeah, there’s a lot of arseholes there”, you know?

(David O’Doherty, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2018)

As usual, it's interesting to see how the UK-wide trends translate in England, as they have the most seats and usually the largest variations from one region to the other. No seat is predicted to change hands in London, as all three main parties there would lose votes in very similar proportions, and that would mostly benefit the Greens, who are in no position to gain a seat or even influence the result in any there. So the main events will happen in the other three English meta-regions, and not necessarily in directions you would expect, or were already there when I wrote my last general election article seven weeks ago. The Reform UK vote remains high in the North, which might just be a polling bias, from the polls' implicit assumption that all parties would stand in all constituencies. Polls are also notoriously unable to predict local variations such as tactical voting, so there might be few more Hartlepools waiting to happen. Regional crosstabs also show that the three meta-regions are not as monolithic as you might think. There is evidence, for example, that Yorkshire and the Humber may be in the same league as the Midlands, offering Labour some opportunities for second chances. While the rest of the North looks more likely to swing even further towards the Conservatives. The South West is also more likely to grant the Greens a high vote share, plausibly up to double digits. Which is probably the cumulative effect of dissatisfaction with Labour, and opposition to the Conservatives' project to reform planning laws. Protest from within the Tory ranks had it put on the backburner some months ago, but it's back now and might lead to further rebellion down the road.

The regional variations here also support the common-sense theory that there is a socially conservative nationalist working class vote that will go to the dominant populist right-wing party, when they feel the traditional left has let them down with their combination of economic globalism and social liberalism. Same thing that happened in the United States with the Rust Belt voting for Trump, or in France with the post-industrial North shifting to the National Rally. In the UK, UKIP and then the Brexit Party were the natural outlets for this electorate, until they were past their shelf date, and it was then far easier to shift to the anti-European and pro-British-values Conservatives that to go all the way back to the woke metropolitan Labour of the post-Brexit era. The effects on the seat projections in each meta-region are quite interesting, as they show Labour still face an uphill battle in most of the North, and might find it harder than expected to reap the fruits of demographic changes in the South. Oddly, when you compare this to what we had seven weeks ago, their best case scenario is now in the Midlands, where the surge in the Green vote is least likely to impact them negatively. But obviously the big picture again says Labour still have a long way to full recovery, and probably some of the proverbial tough choices will have to be made in the future. It's just not totally clear what they should be, other than pointing out that pursuing conflicting goals to accommodate different parts of the electorate is not part of the solution. Uniting tribes with conflicting expectations might have worked for New Labour for about ten years, but it's definitely outwith New New Labour's reach for now.

On current polling, Labour would gain back four seats in the Midlands (Derby North, Gedling, High Peak, Stoke-on-Trent Central) and three in the North (Dewsbury, Keighley, Pudsey, not coincidentally all in Yorkshire), but lose a further four to the Conservatives in the North (Lancaster and Fleetwood, Oldham East and Saddleworth, Warrington North, Weaver Vale), where former LibDem leader Tim Farron would also be unseated by the Tories in Westmorland and Lonsdale. We also have almost a status quo in the Leafy South, which is not really good news for Labour, compared to earlier projections where they were back to 30+ seats doon there. Their new problem is that, as projected vote shares show, the "new young suburbites" are more likely to vote for the Greens than for Keir Starmer, and in large enough numbers to jeopardise a Labour surge in the leafy commuter belt. So Labour would now gain back Peterborough from the Conservatives while losing Bristol West to the Greens. Labour clearly suffers some "non-gains" because of a fragmented opposition, but it's difficult to see which magic trick could solve this. The Westminster System is clearly not designed to accommodate pre-election coalitions, which would be easy targets for the governing party as "coalitions of chaos". Thusly, Labour's only road back to power is to attract a sizeable part of "soft Tory" voters, which seemed to work early in Keir Starmer's tenure, but has now been totally ineffective for several months. This should raise concerns at Labour HQ about their inability to capitalise on Johnson's Cabinet's unprecedented and world-beating list of failures, law-breaking and lies. Even more so when the last Opinium poll says that more people trust Johnson and Hancock to tell the truth, than trust Cummings' revelations. And fewer trust the Leader of the Opposition than the Government. Ouch.

Dominic Cummings really is the kind of Prince of Dark Arts, isn’t he?

