Jeremy's Den: Polling Station To Polling Station

Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whoever they be, are slaves rebelling against the sovereign of the Earth,

which is the human race, and against the legislator of the Universe, which is nature.

(Maximilien Robespierre)

The people do not judge in the same way as courts of law. They do not hand down sentences,

they throw thunderbolts. they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void.

(Maximilien Robespierre)

Don't forget to click on the images, to pop up larger and easier-to-read ones.

Before my Scottish friends object, 'polling station' is the appropriate term here, as this month's local elections happened only in England, where there is no such place as a polling place. And I wanted a David Bowie soundtrack anyway. So there. Now, before looking at the big picture and what it says about the incoming snap general, or not, I will turn the spotlight to a few Councils that The Hipstershire Gazette selected as summat iconic of these elections. First, Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, a few miles down the M4 from Theresa May's constituency in Maidenhead, where a 'rogue progressive alliance' of local Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens was disowned by the national parties. Plymouth, where Labour didn't want to make it all about the trees while making it summat about the trees, hoping to dislodge a Conservative minority administration and pave the way to unseating Conservatives MPs Johnny Mercer and Gary Streeter. High Peak in Derbyshire, a Labour minority administration considered a bellwether and coterminous with a bellwether Commons seat that Labour absolutely need to take back to have a credible shot at winning the incoming snap general. And finally North Somerset, a test for the Liberal Democrats wanting to prove they're the best-placed to defeat the Conservatives all over the South.

I have also mapped the number of wards held by each party. As the electoral system here is first-past-the-post (FPTP) in multi-member wards, a split between two parties can happen, though not as a common occurrence. It happens more often in Plymouth, which has three-member wards up for election by thirds, three years out of four, with staggered four-years terms. Quite a quintessentially English way of making things totally incomprehensible for outsiders, but also opening the door to three-way splits as voters' mood swings from one election to the next. Bracknell Forest, High Peak and North Somerset do it in a more straightforward way, with the whole Council up for election every four years. The people's verdict is quite conclusive in all four. It is also quite entertaining to compare how the five Commons constituencies covered by these Councils voted in 2019, and how their constituent wards voted this time.

The Rogue Progressive Alliance worked in Bracknell Forest, probably beyond its members' wildest expectations, so I fully expect Starmer and Davey to reown it now. Of course they won't promote it nationwide, but they will keep shtum if some local parties here and there go down the same road. So long as they gain seats, anyway. Which is indeed a possibility in the Bracknell constituency. Then Labour conclusively took back control of Plymouth and High Peak, which is really bad news for their Conservative MPs Johnny Mercer, Gary Streeter and Robert Laglan. Though Streeter could possibly weather a challenge from the Liberal Democrats in South West Devon, if the opposition vote remains split. And finally, North Somerset was a massive miss for the Liberal Democrats, who will now have to reframe their trauma and their strategy, as Labour have overtaken them in the Council. But they came ahead of Labour in the popular vote, albeit by a hare, so might have an opening to get first shot at Liam Fox. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

Milk in first suggests you’re of the dusty masses. Would have thought that might appeal to you.

(Margaret Roylin, The Diplomat, 2023)

Art thou some god, some angel or some devil that mak'st my blood cold and my hair to stare?

(William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act Iv, Scene III, 1599)

Now there are more interesting case studies to be made from the results of these English local elections. Which involve comparing how some constituencies voted at the 2019 general election, and how the wards making up these constituencies voted at their local election this month. The caveat and disclaimer here is that local elections have absolutely no predictive value for the next general election, except when they have. Which never happens, until it does. So let's start with Midsomer... oops... sorry... Berkshire where, as you all know, Midsomer Murders has been filmed for many a year. Which might have been an inspiration for voters, as there were many casualties at this year's elections, especially in the rural parts of the county. Berkshire is covered by six Councils, all with unitary authority status, since the historic Berkshire County Council was abolished in 1998. Here's how their membership changed this year, in geographical order from West to East.

