Jeremy's Den: July 2023

Since Rousseau and Kant there have been two schools of liberalism, which may be defined as the hard-headed

and the soft-headed. The hard-headed developed, through Bentham, Ricardo and Marx, by logical stages into

Stalin. The soft-headed, through Fichte, Byron, Carlyle and Nietzsche, by other logical stages, into Hitler.

(Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 1945)

Democracy fails when your press fails to scrutinise and hold the government accountable,

and instead choose to get into bed with them so they can ensure the status quo.

(Henry Mountbatten-Windsor, Earl of Dumbarton)

Did I tell you that all you have to do is click on the images, to get a bigger pop-up version?

There seems to have been a slow news day some time late in June, though I failed to notice it. But J.L. Partners surely did, as they polled the popularity of quite an unusual array of personalities. On behalf of the Daily Express, who may have had a genuine slow news day after exhausting their whole yearly supply of pro-Boris columns. Only two in the list are embroiled in the business as usual of politics, and a handful of them are not even British. The results are too good to miss, before we switch back to the serious stuff. It will surely be a real life-changer for the British public to know that Philip Schofield has less positives than Boris Johnson, and just as many as Donald Trump. That Holly Willoughby's ratings are disturbingly similar to Joe Biden's. Or that Prince Andrew is somewhere between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in terms of popular appreciation. Some may think that putting King Charles in such company was a bit cavalier, but his loyal subjects will feel reassured that he is still the most popular figure of the Realm and Dominions. When Wills is not in the poll too, of course. Just saying.

One of the explanations for Rishi Sunak's low level of positives may be his genuine moments of pure genius. One of them was undoubtedly to go campaigning at an IKEA warehouse and tell the workers that the solution to all their woes is "being a bit clever about how we do things". Nothing sounds more like a True Prime Minister Of The People than telling the oiks they are dimwits, doesn't it? But the writing is on the wall beyond any reasonable doubt. The trends of voting intentions say that Labour is going up again, and the Conservatives are going down again. Odds are that, no matter when the snap general happens, the Conservatives are toast. Worse than that, deep-fried. And deep-fucked.

These trends of voting intentions are quite intriguing when you look at the political direction the Labour Party has taken recently. Keir Starmer has given up every pretense of being Tony Blair 2.0, and is rebranding himself as some posh English variant of Emmanuel Macron. Which is not as far fetched as it seems, and we could actually see it coming from quite afar. Since Starmer basically conceded the 'progressive centrism' corner of the compass to the Liberal Democrats. Since Starmer reneged en masse on all pledges that made him Leader Of The Opposition. Since Starmer started openly endorsing policies Edward Heath would have agreed with. Getting rid of Momentum's toxic influence is one thing, becoming a better Defender of the Natural Order Of Things than the Conservatives is quite another. Labour ceased being socialist many a generation ago, and ceased being truly social-democratic when Tony Blair had the original Clause IV repealed. Now they're not even social-liberal any more. Dog only knows where Sir Keir will take them next.

If you and your New Labour Party sound any more like the Tories, they’ll sue you for plagiarism.

(Anthony Cox, Our Friends In The North: 1995, 1996)

It’s the bollocks of the jungle out there, you know. They’re like wolves, pissed wolves.

(Cliff Lawton, The Thick Of It, 2005)

Rishi Sunak once said his mission in life was to bring competence, efficiency and accountability to government. Then he gave us Jeremy Hunt. Whose solution to skyrocketing interest rates is to extend your mortgage repayments over another 20 years, which a lot of Brits had already done anyway. Then I guess Jezza's next Pearl Of Wisdom will be to extend the mortgage repayment period beyond the average human lifespan, which would shield everyone from repossession of their home. No shit, Jezza. And none of it matters anyway as, if you believe Greta Thunberg's prophecy, we're all already dead and just haven't noticed. Then it was probably either that, or reframing the government's whole housing policy along the lines of a five-decades-old Genesis song. The Bank Is My Shepherd And Gabriel Is Its Prophet, or summat. In that continuity of omnishambles, it will come as no surprise that Rishi Sunak's ratings in the classic 'Preferred Prime Minister' polling are going the exact opposite direction to interest rates and are on a collision course with the Earth's core.

Some pollsters have rephrased the iconic question, from a Sunak vs Starmer Clash Of The Titans to competing duets. Sunak-Hunt vs Starmer-Reeves. And the results are even worse for Team Blue. Now I find it quite offensive that one Jeremy is proving such a massive repellent, but it's all on him and not manufactured from the backbenches this time. It is also quite revealing that Rishi has been overtaken by 'Neither Of These Fucking Clowns', or perhaps the 'Neither' option is taken by some respondents as a silent vote for Ed Davey. Nothing can surprise me anymore. YouGov have also asked their panel how well they think Rishi is doing with his Five Pledges, that are no longer pledges but just priorities now, and have become six for the duration of the poll, and it's not a pretty sight either. It has indeed become worse since the last time they asked, just four weeks before.

Rishi has quite successfully catch-22ed himself into the worst corner of a bad situation, and hopes of recovery are slim. Nobody seriously pretends to listen to him any more as he has, in Malcolm Tucker's immortal words, made himself as useless as a marzipan dildo. He is also not helped by the British public's astonishing level of economic illiteracy. Or lack of basic maths skills. How can you convince people that you're doing a good job at fighting inflation, when less that a quarter correctly understand that halving inflation means that prices will still continue to go up? And barely more than a quarter can correctly work out what 5% inflation does to the price of bread, including those who just took a wild guess. Then the bulk of Rishi's wounds are in fact ideologically self-inflicted, as were Cameron's, May's and Johnson's before. To go full circle where we started, it is obvious that Rishi is fucked so long as the Bank of England stick to that idiotic neo-liberal dogma that rising interest rates curbs inflation, when we all know it does the exact opposite. By increasing the weight of mortgage repayments, expected to rise by £16bn this year. So far.

If you want to stop the small boats, I think we should pay Coldplay to play relentlessly off the South Coast.

Then anyone coming over will see it and go, “Oh, my God, I thought it was miserable where I came from!”.

(Chris McCausland, Have I Got News For You?, 19 May 2023)

This government’s run this country into the ground. This used to be a green and pleasant land.

Now it’s the colour of the fucking BBC weather map. It looks like anaemic dog shit.

(Cal Richards, The Thick Of It, 2009)

Whatever spell had been cast on the Labour Party seems to have dissipated by now. At least, that's what my current snapshot of polls says. It's again tricephalous transseptimanist. Meaning there's three polls in it, including some stuff overflowing from the end of last week. One from Omnisis, conducted on Thursday and Friday. One from Redfield & Wilton, conducted on Sunday. One from Deltapoll, conducted between Friday and Monday. And this week's rolling average of voting intentions has Labour leading by 21%, on a super-sample of 4,921 and a 1.4% theoretical margin of error. No matter how many pledges Keir Starmer reneges on, the electorate are still willing to ditch the Conservatives and let Labour have their turn at enforcing Conservative policies instead. And it works all across the Three Nations of This Isle and the Imperial Capital.

