Jeremy's Den: Democracy?

It’s been tough this century, tougher than I ever thought. At the turn of the century,

I was here, in this house, and I thought “There we are, we’ve done it. Nice little world.

Well done, the West, we’ve made it, we’ve survived”. What an idiot.

What a stupid little idiot I was. But I didn’t see all the clowns and monsters

Heading our way, tumbling over each other grinning. Dear God, what a carnival.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

Let’s move on but it still doesn’t alter the fact that it’s all tour fault. Everything.

All of you. The banks, the government, the recession, America, the Prime Minister.

Every single thing that’s gone wrong, it’s your fault. Because we are responsible.

Every single one of us.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

Boris Johnson loves his Latin, even when he makes up fake quotes. So the opening line to his tenancy at Number Ten should have been "Dies tenebrosa sicut nox". Days as dark as night, as the Dark Ages of Britain have been described by a contemporary chronicler. Those were the days of chaos, plagues and civil war, pretty much the same as in post-FreeDoomsDay Plague Island, and it lasted for 200 years. Which is probably how long 20 years of Conservative rule will feel like to future generations. Unless of course Labour manage to get past their internal squabbles, regroup under a credible leader and win an election before 2030. Legend says Britain was saved by King Arthur, which is obviously not a euphemism for Keir Starmer. Then the Next Big Thing was Nigel Farage joining GB News, the first example in recorded history of a rat jumping aboard a sinking ship. When 2021 isn't even a good year for sinking ships. But Nigel couldn't really blame the public for suddenly becoming more libertarian, could he? At least, The Nige and his lesser sidekick Craftywank Grimes managed to boost much needed donations to the RNLI, the only positive contribution they ever made to mankind.

Britain now stands at a fork in its crossroads. And maybe enough voters have had enough of Boris, the Drama Queen of Bullshit, for a change to come. The first cracks appeared with Survation's "Freedom Day Poll", conducted on 19 and 20 June, which showed that 72% of Brits would continue wearing a mask as often or even more often than before, including a massive 76% of Conservative voters. And that only 4% would refuse to wear a mask "because we don't want to", including a barely more significant 7% of Conservative voters. Another poll, conducted at the same time by YouGov, had 76% of respondents supporting vaccine passes to access indoor events, with 12% opposed. Conservative voters were 82% supporting and 11% opposed. Finally, an Opinium poll fielded some days later had 58% of people opposed to lifting the obligation to wear masks in closed public spaces, with 33% supporting it. Conservative voters went 53% opposed to 36% supporting. Which proved that utter covidiocy is far less present in the general public than the vociferous covidiot keyboard warriors want you to think, and that the covidiot Tory MPs can't expect massive support from their own voters, even if their influence within the parliamentary party is disproportionately high. The overwhelming message was like "you told us we would be free to do what we wanted, and that's just what we're doing: not taking any risk and protecting each other". You can see the impact of all this and more, in the significant recent changes in the traditional "Preferred First Minister of England" polling.

So the flow of events has started to harm Boris Johnson's public image, with the whole English Government being overwhelmed by "Operation Canute", as their attempts to repeal the Covid waves have been dubbed. Bozo oddly still has a better standing in the polls than Keir Starmer because, while his Government is confused, all Their Majesty's Loyal English Opposition could come up with is: "If we are a proper opposition, then we have to look properly confused". Which is like nul points for both sides, or a copycat of the last EngSco game. Interestingly, recent polls show undecideds now switching to Starmer. And, for the very first time since this combination is polled, Rishi Sunak beats Boris Johnson as the general public's choice of Preferred PM. But Bozo is not yet a footnote in the history of failure, unlike Chris Grayling and Matt Hancock. He still has some stunts up his sleeve, like Priti Patel's revamping of the Official Secrets Act. Which might not even come to a vote in Commons before the next snap election, but is still a good squirrel to stir up a controversy, and distract the electorate from more trivial stuff like the lorry and food shortages, the NI's rise or the nurses' not-much-of-a-rise. Obviously Labour still need to seriously up their game. Standing up in support of Dawn Butler, when she was expelled from Commons, might have been a good start. Speaking only three days later, and only to send a garbled message, really didn't cut it. Not standing in the way of vaccine passports, which might be unpopular with parts of Labour's core electorate, but will happen anyway sooner than later, might be a good idea too. I would gladly tell Sly Keir to grow a pair, but that would be an offensive gender stereotype and transphobic, wouldn't it?

