Jeremy's Den: All Rishi Needs Is A Miracle

It’s about the existential pain of living with the consciousness of death and how it defines us as human beings.
(Cristobal Rios, Star Trek: Picard, 2020)

That’s not a conversation killer at all.

I totally want to talk about the existential pain of living with the consciousness of death.
(Agnes Jurati, Star Trek: Picard, 2020)

Remember to click on the images, for a larger and easier-to-read version.

It's a weird wild world indeed, in which a BBC presenter becomes the ideal dead cat, distracting the oiks from news items they would never have noticed anyway, because only the metropolitan punditariat though these news mattered. And, if you think I'm talking in riddles here, you just have never seen me when I actually do. In what passes for the real world, but might as well be a subplot of the second season of Star Trek: Picard, the trends of voting intentions polls for the incoming Sunak Debacle show no conclusive sign of turning again against Labour. Which you might have guessed from me calling it a debacle for the other side. But you never know what may come next, with both parties looking like accidents waiting to happen. Worse accidents than those that have already happened, that is. Something of an industrial mushroom cloud magnitude, or a massive binfire about parcels to Northern Ireland. For the moment, though, the electorate are still massively in favour of the Labour Party, despite a wee slump that benefits the Liberal Democrats, and even longtime Conservative MPs have made their peace with the certainty that no miracle will happen to save them.

But the last announcements from both sides of the Chamber are quite amazing. The first massive own goal was of course Keir Starmer's surprise announcement that his government would keep George Osborne's child benefits cap. It was awful policy when Osborne enforced it, and we know now he had to strongarm some of his colleagues in the Cabinet, who rightly thought it was an awful policy. It's even more awful six years on, when we are all aware of the consequences, and a few Labour MPs and MSPs have quite rightly spoken against Starmer's announcement. The worrying part, for Labour in Scotland, is Anas Sarwar jumping to Starmer's side with the lamest possible excuse, that reeks of neo-liberalism. When he should realise that this is a vote-killer for many Scottish voters, with the potential to derail Labour gains in the less affluent constituencies of the Central Belt. Just think Rutherglen and Hamilton West. Starmer is indeed lucky that Rishi Sunak proved to be even more clueless and out of touch than him. So now we have the sitting Prime Minister pledging to renege on his own party's Net Zero pledges, and thinking it's the oven-ready recipe for an election victory. YouGov were quick to disprove this, simply asking their panel which level of support they offer to Net Zero policies.

The public's verdict here is one-sided and unequivocal. If you discount undecideds, supporters of Net Zero outnumber opponents 4-to-1. Conservative voters support it 2-to-1, which is something Sunak might not have considered before jumping into the deep end of climate denial. Even Scots are massively in favour, despite having a dog on this flight because of the oil industry jobs in the North East. Rishi Sunak's reverse ferret here doesn't make much sense, as it basically cuddles only the Jeremy Clarkson fan club, those perpetually offended by 'punitive anti-car' policies. Which, for them, probably means having to pay £12.50 a day to drive a five-ton one-gallon-per-mile SUV into Mayfair. Even Conservative MPs have warned Rishi Sunak that this is not a good idea, and actually a vote-killer, as climate-conscious voters vastly outnumber the Top Gear viewership. The only caveat here is that Net Zero is bound to have a cost for everyone, which might erode support. Of course YouGov, always ready to help, have also tested what kind of impact, if any, induced costs might have.

The verdict is quite clear here too. The British public are aware of the cost of the transition to Net Zero for individual households, and concerned about it. But the overall level of support rises from 71% to 82% if financial compensation is included in the deal. Rishi Sunak certainly doesn't want his U-turn on Net Zero to become a reboot of Boris Johnson's "newt-counting" PR fiasco. And there was an oven-ready way to avoid the current media blitzkrieg against the UK Government, which the Scottish Government should have used too in a closely related controversy we will look at later. Instead of fiddling while Rhodes was burning, all Rishi had to do was standing his ground about Net Zero, while stressing that contingency measures to mitigate the costs already exist, either as outright grants or zero-interest loans. He would thusly have appeared as both climate-conscious and in touch with the common people's concerns. The proverbial 'two birds with one scone' approach, that doesn't even require the just-as-proverbial 'thinking outside the box'. Just plain common sense. But that required standing up to 43 contrarian Conservative MPs, if The Hipstershire Gazette's headcount is right. And also, more importantly, to the handful of greedy Tory corporate donors who have a vested interest in exploiting oil fields right down to the last drop. But, sadly, Rishi might not come back to his senses even if more investors leave the UK to protest his 'clickbait oil rush'.

I feel a shaking of the ground I stand on. That everything I believe in will be tested and held up for ridicule over the next few years. The nature of life is not permanence, but flux.

(Charles Carson, Downton Abbey, 2014)

How can we take ourselves seriously in an insignificant world? That would be the height of laughter!

When we feel that we cannot take the world seriously, an abyss opens up.

(Milan Kundera)

One of the keys to any election, so potentially to the incoming snap general, is the way people relate to any of the competing parties, or not. Pollsters love to measure that, or at least make us believe they do, with a whole array of popularity, favourability and whatnotibility ratings. But when you look at these long enough, you realise they mean jack shit as they contradict each other, and also contradict the voting intentions people just mentioned a couple of questions before. So you sometimes have to go back to the basics. Do the people really know what's what and who's who? Omnisis tried to get some semblance of a sense of that a couple of weeks ago, asking their panel if they feel Labour and the Conservatives are really that different. With quite interesting results, as you might expect. For context, this was polled on the day after the by-elections, which we will look at later.

At that time, Labour had already let Wes Streeting campaign for more private sector involvement within the NHS for quite some time, agreed that the Royal Navy should repeal the small boats, just not all the way to Rwanda, and had just announced it would not scrap George Osborne's child benefit cap. And also let Anas Sarwar argue that Labour couldn't risk spooking the markets, which is indeed a solid difference with the Conservatives, as they haven't done nothing but spooking the markets with Trussonomics first, and out-of-control interest rates hikes since. Yet a majority of Brits still opined that Labour and the Conservatives are very different parties. SNP voters being of course the most vocal supporters of the 'two arses of the same cheek' narrative, though obviously because of the Independence debate and not the rest of the manifestos. But this will probably not be the major factor when Election Day comes. How voters assess the government's performance will matter more. YouGov have been tracking this for times immemorial, and here's what they found at the end of July.

On average of all surveyed items, the UK government gets a net rating of -40. It was -37 in January and -36 in July 2022, so the public's trust in the UK government is now at a lower level than at the end of Boris Johnson's Premiership, or after Rishi Sunak's Hundred Days. The government also receives massive net negatives on issues that intersect with Rishi Sunak's five pledges, or five goals, or five things to watch, or whatever. This is definitely not the stuff electoral victories are made of, and that explains why so many Conservative MPs have lost the will to fight. Some are openly advocating an early snap general in the spring of 2024, which in practice would be 2 May 2024, so it can be coupled with the English local elections. And, quite ironically, would have been the legally prescribed date for the regularly scheduled general election if Boris Johnson had not abolished the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. Do what you want, you just can't miss your rendezvous in Samarkand.

Even on defence, supposedly a strong point for any right-wing government, the net rating has fallen from +12 in January to a meagre +1 in July. We saw the writing on the bulkhead as soon as the public heard they had actually got one aircraft carrier for the price of two, as both have now spent more time out of the water than in it. This is quite an unhappy ending for Ben Wallace after he transitioned into the David Vincent of English politics, lost on a lonely country road looking for a seat that he never found, after the one he had held since 2010 was drawn and quartered by the 2023 Boundary Review. There is little hope now for the Conservatives to turn the tide, as the only major government event between now and the putative election date is the Autumn Statement, and nobody expects Jeremy Hunt to perform a neatly choreographed reverse ferret to undo cuts to NHS England's funding or the welfare system. The only trick Rishi Sunak can think of is reneging on an already weak green agenda, when polls actually say that the British public support it, even Conservative voters. You can really see the smell of abject desperation here.

"I think, therefore I am" is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

"I feel, therefore I am" is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive.

(Milan Kundera)

In existential mathematics, the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory.

The degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

(Milan Kundera)

My updated snapshot of voting intentions polls for the incoming snap general includes the last three, fielded by Omnisis, Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll between the 28th and the 31st of July. It's a super-sample of 4,888, with a margin of error of 1.4% within standard parameters of temperature and pressure. Labour is still leading by a comfortable margin of 19.7%, pretty similar to what we had from all snapshots in the recent past, but how long will it last? Not for long, if the distant echoes of a beer festival in the North are a genuine clue to the people's mood on the far side the Red Wall. Or forever, if Keir Starmer succeeds in luring in the middle-aged middle-class from Middle England and hold them, something even Tony Blair never achieved. The biggest upside for Labour is that they enjoy a significant lead all across the UK. Which makes it more difficult for the Conservatives to recover, as it is harder for them to find weak spots anywhere to counter Labour's current dominance. Bear in mind too that common wisdom among the punditariat was that Rishi Sunak would lead the Conservatives away from the abyss they had sunk to under Liz Truss. It did happen for a while, and then Rishi's own ineptitude became a major factor, and Labour bounced back up.

The British public have become totally accustomed to the narrative about the massive Labour lead and the sense of impending doom within the Conservative Party. This is fed and fed on by pollsters, who now ask their panels to play the game of prediction to the end on a regular basis. This is always about what the panelists think will happen, not what they wish to happen. But, as this is totally unscientific, even more so than your usual poll about rebranding pot noodles or allowing students to use AI during exams, the panel's political leanings obviously taint their predictions. It's quite fun that, even with this bias factored in, Conservative voters are not really thrilled about their party's prospects, while Labour voters are definitely buoyant about theirs. There are so many recent polls dealing with this, that I had to select one, not really randomly but among those who have made this a regular feature of their polling. So here is the latest iteration from Redfield & Wilton, who update this in each and every of their weekly polls.

To add some fun to the broth, YouGov also polled MPs about their expectations, and their findings are interesting, though not totally unexpected. MPs are obviously on a mission to relay their party's talking points, even when they don't really agree with them. But even so, some cracks are showing behind the smiles in Conservative ranks. You can also see the effects of both wishful thinking and ulterior motives in these results. Surely a number of MPs, outwith the two major parties, are not pushing the option they genuinely think is the most likely to happen, but the one that would offer their own party the best possible opportunities. Something that can plausibly happen only if the snap general delivers a hung Parliament and opens the door to some sort of coalition or confidence-and-supply deal. Which is right now very unlikely, and would not be in the people's best interests, if current or recently past coalitions offer any hint. But you surely can't blame MPs for envisioning this as being in their own best interests.

YouGov interviewed 144 MPs to get this snapshot. Before you object to the small sample, consider that it is actually mammothly massive, accounting for 18% of sitting MPs. In comparison, standard generic polls survey 0.005% of the electorate at the most, and even the most hugest of specially-commissioned MRP polls don't go beyond 0.02%. What we see here is that Conservative MPs have kinda lost their mojo, and no longer believe in their party's chances, even those who try and put on a brave face. In stark contrast, Labour MPs do believe in their destiny, even if only in a typically Starmerite reasonably cautious way. In the meanwhile, SNP MPs seem to be under the delusion that Labour will need them for a majority, while Liberal Democrats just hope they will. The geographical differences don't actually tell us much, as they look like just reflecting how the nations and regions voted in 2019. The only finding worth noticing is that the Leafy South's Conservatives are the only ones really believing that their party still has a future in government, even if only in a Cameron way. While they are also, quite ironically, those most likely to lose their seats in genuine upsets at the snap general. Let a hundred Portillos bloom...

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

(Milan Kundera)

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering".

So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

(Milan Kundera)

This week's seat projection is again predicting a massive Labour landslide. Starting today, I will only use the 'new' boundaries, as they will be the 'current' boundaries on Election Day, and the 'current' ones will fade into oblivion. It's like Metric vs Imperial. At some point, you have to jump and never look back. On the usual optics and metrics, Sinn Féin not taking their seats and the SDLP taking the Labour whip on all key votes, that's a 223-seat majority for Labour. There are clear signs of this unprecedented level of success in Scotland and Wales, especially with the SNP coming second on The Far Side of The Wall. Interestingly, New New Labour would still bag a majority, albeit a wee one, with only the seats from England outwith London. In comparison, New Labour at the peak of their success bagged only 271 seats there in 1997, and 268 in 2001. Which, in an odd way, validates and affirms Keir Starmer's three-pronged seduction strategy. Seducing the down-to-Earth Northern working class, the blue-haired quinoa-munching metropolitan hipsters, and the middle-aged middle-class Middle England in one fell swoop.

The sequence of my seat projections since the 2019 election shows Labour still have fair winds in their sails. Of course, what we have now is well below the peak they reached during the Truss Interlude, but nobody expected that to last. Recent projections have been fairly steady, give or take some seats swinging back and forth, mostly in the South of England, depending on the polls' regional breakdowns of voting intentions. The most meaningful result for Keir Starmer is that he is still ahead of the two Blairslides of 1997 and 2001, which definitely carries some symbolic weight. As symbols go, the current projection is still the best Labour performance ever, and the second best for any party in recorded history, after the Conservatives' 470 seats in 1931.

It will be interesting to watch how this situation evolves in the next few weeks, after the British public have fully digested the fallout of Labour's hat trick of screeching reverse ferrets about gender self-identification. First Anneliese Dodds spelling out what will now be the official party line. Then Keir Starmer letting slip that he has indeed looked up a very specific word in the OED. Finally Wes Streeting saying he's sorry, though the overall tone says it is indeed the hardest word. Of course, The Hipstershire Gazette thought that cosplaying 'fair and balanced' boiled down to offering exclusivity of comment to an individual who published a whole book to propagate Stonewall's lies about the content and intent of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010. I have a hunch that Labour acted on this only because they have internal polling that confirms what Scottish polls said after the passing of the Gender Recognition Reform bill. That more people oppose this kind of reform than support it, and that it has the potential to become a serious vote-killer. Nothing principled here, just basic Realpolitik. And quite a potential for a Labour civil war too, that will be entertaining to watch.

The totalitarian world is a world of answers rather than questions. People nowadays prefer to judge

rather than to understand, to answer rather than ask. The noisy foolishness of human certainties.

(Milan Kundera)

The basis of the self is not thought, but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings.

(Milan Kundera)

Just like the Scottish Government, the English Government don't like genuine international comparisons. Either because they prove that their claims to be world-leading in anything are just fucking bollocks. Or because they prove that their claims to be following best international practice are just fucking bullshit. The sensitive issue of the cost of living is no exception. Since September 2022, when the fallout of the war in Ukraine and the collateral damage of the energy crisis boosted inflation all over Europe, YouGov have been fielding a Cost Of Living Tracker monthly in the UK and six European countries (France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Italy). I will give you some of the findings of their most recent iteration, in a different order to the one YouGov used in their disclosure of results, as I think there is a more logical order to this. First for me, as it may determine some of the other answers, how the various panels self-identify on a scale from'comfortable' to 'struggling'.

Quite surprisingly, Brits see themselves more financially comfortable than any Europeans bar Danes, and distinctly more than the overall average. This is contradicted by most of the poll's other findings, which are based on factual information rather than a subjective assessment. So I guess it is just a transcription of the perennial British compulsion to take one on the chin and stiff-upper-lip any sort of bad situation. The situation looks quite different when the panels are asked whether or not they already have had to make cuts on their spending. What emerges from the British panel is definitely not one that is genuinely financially comfortable. They come out the second worst, after the French and Italians who are tied for the worst rating.

It is quite telling that almost half of Brits expect to have to make further cuts on their spending, second only to the French. It may well be even worse, as the French may be overstating their case, consistent with their time-honoured ritual of whining and moaning first about everything, before exploring solutions. And I'm entitled to say that because I was born and raised there, remember? Interestingly, the two Scandinavian countries paint themselves as the lucky-go-happies here, though not in an overwhelmingly convincing way. Then the key question, which was actually the first in YouGov's sequence of interrogation, is how well people think their government has handled the cost-of-living crisis. Quite expectedly, the English government gets a pish-poor rating here too.

Rishi Sunak's problem is that he has tried all sorts of excuses to deflect attention from himself and his policies, but the people see through the absolute lameness of it. The Conservatives are still desperately clutching at long-debunked neo-liberal myths like the wages-prices-spiral, or the moronic belief that high interest rates tackle inflation, when they do the exact opposite in a mortgage-heavy economy. Sadly, Labour and the SNP are also embracing this mythology, as both are feart of spooking the markets, as the doxa goes. Even the market-friendly American Democrats have realised that investment-oriented public spending is a better solution than austerity. Surely there will be some wastage along the way, as some of the stimulus money will find its way into tax-evading offshore accounts, but the bulk of it will still go into the real economy and benefit real people. If Americans get that, surely the superior English and Scottish intellects should get it too, shouldn't they? There is an interesting subplot in the YouGov poll, then. Spain is the second-happiest country, regarding their government's performance. Happier than Sweden, and second only to Denmark. So you have to wonder why they have just chosen to deliver a serious shot across the bow to that same government. We'll explore that story later, of course.