Of course there are some historical caveats here. A year before the 1997 election, New Labour was leading by 25% in the polls. Six months before, they were still leading by 20%. On Election Day, that lead had shrunk to 12.5%, which was enough by then to deliver the biggest Labour landslide since 1945, second only to the Conservative landslide of 1931. The changes in voting patterns over the last year also mean that the punditariat's proverbial "10% lead needed for a Labour majority" talking point has also evaporated. My model says 4% would be enough, which is confirmed by simulations via Electoral Calculus. Partly because of Labour's unexpected surge in Scotland, but also because they're doing pretty well all across the regions of England.

Even if Labour's vote share in England shrunk to the minimum level needed to barely scratch past the majority hurdle, they would still do better than in 1997 in the South. And we know by now that the Home Counties of Middle England are as much a key to the next election as Scotland. Combine a strong showing in both with tactical voting favouring the Liberal Democrats in only a small number of seats, and Keir's your uncle. Or whatever gender-neutral NewSpeak jargon Pink News are advocating this week. I have a hunch that Labour's strong showing in the polls is here to last, so long as Conservatives insist on seeking futile culture wars that make them oven-ready laughing stock even in traditionally blue constituencies. Labour can also only welcome the birth of the New Conservatives pressure group, who would be more aptly described as New UKIP. Whichever way their farts blow, they undermine Rishi Sunak, and it's all that counts at the end of Election Day.

Their hordes of fucking robots, they're coming over the hills towards us and all you've got to do is this.

Bend down, pick up any fucking weapon you can, and twat the fuckery out of them.

(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It, 2009)

Have you been at Number Ten lately? It’s like the breakup of the Beatles during the fall of the Roman Empire,

and fucking Jordan getting divorced from that bloke, all happening at the same time in a tiny terraced house.

(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It, 2009)

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have high hopes for the triad of by-elections happening a week out, as well as for those set in a more distant future. What is heard from the people living there surely affirms and validates these hopes, even around Downton Abbey. There are similar messages coming from pretty much all round Middle England. But the theme song to the campaign is not 'Give Keir A Chance', it's more like 'Rishi Just Lose My Number'. People are not enamoured with Starmer, but then who is? But they just can't stand the thought of another five years with the Conservatives in charge. It's bound to be a Labour victory by default, which does not mean it's gonna be a narrow one. At least, not if you believe what the current polls predict.

So we now have a 235-seat working majority for Labour on the soon-to-be-obsolete boundaries that have been used for the last 13 years, and even 18 years in Scotland. And a just as massive 239-seat majority on the new boundaries that will be used for Rishi's snap general. This is what happens when the Prime Minister Of The People makes it his duty to moonlight on weekend radio commenting on a cricket match, and makes it worse by pontificating about it, in the middle of the soon-to-become-fucking-worse worst cost-of-living crisis since Edward Heath. Being owned at the Liaison Committee, by a bloke whose best remembered feat so far was posting selfies from his hotel bathroom, wearing only 1950s-style Y-fronts, didn't help either. The breakdown of seats in the Four Nations and the Imperial Capital again proves beyond reasonable doubt that Rishi's irrelevance is a widespread feeling within the electorate, even in the Leafy South.

Enforcing the new boundaries after the Summer Break won't make a fucking difference. There are only minor variations on the vote shares we have today. Even the increased number of seats in the South of England would benefit Labour and the Conservatives equally. Down there, Surrey seems to be the hardest work, as it would retain a majority of Conservative MPs on both sets of boundaries. Six seats out of eleven on the old boundaries, seven out of twelve on the new ones. Dominic Raab and Jeremy Hunt are predicted to lose their seats to the Liberal Democrats on the old boundaries, but Hunt would hold his on the new ones. Nearby, Kwasi Kwarteng would hold his seat on the old boundaries, but lose it to Labour on the new ones. The Conservatives would make up for that by bagging the new seat carved out of the blue around Charterhouse School.

By the way, I realised a few weeks ago that I had the wrong idea about how the boundary changes will be enforced. It no longer requires an Act of Parliament. Boris Johnson took care of that when he had the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 passed. Now all that is needed is an Order In Council, meaning the Privy Council. and you don't even have to assemble all 735 of them in the same room. It is accepted that all you need in practice is Charles III, Rishi Sunak and the Lord President of the Council sitting together and nodding in agreement. The latter used to be Jacob Rees-Mogg in the days of yore, and now it's Starfleet Admiral Mordaunt. Which means you don't have to factor in the parliamentary schedule, and the final proposals can be approved at any time now. Then, according to the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act, all Rishi Sunak needs is a Royal Proclamation of dissolution and the snap general happens 25 working days later. Which, by convention, is actually the first Thursday after 25 working days have passed. In practice, Rishi Sunak would certainly delay dissolution until after the Conference Holiday, and the election could happen as early as four weeks later, on the 16th or the 23rd of November. Which will happen if Rishi convinces himself that he is definitely out of fucking road, and the humane thing to do is to end his MPs' ordeal, and face the inevitable, before Christmas. Mark my words.

The look we’re going for should be solemn respect. You know, like blokes modelling underpants.

(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It, 2012)

One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts.

(C.S. Lewis)

The seventh anniversary of Brexit came and went without much fanfare, but the British public are certainly feeling a seven-year itch. Or wish this all has been a seven-year long Season Nine of Dallas, that they will soon wake up, remind themselves not to forget to vote, and do it all over again. The only problem with these 'if I could do it all over again' scenarios is that, if you could actually do it all over again, you would do it the exact same way. Because information and buyer's remorse don't travel back in time, so you would be in the exact same state of mind and watch the exact same morning news you had the first time aboot, so you would vote the exact same way, and end up in the exact same barrel of shit. But we are of course entitled to buyer's remorse, something YouGov have been tracking for quite a long tome now. And found that the British public are more and more convinced that Brexit was the wrong thing to do. Hindsight is always 20/20, and The Hipstershire Gazette has the best explanation of all anyway. Basil Fawlty did it. No shit, Sherlock.

So a majority now think Brexit was the wrong choice, but that is just a very generic feeling, and we certainly need to elaborate on that. So YouGov drilled a wee smitch deeper into the public's brain, just in time for the seventh anniversary. They simply asked their panel if they feel Brexit is more of a success of more of a failure, and the results are unequivocal. Probably because the panel disregarded the ambiguous 'more of' part of the qualifier and answered the straight 'success vs failure' question. More than two thirds of Brits now think that Brexit is a failure, including three quarters of Scots, Nigel Farage and two in five Leave voters. When even those who supported it disown it and concede that it was a fucking failure, surely the whole of the UK should sit back, take a deep breath and reframe the narrative. But any such move can't be expected from either Labour or the Conservatives. Not that I expected it from the Conservatives. But it's sad to see Labour tiptoeing on eggshells around the bush, like they do with every allegedly 'controversial' issue. Even when there is a massively one-sided consensus in public opinion, that makes the issue as uncontroversial as can be. And even when there is factual evidence of the benefits brought by membership of EU programs in various areas.

