Jeremy's Den: October 2022

I usually don't discuss the musicians I choose as soundtracks for my long-form rants, but I'm gonna make an exception here. Because Steve Kimock is one of the sadly overlooked masters of the American music scene of the last forty years, covering pretty much everything from Americana to jazz, through soft rock and Grateful Dead-like extended jams. He's the lad who was considered good enough to replace Jerry Garcia in the Grateful Dead in 1995, for the short moment before Phil Lesh and Bob Weir decided to fold the band. But I won't bore you any further with my retelling of his life and times, as you can find all you need to know on his Wokopedia page, or from his own website. Then just sit back and enjoy the show.

And don't forget to click on the images for larger and easier to read versions.

I attended the hugely popular all-boys boarding school, Eton, which has been very well

represented in the public eye by such awful people as Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg

and Tom Hiddleston, who is somehow even worse.

Some pupils even had cardboard cutouts made of themselves wearing the uniform.

(Ivo Graham, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2020)

Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus.

If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again.

If you're off the bus in the first place, then it won't make a damn.

(Ken Kesey)

Fucking hell. I am totally devastated. I started this new article when Liz Truss was still Prime Minister, and fully expected to publish it while she was still in office. Alas, poor Lizzy, it wasn't to be. It's true that this tragic ending was not totally unexpected, and I should probably have hurried up a bit, if I really wanted to have these rants up during Liz's tenure. So this time, we're going to look into the rearview mirror, to what happened during the Rise And Fall Of Truss. There were warning signs, as the British public took a decidedly dim view of Truss's performance, and her popularity ratings crashed just as loud and deep as her economic decisions had crashed the pound and the economy. Which went further than offering Labour open goals on a silver platter, and looked more like knowingly firing a HIMARS at her own barn. And the shit hit the fan in droves. Then hell froze over. That's Truss's Law for you, the Conservative variant of Murphy's Law. And it's quite a fitting tribute to her short Premiership that her last popularity ratings, published on the day of her demise, delivered a record-breaking net -77. Better than Boris Johnson ever achieved.

There was the same trend in the proverbial 'Preferred Prime Minister' polling, and even worse. This was surely fueled initially by doubts about Truss's soundness of judgment, or lack thereof, after Temp Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was widely accused of pretty much aiding and abetting insider trading. Having such luminaries as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Therese Coffey as her most 'reliable' supports certainly didn't help either. Once Truss had shed her Mourner-In-Chief cloak, the public saw her for what she really is: an incompetent lazy intellect, anchored in obsolete and discredited ideology. Even YouGov found massive rejection of both Truss and Kwarteng among their panel, even among Conservative voters, with the added bonus that the infamous mini-budget was considered both bad in itself and bad communication. The only downside for Keir Starmer is that his massive surge in this polling is not the result of him being brilliant, likeable and charismatic, but of his then-direct opponent being a more powerful repellent than Boris Johnson, even for life-long Conservative voters.

It certainly said a lot when a former Conservative MP, elected at the same general election as Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, published a scathing review of their first days in the job and switched his vote to Labour. On top of that, the Conservative Conference didn't disappoint, with Liz Truss abandoning all pretense of strong and stable leadership, and submitting to pressure from her own MPs to scrap her controversial tax cuts. But the worst blow might have come from Michael Heseltine, who basically accused Truss of hiring only incompetent lightweights to the Cabinet, and you can't deny he had a point. Especially when you saw the Temp Chancellor getting into a frenzy of damage control, while a substantial group of his own MPs openly plotted to make him fail. But Kwarteng's sacking only produced a new problem, as more people distrusted Old Kid On The Block Jeremy Hunt than trusted him, so the musical chairs were doomed to fail this time. And it delivered quite a shitload of devalued £ to anyone who had bet on Liz Truss lasting less in office than George Canning. She did it, and by a huge margin. Her only success.

Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour.

And lives the more, the more labour it sucks.

(Karl Marx)

If you think John Redwood is the voice of Britain, you have a problem.

(Anonymous Conservative MP, The Guardian, 29 September 2022)

On the First Sunday of the Second Interregnum, while Britain was eagerly tracking how many MPs had pledged their support to the three contenders in the New Best In Show, the Sunday Telegraph felt we had to know what the consequences would be in a handful of hypothetical scenarios. And Redfield & Wilton were only too happy to oblige. I am always mildly amused by this type of polls, though we should not overestimate their relevance, or lack thereof. This one is no exception, even it it made for good clickbait, albeit fleetingly, on The Telegraph's frontpage. But it included two names that were nowhere near the contest, probably fulfilling the same purpose as the placebo pill in a clinical trial for a new anti-depressant: already-buried Liz Truss and perennial non-candidate Ben Wallace. It had also outlived its shelf life by the time it was published, as we already knew by then that Boris Johnson had quit the competition, like the hapless publican from Stoke-on-Trent in last month's Four In A Bed. Anyway, here are the voting intentions that Redfield & Wilton found, for what it's worth.

So, whoever was in charge, Labour would still lead by 15% or above. Which is certainly not a surprise for anyone. The brief Truss interlude has inflicted even more damage to the Conservative brand than the three previous Prime Ministers had, and there is no obvious road to recovery right now. Or, rather, there is but one: just sit back and wait for Keir Starmer's next fuckup. Shouldn't be long, and might actually have already happened with his guest appearance at a Pink News event. I have no doubt that Sly Keir's proposal to make wrongthink an aggravated criminal offence will be met with the success it deserves. Something like 10,000 likes on Facebook and one million women switching their vote to another party. Just saying. Back to business, the seat projections from those five variants of the incoming snap election are also quite enlightening.

Factoring in the regional crosstabs of the poll means that the differences in projected seats are somewhat bigger than the gaps in voting intentions would make you think. Interestingly, the hypothetical Boris was more successful in the Leafy South and in Scotland than the hypothetical Rishi, if the poll is to be believed. I am convinced that this is not what will happen at the real snap election. This will not be a pub-clown vs pub-bore battle, where the pub-clown might prevail. This will be serious stuff, a genuine manifesto vs manifesto battle. That's the kind of context where Sunak will do better than the punditariat thinks, and turn the Leafy South into a more uncertain battleground than current polls say. Because Sunak and Starmer would fight for the same corner of the political compass, voters that might just as likely go for a soft-left New New Labour, the Liberal Democrats or a born-again One Nation Conservative Party. Just the kind of voters you find all across the South, maybe not in massive numbers, but enough of them to swing dozens of constituencies in any direction. So, yes, Labour would be wrong to underestimate Rishi Sunak's electoral potential.

Numeracy and literacy skills in the UK have declined since 2003

But don’t worry, we’re still world leaders in starting wars and closing libraries.

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

Labour will sing the national anthem at the beginning of the Conference because

they can’t think of anything else to do. So they’re going to just do a song instead.

(Mick Lynch, Have I Got News For You?, 23 September 2022)

Oddly enough, the trends of general election polling were quite inconclusive during the First Interregnum, and then the gap between Labour and the Conservatives looked like closing again during the very brief period of Truss's Honeymoon. Which amounted pretty much to just the first day of her forty-four. Then the mini-budget turned the tide again, and this time nothing could salvage the Conservative brand. Nothing tells the tale better than the three polls hastily conducted on the afternoon of 20 September after Truss resigned, and what the various projection models make of their weighted average. Of course, the Electoral Calculus projection is quite extreme here, and we probably won't see the Conservatives losing all their seats at the next election. But there is still a plausible scenario where they could end up with fewer seats than the SNP, and possibly fewer than the Liberal Democrats.