In intense suffering, the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self.

(Milan Kundera)

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

(Milan Kundera)

Since the end of last year, YouGov have been tracking another side of the cost-of-living crisis. How often people in the UK have had to give up on some sorts of spending over the last month. I have collected the data only since this January, and we don't have the July results yet. But what YouGov found for the first six months of this year already shows an alarming pattern. You cannot blame people for their discontent with British democracy, when at least one in six, and often one in four, find themselves struggling with energy and food bills, the most basic essentials bar a roof above your head. You can even call it a miracle that there is not more unrest, or even outright revolt, about this. And a scandal that politicians of all shades fail to devote it the attention and efforts it deserves. Or that the self-anointed 'progressive' media prefer juicy metropolitan middle-class topics to this. I have a hunch that a fourteen-year-old who skipped his second meal of the week does not relish in introspection about whether he is a cat or a they/them. Yet the media have ruled that this deserves fuckloads of coverage, and the politicians are just too happy to oblige with a cunning soundbite.

There are some fluctuations from one month to the other, but even a slight 'improvement' in May didn't last for long, and the situation worsened again in June. Just, not uncoincidentally, when the Bank of England announced another interest rates hike, the twelfth in eighteen months. There will clearly be no end to this so long as neither of the two dominant parties drops the neo-liberal dogmas of the last fifty years for good. Which we obviously can't expect from the Conservatives, and Labour is too feart of their newfound corporate donors to do. The second pair of items surveyed by YouGov are even closer to the heart of essential political debates. Some foreign countries have found ways to mitigate the rise in fuel prices triggered by the war in Ukraine, which mostly involved temporarily subsidising fossil fuels. Which is of course heresy, but exceptional times call for non-standard emergency measures, like for those in rural areas who can't afford a hipsterised five-ton electric SUV. Then the 20% or more rise of mortgage repayments is the direct consequence of the ideological handling of interest rates. But we've been down that road before, haven't we?

What the second part of the tracker reveals is not better than the first part. Not all people own a car. Not all people have to pay a rent or mortgage repayments. But those who do are also struggling with it in noticeable proportions. If you consider only people to whom each item is applicable, and the June data, 24% struggled with their energy bills, 19% with food, fuel or housing. The exact same proportion for the last three items. June also has the highest proportion of people saying that they are struggling with their mortgage since YouGov started these trackers. But I won't rant again about the interest rates hikes and their instant fallout, Scot's Honour. Whichever way you try and spin the findings of this poll, it's a bleak picture. Especially when the actual key finding, that I have kept out of your sight since the beginning, is that less than half of Brits have never resorted to any kind of spending cuts. Not what you'd expect from a country with so many world-beating achievements.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments, and most of the time we are ageless.

(Milan Kundera)

No fight left or so it seems, I am a man whose dreams have all deserted

I've changed my face, I've changed my name, but no one wants you when you lose

(Peter Gabriel, Don't Give Up, 1986)

Generic polls based on a sample of the whole population send a message, but still miss the realities of issues faced by people living off low income and benefits. The Joseph Roundtree Foundation has commissioned a poll from Savanta to explore these issues. I will not draw conclusions from all the questions in the poll, as the Joseph Roundtree Foundation have already conducted and published their own analysis, which confirms that the consequences of the cost-of-living-crisis are deeper and more serious than generic polls say. Their findings are based on a sample of 4,000, all earning less that the average UK wage, only 37% on a full-time job, 56% eligible for one kind of benefit or more, their full income amounting to an average £1,438 per month after taxes and deductions. Just the more salient details, so you get the picture. Savanta reviewed all the possible decisions their panel had to make over the last six months, as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. Their answer show they are the ones making the tough choices, not the Labour frontbench.

This is the reality of spending cuts in 2023 Britain. Not the government making cuts on futilities, but the people making cuts on essentials. The panel's answers leave no ambiguity about the situation. A bad situation is getting worse and impacting hundreds of thousands, millions even, in the most damaging ways. There are also testimonies in the press to support a simple truth, that the cost-of-living emergency has disproportionate and cumulative effects on the people who were least equipped to overcome it in the first place. Certainly not coincidentally, the same people are also the least likely to turn out to vote. You don't even have to be cynical to see something of that logic behind Keir Starmer's U-turn on the child benefits cap. You get a better return on investment by cuddling the middle class than by helping the poor. Now that is cynical. In my opinion, the very last item in Savanta's bucket list is probably the most alarming. 57% of the panel admitting they have reduced or stopped socialising with family and friends because of the cost. This is a clear sign that there are long-term social consequences here, threatening the very fabric of society. Conservatives ignoring this is business as usual, Labour ignoring this is dereliction of duty.

Such a context inevitably leads to symptoms of serious health conditions, which range from severe mental health issues (read 'depression' here) to less alarming, yet damaging ones like sleep issues. To dig further into analysing all components of the situation, Savanta requested more details from the people in the panel who volunteered they are suffering from such symptoms. Of course it does not amount to the whole panel but, depending on which symptom is displayed, to 10% to 30% of it. Which, in the real world, translates into hundreds of thousands of real people. And the answers gathered from the panel, on the evolution of their health conditions over the last two years, are quite alarming.

This is quite a damning picture of the real life of real people. A huge majority of those who suffer most from living in Dickensian Britain 2.0 have seen the symptoms appear or worsen over the last two years. The number of people hit by this makes it a major health emergency, which I doubt the NHS is ready to tackle. On one side, you have Rishi Sunak offering such ridiculous pay deals that the only result is more strikes that will make the whole system even more fragile. The Conservatives are cynically gambling on loss of popular support for the strikes, but it isn't happening, and sooner or later they will have to face the music. Or they won't, and will leave it to Labour to clean up the mess. But on the other side, Labour is still clinging to Wes Streeting's Blairite mantra that all NHS England needs is more private sector intervention. Which is definitely not the solution you should advise if your main goal is better cost-efficiency. And repainting A&E waiting rooms boy-blue-and-girl-pink won't help either, when people need solutions, or at least the hope of incoming solutions. Which is entirely feasible, simply by enforcing policies that Labour was advocating until two weeks ago, that cost less than one Trident submarine. But now Labour have conceded that seeing their leader nicknamed Kid Starver is an acceptable price to pay for not spooking the markets. So, just abandon all hope, ye who trusted them.

Don't give up, you still have us, don't give up, we don't need much of anything

Don't give up cause somewhere there is a place where we belong

(Peter Gabriel, Don't Give Up, 1986)

Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity,

everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.

(Milan Kundera)

Redfield & Wilton seem to have taken a keen interest in Scottish affairs recently. More than London-based pollsters usually do. They started some months ago with a rather low-profile version of the historic generic polling about IndyRef, Holyrood and the Scottish seats in Commons. Then they made themselves more visible by repeating this standard polling monthly, more often than other pollsters like Savanta, YouGov and Panelbase have ever done. Now they have released a new poll that goes further, drilling down the intricacies of the power-sharing between the UK government and the Scottish government, and what Scotland's future prospects may be, including but not limited to the long-term goal of Independence. Before exploring the future options, you have to establish a baseline. The first brick in that wall is the public's view of the level of autonomy Scotland has achieved through devolution.

There is an obvious and interesting pattern emerging from the replies to this question. Scots, whatever their political persuasion, do not assess the reality of the situation, but what the prism of their own beliefs tells them it is. Classic. And that's how we get the half-baked average assessment, where the panel are neatly split down the middle. But, when you think of it, there is some truth in that. Scotland does have some autonomy, but nothing like 'the most devolved government in the Galaxy' that Conservatives want you to believe it is. There is also evidence of a political bias when Redfield & Wilton probe their panel about the level of influence that the UK government has on Scottish affairs. It quite fits the usual narratives that Conservative voters tend to play it down, while SNP voters consider it massive.

Then the average assessment here is not split down the middle. And, from my point of view, closer to the truth than the first question, though I might be summat biased here. But you can't escape the very factual conclusion that the levers that have the most influence on people's lives are within the perimeter of reserved powers. This is true even in domains where there is a semblance of shared power through the devolution settlement, as the strategic parts are still reserved, and the devolved parts basically boil down to operational fine tuning. Redfield & Wilton then tried to close the circle with a question that is not about a more or less objective assessment of the situation, but a subjective view of the powers of each government.