The next logical question would have been to ask the 10% who think Brexit is a success to mention practical and easily verifiable examples that it is. Like the £350m added weekly to the NHS budget, or summat. In a way, it's probably better they didn't ask, as even Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage can't tell a Brexit Success Story that they haven't completely made up. Instead, YouGov chose to ask the 69% who think Brexit is a failure how they think it ended that way. Was it a total fucking trainwreck waiting to happen right from the start, or did someone sabotage an otherwise very smart path to the sunlit uplands? Quite amazingly, there are still one third of these two thirds who think that Brexit had all it needed to be a success. That is almost a quarter of the British public thinking that successive governments were so shit at it that they made it fail. Oddly there is some truth in that when you look at the big picture. It was a fucking shit idea from the start, so shit that nobody could figure out how to make it non-shit. On that we can agree.

I'm going to take you though some maths now, as Rishi Sunak would love. Or possibly not, in this very specific case. Let's get back to the raw numbers from the poll, with the dontknows still counted. 37% of Leave voters say Brexit was a failure. OK? Now 14% of these 37% also say it was always going to be a fucking failure. Still following? Simple maths here, that's 5.18% of Leave voters entertaining these thoughts, or 2.69% of votes cast at the referendum. You have to wonder why the fuck they voted for it if they thought it was going to crash no matter what. Or is it just a very British case of Vergangenheitsbewältigung? Don't get your knickers in a twist though, Leave won by 3.78%, so would still have had it, even if those Mad Leavers had listened to their brains instead of Boris Johnson talking out of his arse. And, even with just a 1% margin of victory, David Cameron would still have found the result binding, as it was never really about the EU, but about appeasing the nutters within the Conservative Party. So, this wee gem from the poll doesn't prove much, except as an estimate of how many certifiable morons there are in the UK.

In my experience, once the chaos tips into forever, you’ve got nothing. And we’re very close to forever.

(Jane Davis, House Of Cards: Chapter 69, 2018)

Moments like this require someone who will act. Who will do the unpleasant thing, the necessary thing.

(Douglas Stamper, House Of Cards: Chapter 73, 2018)

When the good people of Britain are done moaning about how shit their lives have become since Brexit, there is another option that pollsters relentlessly put on the table. Rejoining the European Union. This has always been a favourite of the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and a few within Labour. Interestingly, the Alba Party are arguing that it's not the only available option, and that an Independent Scotland should consider joining EFTA instead. This is all wishful thinking admittedly, as a referendum on rejoining the EU is even less likely than a second referendum on Scottish Independence. But that does not deter pollsters, who routinely include a question about hypothetical voting intentions at such a referendum. Redfield & Wilton even dedicated a whole standalone poll to it, and here is what they found.

These are the panel's raw spontaneous answers, weighted on the usual demographics, but not factoring in the likelihood to vote if the hypothetical referendum ever happened. The "won't vote" category is a wee smitch misleading, as it reflects only the proportion of people who said they would definitely not vote. Only 58%, at the other end of the spectrum, said they were certain to vote. The rest are the different nuances of 'mebbes aye, mebbes naw', and the breakdown of likelihoods to vote hints that the turnout at a Rejoin Referendum would probably be around 70 to 75%. Now let's shift to the poll's final voting intentions result. That's what you get when undecideds are removed and the whole dataset is weighted on likelihood to vote. Which delivers a clear verdict, but also some surprises. Like the differences between nations being totally erased, when they were quite visible in 2016. But the obvious generation divide remains pretty much the same.

The 6-to-4 split in favour of rejoining is not a one-off in this poll only. It does fit the general trend found by other pollsters who regularly ask the question, like Deltapoll and Omnisis. All polls point to a very simple and straightforward conclusion. If there was a Rejoin Referendum this year, Rejoin would win by a massively bigger margin than Leave in 2016. This has not always been the case. Stay Out would have won in 2019 and 2020, and it would have been a close call in 2021 and early 2022. The 3-2 split we have now has been a constant for a year or so, and what little changes there are from one poll to the other look more like random sampling variations than hints the public are changing their mind. Even the prospect of hypothetically joining the Euro, which is tested regularly by Omnisis, is no longer a boogeymanish repellent. It just reduces the gap, doesn't turn the result around. As you already know, I'm not advocating we go down that road, either as part of the UK or as an independent nation. But the days of British exceptionalism and isolationism are clearly over. Only the SW1 Establishment haven't seen it yet.

Isolation is the mother of renewal. We shall retreat to go forward.

(Stewart Pearson, The Thick Of It, 2012)

Why can’t the religions all learn to live together in peace, like they do in Ireland?

(Philomena Cunk, Cunk On Earth: Faith/Off, 2022)

There are a few peculiarities in Northern Ireland's electoral law, compared to Scotland and Wales. Double-jobbing is illegal, there is no provision for the Assembly to dissolve itself, which is why the English Government has to do it for them, and a snap election resets the clock. The new Assembly serves a full five-year term, unlike Scotland and Wales where a snap election covers only the remainder of the original term. So elections in Northern Ireland are now out of sync with the other Celtic Nations, since the emergency snap election held in 2017. There is now a strong possibility that this will happen again soon, with a snap Assembly election called early next year. Which has even odds of happening after the incoming snap general, which has never been polled in Northern Ireland, or before it. The Belfast-based pollster Lucid Talk and the Institute for Irish Studies of the University of Liverpool have surveyed voting intentions for the next Assembly election, and there are some interesting things to decode from that polling.

There is an interesting point in this sequence of polls between last year's Assembly election and this year's local elections. The locals were described as a major upset after the results were known, because they changed the landscape quite radically from what the previous locals had delivered four years ago. But they were actually not much different from the results of the Assembly election one year ago, or the polls conducted in between. They don't imply another wave of change, but quite the opposite, stability within a political landscape that has already changed, but slowly enough or long ago enough that most failed to notice. The sequence of Assembly elections results, in term of seats per party, does not say directly when the tipping point was reached. But it surely hints that it was some time between the 2019 general election, which saw the re-emergence of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland after years of absence from Commons, and the 2022 Assembly election, which propelled the Alliance Party to third party, overtaking the UUP and the SDLP. In addition, I have extrapolated the plausible outcome of the next Assembly election, from a mix of the most recent polls and the local elections' results.

My prediction of the allocation of seats in the next Assembly is more of a reconstruction than a projection. Because the Single Transferable Vote (STV) used for that election is anything but purely proportional, despite being promoted as such. Scots know that from hard experience as it is the same system used in our Council elections, and we have witnessed first-hand the amount of tactical voting it not just allows, but actually encourages. Interestingly, the main beneficiary of tactical voting is the Alliance Party, bagging four more seats in 2017 than strict proportionality would have delivered. Allowing for that, and the nevertheless predominantly proportional nature of STV, my best estimate is that the next Assembly election will not deliver earthquaking results. Which will not solve any of the current problems, as the DUP throwing a tantrum about Brexit is just a facade. Their real issue is having to accept playing second fiddle in the power-sharing agreement to a stronger Sinn Féin, and serving under a Sinn Féin First Minister. And nobody can solve that for them, unless the UK Government starts thinking outside the box of the Good Friday Agreement, which neither the Conservatives nor Labour are willing to consider as it would be tantamount to unleashing a herd of feral cats from a can of worms.

Be under no illusions. A lot may be changing, but some things will stay the same.

(Rosamund Painswick, Downton Abbey, 2013)

We have to live on the borders between praiseworthy pragmatism and villainous expediency.

(Edward B.)