Of course it was just a mega-snapshot, but quite indicative of the public's mood, and the panic spreading like Wi-Fi among Conservative MPs. Liz Truss's obvious problem was that she had overplayed her hand. The infamous mini-budget, made public after two-and-a-half weeks in office and just three days of actual work, due to the mourning period, was bound to backfire badly. Truss ignored the fact that she did not have a solid mandate, and barely a legitimacy. She had been her own MPs' third choice in the first four ballots, and their second choice in the fifth and final one. She had won the members' vote by a much smaller margin than anticipated, and nevertheless chose to act as if she was carried by a landslide. Big mistake, especially when her politics were controversial and divisive even within her own party. If she had thought it through, she might have realised she needed to compromise. But she chose instead to turn her Premiership into a fucking shitshow that made the Hochseeflotte at Scapa Flow look like a success story, and the trends of voting intentions unmistakably said that all bets were off.

Of course, Labour's voting intentions have started roller-coastering again after a few days of unbridled euphoria, but at a much higher level than before. It's quite certainly better to see your lead oscillate between 27 and 39% than between 4 and 10%, isn't it? And an upward sinusoid always looks better than a downward one. Where Labour have been, since Kamikwasi (© John Crace, 2022) crashed the pound, is all they need for a massive victory at the next election. Which does not mean Labour should feel over-confident and go complacent, like they've done so many times before. They were lucky to have their Conference before the Conservatives, so even The Curious Incident Of Rupa In The Fringe Time was quickly forgotten, and overshadowed by the complete clown-and-freak show in Birmingham. Where Kamikwasi proved he is genuinely only superficially a lot of things, like authoritative, competent, knowledgeable, qualified, adequate, thoughtful, reliable, efficient and whatnot. But, as the saying goes, you can take the lad out of Eton, but you can't take Eton out of a dork. Now that Kwasi and Liz are gone and Rishi is in charge, Labour really need to up their game and adjust their campaigning to a new context, which may well be more challenging for them than they expected just a month ago.

Dial it up, otherwise you’re like the French Radicals watching the crowd run by and saying

“There go my people, I must find out where they’re going, so I can lead them”.

(Joey Lucas, The West Wing: The War At Home, 2001)

If you’re gonna make a mistake, at least make it a big one.

(Doug Ross, ER: The Secret Sharer, 1995)

It is quite telling that even bringing back Jeremy Hunt as de facto Prime Minister didn't work. The public clearly never bought Hunt's sole strong and stable direction, U-turning on everything Truss stood for and held dear, even the few measures that looked beneficial for low-income voters. They also obviously questioned the legitimacy of a government led by the person who came third in her own MP's first preferences, crutched by the one who came eighth and last. The same concern obviously applies to Rishi Sunak, the successor of the successor of the bloke who actually got a mandate three years ago. Then we just had to wait one hour after Sunak's proclamation for further demands for a snap general election, which the new Temp Prime Minister will resist. With plenty of good reasons, like losing his job ahead of schedule. My Poll'O'Polls this time includes the four conducted during the brief period of the Second Interregnum between the 21st and the 24th of October. That's four polls from four different pollsters, with a super-sample size of 6,087 and a theoretical margin of error of 1.26%. And it still credits Labour with a triple-digit lead. Because 30% or above is triple-digit, isn't it?

Before Liz Truss resigned, there was clearly a massive rejection of the UK being turned into an Ayn Rand Theme Park, just because Liz Truss fancied herself Dagny Taggart 2.0. Maybe she didn't notice that the Atlas Shrugged film series changed its entire cast for each movie, because the earlier cast saw what fucking bullshit it was, and no longer wanted to be associated with it beyond their last paycheck. Or people just wanted to remind Truss that she was elected by 0.2% of the electorate, and that did not imply a mandate to take a wrecking ball to the family house. Of course the whole mess did not come as a surprise to those who paid attention, and remembered Britannia Unchained, the manifesto of English Randism, co-authored by Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and Chris Skidmore ten years ago. It works pretty much like Mein Kampf: everything the author(s) did after rising to power was written in it, years in advance. So you can't say you didn't know, or weren't warned. We all were. Clearly the people have not changed their minds just because we have another Prime Minister, clearly blaming all Conservatives for the chaos. And all the U-turns in the world, whether Hunt's past or Sunak's incoming, won't make a fucking difference.

Did you notice, though, that when Liz Truss was giving her resignation speech,

she was sort of weirdly smiling quite a lot? I thought "Oh, she's got Christmas Strictly".

(Jo Brand, Have I Got News For You?, 21 October 2022)

The most horrifying part of liberalism is to think that there are moral absolutes.

(Leo McGarry, The West Wing: We Killed Yamamoto, 2002)

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer is again under pressure from the proportional representation lobby, who still haven't learned from foreign experience, like the recent election in Sweden, where the far-right gained a seat at the Cabinet table only because of PR. Or the Italian elections, and also the Brazilian elections, on which I will comment in more detail later. Gordon Brown's constitutional review has also proposed renewing Labour's commitment to scrap the House of Lords, which Tony Blair reneged on. Now there is an oven-ready world-beating way for Sly Keir to keep this promise, while appeasing the PR lobby. Replace the House of Lords with a Chamber of Nations and Regions, as the Brown review proposes, and have it elected from national and regional lists on the D'Hondt method. Let's now imagine that Tony Blair had not reneged on his manifesto pledge, and the UK had had an elected Upper House since 2000. For the sake of simulations, let's say it would have been elected every five years, with half the number of then-current seats in Commons for each nation and region. Based on the actual results of general elections held on the same year, or the year next to it (2001 for 2000, 2019 for 2020), here is what it would have looked like in the past, and would look like next time, based on current voting intentions.

This is obviously more diverse than Commons, and closer to the popular vote, which might at least partly satisfy the PR zealots. But the scheme can work properly only if the new elected Chamber of Nations and Regions is granted significant constitutional powers. This means a real weight in the legislative process, where the Upper House is no longer treated as a Lesser House. There is significant 'international best practice' to snatch inspiration from. Members of the German Bundesrat are chosen among members of the governing majorities in each of the sixteen Landtage. Though not being directly elected, they have a democratic legitimacy as members of the directly elected legislative bodies of the Länder. Also based on indirect suffrage, French Senators are chosen by an electoral college in each département, made up of all directly elected officials for that particular area. Finally, United States Senators are elected by popular vote, but are constitutionally at-large representatives of their state, not of the people, which is the remit of the House of Representatives. Then there is the example that should not be followed, the Senate of Canada, where members are appointed by the Prime Minister as in our medieval House of Lords. All it takes now is for Starmer to resist to pressure of those who want to perpetuate the status quo, and show some imagination. Which is perhaps asking too much, but we still can hope, can't we?

This will not end well. Nobody ever listens to me. Do you know what ends well?

Staying in, watching a bit of telly, having a bit of tea. A few cans, go to bed, that ends well.

(Jon Richardson, Meet the Richardsons, 2022)

Some people say the glass is half empty or half full.

But to me that’s irrelevant because I’m having another drink.

(Sean Lock)

Now we have reached this unique point in the space-time continuum, where the ruling party would not only lose the election, but also fall down to fourth place in the number of seats. Which has never happened before in recorded electoral history. We also have this very rare occurrence of the winning party bagging more than 500 seats, which has also never happened before. Of course, before anyone objects, David Lloyd George won with 520 seats in 1918, and Stanley Baldwin with 554 seats in 1931. But these results were those of a coalition in both cases, and the highest headcount for a single party so far is 470, again Baldwin's Conservatives in 1931. What current polls are predicting right now is the biggest swing to the opposition ever, and the most one-sided election ever in British history. My model is even a wee smith conservative here, pun fully intended. Fed with the same voting intentions, the Electoral Calculus model predicts 559 Labour seats and only 3 Conservatives surviving. Matt Warman in Boston and Skegness, John Hayes in South Holland and The Deepings, Rebecca Harris in Castle Point. It is obviously highly unlikely that the actual election would deliver such a result, but then who would have thought that Liz Truss would crash both the whole UK and her own party to such depths just two weeks ago? Never say never.