We can sit here all day, blaming other people. We blame the economy, we blame Europe,

The opposition, the weather. And then we blame these vast, sweeping tides of history,

You know, like they’re out of our control, like we’re so helpless and little and small.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

But it’s still our fault. You know why? It’s that £1 T-shirt. A T-shirt that cost £1.

We can’t resist it, every single one of us. We see a T-shirt that costs £1 and we think

“Ooh, that’s a bargain, I’ll have that”, and we buy it. Not for best, Heaven forfend,

But nice little T-shirt for the winter to go underneath, that’ll do.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

The trend of voting intentions polling shows that the Conservatives have taken some hits, though none of them lethal yet. Their lead over Labour has shrunk from 2019ish levels to single digits, but it is still enough for them to reach a majority, or a workable plurality, of Commons seats. The Conservatives are even in a better position now than Theresa May was in 2017, when they beat Labour in the popular vote by only 2.4%. They're actually midway between 2017 and 2015, when they led by 6.5%, and it triggered Ed Miliband's demise. The different voting patterns that prevail now might actually help the Conservatives, as there are signs of increased scattering of the "progressive" vote. Not just between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, but also towards minor local parties who try and challenge Labour from the left on economic issues or devolution within England. While this might hurt Labour mostly in some areas of North England, the Tories might also suffer some damage from Nimbys in some parts of the Leafy South, especially now that Unesco is threatening to withdraw World Heritage status from a number of English landmarks because of out-of-control government-approved developments. Another interesting test is how much the English Government is ready to spend on flood defences in the same generally Tory-leaning areas, after multiple warnings that the British Isles might turn to something of a sub-tropicalish climate. Which is possibly a wee smitch exaggerated, but you probably have to push it a bit, just to be heard above the lobbyists' voices.

Even if the numbers look good at first sight, it's not yet time for Labour to celebrate. There seems to be some sort of perspex ceiling that keeps them somewhere in the mid-30s, and they definitely need to clear the 40% hurdle to become really competitive again. The level of support Jeremy Corbyn achieved in 2017, when he reduced Theresa May to a fumbling minority government, and that Keir Starmer reached only sporadically before the vaccine rollout. Just saying. And now Labour are faced with a totally unpredicted event, Carrie Johnson's pregnancy. Which will obviously be all over the English press, as prominently as a prospective Windsor sprog, in their efforts to boost Bozo' ratings. And hope for some butterfly effect on Conservative voting intentions, that don't look really good right now, being just under the 40% hurdle too for the first time in a long long time.

The current Poll'O'Polls has the Conservatives still leading by aboot 4%. It's the aggregate of the last four published polls, conducted between 23 and 29 July, with a super-sample of 6,240 and a theoretical margin of error of 1.24%. You have to wonder what could possibly be the final match, the camel that breaks the powder keg, and sends the Tories crashlanding for good. Remember that the Conservatives had worse polls than this at the end of last year, and managed to rebound. Not just because the First Minister of England was able to ride the wave of the "world-beating unprecedented vaccine rollout", thusly basically controlling the country's narrative for months. But also because Labour are unable to control their own narrative, probably because they don't even have one.

And the shop keeper gets five miserable pence for that T-shirt, and some little peasant

In a field gets paid 0.01 pence, and we think that’s fine. All of us.

And we hand over our quid and we buy into that system for life.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

I saw it all going wrong when it began in the supermarkets, when they replaced

All the women on the till with those automated checkouts.

You hate them but you didn’t do anything, did you? When they first popped up,

Did you walk out? Did you write letters of complaint? Did you shop elsewhere?

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

I will make the bold assumption now that Keir Starmer's Summer Cull of the Left was not just triggered by spite, but had more dignified ulterior motives, like making future coalitions easier. So the baseline will not be just the number of Labour seats, but the combined forces of Labour, the SDLP, the Liberal Democrats and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. Which would take an aspiring Labour Prime Minister a dozenish seats closer to Number Ten, and would make a difference in a very close snap election, like the one I confidently predict will happen in 2022. That cunning plan, if there is actually one, will of course depend on the parties' strengths across the UK, as can be assessed with the regional crosstabs of the most recent polls. The most interesting part is Labour's surge in Wales, and the underlying trends it reveals. First there was a visible switch in voting intentions from Labour to Plaid Cymru, propelling them up to 22% and a possible six seats, then a switch back to Labour, leaving Plaid Cymru at roughly the same level as in 2019. You might also think you have noticed something troubling in the "Scotland" bars, and you most certainly have. But that's another story that deserves more coverage, and I will come back to it later. Soon. Scot's Honour.