Had to repeat Bracknell Forest here, as it is in Berkshire, and also the textbook case of why we don't need proportional representation, because it's so easy to game the existing first-past-the-post electoral law and grant representation to all the stakeholders of a progressive alliance. Elsewhere in the county, the Liberal Democrat steamroller perfectly served its purpose and snatched two councils from the Conservatives without the intermediate phase of No Overall Control (NOC). In both cases, it was quite brutal, with the Conservatives losing half their seats in West Berkshire, and two thirds in Windsor and Maidenhead. Wokingham is still technically NOC, but the Lib-Lab-Ind coalition there has increased their majority from two seats to ten. Slough is the odd one out, the only Council lost by Labour to the Conservatives. Technically it's NOC too, but the Conservatives have exactly half the seats, so will be the next administration. Which has probably little to do with an actual change of political beliefs, but a lot with the former Labour administration falling into Government administration after financial mismanagement and bankruptcy. Berkshire is also home to ten Commons constituencies, only eight are of interest here as they elected Conservative MPs in 2019 and mostly long before that. The three Western ones first, and how they voted in 2019 and 2023.

Even if local elections voting patterns are unlikely to be repeated at a general election, they can nevertheless support or contradict what general election polling says. Here we have confirmation in two case, Reading West and Wokingham, both with a higher vote share for the LibDems than polls predict. There is also an interesting subplot in Reading West, where Conservative incumbent Alok Sharma has been earmarked for transfer to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson, Or was it Liz Truss? It's not done yet though, as Rishi Sunak has put both Honours Lists in his bottom drawer. Newbury, which covers roughly the same area as the West Berkshire Council, is the odd one out as current polling has it as a Conservative hold with a sharply reduced majority. Then there is nothing here a Rogue Progressive Alliance couldn't solve, so long as Labour agree to concede the seat to the Liberal Democrats. Now down to the Eastern seats, where there are quite a few shockers and alternate plausibilities for the snap general. I see no path to victory for either Labour or the LibDems in Windsor, despite Conservative MP Adam Afriyie standing down in disgrace after two reprimands from the Commons Standards Committee. The main minor local party there is called 'The Borough First', which subliminally says a lot about their actual political persuasion, so I have no doubt their votes will go to the Conservatives at the general.

The ward-by-ward results in the Maidenhead half of the Borough Council are much more flabbergasting, and clearly show it was a massive and deliberate cull of incumbent Conservative Councillors, and it was certainly more personal than political. In many wards, the Liberal Democrats bagged three or four times as many votes as the Conservative incumbents, woodchipping them on a more massive swing than when Scotland ousted Labour in 2015. It is highly unlikely that the same pattern would be repeated against Theresa May at the snap general, as even political opponents acknowledge she is an efficient constituency MP, so the personal factor would work for her and not against. Bracknell is a more ambiguous case. The now famous Rogue Progressive Alliance was based on splitting the wards to the most likely winner, which fully worked, but thusly had the probably unexpected consequence of splitting the opposition vote when you do the full maths. The final count is actually, and ironically too, quite close to what the projection from general election polling predicts. Which should be an incentive for a deal between Labour and the LibDems. I give you Newbury and you give me Bracknell. Just don't rule it out just yet. But even this might become a mute point if Berkshire voters are in the same mood as those in neighboring Surrey. Then Conservatives will learn the hard way that this goes way beyond a one-off protest vote, and it can wreak havoc in their ranks any time Rishi Sunak chooses to call the snap general.

I look both ways before crossing a one-way street. That’s how much faith I have left in humanity.

(Tom Hardy)

Sometimes you have to decide between a bad choice and no choice at all.

(Cornelius Moss, Designated Survivor: Commander In Chief, 2017)

There were also some interesting results in the middle of the Midlands, in Derbyshire, once home to active mining communities that were destroyed by Thatcher. The county has just one unitary authority, Derby City Council, that was up for election on May The Fourth, in full because of boundary changes while the usual cycle is by thirds. The rest of the county has a two-tier local government, including the Derbyshire County Council as its upper tier, that was up for election in 2021 and will be in 2025. Eight District or Borough Councils make up the lower tier, all of which were up this year. Eight of them followed the national trend with strong Labour gains, while one favoured the Liberal Democrats. Compared to the previous elections' results and discounting later by-elections, four Councils switched from the Conservatives to Labour, one from NOC to Labour, one from NOC with Conservatives first to NOC with Liberal Democrats first. one from NOC with Conservatives first to NOC with Labour first, and finally two were held by Labour majorities. Which is just the kind of results Labour expected and needed in the run-up to the incoming snap general. Nothing compares to Council gains when you need to boost the morale ahead of a hard fought Commons campaign.