I won't bore you with the full list of Conservative fatalities in this projection, as it is longer that the current list of all opposition MPs put together. Let's just say that, if it quacks like a bloodbath and walks like a bloodbath, then it is a fucking bloodbath of Game Of Thrones magnitude. And we have a bigger problem on our hands anyway, as three months of the Conservatives' Final Meltdown has made the situation untenable for millions. This is a situation that can be resolved only by a snap general election, but that entails delays. First you have to secure a vote of no confidence in the government, then a two-thirds majority to dissolve Commons, and then a mandatory 40 days before the election. Even if every step goes smoothly, which is by no means a given, we're talking two months of governmental limbo here. Which we obviously can't afford. Then exceptional times call for exceptional measures, even if they fall outwith what is considered constitutionally acceptable. Like Charles III appointing a new consensual Prime Minister at once after the vote of no confidence, and granting them the full powers of the position, not just caretaker powers, so they can try and fix the worst of the mess immediately, before the new Commons convene and a duly elected Prime Minister takes over. A bit of a coup, strictly speaking, but we've just slipped through the cracks right into a reboot of the House Of Cards metaverse.

I’m not sure a financial crisis is worth people not paying attention to what Starmer is saying.

(Anonymous Conservative MP, The Guardian, 29 September 2022)

It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.

(Patrick Bateman, American Psycho, 1991)

True to form, Nadine Dorries has renewed the call for a snap general election that she made during the Conservative Trainwreck Conference. Rishi Sunak will obviously not be swayed, even with a YouGov poll showing that two thirds of Brits expressing an opinion want one, including one third of Conservative voters. Because, even if an hypothetical snap election was held after the controversial proposed boundary changes, the Conservatives would still lose it by a parsec. Actually, if the election was held this week, the scheme would totally backfire. The gerrymandering would still hurt the Liberal Democrats, and allow the Conservatives to keep third party status, but both Labour and the SNP would bag more seats on the new boundaries than on the current ones.

There is often a point where gerrymandering transitions into dummymandering, when it benefits your opponent. The current boundary proposals in England definitely fall in that category. As I explained in an earlier article, one of the keys was to carve Labour leaning seats with an electorate close to the upper legal limit, and Conservative seats with an electorate close to the lower limit. That's how you get fewer and larger Labour constituencies in the North, and more and smaller Conservative constituencies in the South. But even the best laid schemes of mice and men... When the South conclusively and steadily turns away from the Conservatives and to Labour, that just creates more opportunities for Labour to snatch seats. Which is just what we have here, with Labour predicted to bag more English seats on the new boundaries than on the current ones. Which would more than make up for them losing a few on the new Scottish and Welsh boundaries. Karma is a bitch.

Good men with good reasons shouldn’t set precedents for bad men with bad ones.

(Toby Ziegler, The West Wing: The Mommy Problem, 2005)

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

(John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

Savanta Comres's Scottish Tracker for The Scotsman had become the Godot of polls for months, and out of the blue we got no fewer than four Full Scottish in two weeks. The long-awaited one from Savanta Comres, one from Survation for Scotland In Union, one from YouGov for The Times, and one from Panelbase for the Alba Party. Plus one from Panelbase, on behalf of Believe In Scotland, that asked only the referendum question. While we waited and waited, we had a lesser brand of Scottish poll from Deltapoll in mid-September, on behalf of The Scottish Sun. One that went where no pollster had gone before, and probably won't go ever again, as it focused mostly on the royalty in the wake of Elizabeth II's death. But it also included a question about the next Independence Referendum, which is another variant of Godot. I have chosen to ignore the data from the Survation poll, as they used Scotland In Union's usual biased and manipulative wording asking a Remain/Leave question. As usual, I factor in only the polls using the standard Yes/No question from the 2014 referendum. And here's what the updated trends tell us, with non-voters and undecideds factored out.

The trends are not quite what you want to see, if we actually have a referendum a year from now. Though there has been a slight improvement since the Summer Break, after Nicola's Big Announcement. This despite the SNP doing pretty much jack shit to promote the Yes vote since then. It's quite obviously a matter of priorities, as the vote on making the Scottish variant of gender voodoo the law of the land was their focus. So it's fairly understandable that major SNP figures are busier drumming up support for Mermaids than dealing with the smaller matter of freedom from English colonialism, isn't it? Or maybe the SNP has a really cunning plan: let the Conservatives do all the leg work for us. It might work as the Scottish Conservatives are better at scoring own goals that the whole of Labour combined. And it got even better recently, since Stephen Kerr appointed himself spokesman for the Branch Office and Arbiter Of Permissible Language. We're going to need some more of Stephen here, as the weighted average of the last five polls still says that No is leading. Not by a lot, but still...

Of course, the whole point may soon become mute, if the Supreme Court rules that the Scottish Parliament has no constitutional right to legislate on the matter as the Constitution, or what passes for one, is, just like the legal definition of sex, a reserved matter. Which is the most likely outcome, as the Lord Advocate of Scotland has pretty much said so already. All of it was quite predictable, as knows everybody who followed Martin Keatings' case against the English Government over the exact same matter, which the Scottish Government dutifully sabotaged. If the current case doesn't fail because of the reserved thing, it will fail for the exact same reason Keatings's failed. There is no actual referendum bill on the table. Which could have been remedied in like one hour and months ago, if ScotGov really intended to win the case. Then we will have to rely on the 'plebiscite election', whenever that one happens, which may be sooner than Nicola Sturgeon wishes. But there is a twist to that option too, as we will see a wee smitch further downriver.

I’ve never seen that happen before. Sometimes you’ve just gotta wing it.

(Mark Greene, ER: Under Control, 2000)

There’s something you need to know about failure, you can never let it defeat you.

(Captain Archibald Haddock, The Adventures Of Tintin, 2011)

We also have a fresh serving of Holyrood polls now. As we're expected to expect, these polls deliver contradictory results, though being fielded over nearly the same period. In this batch, we have a difference of 4% between the SNP's highest and lowest constituency vote, and 6% between their highest and lowest regional lists vote. This is beyond the margin of error for polls with a sample of roughly 1k. My seat projections for the three polls conducted in October reflect this, with the SNP anywhere between losing three seats and gaining two. The difference between a genuine success, securing an outright majority without needing the Greenies, and a setback that would give the Greenies even more power. Likewise, the pro-independence majority goes from unchanged to seven seats up. Nothing really conclusive here.

Despite the discrepancies between these polls, which I won't even try to decipher and explain, there is a trend in there. Which is subtly different from what we find in the Westminster polls I will dissect next. Holyrood voting intentions show that the Conservatives' downfall benefits both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. If you consider the aggregate seat projection, based on the weighted average of the three October polls, Labour come back as second party by quite a margin, and the Liberal Democrats gain back the Big Boy status they lost last year. We can also see that the days of 'Both Votes SNP' are over and out. Voters fully understand how to take advantage of the system, and I can't see how SNP HQ can go on with the mantra, when it clearly benefits their partners in crime... oops, sorry... in government. Though I fully expect them to double down on it if the next batch of polls shows voting intentions for the Alba Party rising again. If that happens, I have no doubt that the terms and conditions dictated by the SNP's LGBTQWERTYIA mob will fully apply, and Alba will again be demonised as fascist evangelicals not worthy of a seat at the Yes table.

My model, using regional breakdowns of voting intentions, predicts a net loss of one constituency for the SNP. They are predicted to gain Dumfriesshire and Galloway and West Dumfries from the Conservatives. But they would also lose Perthshire South and Kinross-shire to the Conservatives, also Rutherglen and East Lothian to Labour. Uniform national swing predicts a zero-sum game here, with East Lothian switching from the SNP to Labour, and Eastwood switching for the Conservatives to the SNP. The allocation of list seats is just the mathematical fallout of this. Uniform swing says the SNP would hold just one in South Scotland. My model says they would also lose that one, because of their net gain of one constituency there. In both projections, the SNP's list seat in Highlands and Islands is a definite goner. What we have in this batch of polls is a continuation of the Yellow-Green Axis, but Labour might prove a more convincing and more successful opposition than the Conservatives. We are still far away from a massive upset that would see the SNP lose the next election. But just factor in a Labour government in London in 2024, and all bets are off for 2026.