What we have here is not what I would have deduced from the first two questions, and is thusly really enlightening. Only a quarter of Scots are happy with the current arrangements, and I believe that this has a lot to do with both the SNP and the Conservatives using other issues as political footballs in their never ending fight over constitutional matters. This leads me to also question what the panel really mean when they choose either of the two options offered to their wisdom. Do they really just mean that the UK government has too much influence, or that it is too interventionist? Do they really just mean that the Scottish government has too much autonomy, or that it is too often trying to venture outwith the remit of devolution? Probably a little bit of everything, and you certainly can approach the truth with a closer look at every brick in that wall, not just a very general assessment. Which is just what Redfield & Wilton asked their panel to do, or I wouldn't tease you with that. More on that after some more real wisdom from the late great Kundera.

It would be so easy to find calm in the world of the imagination.

But I always tried to live in both worlds at the same time, and not abandon one of them because of the other.

(Milan Kundera)

Our dreams prove that to imagine, to dream about things that have not happened, is among mankind's deepest needs.

(Milan Kundera)

Before you ask people about what they want the future to deliver, the obvious first step is to ask them what they think the present is offering. Just to be sure. Redfield & Wilton did that with their Scottish panel, about a number of domains that are devolved, or reserved, or both. Or neither, though that one looks quite unlikely. Or not. This is a test about the people's perception of reality, asking them who has the power over these issues, either the First Minister of Scotland and Holyrood, of the Prime Minister and Westminster. Including a couple where the correct answer is 'both', or 'neither' because it's actually within the Councils' remit. Told you that would happen. Anyway, what the replies say is that the panel, and by inference the average Scot, have a sometimes fuzzy understanding of what's what and who's who within devolution. Or it might be wishful thinking in some cases, or confusion about where the border actually is when there is some sort of power-sharing over a specific domain.

Then, the obvious follow-up question is who the Scottish public think should have the power. There's some wishful thinking in here, like wanting Scotland to have more power on fully reserved domains. But many other cases where it does make absolute sense to devolve totally. One example: drug policy. I already know it's not a popular opinion, but I agree with the SNP's proposal to decriminalise all drugs. The Hipstershire Gazette may dismiss it as just another attempt to pick another futile fight with SW1, disbelievers may dismiss it because all the SNP touches turns to shit, but this one does make sense. Even the most vociferous supporters of the war on drugs know deep down it's an abysmal failure. Trillions of pounds spaffed up the wall, and tens of thousands of people dead, for jack shit. Except strengthening massive international crime networks who hold whole nations hostage. So it's more than time to try the polar opposite approach. Some countries have already done it and they have the statistics to prove it works. It would also be a major step forwards to solve Scotland's very serious drug-death problem, Through controlled delivery and medical supervision. It is worth trying, and it has to be fully devolved.

I have the exact opposite point of view about gender reform, whatever you mean by it. If just one domain should be 100% undevolved, it's that one. Because the disbelievers are right for once here, it has totally turned to shit when the SNP touched it. Even Labour's brand new approach, with all its highly questionable unsaid and implied, and its wrapping in Stonewallish mumbo-jumbo, makes more sense. And, if it is enforced some day, it should be reserved UK-wide, no variations of any kind anywhere, and especially not in Scotland as long as the SNP and the Green Hatters might have a say in it. That's one of the few domains where I believe in a totally uniform approach. Then I hope the snap general campaign will offer opportunities for adult debate on devolution. No empty soundbites. No mudslinging ferrets in a sack. Which, I am aware, is probably asking too much. Now, if you want Scotland to have more powers, you also have to decide how you want to achieve this. Of course, Redfield & Wilton also submitted this to their Scottish panel. Which, in the current context, had to include Labour's Third Way option, even it it makes the results uncomfortable reading.

Of course, Scots don't want devolution annulled or neutered. And we're not happy bunnies with the current arrangement either. A majority want more decisions made in Scotland, and for Scotland, but the split of choices between more devolution and independence is worrying. Here we have the oven-ready trap, the numbers speak for themselves. The hard-core pro-Independence vote is not half of the Scottish electorate, it's a third. Just as many as would be happy with devolution, either 'as is' or Keir Starmer's reboot of The Vow, DevoMax or Radical Federalism or whatthefuckever. And that's how the doors of the trap close neatly on us. Some time early into the next term, a Labour government in London are likely to reshuffle all the constitutional conventions and grant Holyrood more powers than we have now, but just as many as the Yorkshire Assembly or the Cuntellva Kernewek in the Grand Scheme of Federalism. Then why have another independence referendum, if Labour's DevoMax can switch enough Scots to believing we are at last One Among Equals on the sunlit uplands of federalism? And then we're fucked. For evermore.

Do you recall what I told you the last time we parted ways? "The trial never ends".

You've been talking a lot about second chances. Well, my friend, welcome to the very end of the road not taken.

(Q, Star Trek: Picard, 2022)

Many people, few ideas. We all think more or less the same.

So we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another.

(Milan Kundera)

We haven't had a Full Scottish poll in the last three weeks, probably because the pollsters were all recuperating from the shockwaves of their last findings. But Survation sensed an issue that left no one cold, and indeed has the potential for quite a heated debate. You guessed it, Patrick Harvie's pledge to outlaw gas boilers in Scotland within a handful of years, and substitute heat pumps, which Paddy can testify work perfectly well in his own natural habitat in Glasgow'w West Side. Survation have dedicated quite an extensive poll to this and also to all the underlying and surrounding issues, which matter just as much as the heat pumps themselves, on behalf of WWF Scotland. To get some contextual background to the rest of their questioning, Survation first asked their panel to define their level of awareness of issues related to climate change. The results are encouraging at face value, but also quite a mixed bag as 'somewhat aware' can mean a lot of things, and moderate awareness does not guarantee commitment to actually tackle the issues.

There is a wide array of crosstabs in the poll's detailed results, though oddly not the political affiliation. I have quite arbitrarily selected the region and the household income, as they look like the most relevant to the rest of the poll, dealing with more practical issues. One of these, before we go to the more contentious issue of boilers, is insulation of housing. Which is regulated by one of the many chapters of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003, and among the many items evaluated through an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). What the Scottish Government intends to do, through proposals put forward by Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, High Efficiency Drag, Active Travel and Tenants Rights Patrick Harvie, is to implement tougher standards for delivery of a positive evaluation in an EPC. By the way, I totally made up a part of Paddy's long-winded title here. See if you can guess which. The Survation poll shows that Scots generally agree with tougher insulation requirements, even when aware of the potential negative fallout.

The question did mention potential negatives, which have been the target of criticism. The main concern is that not meeting the higher standards will be an obstacle to selling or buying a house. Because the dwellings, as they are called in legalese, must be brought up to standards when changing hands. Which has a cost, possibly a high cost for older properties built when heating efficiency was nobody's concern, or might even be unfeasible. So we're plausibly facing a rise in housing costs, or a forced shrinking of the available housing stock, in some regions, which definitely doesn't sound good. Especially if all goes according to Paddy Harvie's plan and the new standards are enforced as early as 2025. But this is only the top of the iceberg as the most contentious part of the plan is the one that makes fossil-fueled heating illegal in new construction, and mandates its replacement in existing dwellings. And here the poll registers a significant drop in support, especially in rural Scotland, for the mandatory phasing out of fossil fueled heating.

This part has angered many home owners, especially older ones with lower incomes living in remote parts of the country. Before looking at the plausible positives of Paddy's plan, it's fair to say that reactions of instant rejection have a lot to do with the certainty that the whole thing is bound to end in an omnishambolic mess, like everything the Scottish Greens touch. Experience says that there is no timeline in which this will not end up terminally botched and unfeasible. Because Green hubris means they won't even consider the proverbial 'best international practice', the same flaw that doomed the Deposit Return Scheme, variants of which work perfectly in several foreign countries. Because we also know that any adult and rational debate will be polluted by the Greens' usual mix of arrogant authoritarian messianism and performative student politics.

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.

Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.

Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.

(Milan Kundera)

Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the non-thought of received ideas.

(Milan Kundera)

The idea of phasing out all fossil fueled heating over a short period of time definitely makes sense in principle. Remember first that we're paying the price for years of inaction here, years of failure to set firm goals and pass legislation to meet them. Some of the measures that are proposed now may look coercive, or punitive, or penalising or whatthefuckever, but that's the price of complacency. Not just the government's, but ours as we chose year after year to follow the path of least resistance. In plain English, doing jack shit because it made our lives easier. But enough soapboxing for now, let's go back to the rest of the Survation poll, as we are approaching the crux of the matter step by step. Survation first surveyed the likelihood of Scottish households willingly choosing to switch to an electric heat pump within the next five years. Likelihood here obviously means willingness, and the results are far less encouraging than Paddy would like them to be.