In Commons, Derbyshire is home to eleven constituencies. It leaned strongly towards Labour until 1979, and again from 1997 to 2010. Otherwise, it mostly had all the traits of a battleground that could also serve as a bellwether. Labour suffered heavy losses there in 2010, like in most of the Midlands, and have never really recovered and held a majority of seats since. Labour never bagged a full slate in Derbyshire, though they fell just one seat short in 1945, 1966 and 1997. 2019, with just two seats in Chesterfield and Derby South, was their second worst result since 1910. Only 1918 and 1931 were worse, tied on just one Labour seat. If we compare the results of the 2019 general election to this year's Council elections, the county's overall count shows that Labour are back to first place in the popular vote, and the Liberal Democrats have done unexpectedly well. But most of the LibDem vote is concentrated in Chesterfield, where they already did well in 2019, and Derbyshire Dales, where Labour haven't put up much of a fight. Could it be an unwritten quid pro quo? Like giving the LibDems a free rein at snatching the Council from the Conservatives, while Labour is guaranteed first shot for the Commons seat. Weirder things have happened before.

As a point of reference, seat projections from current polls predict Conservatives holding Amber Valley, Derbyshire Dales and South Derbyshire. While Labour would gain back Bolsover, Derby North, Erewash, High Peak, Mid Derbyshire and North East Derbyshire, and easily hold Chesterfield and Derby South. In the above batch of seats, I am quite convinced that Bolsover and Derby North will turn red again. Independents in Bolsover don't really fit the Nimby Resident profile that would switch to the Conservatives at a general, so Labour should gain it back. After all the current seat, and its predecessor Clay Cross, had been in Labour's hands continuously since 1922 before Dennis Skinner unexpectedly lost it at what was probably one election too many for him. Derby North looks just as ready to toggle back, now that Chris Williamson is ancient history. I have less faith in the value of local elections results in Amber Valley. The Brexit Party never competed there, as it was a Tory-held seat, and UKIP always did poorly except in 2015. I don't expect much of the Reform UK vote to remain at the general, as the spirit of tactical voting definitely dictates they help the Conservatives hold the seat.

In the other constituencies, the Council elections results don't always fit what general election polls predict. My tenner is on Labour in Erewash, High Peak and North East Derbyshire, where polling trends and votes at the Council election converge. The two approaches definitely point in different directions in the other three constituencies, most conspicuously in South Derbyshire. The Council election result here is quite intriguing as the current constituency, and its predecessors South East Derbyshire and Belper, have a long history of swinging back and forth between Labour and the Conservatives. An interesting part of its electoral history is that the voting patterns at the Council election and at the Commons election were similar in 2015 and 2019 when they heavily favoured the Conservatives. So why wouldn't it work too now, when they favour Labour? Meanwhile, North East Derbyshire and Mid Derbyshire might prove tougher nuts to crack for Labour than general election polls imply, especially the latter where the non-Conservative vote is quite split. Labour can nevertheless entertain high hopes in Derbyshire, as all seemingly contradictory scenarios point to significant gains, probably not as good as the Blair years, but still better than what they achieved just before or since.

You kick the system, don’t be surprised when it comes around and bites you.

(Jack McCoy, Law & Order: Jeopardy, 1995)

York is real? I thought it was made up, like Narnia or Wales. Maybe it is, but the North is definitely real.

The people talk in funny voices and eat something called hotpot, but they're friendly and welcoming.

(Beatrice and Eugenie, The Windsors: Coronation Special, 2023)

Let's move now further up the Red Wall to a county that does not exist. Does not exist any more, that is. As it was actually a thing for a quarter of a century in the last millennium. Cleveland, also transiently known as Teesside. Famous because it houses Hartlepool, home to Andy Capp and Jeremy Spencer, but not Peter Mandelson. And also that unique Northern oddity, the one and only Council in the UK split between two counties. Stockton-on-Tees which, as the name implies, has wards on both sides of the River Tees. North of the river is in County Durham, and South of it is in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Which actually does not exist anymore either, as it has been fused with other bits of God's Own County fifty-odd years ago to become today's North Yorkshire, the largest ceremonial county in England. OK, I will not confuse you again with ghosts of counties past, so let's get down to business. The area is split between four unitary authorities, Hartlepool Borough Council, Middlesbrough Borough Council, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council and the aforementioned Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council. All of which were conveniently up for election on May The Fourth, as here's how they looked like before and after.