Keep the company of those who seek the truth. Run from those who have found it.

(Vaclav Havel)

The short kilt, you’ll be sorry to know, is an English invention.

It was an industrialist called Rawlinson, who had an iron mill in Scotland,

who thought the long blanket over the shoulder was a waste of time, but that

the short kilt, the skirt, would be a very handy and efficient way of dressing.

(Stephen Fry, QI: Highs And Lows, 2010)

So, Full Scottish polls are again like London buses. You've been waiting for aeons and are starting to feel you bones fossilising, and suddenly a swarm of them show up. Five full-blown polls of Scottish voting intentions for the next Commons election in two weeks, and they bear good and bad news. Mostly good news for Labour and bad ones for everybody else. It's obviously bad news for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats because they are predicted to lose votes on seats on their 2019 results. But it's also bad news for the SNP because they are not progressing. They certainly expected that the English Government's meltdown would help them, but it doesn't. There is a serendipity effect here, as often, as the weighted average of the five polls predicts the SNP would gain just enough seats from the Conservatives (all but Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) and the Liberal Democrats (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, North East Fife) to make up for the ones lost to Labour (Airdrie and Shotts, Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, East Lothian, Glasgow North East, Inverclyde, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Motherwell and Wishaw). But it might well go worse in future polls, as the motion of the tectonic plates is definitely in favour of Labour, and three more SNP seats are just a nose's hair away from turning Red too (Midlothian, Rutherglen and Hamilton West, West Dunbartonshire).

These polls are not as good as SNP HQ would like them to be, seeing that total of the votes for pro-Independence parties remains far below the 50% needed to validate a 'plebiscite election' in favour of Independence. They are also the currently final step in trends that support the idea of yet another tectonic shift in Scottish politics, just as the Holyrood polls do. The SNP are lucky so far as the obvious changes are within the Unionist camp, from both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats towards Labour. And there is a fucking shitload of irony and paradox in there. Labour have nicked the crown of 'Best Defender Of The Union' from the Conservatives, but it's most probably not the main motivation. The pattern is similar to what polls show across the whole UK. Voters crossing the road from Blue to Red because they want to boost the chances of a Starmer Government in London. UK-wide polls show that Labour will get there without needing any extra Scottish seats, but they will probably get them anyway. Just because voters want to feel safe rather than sorry.

Now there might be some more dangerous waters ahead for the SNP, and the threat won't come from the direction they expected it just six months ago. If there is a Conservative surge, it can only be from a reverse reshuffling of the Unionist vote. So the income of that would be a return to 2019, with possibly a couple more seats for the SNP. But if there is a further Labour surge, it will have to come from a reshuffling of the center-left vote, as the reservoir of Unionist votes has pretty much dried up. So, if we imagine the swingometer moving to 40% SNP to 35% Labour, which is by no means impossible, and not even implausible, Labour would bag an additional twelve to fifteen seats and bring the SNP back down to their 2017 level or worse. It will ultimately boil down to a choice of priorities. Either secure a massive Labour majority in Westminster, to make absolutely sure the Conservatives are kicked out now. Or offer one more mandate for Independence to a Scottish Government that has done fuck all with those they already have, gathering dust on a shelf at Bute House. I guess that more than a few Scots will find that choice really easy to make.

Also the Highland Games are a recent invention. People have claimed it goes back to Malcolm III,

the son of King Duncan, the one that Macbeth murdered, but there’s no evidence for this.

The first gathering of these games was in the 19th century. It was around the time Queen Victoria

and Prince Albert came to Balmoral, and they liked it.

(Stephen Fry, QI: Highs And Lows, 2010)

Got to break the cycle. If you feed the bears, they’ll keep coming back for more.

(Mark Greene, ER: Thy Will Be Done, 2001)

Then there is the part that did not make headlines in the Scottish Pravda, because it doesn't quite fit Stephen Paton's usual narrative or the SNP's, and we wouldn't want the good people of Scotland to get that information just yet, would we? As you have probably already guessed, Panelbase also asked their panel about their opinion of three key provisions of the proposed Scottish reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, now known as the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which the Yellows-Green Axis intend to pass as a matter of urgency, before they start campaigning for Independence. The first vote, known as Stage 1, was held this week, and did not go quite according to plan. Panelbase surveyed the Scottish public ahead of it, on the three core provisions of the bill. First the removal of the legal requirement for a diagnostic of gender dysphoria, before a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) can be granted. This is the key part of the GRR Bill, as it is the very foundation of gender self-identification, and Scots reject it.

With undecideds removed, we have 60% of the Scottish public opposing self-identification, including a 50-50 split among SNP voters. Even the younger generations, who are supposed to be the most 'progressive' on these issues, offer only lukewarm support with 48% of 'decideds' opposing the measure. This alone should have made the SNP think twice, when they can't even get massive support from their own voters, or the demographic that is supposed to be the most enthusiastic. It gets worse then with a question about a second iconic provision of the bill: lowering the age to apply for a GRC from 18 to 16. The results are even more clearcut than on the first question. With undecideds removed, 77% of the general population oppose this, including 66% of SNP voters and 61% of the 18-34 age bracket.

This is also the provision that might offer an opening for a solid legal challenge. Legal majority is 18 in UK law and it is a reserved matter. One of the aspects is that, per UK law, minors have to get parental consent for their medical decisions, and there is no possible exception to that rule. Which is why gender ideology activists lobby for the right to 'socially transition' school-age children without notifying the parents. And why a fundamentalist reading of the perimeter of devolution is probably the best safeguard, and the best chance to challenge the bill successfully in court. The poll's final question is about reducing the waiting period for a GRC from two years to three months of living in the 'acquired gender'. Which has also been sold a just an administrative simplification, and is also strongly opposed. With undecideds removed, 66% of the general public and 56% of SNP voters oppose it. So it's a hat-trick of responses proving that the SNP have failed to make their case, even with their own voters.

There is no doubt that the SNP leadership has seen this poll, and others going in the exact same direction. That's why they needed to whip their MSPs on the day of the first vote, to coerce them into supporting an unpopular bill that might cost them dearly at the next election. It also explains their garbled messaging about the implications of the bill. You can argue that it is just an administrative simplification that won't change anything to other legislation, such as the Equality Act. Or you can argue that it is a major step in the 'liberation' of the 'most oppressed and marginalised minority in history'. But you can't argue both at the same time, especially when real events had proved both to be lies. By the way, if you ever doubted that the exclusionary gender ideology cult is a danger to society, just read what happened at a renowned London hospital just this month. Sorry I had to drag you into The Daily Fail for that, but that's something you will never see in the self-proclaimed 'progressive' press. They don't want to hurt the feelings of the Gender Inquisition, and feel their wrath.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind, and won’t change the subject.

(Winston Churchill)

Getting animals to mate in captivity is very difficult, especially with each other.

(Jimmy Carr, QI: Engineering, 2007)

Last month also saw the return of YouGov's Full Welsh polling, known as Barn Cymru, a 'collaborative partnership' between ITV Cymru, Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre and YouGov. Which you could call a rare bit of Welsh, as they have fielded it only five times in eighteen months so far. I will start with the funniest part of this instalment, which is about three celebrities who had recently started a new job, and how the good people of Wales feel about it. You have probably guessed it already, or read the poll, our subjects here were Mary Elizabeth Truss, Charles Mountbatten-Windsor and William Mountbatten-Windsor-Spencer. The phrasing was subtly different, asking first what kind of Prime Minister the panel thought Truss would be, from terrible to great. Then YouGov asked their panel if they thought Charlie and Wills would do a good job or a bad job, because you can't ask whether a King would be 'terrible' at his job, can you? To cut a long story short, I only display the positives for all three, the totals of 'pretty good' or 'great', and 'fairly good' or 'good'. The results were definitely not a resounding success for Mary Elizabeth.