It's an odd feeling to realise that nearly nine years have passed since the Independence Referendum. Sometimes if feels like yesterday, sometimes like really a generation ago. And it's sad that the SNP's mini-conference in Dundee delivered exactly what the realists among us expected. Jack shit. The main reason was certainly that it wasn't convened to make decisions, which will have to wait until the regular conference in October. What the SNP need right now is some critical reassessment of their recent past. After all, Labour and the Conservatives have done it... err... wait... checks notes... naw, they fucking haven't. But that's not an excuse for the SNP to not do it, especially as they urgently need to reframe their relationship with the other components of the wider Yes Movement. Yes voting intentions have indeed progressed recently, no thanks to the SNP for that, but the future is not carved in the Stone of Destiny. Far from that, and it surely can't be otherwise when the Scottish Government's most obvious strategy is a total lack of strategy.

The snapshot of IndyRef voting, based on the rolling average of all polls conducted over the last six weeks, says we're still stuck on a 48-52 situation, which is good only because it could be worse. But we can't keep on ignoring the reality that this boils down to a one-vote referendum, as I have said again and again. The One At Number Ten, whoever that is after the snap general, has already cast his vote and it's a No. What do polls mean if there never is a referendum? Bagging 60% Yes in polls, even for ten years straight, means fuck all, and we should stop entertaining the delusion that is does. In that context, the United Nations Option starts making sense. Relying on Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, the one about self-determination. You don't have to prove colonialism or oppression or whatthefuckever. You don't even have to argue it, it's not mentioned in the article. It's a big tent principle, no ifs and not buts. Could it be more worth a shot than a wild Section 30 chase?

The SNP's pseudo-conference was actually worse than delivering jack shit, it delivered bullshit. I'm not sure even Humza Yousaf can make heads or tails of what Humza Yousaf said. There was absolutely nothing in there, except painting himself in the corner of a lose-lose situation. No matter what the results of the snap general are in Scotland, and every poll says they will be disastrous for the SNP, there will be no irresistible force applied on an unmovable object. Alex Salmond squeezed the Edinburgh Agreement out of David Cameron, and on his own terms, only because Call-Me-Dave was scared shitless by the results of the 2011 Scottish Parliament election and the prospect of a perpetually rebellious nation taking the piss out of Westminster, and acting as if we were already independent. What is left of that now? Don't look at me for an answer. Look at the voters who are ready to resurrect Labour in Scotland, because it's the surest way to get rid of the Conservatives in Westminster. When independence is no longer your top priority, don't feign surprise that it is not the voters' either.

Time is a leash on the dog of ideas. Let's go truffling in the forest of knowledge.

(Stewart Pearson, The Thick Of It, 2012)

Scotland does not need a referendum on independence. She just needs to send a majority

of nationalist MPs to Westminster to have a mandate for independence.

(Margaret Thatcher)

The Conservatives are highly unlikely to be in charge in Westminster after the snap general. But if they were, they would surely find huge merit to this proverbial quote by Margaret Thatcher. Since the 2005 election, when Scotland saw new boundaries enforced one election ahead of the rest of the UK, the bar was set at 30 seats. Which the SNP cleared three times out of five, and the Tories were adamant to tell us that Thatcher's words were taken out of context and that she was being misunderstood. They weren't and she wasn't, but what the fuck? The incoming new boundaries will lower the bar to 39. Which doesn't make it easier for the SNP to clear it, even if the new boundaries show hints of gerrymandering to protect as many SNP seats as possible, while minimising the potential for Labour gains. We now have the final version of the new boundaries, and the two seats lost overall are still lost by the Liberal Democrats, as they were in the initial and revised proposals, while the three other parties keep the same number of seats, if not exactly the same seats. The gory details of the frankensteinisation are on the Boundary Commission for Scotland's site, with lots of maps to help you find out who your MP is now, for the few months left before the snap general.

The Boundary Commission have changed the names of some of the new constituencies. Which serves no real purpose, except perhaps confusing John Nicolson's chauffeur about which coordinates he has to enter into the GPS to get the boss to his hustings. But the main attraction is elsewhere, as the Commission couldn't help themselves and indulged in some ward-swapping to play mind fuck with the Glasgow SNP again. Glasgow still loses one seat, and the post-2005 Glasgow Central is again pizza-sliced to make it happen. But this time the biggest slice does not go into the new Glasgow North, but into the new caterpillarish Glasgow East. Which means Alison Thewliss and David Linden are pitted against each other, and the SNP no longer have an oven-ready way to dispose of Patrick Grady. It's actually The Trouble With Patrick all over again. The SNP may have thought the Boundary Commission had solved the Grady situation for them, but now they have kicked a last minute curveball straight back into the SNP's court and there is no going back. They will have to deal with it, and it will be another fun moment.

I have become more and more like a sucked orange, and I am going to get out of it and go to Scotland.

(George Orwell)

From now on it’s a proper fight. It’s a pub fight, Motherwell Rules. And you are gonna get a pint glass

in your fucking eye, and a pool cue up your arse, and another pool cue in your other fucking eye.

(Jamie McDonald, The Thick Of It: Spinners And Losers, 2007)

We have two more Full Scottish polls to digest now, one from Survation and one from Redfield & Wilton. I have included their findings about an hypothetical IndyRef already two paragraphs up, so let's see what they have to say about the incoming snap general in Scotland. It confirms, and even accentuates, the trends seen in Full Scottish polls conducted since January 2020. Our last two Full Scottish polls even make it worse, as the updated trends show the SNP and Labour still on a collision course, and now closing on each other. It's HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown the minute before Admiral Tryon ordered full speed astern. Or the Titanic and the iceberg at 23:35 on 14 April 1912, soon the trajectories will cross and one will not survive. Outwith the naval analogies, it means we're getting ever closer to the tipping point where Labour bag more seats than the SNP on fewer votes. Which, if you remember the earlier episodes, happens when the SNP's lead shrinks to 2%. And now we have two polls saying it's already down to 3%.

The seat projections from both polls, on both the soon-to-be-previous and the soon-to-be-current boundaries, show there is no way the SNP can get that majority of Scottish seats now. Even the SNP Protection Scheme embedded in the new boundaries by the Boundary Commission has little effects on such numbers. It is even slightly less effective on the final version of the new boundaries than it was on the initial and revised proposals. But the Conservative Protection Mechanism also embedded in the new boundaries works even better now. On those new boundaries, which are the only ones that matter now as they're the ones on which the incoming snap general will be fought, the Redfield & Wilton poll says that the Conservatives would not just hold their current six notional seats, but also snatch three more from the SNP. But that's an extreme situation that can only happen if you buy the possibility of a strong Conservative resilience in Scotland, which I don't despite that one poll. And, in case you're desperate to know, the three casualties would be Kirsten Oswald in East Renfrewshire, Alyn Smith in Stirling and Strathallan, Pete Wishart in Perth and Kinross-shire.