He’s our very own, or was, when he was at the heart of government

Our very own Littlefinger, the kind of Bastard of Barnard Castle

He really knew how to make sure he had all the power in his hands

And I just think that everybody’s desperate to have him back

To tell us exactly, you know, what he wasn’t doing

When he should have been doing his job

(Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

To be fair, the whole of Scotland was watching Cummings going

"Keep going, keep going, Dominic, dig a bigger hole"

"Give Dominic a shovel, get tore in, fella", because the whole of Scotland

Was like "This is the reason we don't want anything to do with these people"

(Janey Godley, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

Finally, let's have a look at what the polls have to say about Scotland's voting intentions at the next Westminster election. In which Scotland will definitely take part, as the odds of Boris Johnson saying Yes to a Section 30 Order are about as high as those of Boris Johnson saying Yes to a Section 30 Order, or somewhere South of the square root of the SFA. This could have been avoided if the Scottish Government had not instructed the Lord Advocate James Wolffe to sabotage Martin Keatings' People's Action on Section 30. It's quite obvious that the SNP are sending a clear message here: oiks, don't meddle with this as it is our unalienable mandate to totally fuck it up again. Martin's full account and comments can be read here, and I encourage you to read it in full, so you're fully aware of all the gory details of the SNP's deceit and obfuscation. There will be a price to pay for this some day, most likely in the shape of the SNP losing their bid for a fifth term in 2026 if Independence has not been secured by then. But let's take this one baby step at a time, as the SNP do with Independence, and look at first at the trends of Scottish voting intentions. I factored in only the Full Scottish polls and not the subsamples of GB-wide polls, with one exception I will come back to later. The trends speak for themselves, with the SNP continuously predicted to bag twice as many votes as the Conservatives, and Labour in disarray. The most recent polls also credit the Greens with a higher vote share than in 2019, aboot 3 to 4%. This works only in theory, if the Greens field candidates in all constituencies, which they probably won't. The interesting part is that, like in England, this Greenish surge has dented Labour's vote share, but so far has not hurt the SNP.

Based on the most recent survey of Scottish voting intentions, the next general election would be a massive success for the SNP, though not as overwhelming as the 2015 landslide. Then I guess nobody is actually expecting an exact repeat of that one. This poll is the exception to my rule, as it is the Scottish subsample of a GB-wide poll. But this was the massive poll conducted by Find Out Now for the Sunday Telegraph just after the various May elections. Their sample was 14,715 with a Scottish subsample of 1,280. Which is some 25% larger than the usual Full Scottish poll, so definitely qualifies as one to keep. Besides, there was nothing in this poll that contradicted the general trends, or what we could infer from the Scottish Parliament election results. Here we again see the Conservatives doing worse under Doogie Ross than under Jackson Carlaw, losing 3% of the popular vote and two seats. Doogie's own seat in Moray would return to the SNP and the Conservatives would hold only the Leave-voting Banff and Buchan, and the three Borders-and-Border seats. Of those, Alister Jack's seat in Dumfries and Galloway would be held only by the weeest of margins, and would be the next one to fall on a good day for the SNP. At face value, the Liberal Democrats would hold only Orkney and Shetland, but with a similar margin to the 2015 election, when the late Danus Skene nearly sent Alistair Carmichael packing. So fair winds would also shift this one to the SNP quite easily.

There is of course one big flaw in the Scottish polls we have: they don't include the Alba Party. Though it would be challenging to factor in Alba in any projection, as we're definitely treading into terra incognita here. You can definitely expect the SNP to go all the way to "if I can't have it, then neither can you" in both Alba constituencies, and field candidates against the defectors, Neale Hanvey and Kenny MacAskill. Which of course would be a dick move as it would gift Labour with two easy gains on a silver platter. And is exactly what you can expect from New SNP, as it would allow them to again whine about "transphobes splitting the vote", and blame Alex Salmond for Culloden and the Clearances. I don't expect the Alba Party to respond in kind and go tit-for-tat. Though it would be quite enlightening to see how luminaries like Kirsty Blackman, Alyn Smith or John Nicolson would fare if facing a direct challenge. But I don't think we will ever see that as I'm convinced the Alba Party will act responsibly, if New SNP don't, and will take one for the cause. Like asking Neale and Kenny to stand down, and clear the way for SNP "holds", so the Unionists and their affiliated media won't get any oven-ready soundbites about devastating blows and downward spirals. Then the next general election is three years out, which is both an eternity and the blink of an eye in politics, and I can't rule out the Ultimate Game Changer happening in the meantime. Like Nicola Sturgeon pulling a Blair on us: anointing Kate Forbes as her heir apparent, and quitting mid-term. Which could be a major step towards the reconciliation of the clans. One can dream, can't he?

With my teenage self, what advice would I give?

I would say, introduce more fibre to your diet

And don’t strain too hard during a bowel movement

If alcohol and drugs don’t get you, haemorrhoids will

(Kevin Bridges, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2020)

Jeremy's Den

31/05/2021

Signal Lost In All The Noise

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