Even Conservative voters were not really big fans of Liz's, while everybody loves Charlie and Wills, even Plaid Cymru voters. There's an interesting side story here as 'only' 66% think Wills should officially be titled Prince of Wales, and 22% oppose it. Plaid Cymru voters oppose it 56% to 37%, yet a similar majority of them think Wills would do a good job as Prince. The panel are less supportive of an investiture ceremony. Only 19% think there should be something similar to Charles's in 1969, 30% want a different kind of ceremony, presumably toned down, and 34% want no investiture at all. YouGov then tested Liz Truss against First Minister Mark Drakeford and Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, on more familiar terms. The panel were asked if they thought Truss could be trusted to make the right decisions for Wales, and if Drakeford and Price are doing a good or bad job in their current positions. Here again, I mapped only the positives for all three contenders.

Here, the panel confirmed they definitely didn't see Truss as a good leader, either in general of for Wales specifically. But it's a massive success for Mark Drakeford, who scores higher than Keir Starmer in England. And also a surprisingly lukewarm result for Adam Price, even among Plaid Cymru voters. This is probably the result of some perceived ambiguity in the co-operation agreement between Plaid Cymru and Labour after last year's Senedd election, even if it was massively approved by Plaid's Conference. But many surely feel it's not genuinely "a down payment on independence", as Price described it, but more of a watering gown of Plaid's historic stance on Welsh independence. YouGov also surveyed their panel about this, and the results are generally not in favour of independence. With undecideds and abstentions removed, this snapshot predicts 32% Yes to 68% No.

The history of polling about an hypothetical Welsh Independence referendum shows a far lower level of support than in Scotland. The most recent poll shows that even Plaid Cymru voters are unsure, going 49% Yes to 34% No, while Labour voters would go 42% No to 34% Yes. This is significantly different from the situation in Scotland, and may explain why co-operation between Labour and Plaid can be on the table and enforced, though probably not totally satisfying for either party's voting base. Independence being a far more distant prospect, and far less politically divisive, is obviously a factor here. But whether coo-operation is a win-win situation, in the long run, for both Labour and Plaid Cymru, is a matter of conjecture. And an area where the results of the next elections might also change the lines.

What is a god but the cattle’s name for farmer?

What is heaven but the gilded door of the abattoir?

(Odin, Doctor Who: The Girl Who Died, 2015)

Wi-Fi does spread, it’s worse than wildfire.

It goes everywhere, apart from parts of Wales.

(Sean Lock, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2018)

YouGov also polled voting intentions for the next Senedd election, which are quite expectedly very favourable to Labour. Interestingly, this poll predicts that Labour would bag a majority of seats, the first such occurrence since 1999, despite having a lower share of the constituency vote than the SNP in Scotland, and a statistically similar share of the list vote. This is probably happening because the proportion of list seats, the compensatory seats for constituency losers, is lower in Wales than in Scotland. Certainly by design, as the Founding Fathers Of Devolution, wanted to make it less difficult for Labour to get a majority in Wales. It almost worked thrice already, with Labour bagging exactly half the seats in 2003, 2011 and 2021. Now the downfall of the Conservatives makes a Labour majority a very real prospect. The fragmentation of the right-wing also helps, as Wales seems to have the last branch of UKIP still breathing, and also the oddity of an ultra-Unionist party who stands at elections for an assembly they want to abolish.

The seat projection here is also quite a disappointment for Plaid Cymru. They only progress marginally in the popular vote and would not gain any seat. The obvious fallout is that Mark Drakeford would no longer need a non-aggression pact with Plaid Cymru after the next election. But Drakeford, being quite a political animal, might also think it more astute to still have some sort of agreement with Plaid Cymru, rather than having them as his official opposition. YouGov also polled Welsh voting intentions for the next Commons election. On top of it, we also had the Welsh part of a massive MRP poll conducted by Survation on behalf of 38 Degrees. Both predict a significant shift towards Labour and a disaster for the Welsh Conservatives.

The reasonably plausible upper limit of Labour's Commons seats in Wales is 35. As they would have to concede either five to Plaid Cymru, or four to Plaid Cymru and one to the Liberal Democrats, depending on the strongest prevailing winds. We have not reached that point yet, but current polls still say the Conservatives would lose two thirds of their Welsh seats. Only Faye Jones, Simon Hart, David Jones, Craig Williams and Stephen Crabb would show enough resilience to survive the Red Wave. The optics are a bit misleading here as the map of Commons seats would be the same as the map of Senedd constituencies. But other polls show that there is much more of a Drakeford Effect than a Starmer Effect at work here. Drakeford's brand of bolder politics is obviously one of the keys to his success, especially when he brutally takes down the Welsh Tories in a way the London Starmerites would certainly call 'excessive', if they didn't know that the Welsh public love it and agree.

One litre is the amount of saliva the average person produces in one day.

And, if you’re Welsh, most of it ends up on the face of whoever you’re talking to.

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2018)

The shittier your life is, the more likely it is that it’s real. That’s comforting, isn’t it?

(Jon Richardson, Ultimate Worrier: Humanity, 2018)

In the middle of Liz Truss's graveyard shift, Redfield & Wilton updated their survey of Red Wall voters, which I mentioned in an earlier article. Their new findings tread pretty much the same waters as their generic voting intentions polls for the North and Midlands, with Labour leading the Conservatives by 41%. Again Labour has a strong advantage as the party Red Wall voters consider the most able to deal with the day's major issues. It is quite telling that Labour score massively ahead of the Conservatives even on issues they never had to deal with, like the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The damage done to the Conservative brand by their successive failures is made even more obvious by the people's verdict on the economy. The Conservatives have lost their last shreds of credibility, and their desperate claims of 'managerial competence' definitely fall on deaf ears.

There is certainly a cumulative effect here, of voters considering that Boris Johnson first, and then Liz Truss, badly let down the most deprived parts of England. And probably nothing Rishi Sunak can do about it, as long as Northerners remember that he publicly admitted he had diverted 'leveling up' funding to more affluent parts of the Conservative South. It's entirely up to the Labour leadership to not lose that momentum, pun again fully premeditated. This is clearly not a given, as Keir Starmer is prone to scoring own goals even in the most favourable context. Besides there is, as usual, more in this poll than meets the eye in the first question. There are also hints that the public's verdict is not as clearcut and one-sided as you'd think.

Men in the North East think putting out the bins is the most romantic modern gesture.

And why not? For most couples in Newcastle, it was where they had their first date.

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2014)

I love places like Blackpool, with everything they have to offer, for about two hours.

And then I get all itchy and kind of need to get out pretty quickly.

(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2017)

Redfield & Wilton then switched the angle from the relative to the absolute. No longer 'who do you think would be best at dealing with these issues?' to 'how much do you actually trust each of them to deliver on the issues?'. Whatever 'deliver' actually means, which might be anything from fulfilling a manifesto pledge to doing what the respondent wants. As you might expect, the results here are far less favourable to Labour than on the first question. Here they are judged on their own merits, rather than just being 'not as bad as the other lot'. It is also quite likely that the Red Wall public exercise some caution, as they have been deceived and disappointed by the London political establishment many times in the past. Fool me once, fool me twice... With all these caveats, Labour still emerge from the test with far more positives than the Conservatives across the whole spectrum.