Again the level of support goes one notch down on the Harvie scale. 10% down on the level of support for the principle of phasing out fossil fueled heating, and not even bagging a majority. The Scottish public also have an issue with Oor Paddy's timetable. The UK's official date for achieving Net Zero is still 2050, unless Rishi Sunak manages to totally sabotage the master plan. I also totally support the Scottish Government's decision to aim for an earlier date, 2045 for now. If only to buy time to deal with the inevitable pile-on of not-dones at the tail end of the period. But there is scant rationale for going even faster with the phasing out of fossil-fueled heating, compressing it into a five-year period. That's knowingly rushing at flank speed into a wall without a safety net. The poll shows that as many Scots want a looser timetable as agree with Paddy's rushed job strategy. And, even if we stretch the transition period from five years to ten, we still meet the Scottish target date for Net Zero. So there's definitely no harm in listening to the people, for once.

One of the key issues is how much a heat pump costs. That's £7k to £15k for an air source model, or £17k to £35k for a ground source model, which you would probably want to avoid as it also implies major roadworks in your back garden. Let's just play the numbers game for a while, assuming that there are over one million households in Scotland needing to reframe their heating, which is the government's estimate. That's a total cost of £10b to £15b, depending on the exact number and what device they choose. Which sounds mammothean at first sight, but far less so if you spread it over fifteen years instead of five. The end date would thusly be 2040ish, still well within the Net Zero deadline, and far more realistic if you want to secure funding and public support. The Scottish Government has already decided to provide some sort of financial help for the boiler transition. But, if you check on the dedicated website, you find out it's all about interest-free loans, not grants. The criteria for actually getting a grant are not even spelled out, and it would be just £6k anyway, available to only 25% of households. Why doesn't the Scottish Government switch to a simpler system of grants only? Including a clear option, devoid of massive red tape, to cover the full costs, including replumbing and manpower, and not leave lower-income rural households desperate for a solution? That's what redistribution through taxes means, and the poll shows that a solid plurality of Scots expect just that.

Sadly, we also collide head on here with one of our many problems with Paddy. He's showing the Greenies' usual ideological normative rigidity. He has a fixation on the fucking heat pumps, and won't listen to suggestions for other options. Even when one third of Scots tell him to shove his heat pump wherever he wants. Even when the alternatives, electric boilers for detached homes and Council-provided central heating for tenement blocks, are already widely used and work fine. The icing on the cake is of course the technical details proving that heat pumps are unfit for use in Scotland, because of our local climate. Coming from a heat pump manufacturer who could have made millions off the scheme by just keeping schtum about it. As you might expect, Patrick Harvie was quick to dismiss this as not valid with a gratuitous jibe at his critic because, ye ken, Paddy always knows best. Until he doesn't. But that's just Paddy being Paddy.

We can never know what to want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

(Milan Kundera)

Dogs are our link to Paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring. It was peace.

(Milan Kundera)

Redfield & Wilton have also updated their now ritually monthly polling of Wales in mid-July. Spoiler alerts: there are no massive changes in either the Westminster or the Senedd voting intentions, just both being slightly better for Labour than in the previous iteration in mi-June. The new poll reveals that support for Welsh Independence has increased a bit, as more undecideds have shifted to Yes than to No. It still remains an uphill battle though, as it translates into 64% No to 36% Yes if you remove undecideds and include weighting by likelihood to vote.

The trendlines of Westminster voting intentions confirm Labour as the first and dominant party in Wales. Labour are not back to the outright majority of votes they were predicted at the height of discontent in late 2022, but their result here is the best of the last three Redfield & Wilton Full Welsh polls. Only YouGov's Full Welsh credit them with a higher share of the popular vote, and we will probably have an update from them too later in the summer. The reduction of the number of Welsh seats from 40 to 32, which only corrects a deliberate politically motivated over-representation inherited from Tony Blair, clearly favours Labour. The recarving of the constituencies also showed how a very unevenly distributed vote hurt Plaid Cymru disproportionately, as even the most imaginative options could save at best half of their current seats. Plaid could overturn this only with a significant increase of their vote share, which is not in the cards in recent polls.

The updated seat projection for the Senedd has Labour back on an outright majority of seats, if you assume one of the other parties would get the Presiding Officer's seat, thusly making the headcount 30-29 for Labour. Though it probably doesn't really matter as everything points to the Labour-Plaid Cymru deal being renewed after the next election. At least Plaid Cymru's new leader Rhun ap Iorwerth hasn't sent any message hinting at a change of mind on their side. And whoever succeeds Mark Drakeford as First Minister of Wales will have every incentive to perpetuate the deal too, as it seems to have been mutually beneficial. In political terms at least, if not in voting intentions, as Plaid Cymru's recent polling is definitely lacklustre.

This simulation carries the usual caveat that it is based on the current AMS voting system, and the existing constituencies and regions. We can't predict how the voting patterns will change, or not, when the new voting system is enforced. The timeline may favour Labour, as the new rules will be approved by the Senedd a relatively short time before the election, probably no more than 18 months. So it is reasonable to expect some sort of super-tanker effect, and only minor changes in voting intentions. It is also worth remembering that the choice of having six-member constituencies raises the bar for representation. It's basic math, you will need 14.3% of the popular vote for a seat. Which would shrink the voting base to about 75% of votes cast, when parties bagging less than the de facto threshold are eliminated. This would raise Labour's vote share to about 45% of the votes eligible for representation. Which is more than enough votes for a majority of seats when you use the d'Hondt method. Good days ahead for Welsh Labour, then.

There is nothing more ill-bred than trying to steal the affections of someone else’s dog.

(Robert Crawley, Downton Abbey, 2014)

Most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths. They believe in eternal memory and in redressibility. Both are false faiths. Everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed.

(Milan Kundera)

Then came the by-elections. The Hipstershire Gazette had great expectations for these, but in a cautiously subdued way, a Starmerite way. You never know, Labour might have fucked it up. They tried hard, indeed, with that rape clause thing just days before the vote. But, much to anyone's surprise, the own goal that came in the way of a hat trick had nothing to do with that, but with parochial politics in West London. Uxbridge and South Ruislip didn't fall, so it's probably just as well The Hipstershire Gazette ignored it for the last eight days of the campaign. Somerton and Frome fell from a great height, despite the Liberal Democrat candidate having done her best to make herself unelectable, with a trainwreck interview on the first day of the campaign. Selby and Ainsty fell, despite the local Labour activists saying it was unwinnable unless all Conservative voters were abducted by aliens. The voters had chosen to validate and affirm two thirds of The Hipstershire Gazette's other column, the one that painted a hat trick for the oppositions as a slam dunk. Straight from Owen Jones's playbook, or Boris Johnson's. Always defend two mutually exclusive points of views in different columns, so you can dig out either to prove you were right all along. Or not totally wrong.

I think the by-election winners should be careful what kind of narrative they squeeze out of this results. Like Labour gloating about the 24% swing in Selby and Ainsty. Or the Liberal Democrats about the 29% swing in Somerton and Frome. Quite a different picture emerges if you consider the number of votes instead of the vote shares. Labour in Selby and Ainsty, and the LibDems in Somerton and Frome, gained far fewer votes than the Conservatives lost. It's even worse if you factor in tactical voting, measured by the number of votes lost by the other opposition party. Then it becomes a net loss for the combined oppositions in both constituencies. Victory by default, winning thanks to massive Tory abstention, might work at by-elections, but will that be enough at a general election? Then the most hilarious situation materialised in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where Labour's trans-zebras warrior Danny Beales lost votes on the 2019 result, despite the drop in turnout being lower than in the other two constituencies. But obviously ULEZ is to blame here, not obsessive virtue-signalling inclusivibility.

I must say the most hilarious part of By-Election Night was the declaration at Selby and Ainsty, and its aftermath. And, before you ask, aye, I did stay up until 4:10am to see it. Sadly, BBC News have not uploaded the whole thing to their YouTube channel, as the most revealing part was not Keir Mather's AI-authored victory speech, but the way he answered questions from the press afterwards. The whole thing had the unmistakable feel of robotically croaked pre-scripted remarks, kind of a Drone straight out of the Laborg Cube, as all questions were indeed quite predictable, or easily divertable into prepared soundbites. All this definitely made him look more like a needy puppy, eager to please his human, than like an Inbetweener, even if this analogy does have some merit. Sadly, the media failed to mention some interesting facts in the new Puppy Of The House's CV. Like that he has been living in London for the best part of the last four years, working first for Neo-Blairite MP Wes Streeting, and then for the business lobby CBI. Or that he has been a vociferous enabler of woke McCarthyism during his time as Head of research for the Oxford Union debating society, supporting the censorship of non-compliant speakers.