In that context, it's fucking hilarious that the Scottish Affairs Committee's top concern is increasing the number of flights between Scotland and London, including same-day returns. Ever heard of Zoom, mates? I'm wondering now if Brian Hurren would be a better MP than Pete Wishart. Runrig fans will get that one. This is quite a symptom of the fin de règne atmosphere that's prevalent on the higher rungs of the SNP's food chain these days. Fucking fiddling while fucking Rome is fucking burning, Malcolm Tucker would say. I don't know who is really responsible for all that, and I honestly don't fucking care. In a way, we're probably all collectively guilty, for having believed in Nicola Sturgeon for far too long, even when warning lights started flashing all across the horizon. I still share Alex Salmond's view that the dream shall never die, but it's sure going to go into hibernation for a fucking long time now.

Maybe you should take a bit of time off, maybe tour the Highland distilleries, or whatever it is your people do.

(Oliver Reeder, The Thick Of It, 2012)

This government is maimed, but it can't be shamed. It will be fucked. Let's get going.

(Cal Richards, The Thick Of It, 2009)

The Holyrood parts of the last two Full Scottish polls confirm that the same trends have materialised here as in the Westminster voting intentions. Only there are two votes here, so the SNP are on a collision course with Labour twice, and it will hurt twice as much. Interestingly, the current downward spiral started in late December 2022, just after the Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRR). The everlasting mystery here is why people think it is a good idea to switch to Labour, who also supported the bill, and even whipped their MSPs to support it. Then the plausible underlying logic has nothing to do with the GRR, but a lot to do with the evolution of the Westminster vote. If you think that boosting Labour's expected majority in Commons is the key issue, it also makes sense that you would think that having a Labour government in both London and Edinburgh is the way to go. Though it will be summat of a ticking time-bomb, as more and more of their Scottish voters will also support Scottish Independence. Then Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar will only have the SuperFederal DevoMax card left to play. Good luck with that, mates.

Of course these trends paint quite an odd picture, as everything in Scotland that ends up totally fucked, from the Edinburgh Trams to the GRR Bill, has everybody's greasy fingerprints all over it, except the Conservatives'. And yet polls regularly have them suffering the worst humiliation in the ballot box, bar the SNP's. And more often than not the absolute worst, bar none. Mind you, I'm not advocating giving the Conservatives a pity vote here, after all they can only blame themselves for the bottomless pit of shit they have fallen into. Just saying there is some variant of poetic injustice in seeing all others emerging from their own shit pit smelling like roses. What we get from the earliest of our two new Full Scottish, the one from Survation, is quite similar to where we left last time with the Panelbase poll conducted in mid-June. So there is indeed continuity in this polling, an incremental descent into the abyss for the SNP.

So Survation tells us there would be a 13-seat majority for the Unionist parties in 2026. It doesn't mean there would be a Unionist coalition government. They're thick as thieves only so long as needed to vote tactically for each other, not for the length of a full term. Now, if you do the maths, which is pretty basic here as all you need is one addition, the only alternative option with a majority of seats is an SNP-Lab coalition. Don't raise your eyebrows, weirder things have happened in other times. But we're fortunate that the most recent of our Full Scottish, the one from Redfield & Wilton, offers unprecedented pathways for speculation. It's much worse than Survation, predicting a 33-seat majority for the Unionist parties. But now we have two options, rather than just one, that would not involve the Conservatives in government. The already mentioned SNP-Lab coalition, and the more exciting new option, a Lab-Lib-Green coalition. Admittedly, that would deliver a minority coalition, but probably not as fragile as you might think. Or else nobody anywhere in the Scottish political spectrum would have jumped on it like a cheetah on crack snatching a gazelle by the neck.

It's quite fascinating, and quite revealing, that Wee Ross Greer's latest ramblings found their way to The Herald's frontpage in a matter of hours after the Redfield & Wilton poll, and its implied fallout, were digested by everyone within the Scottish metropolitan elite. The column spells out the same alternative scenarios as me, or everyone with two functioning brain cells, with their numbers of projected seats based on uniform national swing. It creates quite an embarrassing situation for the Yellow-Green Axis, and SNP HQ should definitely ask their BFFs Patrick and Lorna to clarify if this is official Scottish Greens policy, or just Ross having had one too many. Of course, Labour have the oven-ready answer to this, which is obviously not to vociferously reject holding a second IndyRef. Quite the opposite, in fact. Do what David Cameron did when he conceded the referendum on Alternative Voting to the Liberal Democrats. Make it happen, actively campaign against it, make sure it fails. After all, all that Wee Ross demands to switch sides is holding the referendum, nothing more. Call his bluff then, Anas, we're watching.

When you bring yourself down before someone else can, you control the way it happens.

(Frank Underwood, House Of Cards: Chapter 65, 2017)

Trains are one of those places where alcohol is acceptable at any time of day, like a casino or Cardiff.

(John Duggan, The Thick Of It, 2012)

Wales, like London, has seen Labour's grip loosen in recent months, as the trends of Senedd voting intentions show. There have been fewer Senedd polls than Holyrood polls since the last elections, so fewer opportunities to identify any specific poll as an outlier. But the same pollsters survey Wales, Scotland and Britain at large, so I'm inclined to take Full Welsh polls at face value, just like Full Scottish polls. Especially when the trends of Senedd voting intentions are consistent with those of Westminster voting intentions.

The most recent snapshot is Redfield & Wilton's last Full Welsh poll. Admittedly it is a month old, so may not reflect this week's public opinion. But it's the only one we have until YouGov field another one of their own, which might not happen until August, or September if they take a long Swansea Beach Break. The seat projection, based on the current electoral law and boundaries for the constituencies and regions, is not as good for Labour and Plaid Cymru as what we had in previous polls. It would be a net loss of one seat for Labour and three for Plaid Cymru, though a Lab-Plaid alliance would still enjoy an 18-seat majority. The Conservatives would also lose two seats, and the beneficiaries would be the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, gaining three seats each.

This projection is already obsolete, as the electoral law will change ahead of the next Senedd election. The basic principles are known, but a detailed Election Bill won't be written and tabled in Senedd until next year. We know for sure that the next members of the Senedd will be elected on proportional representation from sixteen six-member constituencies created by the pairing of the 32 Westminster constituencies established by the 2023 Boundary Review. We will know only after the snap general which of the Commons constituencies are paired, but we can still extrapolate from the regional crosstabs of current polls, assuming the same voting patterns will be observed a year out in the new constituencies. Here's what the simulation says, based on the constituency voting intentions and the regional list voting intentions of the Redfield & Wilton Full Welsh, and the average of both. The counter-intuitive parts of this, like Labour bagging a majority of seats on a small plurality of votes, are entirely the result of the way the new electoral law would de facto squeeze the least performing parties out of the allocation of seats, and massively favour the three or four left contending.

This is only an approximation, as we don't know the boundaries of the new multi-member constituencies. We would also need crosstabs of voting intentions adapted to the new layout of the constituencies, instead of the historic five regions. If some of the seat projections look counter-intuitive, remember that the D'Hondt method always favours the largest party, so they don't need a majority of votes to bag a majority of seats. A small number of seats per constituency amplifies that, as it creates a de facto high threshold for representation even when none is specified in the law. Specifically in Wales, voting intentions for the four larger parties are very unevenly distributed, and the mechanics of the method disproportionately favour those with the least uneven distribution, Labour. Even with unimpressive voting intentions, Labour could thusly come close to a majority of seats, and plausibly have a choice of coalition partner between the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru. My tenner is on them choosing Plaid Cymru.