There is nevertheless a warning sign for Labour in these results. On average, far fewer people trust Labour than would vote for them, and more distrust them than would vote for the Conservatives. The average ratings for the Conservatives are a mirror image of this, in regions that are otherwise supposed to endorse Labour massively in the ballot box. Of course, voters can act paradoxically, and possibly not fully rationally, when the time comes to make a decision. We know, especially in Scotland, that 'not quite as bad as the other lot' can win an election, even when there are huge gaps between a party's manifesto and the electorate's expectations. It would be quite amusing to see Labour making that their unique selling point in the coming months, especially in hard-fought battlegrounds. But make no mistake, it might work.

I remember when I first came to live in Britain. I was 14 years old, and people talked

about putting cream or jam on their scone first. And I realised that they cared.

(Sandi Toksvig, QI: Naked Truth, 2016)

Whitby’s not edgy. When you order a gin and tonic, they’ll put herbs in it without being asked.

“What’s that?” “Oh, it’s a juniper berry”. Well, it’s a fucking choke hazard. Get it out of my drink.

(Jon Richardson, Meet the Richardsons, 2022)

On current polling, the North of England has turned redder than in 1945 and 1997. This was not a given in earlier polls. But the massive consequences of incompetent Conservative management are plainly seen here. Redfield & Wilton's qualitative surveys paints the background for this, in a way that should make Labour less complacent, yet hopeful. The Northern electorate certainly have a long memory span, and should not be taken for granted. The state of Northern voting intentions before Rishi's coronation illustrates why Labour should be both fairly confident and somewhat cautious about their future prospects there.

This shows that Keir Starmer should not underestimate the strength of working class socially conservative Eurosceptic vote. The people who crossed the road to the Blue Side in droves in 2019, because even some within Labour painted Jeremy Corbyn as a Commie dinosaur. They're still here, alive and kicking, and they're not ready to go away. Nevertheless, the seat projections show only one Conservative MP surviving, Neil Hudson in Penrith and The Border, Rory Stewart's old set. All Johnson Babies of the 2019 intake gone. And also Graham Brady, Jake Berry, Esther McVey, Ben Wallace and above all Rishi Sunak himself in Richmond (Not Richmond Park), a safe Tory seat of 112 years. Which would make him the one and only Prime Minister to lose his seat since Dog domesticated Man. Don't hold your breath though. Like many other upsets in this literally extraordinary snapshot, this one is just as unlikely to happen as Boris Johnson ever coming back to Number Ten. Now, on second thought...

There will be two real-life tests of the reliability of polls in the North West soon, with the by-elections for City of Chester and West Lancashire. City of Chester has been in Labour's hands from 1997 until 2010, and again since 2015. Even if it was quite reliably Conservative before 1997, including one term for Gyles Brandreth, it does not look like a high-risk situation for Labour this year. West Lancashire looks even better, as half of the current constituency has been reliably Labour since 1974 and the other half since 1906, if you go back in time to its predecessor seats. Here the only misses were 1983 and 1987, followed by two successive Labour MPs over the last thirty years. There is no doubt that Labour will hold both seats. But it will be interesting to see if the Reform UK vote reaches the level predicted by the polls. Who comes second will also send an enlightening signal. The Liberal Democrats ended up a very distant third in both constituencies in 2019, so it's highly unlikely they will outvote the Conservatives this time. If they did, it would be a massive alarm for Rishi Sunak, and a clear sign that restoring the credibility of the Conservative brand will be harder than he expects.

I’ve been to Peppa Pig World, mate, of course I have. Bloody adrenaline junkie, aren’t I?

Been to Peppa Pig World, been to CBeebies Land, Been to the Peter Rabbit Farm in St Albans.

I just love the thrill of life, man.

(Jon Richardson, Have I Got News For You?, 2021)

I met a bloke in Wolverhampton who had seen Star Wars 112 times.

And he still hadn’t got through all the reading at the beginning.

(Frank Skinner, Room 101, 2015)

As long as Boris Johnson was in charge, the Midlands looked quite challenging for New New Labour, with little progress made from the Corbyn Era. The Second Interregnum's polling says otherwise, with Labour's voting intentions climbing to unprecedented heights. The Liberal Democrats are also doing reasonably well, compared to their GB-wide results, which can only be a bonus for Labour in marginal seats. Just like in the North, there is also a stronger Reform UK vote than in 2019, which can only work against the Conservatives too. Though there are many reasons why Labour should also see this with some caution and no complacency. The main point is still that they can't gain back once-Socialist Derbyshire and secure the rainbow-painted wards of London's Inner Hipstershire with the same talking points. Something that seems to have eluded Sly Keir so far, and the time might come when it bites him in the arse.

Only three Conservative MPs would survive the Red Tsunami here: Matt Warman, John Hayes and Gavin Williamson. The whole Conservative intake of 2010 would be gone, who so far seemed to have entrenched themselves in their rural seats and bound to resist the successive waves of Labour surges. No more Sajid Javid, Tom Pursglove, Chris Heaton-Harris, Michael Fabricant, Robert Jenrick, Andrew Bridgen, Andrea Leadsom and Nadhim Zahawi. Of course, the November polls will certainly prove that this was too good to be true. I fully expect the Midlands to live up to their reputation as one of the key battlegrounds at the next election.

If you can’t afford VR goggles and the Zombie Apocalypse game,

just put some ski goggles on and walk down Northampton High Street.

(Alan Carr, Epic Gameshow, 2021)

A petition has been launched to remove the term “Essex girl” from the dictionary.

I don’t see what the harm is, it’s not like they’re going to read it.

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2017)

England's once Leafy South is again and again confirming its status as the biggest trophy of all for Labour. This is quite an extraordinary situation, with the results of the 2019 election totally turned around and beyond, and no poll significantly off the trend for now. Admittedly, this snapshot is like a cross between the Spanish Inquisition and a miracle. Nobody expected it and nobody really believes that it happened. Which is just as well, as it will probably not last. It is so off the track of the South's ancestral inclinations that it can't be anything but a momentary lapse of reason. Or it isn't and there is indeed a massive rejection of the Conservatives, even in their cherished heartlands, but we can reasonably expect it to go down a bit after the dust has settled on the memories of the Truss interlude. The current voting intentions in the three regions do nevertheless show quite a radical change from even Labour's most successful years. But we certainly shouldn't expect these exceptional circumstances to last, that make the electoral map of the South look like the North's.

Even with this Red Tsunami, the South would still remain a sort of Conservative fortress, or more like the battered dungeon with a dry moat around it, with sixteen of their twenty remaining MPs in England outwith London coming from there. Six from East Anglia (Alex Burghart, Rebecca Harris, Giles Watling, John Whittingdale, Steve Barclay and Mark Francois). Five from the South East (Flick Drummond, Desmond Swayne, Laura Farris, Ranil Jayawardena and Michael Gove). Five from the South West (Christopher Chope, Michael Tomlinson, Scott Mann, Simon Hoare and Marcus Fysh). And that's it. All the big nasty beasts gone. Truss, Raab, Sharma, May, Mordaunt, Badenoch, Buckland, Kwarteng, Coffey, Tugendhat, Shapps, Hancock, Rees-Mogg, Fox, Elwood, Burns, Cleverly, Eustice, Grayling, Braverman, Dowden, Dorries... You name it, you got it, all gone. Leaving us with the prospect of Gove and Francois battling it out at the next Conservative leadership contest. Or not...

...because then you wake up and realise it's all been Season Nine of Dallas. Taking today's snapshot from just the polls fielded during the Second Interregnum certainly has some fun potential, but the final picture is unlikely to look like that. This represents the peak pf discontent and exasperation against the Conservatives, and we will obviously see something different emerging from the next weeks and months of polling. That's where Brand Rishi comes in handy. There's something of the smooth operator in Sunak, far from Johnson's histrionics and Truss's robotics, that could bring quite a number of the prodigal sheep back to the henhouse. Once Conservative voters are done venting their anger and frustration in opinion polls, they will surely think twice before making Keir Starmer the next Chosen One. There might even be some openings for the Liberal Democrats, who still have a stronger base in the South than anywhere else in England. Everybody's second choice coming on top in the real vote is not unheard of, isn't it?