Hartlepool is technically of the NOC variety, which can happen when you are tempting fate with an even number of seats. But Labour should have no problem taking back control of it, potentially with support from some Independents. Middlesbrough is also one of the NOCs, but it matters probably less as executive power is vested in a directly elected Mayor, Labour's Chris Cooke since May The Fourth. Redcar and Cleveland is another NOC, both before and after the election. Odds are the LibDem-led minority administration will now have to give way to a Labour-led administration that could very plausibly form a majority coalition. Stockton-on-Tees also went from NOC to NOC, meaning the incumbent Labour-led administration will probably go on, even if the Conservatives have become the first party. In Westminster, the area formerly known as Cleveland is split between six Commons constituencies of interest. Especially Peter Mandelson's old seat in Hartlepool, which was also the seat of many a first. The first by-election of the current Parliament, the first by-election on Keir Starmer's watch, the first Labour seat lost on Keir Starmer's watch, the first by-election won by the governing party in almost 40 years, and I think that's about all. I have dug deeper only for the four of them who are held by the Conservatives today, and have been Labour for most of their existence. Here is how they voted in 2019, and also 2021 for Hartlepool, and how their constituent wards voted this month.

What we have here is even less conclusive than in Berkshire or Derbyshire because of the massive presence of independent candidates of various shades. Nevertheless, I will venture that these independents will mostly shift to Conservative candidates at a general election. So I think Labour has a very slim chance of taking back Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, the one that was least often in Labour's hands, and was lost already in 2017 before the Johnsonami of 2019 overran the Red Wall. I think Labour have far better odds in Hartlepool, and could plausibly take it back with an outright majority of the popular vote. Redcar is an interesting case as the town's vote at the Council election in May 2019 was massively different from their vote at the Johnson general in December. There is the same pattern here, with Liberal Democrats and independents biting massive chunks off the Conservative vote, and you see the results of that in their number of Council seats. But this month's Council vote is quite encouraging for Labour, as all they have bagged the same share as in 2019. All they have to do now is to snatch tactical voting from the LibDems, which sounds like a viable strategy all across the North and Midlands. Though there may be some spanners in the cogs in the South. Finally Stockton South looks like quite an uphill battle for Labour. It already escaped them in 2010, 2015 and 2019, and was a surprise gain in the Corbyn Surge of 2017. Pending further investigation, the Council results support the hypothesis that it could be one of the few Conservative holds in Red Wall territory next year.

A steam train! Because we're in the North, and they haven't got their Leveling Up money yet.

(Eugenie, The Windsors: Coronation Special, 2023)

Well, we all seek absolution in our own way. You sure you don’t want a dumpling?

(Anita Van Buren, Law & Order: Aftershock, 1996)

There is quite a massive consensus that these local elections turned out to be as bad for the Conservatives as the worst predictions hinted, and then some notches worse. It says a lot that Conservative Party Chairman Greg Hands thought it smart to use a 'could lose up to 1,000 seats' random prediction as a way to scare the Blue Base to the polling stations, and they ended up losing 1,063 per the BBC's calculations. When these elections were part of a cycle that saw the Conservatives already lose 1.330 seats in pretty much the same councils four years ago. There's no way Rishi Sunak can lipstick that pig into anything else than a fucking disaster of asteroid magnitude, and a well deserved one. But now he seems to have locked himself in an echo chamber of cognitive dissonance rooted in confirmation bias, which you might argue Keir Starmer had done too. But let's look at the big picture, instead of the faraway Marches Of The Realm. Let's see first how many votes everyone got, and how it compares with the polls.

The BBC and Sky News couldn't be arsed to wait until all wards had declared and do the exact maths, so they have published their proverbial 'projected national vote shares'. Which are obviously approximate, and actually transpose the results of the locals into an hypothetical general election held on the same day and in the whole of the UK. With these caveats, their calculations confirm my first impression, that the Focaldata poll was fucking bollocks and wildly off-piste. But, quite uniquely for local election polls and much to my surprise, Survation and Omnisis were not far off the mark. So maybe we should believe them when they poll future local elections. The breakdown of seats and councils, before and after the election, testifies to the amount of drubbing the Conservatives have taken, and how Labour have now become the first party in English local government. There isn't much change in the Metropolitan Boroughs, where Labour were already dominant. Contrary to the punditariat's prophecies, the independent candidates and minor local parties have held their ground. Evidence that they were not just the least bad fallback option in 2019, for voters dissatisfied with both Labour and the Conservatives, but a real force of their own. The most significant part is the results in the District Councils, which are predominant in the Midlands and the South, covering the most likely battleground seats at the next general. Significant Conservative losses across the board can only boost the oppositions' morale.