The other fun part is that the Conservatives think they have a winning talking point, when they say that Sadiq Khan lost the Uxbridge by-election for Labour with his working-class-unfriendly implementation of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) all across Greater London. More on that later. Keir Starmer was quick to agree with them, as it is the only way to shield his protégé Danny Beales from criticism. Sadly, this electoral upset overshadows the need for an adult debate about Net Zero and the ways chosen to meet its goals. Policies like ULEZ are unpopular only when they are implemented in a punitive way, and disproportionately hit low-income households. Find a way around that and the people will admit that they are necessary, and indeed inevitable if politicians are serious about seriously tackling the fallout of climate change. Sadiq Khan actually has a point when he says he has already done that, and is ready to do more. In another plane of reality, everybody, especially Rishi Sunak, is eagerly waiting for Nadine Dorries to at last apply for one of the non-existent Offices of the Crown that pass as a resignation from Commons, and let us have the last instalment in this year's series of English by-elections. Nadine has definitely not improved her situation with her petulant antics that had her reported to the Headmaster... oops... sorry, the Speaker. Will she get a 10-day suspension, making the by-election unavoidable? Popcorn time, mates.

The task of obtaining redress, by vengeance or by forgiveness, will be taken over by forgetting.

No one will redress the wrongs that have been done, but all wrongs will be forgotten.

(Milan Kundera)

Humour: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others.

(Milan Kundera)

Two weeks after the by-elections, Labour are still predicted to do extremely well in all regions of England outwith the Free City-State of Londonshire. I don't think there ever has been a general election where Labour led in the popular vote in all eight regions. But now they are leading in voting intentions in all eight regions, even if their margins are lower across the South. But there are of course many weaknesses and paradoxes in there. This week's predicted votes shares across the North are not really overwhelming, as they have been at many past elections, and Labour still need Reform UK up there, to divert enough of the Eurosceptic and socially conservative working class vote from the Conservatives. Just as they need the Liberal Democrats in the South, to snatch away disenchanted Conservative voters who are not ready to take the plunge to the other side. If either goes down in the future, Labour's prospects will not look as bright as they do today.

The seat projection shows, as it did multiple times before, that Labour have successfully rebuilt the Red Wall and punched some big holes in the Blue Wall. But Labour can only achieve this level of success across the board by assembling an unlikely coalition of tribes. This is the natural evolution of Labour giving up on class politics and switching to identity politics. Labour's ideological shift to the centre, some would even say to the right, is also a consequence of this. Even just a cursory look at identity politics shows there is nothing progressive in them. Part of them is clearly libertarian, and not dissimilar to Ayn Rand's glorification of individualism. By an obvious ripple effect, the economic core of identity politics is unquestionably neo-liberal. Which, quite ironically, makes them more suited to the Liberal Democrats, or even a progressive wing of the Conservatives, than to an ancestrally social-democratic party like Labour. And could be, in the long run, be Starmer's Achilles' heel.

So far, Keir Starmer has managed to seduce enough voters to do just as well as Tony Blair in the North and Midlands, and better in the South. As I pointed out many times, this is based on a fragile alliance of opposites, and a total lack of proper ideological foundations. Starmer may be reciting the proverbial mantra that 'more unites us than divides us' to keep his electoral coalition together, but will the glue hold until the snap general? Or, more threateningly for Labour's long-term plans, can a coalition built on rejection of the Conservatives, rather than genuine support for Labour, last longer than one parliamentary term? Clearly, Keir Starmer would have no oven-ready answer to that if he ever was asked. Just as clearly, nobody in the metropolitan political punditariat will ever ask, as it would totally undermine their own business. But it still makes a massive Labour victory quite a gamble for the British electorate.

Humour: the intoxicating relativity of human things, the strange pleasure that comes of the certainty that there is no certainty.

(Milan Kundera)

We came from the North and we came from the South, with picks and with spades and a new kind of order

Showing no fear of what lies up ahead, they'll never see the likes of us again

(Phil Collins, Driving The Last Spike, 1991)

Redfield & Wilton keep updating their Red Wall polling fortnightly. I haven't used it for quite a while, so I will remind you first of their rules. Just like Amol Rajan does on every episode of University Challenge since he has taken over, though nobody needs a refresher course on those rules. Remember first that the concept of the Red Wall is a punditarial construct that came out of the blue, if you pardon the cheap pun, some time during the 2019 general election campaign, though nobody ever claimed paternity. Redfield & Wilton use a sample of 1,000 to 1,500 voters from 39 constituencies that switched from Labour to the Conservatives at the 2019 general, after decades in Labour's hands. Plus Hartlepool, that fell at the first by-election of the Starmer era, in early 2021. These seats voted 46.7% Conservative, 37.9% Labour and 6.5% Brexit Party (now Reform UK) in 2019. The first stage in the assessment of their current state of mind is a comparison between their current voting intentions, and which party they trust the most in handling a number of key issues.

The voting intentions show a 13.6% swing from the Conservatives to Labour. This is higher than the swing found by generic polls in the North East and the North West, and similar to what they find in Yorkshire and the Humber. Redfield & Wilton use a list of fifteen topics for this line of questioning, and I have extracted the eight issues considered the most important by their panel, in descending order from left to right. Labour are leading on all issues, sometimes quite conclusively, and sometimes not quite so. There is definitely an odd mix here. On one side, ancestral left-wing working-class attitudes lead people to give Labour credit on issues that embody left-wing working-class priorities and values. On the other side, the recently infused right-wing approach leads quite a number of the same people to question Labour's credentials on items that are more related to traditional right-wing priorities. There are traces of this in the answers to another question, about the level of trust the panel have in the two major parties in the absolute, instead of relative to the other parties.

I have also extracted the data for the issues that are considered the most important. Only six this time, to keep the chart readable, in descending order from left to right. Oddly, in a rare lapse of consistency, Redfield & Wilton used a list of fourteen topics here, that does not match the list of fifteen used in the other question. Notwithstanding, the general spirit of the priorities does match. On average of all fourteen items, 43% trust Labour significantly or fairly, and 30% do not trust them at all. 36% trust the Conservatives and 40% do not trust them. There are definitely good news for Labour here, as they do better than average on issues that are iconic of traditional left-wing policies, and are also tied with the Conservatives on the economy, a domain that used to be an asset for the right-wing, but where 13 years of Conservative policies have quite conclusively failed. But all good things must pass, and the poll is far less favourable for Labour when the panel are asked to assess the leaders personally, and not the parties and their policies.

Redfield & Wilton offer a list of eighteen items here, worse than the most inquisitorial HR questionnaire. So I have extracted just eight of them, and targeted those that are more likely to resonate with a generally left-leaning electorate, in a totally arbitrary way. On average of all eighteen items, both Starmer and Sunak have lower ratings than their 'better PM' assessment. But Sunak is down 4% and Starmer down 8%. This is, or should be, worrying for Sly Keir. Here we have a left-leaning sample, who don't question the Labour Party's credibility as a collective, or their policies, but have doubts about the leader and aspiring Prime Minister. Actually it probably does not matter whether the sample represents a left-leaning or a right-leaning electorate, as doubts about Starmer are felt pretty much across the whole of the UK, and are highlighted by dozens of polls. This is just one symptom of a wider problem for Labour, actually. That their current front-bench definitely does not look like an A-list, and look relatively good only because the Conservative Cabinet is conclusively a Z-list. What remains to be seen is how much this will influence voters in the last lap before the snap general.

We followed the rail, we slept under the stars, digging in darkness and living with danger

Showing no fear of what lies up ahead, they'll never see the likes of us again

(Phil Collins, Driving The Last Spike, 1991)

Einmal ist keinmal.

That which happens once is as if it had never happened. This is the very essence of human life.

(Milan Kundera)

Just like the Red Wall, the Blue Wall is a recent punditarial construct. But, unlike the Red Wall, we can trace its origin pretty easily to the ones who spawned it. YouGov, in July 2021, in the aftermath of the Chesham and Amersham by-election, where the Liberal Democrats bagged an upset gain in a perennially blue corner of the Outer Commuter Belt. Redfield & Wilton regularly poll this part of Middle England, based on a sample of voters from 42 constituencies that fit some arbitrary criteria defining them as 'weak Tory' seats. In 2019, these constituencies voted 49.7% Conservative, 27.5% Liberal Democrat and 21% Labour. Which is not representative of the whole of the South of England, with a significant over-representation of the Liberal Democrats. But it definitely makes sense when the stated objective is to feel the pulse of a cross-section of the electorate who may choose to heavily punish the Conservatives at the next election. And who are allegedly more inclined to switch to the LibDems that to Labour. Let's see first what are this panel's current voting intentions, and which parties they trust most to deal with their key issues of concern.