Did you know that 6% of drivers deliberately swerve to kill animals?

That might sound horrible, but roadkill is how the people of Norfolk get their protein.

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2017)

Werner Von Braun’s autobiography was titled “I Aim For The Stars”.

Mort Sahl joked he should have added “Only Sometimes I Hit London”.

(Josiah Bartlet, The West Wing: Things Fall Apart, 2005)

The Imperial Capital is still bound to deliver a massive number of Labour MPs, way beyond what they achieved under Jeremy Corbyn. Earlier this month, Survation even advertised a poll that predicted 72 Labour seats there, leaving only Twickenham to the Liberal Democrats. Which of course will never happen, but all recent polls nevertheless point to Labour bagging an outright majority of the popular vote, something that happened only twice in 1945 and 2017. But even 2017 failed to deliver the overwhelming number of seats you would expect, and the next election promises to be much more one-sided, in London like in the rest of the UK. The London subsamples of some GB-wide polls even predict Labour bagging more than 60 seats, which honestly seems just a distant prospect even in times of complete Conservative meltdown.

What we have here is the Conservatives losing half their seats in one fell swoop. Temp Paymaster General Chris Philip, one of the rising stars of Truss's reign, would lose his seat in Croydon South. So would Mike Freer in Finchley and Golders Green, Margaret Thatcher's seat in the previous millennium. Also Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford and Woodford Green, and Theresa Villiers in Chipping Barnet, both of whom were doomed anyway already months ago. And, last but not least, Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, unless he has been dispatched already at a recall by-election, triggered by the Privileges Committee investigation into the various episodes of PartyGate, long before the snap general election.

Swallows certainly sleep in the winter. A number of them conglobulate together by flying round

and round and then all in a heap throw themselves underwater and lie on the bed of the river.

(Samuel Johnson)

Precedent, baby, the mother’s milk, you know, of making your point and being right.

(Donna Moss, The West Wing: Galileo, 2001)

After France's National Rally bagging 89 MPs, and Sweden's Sverigedemokraterna becoming the country's second party, the new Fascist Scare has been triggered by the result of the Italian parliamentary elections. Interestingly, Italy has had more electoral laws in the last ten years than the UK has had Prime Ministers, each more abstruse than the previous ones. The current one has one third of MPs and Senators elected on FPTP from single-member constituencies, and two thirds on PR from multi-member regional constituencies. It also reduced the size of the Chamber of Deputies from 630 to 400, and the size of the Senate from 315 to 200, not counting the appointed Senators-for-life, of which there are currently six. It's quite enlightening to compare what the previous election delivered, how it evolved during the term, and what this year's election has delivered. The massive paradox is that the left-wing parties actually did better this year than in 2018, but the right-wing coalition won in a landslide because they benefited more from the accelerated collapse of the 'anti-system' M5S. So the post-fascist Fratelli d'Italia are now the first party, and their leader Giorgia Meloni has become Prime Minister of Italy.

Italy has been spectacularly marred by massive political crises since the last election in 2018. As the headcounts shows, one factor has been the increased fragmentation of both chambers of Parliament. What were once big-tent parties have exploded into factions, and the fractions of factions. The PR component in the electoral law only made it worse, because a number of opportunistic politicians figured out they could game the system, and had better odds at bagging a seat as the top candidate for a breakaway party than as the 20th on the list of a big tent party. The 2022 numbers show that this has hurt the left far worse than the right, who seem to have better understood the logic of the big tent. It's a well established fact that the D'Hondt method, like all other highest averages methods, is more representative of the popular vote, but also delivers a seat bonus to the larger parties. So the Left should think it through and twice before endorsing it. Because the Left's well established tendency to factionalism, if not fractionalism, can only hurt them with a PR-based electoral system.

The real issue now is how the rest of the world, and especially the rest of the European Union, will handle Meloni. Some high-ranking EU politicians have been quite hyperbolic, even apocalyptic, about the prospect of a far-right government in Italy. But it might be a bit more complicated than this. Meloni might be a member of Mussolini's fan-club, or have been in her twenties, but she's not a full-blown fascist. Fascism favoured state intervention in the economy. She is a trickle-down economics neo-liberal, just like Liz Truss. Meloni is even on record saying she shares the values of our Conservative Party and the American Republican Party. Fascists thrived in the company of like-minded dictators. She has distanced her party from Putin's influence, supports Ukraine and NATO. What could create major problems is her stance on civil rights, abortion, gay rights and immigration, the latter being the most problematic as she has shown sympathies towards white supremacist ideology. But the Polish PiS and the Hungarian Fidesz are thinking pretty much on the same lines on these issues, so there is nothing here that the EU can't handle, or hasn't already handled more or less efficiently. And they will have to handle Meloni with care, because they need her in their not-so-united front against Putin. Pragmatism trumps principles every day in politics, mates.

We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.

(Benito Mussolini)

Repetition of a non-truth as a kind of brain-washing works only if your brain is a sponge.

(Suzanne Moore)

The Brazilian elections, perhaps even more vividly that the Italian elections, are quite a textbook case against proportional representation We still have some hours of suspense before we know who will be the next President of Brazil, but a comparison between the results of the first round of the presidential election and the result of the Chamber of Deputies' election illustrates quite well the absurdity where PR can easily lead. Both major presidential candidates, far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and once-radical-left Luis "Lula" da Silva, managed to assemble big-tent coalitions supporting them for the presidential election. But almost all parties chose to go their separate ways for the parliamentary elections. The Brazilian electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies, proportional representation at state level, means that even 1% of the vote gets you seats, and a massive 23 parties are now represented. This might be considered as an example of diversity and fair representation, but it definitely looks more like a textbook case of inefficiency.

There's a well established tradition in Brazil, that government coalitions are not necessarily correlated with ideological proximity. Minor parties have been known to literally sell themselves to the highest bidder, the one who could deliver some extra funding for a given state or city. So, whoever wins the presidential election tonight, he will not have an oven-ready parliamentary coalition to back him. Depending on what the other contender has promised, he might even have to face a Parliament dominated by a patchwork quilt of opposition. Which is probably what both candidates are trying to achieve, as the result of the presidential election remains quite unpredictable. And this again confirms that full PR, an incentive for fragmentation and factionalism, is the perfect recipe for instability and uncertainty, and not what any democratic country needs.

History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.

(James Joyce)

Sex is why women are oppressed. Gender is how women are oppressed.

(Helen Joyce, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, 2021)

It is now my sad duty to inform you that gender ideology has now reared its ugly head in France too Ca devait arriver. It all started with a poster from Planning Familial, the French variant of Planned Parenthood, a stunningly brave gesture of kindness to 'pregnant men'. OK, I was being sarcastic. It caused quite a backlash, in a country where the whole 'trans debate' had so far been relegated to the fringes, and never made it as an issue in a major election campaign. Soon afterwards, a long-winded column was published on the 'independent information site' Mediapart, entitled 'For a feminist and trans alliance'. I'm sure your browser will offer you the option to translate the whole thing into English, and you will not be surprised by its content. And if it doesn't, you're not missing much, as this column is essentially a well-rehearsed carbon copy of all the asinine bullshit spewed by English and Scottish TRAs for years. Gender-critical feminists are anti-trans, they are part of an international reactionary conspiracy, they are essentialists indulging in genital fetishism... You name it, you have it. All in the first three of nineteen paragraphs of word salad. Including the statement that "one is not born a woman, one becomes one", which was written by prominent feminist Simone de Beauvoir in 1949, and is here hijacked and totally distorted out of its intended meaning. Plus accusations of being in cahoots with the far-right. Been there, heard that, haven't we? Even the poster that started it looks lifted from a staged and faked British propaganda picture.