I did not include Northern Ireland here, again, because we don't have any Commons poll from there right now. I would be interesting to have one, if only to answer a number of key question. Will the electorate continue to swing towards the Republican parties? Or will they switch to the non-communitarian Alliance Party and make them a force to be reckoned with? Will Republican voters still massively vote for Sinn Féin? Or will more of them switch to the SDLP, as in December 2019, because they want their voice to be heard in Westminster? Will Unionist voters still favour the DUP? Or will a significant part switch back to the less ideology-driven UUP, in the hope they can rebuild bridges with the English Conservatives? Guess we will have to wait some more, but never mind. Right now, a lot can be said about the sometimes conflicting trends we see across the regions of England, and you probably expect me to comment on them. And I will, in my own time. Scotland first now.

No! You huffed and you puffed and you put up with it. And now, all these women are gone.

And we let it happen. And I think we do like them, those checkouts. We want them.

Because it means we can stroll through and pick up our shopping.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

And we don’t have to look that woman in the eye.

The woman who’s paid less than us. She’s gone.

We got rid of her. Sacked. Well done. So yes, it’s our fault.

This is the world we built. Congratulations. Cheers, all.

(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years: Episode Six, 2019)

You might have noticed that the SNP's vote share is down to 3.73% UK-wide, definitely not a stellar result as it was 3.98% in December 2019. I already pointed out that the SNP's vote share in GB-wide polls does not always reflect what actually happens with the Scottish electorate, as pollsters don't actually factor in the differences in turnout or the contrasting levels of undecideds in their own polls. But the overall trend of the Scottish subsamples of GB-wide polls confirms that the SNP is on a slippery slope, while the Conservatives get more support. Most of which seems to come from disgruntled LibDem voters switching to a more unquestioningly unionist gang. There are many ways the SNP could regain some votes beyond the mid-40s zone, like using the newly discovered story of the Queen's Consent to their advantage. But their proverbial talent for fucking up even golden opportunities has taken over, as their PR on this issue is just what you'd have expected from a royalist unionist party. Keir Starmer could have written it, that is. To add insult to injury, Andy Wightman has now taken the moral high ground in a controversy that has become a matter of UK-wide interest, thanks to The Guardian devoting more space to it in two days than they allow Owen Jones in three weeks. And there is only the weeest dose of irony here. And the latest development, that ScotGov will politely ask the Queen of England for her approval to lift the confidentiality of their exchanges, doesn't really make the situation better. Or restore confidence in the SNP's will and ability to shake the tree of medieval English rules and conventions. Having the UK's first political prisoner in 70 years surely won't help either. Just saying.

I mentioned this trend in a tweet earlier this week, which might have left some of you in suspension of disbelief. Of course a smaller sample means a higher margin of error, which would be 4% here. And that still means you have a 95% probability of having the Tories between 25.5% and 33.5%, and the SNP between 39.5% and 47.5%, quite the recipe for a major setback. The trend of Scottish polling shows the opposite phenomenon to England: Scottish LibDems voters switching to the Conservatives, instead of the other way round. This would enable the SNP to gain all four current LibDems seats, Orkney and Shetland switching by only a razor-thin margin, but the mainland seats more convincingly. There is also evidence of some voters switching from the SNP to Labour, which would impact only a few seats, as the SNP is mostly ahead by double digits in constituencies where Labour is still competitive. But the real setback is the SNP losing five seats to the Conservatives, their second best result in 35 years, just two seats short of 2017. Losses would be Aberdeen South, Angus, Ayr Carrick and Cumnock, East Renfrewshire, Gordon. Only two seats of the 2017 Conservative intake are projected to remain in the SNP's hands: Ochil and South Perthshire, Stirling. Or Stonewall East and Stonewall West, as I like to call them now.