Here we have a 16.3% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, which is just slightly lower than the swing detected all across the South by generic election polls. I have also singled out the eight main issues for this panel, which are the same as with the Red Wall panel, but not in the same order. Interestingly, Labour get generally better ratings on specific issues than their voting intentions, which was not the case with the Red Wall panel. The obvious explanation is the weight of the Liberal Democrats Doon Sooth. A number of Southerners are intellectually ready to credit Labour with good intentions, sound policies and all that jazz, yet not ready to cross the line and vote for them. This is all the ambiguity of the LibDem vote being used as a sort of decompression chamber. Where will these voters go next time? All the way to the Red side? Or back to the Blue side? This might be an element of fragility for Labour there, even if the Southern electorate have a fair level of trust in them on the key issues.

I have also singled out here the six issues that emerge as the most important for this panel. There are some differences with the Red Wall priorities, though four out of six are shared concerns. Labour does quite well with the Blue Wall panel, which is both surprising in itself and consistent with the panel's views seen in the previous chart. Labour also benefits from this assessment being a two-horse race between them and the Conservatives, without the Liberal Democrats as a fallback option. On average of all issues tested in this question, 41% of the panel trust Labour and 29% don't. 39% trust the Conservatives and 32% don't. This one is better for Labour than the voting intentions implied, but again the one-on-one between the two leaders sends a different message.

I have chosen a slightly different list of topics here to the Red Wall ones, those I totally arbitrarily think are closer to centrist or right-wing priorities and values. At first sight, it is of course not as bad as it looks. Starmer and Sunak are tied as the people's choice for 'the better PM', in regions with a long-established Conservative tradition, and where the same poll finds Labour leading by just 4% in voting intentions. But the average rating on all items used in the question has Sunak seen as the most capable by 34% of the panel, and Starmer by only 31%. Which is just another brick in the wall of doubt. People kinda feel Labour's appeal, more or less, but not their leader's. This is quite cruelly emphasised by the panel finding Sunak and Starmer equally unable to keep their promises. Which sounds like a warning for Labour, that using Sunak's U-turns against him might not always been a winning card. Then let him who lives in a glass house cast the first vote...

We haven't even the chance to find out if we have acted well or badly, if we have chosen wisely or unwisely.

(Milan Kundera)

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in, meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin

Engines stop running but I have no fear 'cause London is drowning and I live by the river

(Joe Strummer, London Calling, 1979)

London has been under the spotlight recently, not for the right reasons, and polling in the Imperial Capital has been summat puzzling recently. Survation have published a new Full London poll, covering both the incoming snap general and next year's mayoral election. For some unspecified reason, they published it on the eve of the Uxbridge by-election, but it was conducted two to three weeks earlier, between the 30th of June and the 5th of July. Definitely not fresh fish, but London polling is actually quite scarce, so that's the most recent we have. What we have in this poll is definitely encouraging for London Labour, showing them back on track for a landslide of the same magnitude as 1997 and 2001. And it also shows that the Boundary Review has definitely been kind to Labour in the Imperial Capital.

There is an interesting subplot to this polling, related, as you might expect, to The Curious Incident Of Danny Boy At The By-Election. Labour's fiasco in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. The Survation poll, which is hugely favourable to Labour, predicts they would have gained the seat by 0.5% on the current boundaries, and by just 3% on the incoming Labour-friendly ones. It's even worse if you consider the weighted average of the London subsamples of all GB-wide polls conducted in July. It delivers 50.8% for Labour and 25.3% for the Conservatives, closer than the Survation poll. And it predicts the Conservatives holding Uxbridge and South Ruislip by 4%, compared to 1.6% at the real by-election. So maybe, just maybe, Labour failing to gain Uxbridge was not a freak accident, but just the natural order of things. Survation also polled next year's mayoral election, and the results are far less flamboyant for Labour, showing little change from an already disappointing Redfield & Wilton poll from three weeks ago.

The Greens and Liberal Democrats gaining votes is irrelevant since the electoral system was altered from Instant Runoff to First Past The Post. Labour can count only on their own votes, and the two polls we already have show that Sadiq Khan has less appeal than a generic Labour candidate for Commons. I don't think that ULEZ is genuinely a reason for that, as a YouGov poll has shown that Londoners are not massively against it. They are split right down the middle, and strong opposition actually comes from the rest of the South, who don't vote at the mayoral election. Moreover, a court has ruled that a legal challenge against ULEZ doesn't have a leg to stand on, though it's unlikely it will deter the opposition from weaponising the issue during the campaign. Which might be quite damaging if the best Sadiq Khan can come up with is this 'Say maaate' campaign that even The Hipstershire Gazette find unstoppably cringe. I beg to differ here as I see it more like the political equivalent of an Ed Wood movie. Massively cringe at first sight, but bound to rise to cult status with future generations. Too late to help Sadiq with re-election, though.

Here we go, here we go, here we go rocking down the West London motorway

And on your left you'll see the tower blocks, built in 1963 with hard cash payments from the GLC

And over there you'll see Westbourne Park, you don't wanna go there when it gets dark

(Joe Strummer, London's Burning, 1977)

It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.

(Milan Kundera)

One of the controversial issues in London right now is the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). It was created by Boris Johnson at the end of his second term as Mayor of London, as summat of a logical extension to the existing Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ) in Central London, which covers approximately just the historic Cities of London and Westminster, with a few bits of Inner Hipstershire in between. Now Johnson of course opposes it because Labour supports it, have already expanded it to the whole of Inner London, previously the historic County of London, on a specific demand from Conservative Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, and are expanding it to the whole of Greater London at the end of this month. The plan has also received criticism from the left, for its disproportionate impact on low-earning households who can't afford to change their car to an ULEZ-compliant model. Redfield & Wilton have smelled blood on the campaign tracks here, and polled the Londoners' support for ULEZ, among other options for a transport policy in the Imperial Capital. That was before Labour's fiasco at the Uxbridge by-election gave anti-ULEZers more fuel, pun deliberately inserted, and switched Keir Starmer to opposing it.

The existence of both CCZ and ULEZ is supported by a majority of Londoners, albeit not an overwhelming one. The extension of either is conspicuously less popular, but it still elicits more support than opposition, thusly contradicting Starmer's soundbite that the ULEZ extension cost Labour the Uxbridge by-election. It is also interesting to see that a majority of Londoners support the pedestrianisation of the whole of Central London, which is not in anybody's manifesto, probably because it proved controversial when even just one street was targeted. Pedestrianisation is not a novel concept. Pedestrian-only access to shopping streets already existed in 13th century England, and was still pretty common in Victorian London. But then the car culture took over, and pedestrianisation was not revived in the UK until 1967, much later than in Germany and even the car-loving United States. The main issue is that city-planners mostly see pedestrian zones as limited to a couple of shopping streets, and have a hard time envisioning one covering a contiguous area similar in size to a small city, and with a population of nearly half a million. Even when the concept makes sense and is popular. Redfield & Wilton's panel did show consistency with this choice when asked which modes of transport should be granted more or less priority in London.

Walking and collective transportation win hands down here, with cycling less popular, and individual fossil-fueled means of transportation at the bottom of the pit. One can only wonder what kind of replies this question would get from other major cities across the UK. The optimist in me likes to think it would be pretty similar, though you never know. Of course, it would depend on peoples' experience in their own city, which kind of configuration it has, whether the public transport offer is more or less extensive, etc... And also cases where cyclists have proved to be more of a nuisance and a hazard to pedestrians and their dogs than cars. Nothing personal here, of course. Redfield & Wilton had another question for their Londoners, probably added as the perennial consistency test that features in a lot of polls. They asked the panel which mode of transportation should be given the highest priority on the Imperial Capital's streets. And the panel proved to be really consistent with the earlier question.

It's fun to see they sneaked electric scooters into the list here, and that it got an abysmal rating. Which is fully deserved as these abominations should be banned by an international treaty, or possibly have their use restricted to railway tracks at peak hours. Though it's also surprising to see it ranked so low in London, as it seems to be the hipsters' weapon of choice against canines and toddlers. Anyway, what this poll proves is that efficient transport is a priority for Londoners. Earlier polls say it comes second, just after housing. Clearly, no city should have the choice between cheap and average, or efficient and costly. Especially when the reality ends up being overpriced and crassly inefficient. Of course, we know that one of the most salient traits of English exceptionalism is that even the best laid plans end up being massive fucking failures. Then history teaches us English plans for anything are not even well laid to begin with, and plans for transport in London are no exception. Even the most massive injections of funding deliver only overheads and delays, when it's not outright cancellation. A word of advice to Sadiq Khan's campaign planners. Whatever you intend to say about the future of Transport for London, don't even mention Crossrail.