I have found, when dealing with foreigners, if one speaks loudly and slowly, they’ll bend to your will.

(Charles Carson, Downton Abbey: A New Era, 2022)

This city of York will be a great city! The centre of an empire! Our empire!

That will stretch from here to Kattegat, from Ireland to Frankia, from Scotland to the steppes of Rus!

(Harald Finehair, Vikings: The Buddha, 2018)

According to The Hipstershire Gazette, the Labour Party are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the incoming by-election in Selby and Ainsty, on the outskirts of the City of York. They're spinning it as part of the Reconquista Del Norte, boldly going where no Labour MP has been seen before. Which is a shameless rewriting of history. Of course, the current and soon to be quartered constituency has been in Conservative hands since 2010. But its predecessor seat, called just Selby and covering pretty much the same area, was Labour's from 1997 to 2010. Then, you shouldn't let mere facts get in the way of the narrative that this is a nearly impossible seat to win, especially when your excuse, in case of a defeat, is that the constituency is so fucking huge. It's about 850 square kilometres actually, or 1/15th the size of the soon-to-be-abolished Ross, Skye and Lochaber. That is fucking huge. Anyway, the one poll conducted there, by J.L. Partners, says that Labour should feel more relaxed about their prospects in that one.

When you compare this to Labour's campaign narrative, as reported by The Hipstershire Gazette, the one salient thing is that the Liberal Democrats are far from being within striking distance of Labour. They actually never were in the current configuration of the constituency, not even in 2010. So the local Labour should stop crying wolf, this is fucking Yorkshire, not Somerset or Berkshire. There was even a Socialist in charge at fucking Downton Abbey, just on the other side of Harrogate. The poll conclusively says that any tactical voting there might be favours Labour, as the Liberal Democrats would lose like a third of their 2019 voters. The constituency may be older, wealthier, more white English and more middle-class than the Yorkshire average, voters still identify Labour as the best choice to get rid of the Tories right now. Interestingly, my model predicts something disturbingly similar to the poll, based on current polling. It says 42% Labour, 8% Liberal Democrats and 37% Conservatives. But that is in the absence of a Reform UK candidate, as there was none in 2019 and the model can't simulate something for which there is no underlying data. Factor in Reform UK on 8%, as in the poll, and we pretty much match bang on. Definitely a tenner on a Labour gain here.

Yorkshire, the county. You know, Yorkshire! Just keep going North till I tell you to stop.

(Cormoran Strike, Strike: Career Of Evil, 2018)

I just can’t quite believe this. I mean, this is the single most shocking thing I’ve seen in politics since the SDP.

(Glenn Cullen, The Thick Of It, 2009)

Nadine Dorries has vociferously resigned her seat in the House of Commons quite a while ago in the media. But in the real world, she is still the sitting MP for Mid Bedfordshire, even if the locals can't even remember the last time she showed up in the constituency. She deliberately failed to apply for one of the fake Crown jobs, that count as a resignation, before the Summer Break. And now she can't before Commons reconvene on the 4th of September. Just for the fun of having more "Conservatives lose by-election" headlines later in the year, and again making the case that Rishi Sunak is a fucking loser, unlike Nadine's idol Boris Johnson. I told you already that Nadine's game now was Throw The Election, but a newly released poll from Opinium hints that she will not even need to do that. The voters will take care of it anyway.

There are many amusing elements in that poll. Labour wouldn't even do cataclysmically better than at previous elections. Gaining the seat on 28% of the popular vote wouldn't even be a record, there's been worse before. But the game-changer here is a wildcard. Independent candidate Gareth Mackey, who is predicted to bag 19% of the vote. Mackey represents the Flitwick ward on Central Bedfordshire Council since 2019, a seat he quite ironically snatched from the Conservatives. He is serving as Chairman of the Council, a position similar to Presiding Officer, since the 2023 election when an alliance of Independents took over control from the Conservatives. The poll's crosstabs make it abundantly clear that he is not a fringe or niche candidate. He has appeal across the political spectrum and across generations, which probably reflects where the Independent vote at Council elections comes from. This by-election certainly has potential to be a crowd-pleaser later in the year. But let's not forget that it also reflects the Conservatives' continued lousy performance in the South of England. Which is quite significantly bad in East Anglia, where Bedfordshire is located.

I’m not sure “Vote Tory if you want the place where you live to look like Birmingham” is the

right slogan to shore up the Blue Wall.

(David Mitchell, The Guardian, 25 June 2023)

Understanding the working class is a qualification that is meaningless in terms of government.

(Charles Carson, Downton Abbey, 2014)

Last but not least, we have this by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, left vacant when Boris Johnson chose to spend more time with his donors, and also piss off Rishi Sunak by offering Labour an oven-ready gain in the already massively Red London. Kissing two turds with one scone, or summat. It has often been said that by-elections attract loonies, and this one is no exception with 17 candidates. Admittedly, when you look at the bigger picture, it's more a case of a local micro-climate. As in 'Boris attracts loonies', as there were already 12 candidates there at the snap general in 2019. Most of them thinking that having their picture taken with Boris while wearing strange costumes was worth losing their deposit. Can't fault them here. This race has already been polled once by Lord Ashcroft, who delivered as close a carbon copy of the 2019 result as possible without making it an actual carbon copy. And now we have a second poll, from J.L. Partners, that may be taken more seriously. Of all the loonies standing, I have singled out the Reclaim Party, fielding Lozza Fox himself, just for the fun of highlighting that he is predicted to attract 10% of Johnson's 2019 voters.

Seeing Labour predicted to win with an 8% lead is no surprise, in the current climate of massive Tory-bashing coming even from their own voters. Boris playing Throw The Election must have its reward, mustn't it? But I have a hunch that Labour's lead would be more spectacular if they had chosen another candidate, as theirs has obvious high repellent potential for floating voters and the older generations. Even his appeal for the TikTok generation is debatable, when you compare the crosstabs here with those from Selby and Ainsty. If I lived in Uxbridge, I would have really high expectations for the hustings. Especially the predictable clash between Lozza Fox and Danny Beales over the merits of virtue-signalling. Probably summat like the mashup of Alien vs Predator and Rise Of The Nutters, though who is the nuttiest nutter here is open to debate. But Keir Starmer surely sees something in Beales that I don't, or he wouldn't have parachuted him from Camden Council into a 'must watch' battleground constituency. It will also be fun to watch how Sly Keir handles the situation when Danny Boy proves to be as embarrassing an extremist as Lloyd Russell-Moyle or Nadia Whittome, or becomes what Jared O'Mara was to Jeremy Corbyn.

There’s no happiness without order. It’s a Nazi quote but nonetheless it stands the test of time.

(Philip Smith, The Thick Of It, 2012)

He’s impressive, in an evil way. Like those women at Crufts who make dogs dance on their hind legs.