The resulting seat projections are naturally quite damning for the SNP, even more so if you consider the extreme scenarios. Most of the projected Conservative gains are ultra-marginals, but it still means a loss of at least two for the SNP (Ayr Carrick and Cumnock, Gordon). On a bad day, two more seats would switch from the SNP to the Conservatives (Ochil and South Perthshire, Central Ayrshire), with Stirling still projected to be held by the SNP. Which is a shame, as I would gladly trade Aylin Smith for Philippa Whitford, who is under direct threat of losing in Central Ayrshire. Things could even get worse in SNP-Labour marginals, as Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is already within reach of Labour on these numbers. And that is without factoring a split vote between the SNP and the Alba Party in some seats. I'm sure we can already add Kenny MacAskill in East Lothian to the fatality list. Also never underestimate the SNP's uncanny ability to make the worst possible decisions and shoot themselves in both feet simultaneously. The obvious example here would be deselecting Joanna Cherry in Edinburgh South West, which they already tried in 2019, against all logic and the explicit wish of the constituency members. A risk that does not prevent Joanna from strongly standing up for her beliefs, no matter how unpopular they make her with the rainbow-socked attention-seekers at Stirling Uni. If Stur Jong-un's Glasgow clique succeed next time, I can already predict a massive backlash and hundreds of SNP voters abstaining. Which would hand the seat to the Conservatives, but never mind. The pronounist mob at SNP HQ have already made it abundantly clear they would prefer a Tory MP to an SNP MP who does not fit their fantasy of "ideological purity". Stupidity rules in Brave New Scotland.

There will be no imprint left of us at all in the far future

There will be no permanent monument of your achievements

Don’t worry about the statues, just don’t worry about them

They’re all going to dissolve into a bath of photons

(Brian Cox, Adventures In Space And Time, 2021)

I think for Keir Starmer, it is about making a big impression

He strikes me as the sort of person who would walk up to

The automatic doors at Tesco’s and they would not open

(Alex Brooker, The Last Leg, 2021)

So here is my updated seat projection for the 650 not-yet-gerrymandered seats we still have. Which some would describe as "Conservatives three seats short of a majority". Which is misleading as a majority is defined relative to the number of actually sitting MPs, not the number of available seats. So what we have here is actually a three-seat majority for the Conservatives, 323-320 with Sinn Féin still refusing to take their seats. Pedantic purists, and I can be one too every now and then, would argue that you should also factor out the Speaker and Deputy Speakers. But that would be 321-318, still a three-seat majority, so forget it. And just consider the ultimate irony, which I hinted at earlier without a spoiler alert: Scotland granting the Conservatives the final couple of seats they would need to clear the majority hurdle. The polar opposite of 2005, when Scotland provided the Feeble Forty whom Tony Blair needed to hold his majority, after Labour fell to 315 seats in England and Wales.

The clear conclusion still remains that Labour haven't truly upped their game, despite thousands of calls to do just that. Perhaps Starmer's latest appointee to his Ninth Circle will succeed, where others so far have failed, as she's sending the same message: you have fucking lost it, mate. And you have to do something more convincing than Angela Rayner telling the press that Labour would love to be in power. Don't we all? In the ever paradoxical current political landscape, the main threat to Boris Johnson would still come from within his own party, after the kind of close result the polls predict. Could come from the four dozen or so poundshop libertarians, who have not been appeased by the appointment of an Ayn Rand fanboy at the Health Department, and have found an unexpected new angle of attack in supporting Universal Credit recipients against the English Government's austerity plans. Or it could come from the two dozen or so not-yet-totally-batshit-crazies rallying more or less around Theresa May, and representing the disgruntled well-to-do Nimbys in the Leafy South. Though any rebellion is likely to be tamed by the whips, who are world-leading experts in blackmailing and bullying their own MPs, and steer them back to the Aye lobby for any meaningful vote. But current polling also says there are 60ish ultra-marginal seats that could go in any direction. So if you factor in all marginal seats going a different way, here are your alternative scenarios.

What it says here is that it would take very little to achieve a significant upset. The two extreme scenarios factor in a swing of roughly 2% either side, compared to the present state of polls. The "Con Max" scenario would thusly be quite 2015ish, except for an extra dozen seats for the Conservatives coming unexpectedly from Scotland, where the results would be more 2017ish. At the other end, the "Lab Max" scenario would offer us an excellent opportunity to find out if a "progressive coalition" could ever be more than a pipe dream for delusional campaigners and pundits in lack of juicy columns. Here my so-called "Rainbow Min Coalition" (Labour, SDLP, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Liberal Democrats, Alliance Party) would bag five more seats than the Conservatives, and could tell Lilibet that they stand a better chance at forming a strongish and stableish government. They would not even need the Pesky Sweaty-Sock Jocks to make their point. But of course it will never happen because, ye ken, it never has been more than a pipe dream. Acting with common sense and setting apart differences is not the way England works, do they? At least not in this time and age of obsessive ideological purity. Their loss.