Once again, the proponents of proportional representation (PR) are at it, claiming that these elections validate their belief that we absolutely need PR. When they were fought under the usual FPTP, and some of the massive upsets they quote would never have happened under PR. The best example is Bracknell Forest, where the Conservatives suffered a major debacle only because Labour, the LibDems and the Greens gamed FPTP and didn't stand in each other's way in 12 wards out of 15. That's the way to go, and not endorsing the illusion that PR is more democratic, when there is massive and conclusive evidence that it enables backroom deals and empowers minority parties to force fringe policies down the throat of the majority because they are kingmakers. If the opposition parties are serious about ousting the Tories, all they have to do is a 543-seat strategy across England, duplicating Bracknell Forest all over the place. Let the Tories howl at the moon over that, as neither law nor convention forbids it. The only issue would be which party is the standard bearer in each constituency, which would lead to some performative frictions between Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the Home Counties. Now, if you want constitutional change, think about replacing FPTP with a two-round majority system. Can make it Instant Runoff, if you want all seats to be filled on the same day, or two rounds held a reasonably short time apart as in France and some US states. If it's good enough for them, to avoid the brutal nature of FPTP, then it's good enough for us.

It’s a middle finger aimed squarely at your base. This will have a knock-on effect.

I don’t like to traffic in overstatement, but if this sticks, it’s political Armageddon.

(Lyor Boone, Designated Survivor: Suckers, 2017)

When I was chanting just now, I was thinking about how you can only live in your full

knowing if you stand in your full knowing. Can you live and stand in your full knowing?

(Megan, The Windsors: Coronation Special, 2023)

The breakdown of seats by region and meta-region shows quite significant changes in England's electoral geography, which might be the prelude to similar changes at the next general election. Or not. Labour have secured only minimal gains in the North, where they already were massively dominant in the Councils that were up this year. In some cases, they just increased their vote shares in already Deep Red territory, which would achieve fuck all at a general election, as it would only turn safe seats into sinkholes. But huge swathes of the North did not vote this time, so we lack any hints of the public's mood in Cumbria, Northumberland, and most of County Durham and North Yorkshire. Labour have secured gains in Lancashire, but they are spread quite evenly across ten District Councils, so are not conclusive hints of plausible Commons gains.

The possible implications of the Council elections in the Midlands are more ambiguous. The Conservatives lost seats, but it is not a massive Red Wave that could make Labour anticipate significant gains at a general election. The Conservative network of Councillors has been weakened in the Midlands, but remains as strong as Labour's. Obviously, Labour would be wrong to underestimate this network's influence, especially in small rural communities. The swingometer may have moved in Labour's direction, but the Midlands remains as much of a battleground now as before the elections. Finally, the changes in the South plausibly overestimate the Liberal Democrats' potential to gain Commons seats. They already bagged excellent results in the South at the May 2019 Council elections, and then totally failed to translate these success into Commons seats in December at the general election. The Liberal Democrats can only wish it will be different next time, and in the meanwhile use their gains as bargaining chips in local deals with Labour. The downside is that their most spectacular gains are within constituencies that Labour may have already secretly decided to concede anyway, as their own bargaining chips against LibDems playing possum in Lab-Con marginals. There are surely some fun moments ahead.

We’ve come back with a healing message to help us all find harmony.

Like the notes in a song by Beyonce, who incidentally just texted me.

(Megan, The Windsors: Coronation Special, 2023)

One fact, two sharp edges. You’re gonna need an extra large box of Band-Aids.

(Adam Schiff, Law & Order: Working Mom, 1997)

It looks like nobody could be arsed to do the fucking maths, and tell us how many people actually voted for each party at the English locals. Rishi Sunak is certainly not amused, though he might be relieved that all we have are competing 'estimated projected vote shares' from the BBC and Sky News. Sky News even tried a narrative around these approximate results, with lots of very precise demonstrations based on very imprecise numbers, to the effect that similar voting patterns at a general election would deliver a hung Parliament. Which Alyn Smith, the SNP MP for the Stirling University Students Union, used to support a claim that the SNP would force Labour to undo Brexit. As if. The only problem here is that seat projections absolutely do not point to a hung Parliament. Bear in mind that the proverbial common wisdom that Labour need a 10% lead over the Conservatives rests on two pillars. That the Scottish seats would go roughly the same way as in 2019, with the SNP bagging a mammoth majority. That the Liberal Democrats would stay on roughly 10% of the popular vote, and not be a threat to the Conservatives anywhere. Remove one pillar and cracks start to appear. Remove both and the whole construct tumbles down. And that's exactly what happens here.