(Ollie Reeder, The Thick Of It, 2009)

The Conservatives seem to have hit a bump in the road in their quest to unseat Sadiq Khan at London's next mayoral election. One of the candidates on their shortlist, and possibly the best one on it since they dumped Paul Scully, was facing accusations of groping, but he wouldn't let go, if you pardon the silly pun. But he finally gave up, leaving the London Tories with a level playing field of nondescript nobodies on the shorter list. Which does not make it necessarily easier for Sadiq Khan, as his own record is far from unblemished. And I'm not even talking about having public property repainted in the colours of an ideology the majority reject, including lesbians and gays who have been mugged of their symbols, history and fights. There are more serious issues, impacting Londoners' daily life, where Khan's record is not seen as satisfactory. Redfield & Wilton conducted a follow-up to their mayoral voting intentions poll I mentioned previously, and the first series of questions was about the people's assessment of Khan's actions in various domains.

These results are quite odd, which becomes more apparent if you consider the net ratings. Khan gets a stunning +28 on his overall job performance, whatever that actually means, but only a less stellar +10 on average when the poll digs deeper into individual topics. Obviously, a lot of Mayors, Ministers and MPs would kill for a net +10. But Khan gets only 43% satisfied on average, similar to his own voting intentions, and lower than Labour's voting intentions in London at the snap general. More strikingly, he gets a Net Zero on transport, and the way the ULEZ, which was actually Boris Johnson's idea of a good idea, was enforced surely played a part in that. Of course, Transport for London spending more energy on dazzle paint for buses and trains, than on making them run properly doesn't help either. Khan also bags a net -4, his only negative, on housing, which is obviously a major problem in the Imperial Capital, both because of the shortage of accommodation and prices skyrocketing as a result. These two issues alone will certainly have more weight on Election Day than any other tested in the poll. Redfield & Wilton then surveyed Londoners' feelings about Khan standing for a third term, and an hypothetical law enforcing term limits.

So we again have this very English response. People convincingly supporting two mutually exclusive and polar opposite options, and even more massively agreeing to a legal provision that would outlaw the very situation that is under our eyes right now. We want Sadiq to stand, but we don't want Sadiq to stand, and we want it to be illegal for him to stand. Fucking hell. Unfortunately, the poll does not include crosstabs by political affiliation, which might have explained the oddities here. But I have a hunch we would have found that Labour supporters are the most contradictory here. Redfield & Wilton concluded the poll with a question that should probably have come first, asking their panel who they think 'has the most power and responsibility with respect to London'. The choice being offered between The UK Government and the Mayor and Assembly. As you might expect, the results are quite unexpected, and in many ways quite illogical.

This line of questioning is a bit odd, as what you could call the 'devolution settlement' for London does not follow the lines that the question seems to imply. There are no shared powers between the central government and the Mayor in any domain. The London Assembly does not actually have any specific powers, as their mission is to scrutinise the Mayor's actions and vote on the budget and long-term strategies, not the day-to-day operational running of things. The poll also does not mention the Boroughs, that have wide-ranging powers similar to all Councils with unitary authority status all across the UK. Of course, the questions don't test the panel's knowledge, but their perception. But it's nevertheless quite a problem that their perception is overwhelmingly wrong. The lad who wrote the question probably anticipated that, and it was just a massive trap. Which worked. Of course I'm not advocating some sort of constitutional literacy test before allowing people to register to vote. Then, when you think of it...

I think we could use the carrot and stick approach. Take a carrot, stick it up his fucking arse.

(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It, 2009)

If you could truly see what the gods have in store for you, you would go down and dance naked on the beach.

(The Seer, Vikings: The Dead, 2015)

Next to the by-election in Mid Bedfordshire, the incoming electoral event that could determine the fate of Civilisation As We Know It is undoubtedly the snap general election in Spain. The most compelling evidence is that YouGov felt it was their duty to go there, poll it, and write an article about it. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez did not call this election from his own volition, but because his hand was forced after regional and local elections earlier this year, that proved disastrous for the PSOE and signaled the final demise of the radical left Podemos. These elections were also the final nail in the coffin for the centrist Ciudadanos, who lost pretty much all their earlier voters to the conservative Partido Popular (PP). In the aftermath of the local elections, Podemos dissolved, and their corner of the political spectrum is now occupied by the newly-formed Movimiento Sumar, technically an alliance of national and regional left-wing to radical left parties, still promoting broadly socialist policies, but without most of the 'authoritarian extremist woke' elements that discredited Podemos. The trends of voting intentions polling show this detoxification is working quite well, as Sumar are neck-and-neck with the far-right Vox as the third party in the popular vote.

The electoral law for the election of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Cortes Generales, is proportional representation based on provincial lists. Each province is allocated a number of seats proportionate to its population. The current range is 2 to 37 seats, which strongly tweaks the allocation seats towards the first party in 19 of the 50 provinces, that are entitled to 4 seats or fewer. The Senate, which is up for election on the same day, uses an abstruse system based on limited voting for individual candidates in multi-member constituencies that are not in proportion to the population, that I won't even try and explain in more comprehensible terms. Spanish pollsters also provide seat projections for the next Chamber of Deputies, which is the main focus of the campaign as the actual seat of parliamentary power in the country. I fully trust them on this, as I can't be arsed to even try and devise a Spanish Elections model of my own. Here is what the weighted average of the last six polls predicts for the popular vote and the allocation of seats, compared with the results of the previous election, held in November 2019.

The most likely result is a hung Chamber, with the PP emerging as the first party, but many seats short of the 176 needed for a majority. This raises the question of a possible alliance with Vox at the national level, and the aftermath of the regional elections held earlier this year might offer some hints. The PP held or gained a majority of seats in two provinces, so the point of an alliance with Vox was moot. The local branches of the PP have rejected such an alliance in four of the six regions where the PP came out first without a majority of seats, and have agreed to an alliance in the other two. There is indeed a lot of resistance to a parliamentary alliance with the far-right within the PP, but 'doing the right thing' may well die when faced with basic maths and political expediency. Unlike the PSOE, the PP can't rely on case-by-case support from the two main regional parties, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and Junts per Catalunya, as both support Catalan Independence, and other minor parties just can't offer enough seats for a majority or even a credible minority government. A deal with the far-right might thusly become unavoidable. Interestingly, one of the keys might be the war in Ukraine. Unlike most far-right parties in Western Europe, Vox are strongly pro-Ukrainian and support all kinds of aid, including the delivery of advanced weapon systems. The PP may well need their votes on that issue, so the aftermath of the election, and especially the exact terms of an alliance, will be interesting to watch.

Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked.

(Warren Buffett)

For a long time, Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government.

And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 24 June 2023)

Strange things always happen around the Summer Solstice, and this year in Russia was no exception. First it was Prigozhin, and then it was Prigozhout. The revolution was not televised, and ended in a lousy cliffhanger from a one-season Netflix series anyway. Three weeks after the event, I am still not entirely clear about what actually happened. Was it real or was it some pre-arranged game of smoke and mirrors between Putin and Prigozhin? I guess we will never know for sure but, whatever it was, it has exposed weaknesses and rifts within the Russian political and military establishment, that can only help Ukraine in the long run. Putin's only credible response is Stalin-like purges, starting at the highest level, and we know these almost fatally hurt the Soviet Union's military capability to resist the German invasion in 1941. The fallout of these events is also likely to influence the British public's perception of who is having the upper hand in the war. I have never used it before, but YouGov have been tracking just that for more than a year now, and here is what they found.