This comes at a rather odd and awkward moment. Among the signatories are five MPs from the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI), one senator and one MP from the Greens (EELV). One of the most prominent signatories, Green MP Sandrine Rousseau, had got a lot of negative PR during the summer when she got her own parody account on Twitter suspended for a few days, and doubled down by advocating that people who like caricature should be reeducated. Which will surprise only those who haven't noticed the decidedly neo-puritan attitude of the English and Scottish Greens, who seem to be quite the role model for the looniest faction of the French Greens. But that's not the most embarrassing part. What has been brutally brought into the spotlight is both parties' attitudes towards violence against women. One LFI MP has been accused of 'inappropriate behaviour', quite the euphemism for suspicions of sexual harassment. Another LFI MP has publicly admitted acts of domestic violence against his wife, during confrontational divorce proceedings. In both cases, public comments by LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon have been widely criticised, including by some of his own MPs, as highly insensitive and out of touch with women's concerns. Finally a Green MP, and co-leader of the EELV party, has been suspended, and then resigned with some fracas, after detailed revelations of acts of domestic violence. Not really the best 'progressive feminist' credentials for either party.

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who

are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

(Malcolm X)

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

(Marcus Aurelius)

Interestingly, the opening of this Pandora's can of worms, on the far side of the White Cliffs of Calais, coincided with publication of the latest instalment of the British Social Attitudes survey, known this times as BSA 39. It includes a chapter about the culture wars, those made-up and highly publicised conflicts that the right loves so much because they divide the left, and some of the left love too because virtue-signalling makes them feel genuinely virtuous and superior. There is first a sort of 'big tent' question about attitudes towards equal opportunities for minority groups. Which, quite oddly, includes women, who are the majority of the population. But never mind, the authors of the survey certainly meant well. What's measured here is whether the public think policies to achieve equality have gone too far or not far enough. There's a level of ambiguity here, depending on which side you decide to count the 'just about right' votes. Nevertheless I'll go on a limb and say that the public do support efforts to end discrimination based on sex, race or sexual orientation, and the changes over time show it. But the whole ambiguity blows to your face when it come to transgender persons. There are many ways to tweak a perfect three-way split to fit any agenda. But not the fact that more people think that 'inclusion' has in this case gone too far, than think it should go further.

That's the part The Guardian thought they had to tweak and misrepresent, in a desperate effort to prove there is massive public support for gender ideology, while there isn't. They also found they had to water down the findings on the next question, taking advantage of the fact that the authors of the report had included a caveat. Which, in my opinion, does not actually change the real meaning of the public's evolving opinion. That one is the question about whether or not people should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate. Or, in simpler terms, do the public approve of gender self-identification or not? I certainly don't believe that changing the wording from "sex on the birth certificate" to "sex recorded on the birth certificate" makes any difference. Activists might want to put lipstick on that pig, but you can't hide the fact that there has been a massive shift of public opinion against self-identification. Which is what happens when there is an actual debate, not just on the principle, but on the practical consequences and how harmful they can be. And it's also why the gender ideologues had this 'no debate' policy. When all terms of the debate are transparently on the table, they lose.

Surveys like BSA 39, and the comments they trigger in the media, also highlight the ambiguity, and also the misunderstandings, about what we call 'rights'. It started years and years ago, when the fight for equality for same-sex attracted people was labeled 'gay rights'. It was a simple way to sum up the goals, but was somewhat unfortunate too, as it introduced that ambiguity about the real meaning of the word. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals never fought to be granted specific rights, based on sexual orientation, that nobody else had. They fought to access basic human rights that everybody else enjoyed, and they had been denied by centuries of discrimination. Today's 'trans rights' activists deliberately abuse the terminology, and have a radically different approach. They are not fighting to be granted basic human rights, as they already enjoy, by law, the exact same rights as every other citizen. What they are aggressively and vociferously demanding are specific rights, based on an alleged 'gender identity', that nobody else has. In a word: privileges.

If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practising leadership.

You are practising followership.

(Margaret Thatcher)

We don’t have to move to our right if there’s an opportunity to spank people to our left.

(Toby Ziegler, The West Wing: The Drop-In, 2001)

There was some interesting turmoil this month in Washington, when the Progressive Caucus, aka the Radical Woke Left, sent Joe Biden a letter asking for negotiations with Russia. Then retracted it. Then doubled down on it, or parts of it. This couldn't come at a worst moment during the midterms campaign, when Republicans are promoting an 'America First' narrative, implying that they would cut military aid to Ukraine to fund domestic policies to fight rising inflation. If you're surprised by this unholy alliance of the radical left and the far-right, it's just that you haven't been paying attention to who the Kremlin-funded Putin-enabling networks are in all Western democracies. For weeks, the Democrats were on a roll with campaigns targeting anti-abortion legislation being passed in Republican states after the repeal of Roe v Wade, and thought they would hold the momentum it created until Election Day. But the recent trends of general polling have proved them badly wrong.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the Republicans have correctly sensed a mounting 'Ukraine fatigue' among the electorate. They have used the same populist rhetoric we are now familiar with in Western Europe, questioning the wisdom of spending billions on military aid to Ukraine, when millions of Americans are facing increased hardships in their every day life. This is of course a bit rich, considering the Republicans' dismal record on anything from fair wages to healthcare and welfare. But it worked as rising inflation has become as much a problem in the USA as in Europe, and legislation passed by Democrats is not seen as adequate to tackle it. In true hard-right fashion, the Republicans have not just played on historic American isolationism, but also brought immigration back to centre-stage in the campaign. The perceived inefficiency of the Biden administration in the face of increased illegal immigration has also fueled a reversal of voting intentions towards the Republicans. Projections based on generic nationwide polls now say that the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives. The first immediate fallout will probably be some reduction in military aid to Ukraine, as the House could deny it funding.

There are similar trends in state-level polls for the Senate elections. Not long ago, it seemed safe to predict that the Democrats would strengthen their Senate majority with a net gain of two or three seats. We are quite far from that now, as the current projections predict a zero-sum game, with Pennsylvania switching from Republicans to Democrats, and Nevada switching the other way. The Democrats rely heavily on the Latino vote in Nevada, so the Republicans have mounted an aggressive campaign to gain a significant share of it. It has taken the form of a local culture war, with the Republicans relying on the socially conservative leanings of the Latino community. One of their talking points was the use of the woke-coined gender-neutral barbarism 'Latinx' by the Democrats. Which only about 15% of Latinos find acceptable. It was a cheap trick, but it worked too, and the Democrats can only blame themselves for it. So we have now a plausible outcome where the Senate elections end up in a stalemate.

This is close to the worst case scenario for the Biden administration, just one step short of a net loss of Senate seats. But, as it is, they will still have to deal with the two rogue 'moderate' Senate Democrats, Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who will side with the Republicans to block any reform of the Senate rules. Democrats need to repeal the filibuster, that American oddity that means you can not just block debate for an indefinite period, but most importantly force a two-thirds majority vote on any bill. Which is the most important part when the Senate is tied, and Vice-President Harris has to come deliver the tie-breaking vote every other week. But Sinema and Manchin are hell bent on keeping the filibuster alive and kicking, in the name of bipartisanship. Which, for all intents and porpoises, means conceding Republicans a de facto Senate majority they were unable to get in the ballot box. There is no foreseeable end to this situation as both Sinema and Manchin intend to stand again for another term in 2024. Thusly blocking any attempt at far-reaching 'progressive' legislation beyond the end of the Biden presidency. Truss's Law, American style.

It’s the dance we do. You get lost in it for a little while, but it always ends the same.

(Abby Lockhart, ER: The Dance We Do, 2000)

Jeremy's Den

29/10/2022

Truss's Law

Welcome To Their Nightmares