I have first extrapolated individual vote shares for the 'Others' (19% total for the BBC, 17% for Sky News), based on what the current real voting intentions polls tell us. And then fed this to my model, Electoral Calculus and Flavible. All say that Labour would bag an outright majority, either on a 9% lead or a 7% lead. Even Flavible's modest 324 seats are a majority, if you bear in mind that Sinn Féin still not taking their seats lowers the bar to 322. The flaws in the 'hung Parliament' are obvious when you look at Sky's figures that credit 'others' with 75 seats. Which only works if you credit the SNP with 50ish seats. Which won't happen under current polling, which Sky is obviously aware of. I won't even bother to discuss their projection for the Liberal Democrats, as the earlier point alone proves their approach is deeply unprofessional. As in knowingly peddling fucking bollocks to serve a pre-scripted biased narrative. Which works only because the general population are blissfully unfamiliar with the mysteries and oddities of psephology, and will thusly take any self-anointed or punditariat-validated expert at his word. All that we have here proves an actually simple fact. That there is not just one determining variable at work here, but several, sometimes totally uncorrelated and sometimes deeply intertwined. So there is no definitive answer to the question 'who will win the next election?', just an array of plausibilities.

Sometimes we’re so intent on a grain of sand, we lose sight of the beach.

(Adam Schiff, Law & Order: Stalker, 1997)

Then the lights go out and it's just the three of us, you me and all that stuff we're so scared of.

(Bruce Springsteen, Tunnel Of Love, 1987)

An unexpected post-elections PR stunt was The Prince Of Darkness coming out of his burrow, begging Labour and the Liberal Democrats to reframe their stance on Brexit. Forget Get Brexit Done and Make Brexit Work, now's the time to Get Brexit Fixed; Or not. Or maybe. Forget all you preconceptions about Alastair, he may have a genuine point here. Brexit ain't what it used to be, and the British public are seeing clearly now the amount of damage it has inflicted. Alastair is right that the English Government's narrative that none of the present disasters have anything to do with Brexit, and everything to do with Covid and Ukraine, is absolute fucking bollocks. Rishi Sunak knows it, the British public knows it, and buyer's remorse is growing by the day. YouGov have been tracking the public's feelings for literally years now, and we currently have half thinking Brexit was the wrong choice, and just a third saying it was the right choice.

The split has been pretty steady for some months now, and it is quite plausible it will remain so for the foreseeable future, like the French and German trenches between 1914 and 1918. The British public also massively think that Brexit was badly handled by successive governments, making it a double whammy of frogs and locusts. The English Government are obviously aware of that as they gave up on the 'sunset clause' that would have seen 4,000 items of European legislation removed from UK law on New Year's Eve. And caused 40,000 additional problems. Of course, the rabid Brexiteers led by Penfold Francois are not happy bunnies over that, and Kemi Badenoch did not make herself more popular by openly taking the piss out of Lindsay Hoyle. Which everybody does, to be honest, just not to his face. Jacob Rees-Mogg had previously let it be known that he was extremely displeased with the cancellation of the Bonfire Of Laws. Which actually worked in Sunak's and Badenoch's favour. Whatever decision pisses off the MP for the 17th century has to be the right decision, innit? And Somerset Jake is pissing down the wrong tree here, as he usually does, as a substantial majority of Brits would now choose to rejoin the European Union. That's what they tell pollsters, that is, without risk as nobody will call their bluff and actually call a referendum.