Hell has nine circles, and if you think that’s bad

Milton Keynes has got 130 roundabouts

(Sandi Toksvig, QI: Pain And Punishment, 2019)

I think that’s the wonderful thing about Milton Keynes

The roundabouts, because there’s lots of chances to turn back

(Jimmy Carr, QI: Pain And Punishment, 2019)

Now bear with me for a few minutes, while I indulge in a new exercise: taking a closer look at what happened, and could happen, in all the regions of England separately. After all, that's where most MPs come from and where any election is likely to be lost or won, save for some extraordinary upset elsewhere, like... err... wait.... Scotland? I've gone back in time to 2005, which you might remember as the last time any incarnation of Labour won an election. It was fought on different boundaries in England, but is still something of a benchmark for what New New Labour has to achieve to win the next election. 2010 was the first general election fought on the current boundaries in England, and is possibly an example of what not to do next time. This is of course before the next round of gerrymandering adds 10 seats in England. The Boundary Commission for England has already issued an initial set of proposals, that definitely favour the Conservatives. A rough estimate is that they would notionally bag fifteen more seats, while Labour would lose four and the LibDems one. Let's see what we would possibly get on the current boundaries anyway.

Seat projections across North England are quite disappointing for Labour. Their prospects in the North West and North East are definitely mediocre, not even matching the 2010 debacle and light years away from the 2005 benchmark. Even Hartlepool would not go against the trend, and is predicted to stay blue. Yorkshire is better, again supporting the conclusion that the Batley and Spen miracle wasn't actually one, but evidence of an actual trend. Though even this one is a mixed bag. Better than 2010 and close to the Corbyn landslide of 2017, but still way down on the 2005 result. Interestingly, six of the seven predicted Labour gains are in West Yorkshire, the same part of the region as Batley and Spen, with just one in South Yorkshire and none in North Yorkshire or Humberside.

I have grouped the Midlands and London here, even if it doesn't make sense geographically, because it will allow us to have a global vision of South England outwith London next. No spoilers though, just wait a little bit longer for that one. London has a life of its own obviously, and was a success story for Corbyn twice. There's no reason to believe they would fail Starmer, as the only region of England where Labour are consistently predicted to do better than the 2005 benchmark. Which is not the case in the Midlands, even if Labour are predicted to make more progress there than in the North, relative to a smaller number of seats. Labour still seem to have a firm grip on Birmingham, and are predicted to bag all the city's seats, gaining back the one they lost in 2019. But they are still not recovering fully in the historic mining communities around the Black Country and Derbyshire. Even Dennis Skinner's Bolsover is predicted to remain in Tory hands.

The Leafy Blue South now, to conclude this trip, with some interesting possible upsets. It is the only part of England where the Conservatives had a majority of seats in 2005, when Labour still dominated the others. And also the only meta-region of England, except for London, where Labour are now predicted to do better than in 2010, and by a considerable margin. The only predicted setback for Labour is losing Bristol West to the Greens, the seat currently held by Shadow Leader of the House of Commons Thangam Debbonaire. Something they probably asked for when they totally fucked up the 2021 Bristol City Council elections and allowed the Greens to become dominant in that part of the city. The projected Labour gains are spread from Cornwall to Norfolk, but with half of them in the South East, basically Greater London's commuter belt just outwith the M25. They would even take back control of Milton Keynes and its magic roundabouts. This lends a bit of credence to the narrative peddled by the Metropolitan pundits after the Chesham and Amersham by-election, though the new voting patterns would not really benefit the Liberal Democrats, contrary to what the pundits predicted. Their only predicted gain in the South East is Winchester, which doesn't quite fit the "young progressive commuter belt" profile, but rather some sort of "posh Nimby Tories turned posh Nimby LibDems" profile. Then I expect some more interesting twists down there before the snap election of 2022. Just watch this space.

I don’t understand why people are supposed to get over their fears

Fear is a legitimate thing to stop you dying of things

At school you’d go “I got blinking powder, you blinked!”

“Yes, I thought you were going to throw something in my face”

I’m not going to get over it so that I can end up dead

King Harold wasn’t in a field going “Didn’t blink, though, did I?”

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2011)

Jeremy's Den

02/08/2021

Democracy?

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