The fluctuations in the public's assessment follow quite closely the way events unfolded since the start of Russia's criminal aggression against Ukraine. But the most interesting part is at the end, the two bars that show the results YouGov got just before and just after the failed coup. Of course, there is no massive swing, but the coup certainly weakened Russia's standing. We can only hope that a sense of weakness, or just loss of faith in the official narrative, will also influence Russian public opinion. Polls conducted in Russia, so long as we stipulate they are summat credible, have recently shown a shift away from supporting peace talks with Ukraine, and towards continuing the 'special military operation'. Data up to and including May 2023 are taken from polls fielded by the Levada Center. The figures for June are from a poll by Russian Field, that offered only two umbrella options. Bear in mind though that these options have a different meaning in Russia to that in the civilised world. To them, 'peace talks' means freezing the frontline and keeping territories they have taken by aggression. While 'continuing the operation' means fulfilling the original goals and removing Ukraine from the map.

The Russian pollsters, with all the usual caveats, have also tested the public's assessment of the success, or lack thereof, of the 'special military operation'. Data here come from Russian Field for April and June 2023, and the Levada Center for the other months. There is a double layer of caveats, as we have a wee problem with the exact definition of 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' in this specific case. It is quite basic common sense that success or failure can only be determined in relation to the stated goals. Which is where we hit the wall, as Putin's goals have changed vastly over time, because he realised he was failing. First it was about overthrowing the Ukrainian government. Miss. Then about demilitarising Ukraine. Miss. Then it was about exorcising gay satanists, or whatthefuckever. The narrative had to change, so Putin could still induce the delusion that the whole thing had always been a success, and the polls show it mostly works. But I genuinely don't know what Putin's real goals are this week, other than holding the occupied territories in Eastern Ukraine, that have been subjected to intense coerced Russification. If that's that, it does look like a temporary success, and hardly anything more.

I was also amused by the Kremlin-bribed trolls huffing and puffing about Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying that there will be no elections in Ukraine so long as the war lasts and the country is under martial law. For fuck's sake, there were no elections in the UK during World War One and World War Two. One Parliament sat for eight years and another for ten years. The government was no less democratic, as circumstances permitted, and no less legitimate. And, before you raise that point, the reason the United States did have elections during World War Two is that the whole electoral process is enshrined in their Constitution, and a state of war does not suspend the Constitution. Of course, having the frontlines thousands of miles away on the far side of two oceans also helped. Make no mistake. Prigozhin may no longer have a dog of his own on this flight, but his troll farms are still in full working order. Odds are they have been taken over by the FSB and will go on pouring fake news and propaganda all over the airwaves. Putin still needs every wee smitch of it.

Emmanuel Macron sponsors attacks and kidnappings in his own country with his strong faith in Satan,

but we will make him eat from the trough of pigs and dogs.

(Metropolitan Nikolai Aleksandrovich Olhovsky, 21 June 2023)

Russia cannot be allowed to win because it will continue to advance and that will support its imperialism.

It is like a wild beast that will eat a human being. If a wild beast eats a human being, it is usually said that

it should be hunted down and shot because it is used to eating human flesh, the same with Russia.

(Andrzej Duda)

In between episodes of the Wagner serial, that makes Succession look like and Enid Blyton novel, there was further concern about the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, fueled by Volodymyr Zelenskyy's warnings that Russia was making preparations for an 'accident' there. We will probably never know what actually happened, or might have happened. I'm not even sure that any inspection by the IAEA will find anything conclusive, one way of the other, as the Russians have had time to remove any incriminating evidence, if there was any. I don't know if Zelenskyy lied, or if he had genuine intelligence to back his claims, and I honestly don't give a fucking shit. What matters is that he reminded us that Russia is a rogue terrorist state that will stop at nothing, a massive criminal organisation that prefers scorched earth policy to admitting failure. If the result of Zelenskyy's accusations was indeed China, India, and possibly Brazil too, putting pressure on Putin to not do anything fucking stupid, as Mossad allegedly found out, then so be it. In the meanwhile, YouGov's continued polling proves that the British public still have a keen interest in the outcome of the war.

The question's actual wording is "How much, if at all, do you care who wins in the war between Russia and Ukraine?" And Brits do care, though there is a clear generational divide here, and we know what the subliminal message is here. We do want Ukraine to prevail, with a level of support that has not vacillated after sixteen months of inconclusive fighting. This is a good thing, as it seems we need to put pressure on our own government too, so they act more swiftly on delivering on their promises. Like the training of Ukrainian pilots to NATO standards, which was announced in February, and will start in earnest only in August. The MoD surely has a perfectly good explanation for the six-months delay, it usually is that 'logistics did it', but it surely leaves the public dissatisfied. The UK government can't be accused of procrastinating in the same way the Biden Administration has constantly done, but there is a strong feeling that more could be done. YouGov also regularly ask their panel if they feel the West has done enough to "prevent the Russians from winning the war in Ukraine". Their wording, not mine. In the most recent iteration, half of the panel say that we haven't.

This is a British poll surveying the British public, so it's safe to assume the implied criticism is aimed at our very own government, not at the mythical Global West in general. What is happening in Ukraine right now is clear evidence that we need to increase our support at a very critical moment. The much-awaited counter-offensive is stalling in many parts of the front, because Ukraine lacks some key items like advanced fighter planes. If this had been done before, the United States would not have to choose expediency over ethics, and allow the delivery of morally objectionable cluster ammunition. In this context, I am puzzled by Rishi Sunak's statement that the UK will not deliver cluster ammunition to Ukraine. The UK has signed and ratified the Convention On Cluster Munitions, so we are not supposed to have any and there is no need to say loudly we won't give them away. Or is there something we haven't been told? But military aid is not the sole weapon at our disposal. The time has come to ramp up the sanctions against Russia, and all those who are aiding and abetting the Putinist Deep State. In the last instalment of their Ukraine trackers, YouGov offered their panel the choice between two options, either maintaining the current level of sanctions, or increasing it. And the panel support both, as the difference between the levels of support is small enough to be statistically insignificant.

It's reassuring to see another confirmation that the British public don't fall for the Kremlin-backed narrative that sanctions are not working. By the way, it will be interesting to see what becomes of that narrative in the next few weeks, as it was mostly propelled by Yevgeny Prigozhin's troll farm and bots. The perpetuation of this line of propaganda would be a clear sign that the FSB have indeed taken over control of the Wagner Group's remains. But the British public know by now that this is one of the rare occurrences where Sir Humphrey Appleby was right. These things take time. We need to exert more pressure on Russia by all means necessary. We cannot just rely on China and India demanding even lower prices for their gas and oil supply. Or China asking for summat substantial in return for supplying Russia with the microchips they need for their more sophisticated weapons. A step worth considering would be to extend the scope of asset forfeiture legislation in the UK, on similar lines to the USA, so that Russian sovereign and private assets could be seized and not just frozen, without the threat of long and costly legal action. Rishi Sunak has hopefully found a way to do summat approaching that, though less radical, and direct the seized assets to funding the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine. If this works quickly and as intended, it's a win-win, for Ukraine and for the British taxpayers who won't have to foot the bill, and it will quash the 'Britain First' rhetoric peddled by the Putin-appeasers.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.

(Winston Churchill)

Jeremy's Den

11/07/2023

Not A Shadow Of A Doubt

We Must Be Dreaming