Pollsters tell us that the British public would choose to rejoining the EU roughly 3-to-2. Even the prospect of being forced to join the Euro, which Omnisis tests every time they ask the hypothetical referendum question, is not a deterrent. Rejoin still wins, albeit with a lesser margin. The basic flaw in this approach is, and has always been, the inability of anyone to see this issue as anything other than in binary terms. When it's one of a few instances where reality is non-binary. It's not a fucking U2 song, it's not with or without EU. There are multiple layers of a Schrödinger's EU out there. The 'Swiss Deal' that Rishi Sunak allegedly tried to negotiate some months ago, is just one option among others. It's more like a Swiss knife of possibilities. The most obvious path is to study the details of European Economic Area agreement that links the EU with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Going the Full Monty, and signing up to the full agreement, was even floated as an option dubbed 'Norway Deal' in the protohistoric times when Theresa May was Prime Minister. Which was of course anathema for the Brexit maniacs, because it would have required the UK joining the European FreeTrade Association first, and isolationists can't have any of that. But a reality-based approach involves giving up on the Brexit dogma. Keir Starmer should acknowledge that if Rishi Sunak doesn't.

It is the hubris of rationalism to always attack the prophet, the mystic, the god. It is our blasphemy

which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us.

(Roger Zelazny, A Rose For Ecclesiastes, 1963)

It takes a team of mad geniuses to hoist one man to the top of the greasy pole.

And once you’re in office, it’s best to sack them before they burn the place down.

(Nicol Trowbridge, The Diplomat, 2023)

There is a narrative taking shape and gathering momentum in the 'progressive' metropolitan punditariat, that Labour must now get ready for a hung Parliament. The only foundation for this is the Sky News feature about the 'general election equivalent' of the English locals. Which I have already debunked as fucking bollocks and is absolutely not supported by the current trend of voting intentions polls. If you look closely at the tail ends of the trendlines, you see a slight improvement for Labour, a slight decrease for the Conservatives and a continued rise for the Liberal Democrats. Another key argument of theirs is that Labour would need 123 gains for a majority, and there is no way this can happen. Only it has, and more, six times in the past 125 years. 1906, 1924, 1929, 1931, 1945 and 1997. January 1910, 1918 and 1935 came very close too, with more than 100 seats switching to the opposition. I'm not indulging in confirmation bias here, as there is also evidence that FPTP can indeed spawn a hung Parliament, and has done so seven times in 125 years (January 1910, October 1910, 1923, 1929, February 1974, 2010, 2017). Of course polls did not predict a hung Parliament in 2017, but they did in 2010, so there is no solid case for disregarding current polls, that predict a sizeable Labour majority.

Under current voting patterns, that include strong Labour gains in Scotland, Wales and London, Labour's lead could even shrink by 10% in the rest of England and they would still win the election with a slim majority. I'm not going to give you the Grand Tour today, I will wait until we have some more post-elections polls in store. So far we have seven, conducted over the last ten days, which is a mammoth super-sample of 11,929. Their weighted average predicts Labour leading by 17.2%, so pretty much the same as we had on Election Eve. Or, in more direct terms, absolutely jack shit that would indicate that the electorate is swinging towards hung Parliament territory. Projection, both on the current and on the incoming new boundaries, show Labour closer to a 1997ish landslide than to February 1974, the last time an election delivered a minority Labour government. And, before you ask, only Electoral Calculus offer a 'new boundaries' option available for the general public to play with. It's in the 'Seat boundaries to use' drop-down list.

So you have to wonder, cui bono? Who stands to benefit from peddling a misleading narrative that is not supported by any hard facts? Not even by what actually happened at the English local elections. There are numerous cases where the voters turned on incumbent Conservative Councillors for no other reason than they were Conservatives. So why is it so unbelievable that they would turn on incumbent Conservative MPs for no other reason than they are Conservatives? The stunt is actually hidden in plain sight, as the prophecies of doom and gloom are part of another propaganda piece in favour of proportional representation. Which has, as usual, holes big enough in it to sail John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet through them. How can anyone argue with a straight face that FPTP implies Conservative rule until Hell freezes over, when two of the last four general elections delivered a hung Parliament? That alone shows that the whole argument is fucking bollocks, and that its proponents think the average voter just fell of the turnip cart. The electoral law does not produce or prevent a majority all by itself. There are many other factors at work here. The Scottish vote, the amount of wasted votes in sinkholes, biased boundaries, the geography of the Liberal Democrat vote, to name just a few. And not all favour the Conservatives every time. There is still no solid case for proportional representation, and peddling it every other week with trademark metropolitan punditariat arrogance will surely not make one.

They have so thoroughly colonised the moral high ground, I couldn’t set foot there if I wanted to.

(Nicol Trowbridge, The Diplomat, 2023)

Jeremy's Den

15/05/2023

Polling Station To Polling Station

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