Ever since Joyce, we have been aware of the fact that the greatest adventure in our lives is the absence of adventure.

(Milan Kundera)

When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons. He does not yet sense that his life contains just a single theme.

(Milan Kundera)

Discussing Spain is something most Brits should stay away from. I'm not talking about the Benidorm residents here, who love whining about the restless natives pretending to speak Spanish only, to take the piss out of their sorry English asses. Or those sharing selfies on Instagram, from their binge-drinking weekend in Magaluf. No, it's all about Gordon Brown pontificating in The Hipstershire Gazette about the Spanish general election, ten days before Election Day, as if it could influence any Spanish voter. Don't misread me here. I totally agree with The Gordzilla's concern over the rise of far-right parties in continental Europe, and them becoming part of governing coalitions. The prospect of unhinged far-right ideologues making xenophobia, homophobia and misogyny government policies is appalling. But so is Brown's inability to even name the underlying causes of the Left's difficulties in Spain. Why did voters lose trust in a government, that had a better record on the economy, inflation, wages and climate emergency than almost any other on the continent? How did a feminist rebellion force one the incumbent coalition partners to commit seppuku, and dissolve itself into a broader, less wokextremist, electoral alliance? This needs to be addressed too, if you want to understand why the trend of polls went so bad for the Left months before the election.

Spanish law bans the publication of voting intentions polls in the last week before the election, as if it still made sense in this day and age, when you can get them from foreign sites. But Spanish pollsters more than made up for the lost revenue by going into maximum overdrive the week before. Seven to twelve new polls a day, even the busiest British pollsters couldn't keep up with that. Of course it does not make the polls more accurate, it just gives anoraks like me a broader base to calculate a last day estimate of voting intentions and the allocation of seats, from the last batch revealed on Election Day itself. And then take the piss out of the pollsters as they still got it wrong even in that last ditch effort. The one thing they missed, that ended up making all the difference, is the PSOE's surge in the last mile, especially in Catalonia. There the PSC, the PSOE's regional branch, gained 13% of the vote and seven seats from the pro-Independence parties. The conservative Partido Popular (PP) are now trapped between a rock and a harder rock, as they ended up 39 seats short of a majority, and a coalition deal with the far-right Vox. would still be six seats short of a majority, after Vox lost 20% of their votes and 40% of their seats. After the last count of the expats' votes delivered a potentially perfectly hung Parliament, there is still a strong possibility that the PSOE will defeat all odds and all polls, and stay in power.

Of course the funniest part of the story was the British Woke Left riding their high horse to the moral high ground, and lecturing Spain on how bad it would have been to let the far-right sneak into government, before Spain voted to avoid just that. But they carefully avoid telling you that the only reason the PP might have chosen to go into a coalition with Vox, on just slightly different results, is proportional representation (PR). On First-past-the-post (FPTP), the PP would have bagged an outright majority of seats and any discussion of an alliance would be moot. And I do have first-hand evidence to prove it, the results of the Spanish Senate elections, that were also held on the 23rd of July. The Senate elections are the only ones in Spain that use FPTP instead of PR. The system is FPTP in multi-member constituencies, the same as in English Councils, when they choose to have a smaller number of large wards, rather than a larger number of small wards. The comparison between the election for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate elections makes my point beyond any sort of reasonable doubt.

The voting patterns are slightly different, but not by much. On FPTP, the PP bags an outright majority in the Senate, with 120 seats out of 208, and the added bonus that Vox gets none. The same system for the Chamber of Deputies would guarantee a majority government, with no reason to bother about the influence of the far-right, for all intents and tortoises a win-win situation. But don't expect the Loony Left keyboard warriors to admit to that, when they want to impose PR on the UK. Not because it's a fairer system, but because it would enable the fringe extremists they also support to exert disproportionate influence on government. An influence that voters denied them in the ballot box, but that PR grants them through the backdoor. Don't say you haven't been warned.

Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect someday to suffer from vertigo. Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us, which tempts and lures us. It is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

(Milan Kundera)

In Central Europe, the eastern frontier of the West, everyone has always been aware of the dangers of Russia's power.

(Milan Kundera)

The key event impacting future developments in Ukraine was of course the much-awaited NATO Summit held in Vilnius on the 11th and 12th of July. For one fleeting moment, I feared that the Zelenskyy Show was going one notch too far this time, and that the Allies would tell him to fuck off. Our Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Joe Biden's National Security adviser Jake Sullivan came within a hare's breadth of that, when they demanded that Ukraine show some gratitude for all we have already done. Which is a bit rich coming from the United States, as Joe Biden's perennial procrastination and imaginary red lines are the one and only reason Ukraine didn't get all they needed, when they needed it. And also coming from Ben Wallace, who has been repeatedly watering down Rishi Sunak's promises to Ukraine because, ye ken, these things take time and we didn't really mean it anyway. There was an immediate backlash from the British public, evidenced by a YouGov poll conducted on the last day of the summit, just after Ben Wallace's remarks. YouGov simply asked their panel if they found these remarks appropriate or inappropriate. And it's one-nil for Zelenskyy, while Ukraine is not done taking the piss out of Ben.

Half of Brits disowning Ben, and only a third supporting him, is a clear own goal. Even Conservative voters offer only minimal support. Another clear sign that Ben should think twice before speaking, or simply just shut the fuck up. Fortunately for Ukraine, Ben is not in charge of the real decisions, Rishi is. Which does not mean we're conclusively in safer hands, just that decisions are more likely to be made in a reasoned and adult way, rather than Ben's usual self-serving petulance. Public opinion will probably now expect some clarification on the how and when of Ukraine's membership of NATO, as the Vilnius Summit failed to deliver the clear answer that Zelenskyy requested. Turkey's screeching reverse ferret and unexpected support for Ukraine's membership might have been the tipping point. As usual, the waters were again muddied by the United States finding more excuses for extending the borders of caution into procrasturbation. Which is probably Sloppy Joe again drawing red lines in the sand, that exist only in his imagination. But another YouGov poll, also conducted during the summit, proves that the British public are not for procrastinating, as they massively support Ukraine's membership of NATO after the war.

There is absolutely no ambiguity here, when supporters outnumber opponents seven-to-one. And massive support definitely cuts across all demographics, politics and geographics. That may not be what Ben Wallace wants to hear, but here it is. I was also flabbergasted that Joe Biden first, and then Jake Sullivan, felt they had to lie publicly about what the NATO Treaty says. Peddling the tired narrative, unquestioningly relayed by lazy media outlets, that Ukraine's membership of NATO would inevitably and inextricably lead to direct war with Russia. Which is also the fear-mongering talking point from the the Putin-enablers and is demonstrably fucking bollocks. All you have to do is read what the Treaty actually says. The now famous Article 5 does not say 'immediate war', and was indeed artistically chiseled by expert diplomats to specifically not say that. So you really have to wonder what are Joe Biden's ulterior motives in peddling Putin's lie, other than offering himself an excuse for permanent procrastination. In the meanwhile, YouGov also polled the British public about who they think is responsible for the war in Ukraine, and the verdict is implacably and impeccably unambiguous, unlike politicians.

The poll actually has two NATO-related options, "more NATO than Russia" and "exclusively NATO", mirroring the choices offered for Russia. But they attracted so little support that I combined them into one, to make the chart more readable. The Kremlin's narrative, that NATO did it, is rejected by a gigantic 18-to-1, no ifs and no buts. Even the 'balanced' option of both-sidesism doesn't hold water for the British public. It is indeed very reassuring that Brits, even the TikTok Generation and the blue-haired hipsters from Islington, don't fall for the Russian propaganda regularly relayed by all the FSB-manipulated Putin-enablers on our side. We are fortunate that, unlike what we see in some European countries, no credible political force in the UK is backing the Putinist Weltanschauung. There is only one truth here. Russia is the aggressor, not the victim. Russia is the rogue terrorist state managed like an international crime syndicate. Putin is the one perpetuating Stalin's vision of a Thousand Years' Soviet Empire, and Hitler's vision of an ethnically-purified Lebensraum. So long as the British public don't fall for Putin's revisionist alternative history, Ukraine can count on us.

Horrible as it is, a fascist dictatorship will disappear when its dictator does, and therefore people can keep up hope. Dictators are perishable, Russia is eternal. The misery of the countries we come from lies in the utter absence of hope.

(Milan Kundera)

In Memoriam

Milan Kundera

(Brno, 1 April 1929 - Paris, 11 July 2023)

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground.

But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment.

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave

of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

(The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, 1984)

Jeremy's Den

03/08/2023

All Rishi Needs Is A Miracle

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