Jeremy's Den: September 2023

One of the saddest lessons of history is this. If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth.

(Carl Sagan)

The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
(Carl Sagan)

When your day job, and also your hobby, is to dissect numbers and make them talk, you often wonder if there are precedents for what you are seeing. In electoral terms, that will boil down to how good pollsters of earlier generations were at predicting the results of elections. Or not. Then you have to travel back in time a wee smitch and look at what happened in similar situations to the one that is under your eyes right now. So I went back to the last three elections that the Labour Party won, and how the pollsters' findings at various points in time compare with the final result. To make it simpler and wrapped up in just one item, what was Labour's lead over the Conservatives in polls ahead of these elections, and was it close to their lead on Election Day or not? I plotted that at the same reference points, from one year before to the day before, and then added a plot of the Conservatives' lead over Labour ahead of the 2019 election, just for fun.

The most interesting is the 2019 election. I have little doubt that, if Theresa May had called a snap general in the spring, instead of force-feeding us an unnecessary European Parliament election, Labour would have won it, probably struck some deal with the SNP in a hung Parliament, and we would be wondering now if Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn could win a second term. Then, after all that Theresa May achieved was making the Brexit Party a one-hit wonder and Boris Johnson Prime Minister, the cards were reshuffled and Corbyn was doomed. Unlike the three Labour-won elections, 2019 shows a very consistent sequence of polls pointing to the actual result. In stark contrast, the trends of polls in 1997 and 2001, the two elections closest to what we are being led to expect from the next one, show a constant over-estimation of the Labour vote. Which probably only shows how much the people wanted to get rid of the Conservatives in 1997, and how toxic the Conservative brand still was in 2001. But it also tells us that current polls should be handled with care, when they predict a Labour lead somewhere in the same range as in late April 1997 or early May 2001.

Now the deepest area of unknown is when the snap general election will happen. When Boris Johnson had the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011 repealed, and the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 passed, it basically meant the the FTPA 2011 was our Season Nine of Dallas. Had never existed. So the modus operandi, which I had dutifully familiarised myself with, was back to the status quo ante, with which I had to refamiliarise myself. Thanks Dog, it's fucking simple. All the Prime Minister has to get is a Royal Proclamation of dissolution, which is also legally considered as the writ of election for countdown purposes. And then the election is held on the first Thursday after 25 working days have elapsed, so five weeks unless there are bank holidays in between. My hunch is that Rishi Sunak will want to cut the clown show short, and not wait until an improbable Conservative surge next year. He could thusly request the necessary Royal Proclamation in the week when Commons reconvene after the Conference Recess. Which would put the election on the 23th of November if he moves really fast, or otherwise on the 30th. That's just pure speculation but, if it does happen that way, remember you heard it here first. If it doesn't, this article will self-destroy.

You say you never compromise with the mystery tramp but now you realise he's not selling any alibis

As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes and say "Do you want to make a deal?"

(Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone, 1965)

Hey, please crawl out your window, use your hands and legs, it won't ruin you

How can you say he will haunt you? You can go back to him any time you want to

(Bob Dylan, Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?, 1965)

No update on English politics can be complete without an entry about Nadine Dorries. She who her own constituents considered as useful as a chocolate teapot, which is the Mid Bedfordshire version of Malcolm Tucker's immortal marzipan dildo. Nadine first insisted she was still working daily with constituents, but failed to mention which constituency they are from, so it might just as well be The Cotswolds, where she apparently lives now. Sadly, Nadine cut the fun short, when she officially submitted her application for one of the fancy non-existent jobs that count as a resignation from Commons in the medieval rulebook of SW1, so she is now reunited with her beloved Boris Johnson in Former MPs' Purgatory. This at last allowed a writ of election to be issued as soon as Commons reconvened, so the long-awaited by-election in Mid Bedfordshire will now happen on the 19th of October, three days after the end of the Conference Recess. Couldn't imagine a better timing for another plausible major embarrassment for Rishi Sunak. There have already been two polls about this by-election, with some puzzling findings.

It is not really, and also really not, surprising that most of the votes for the Independent candidate Gareth Mackey, the Chairman of Central Bedfordshire Council, have been siphoned by the Liberal Democrats in the six weeks between the two polls. The Liberal Democrats have their sights set as firmly on that seat as a Ukrainian drone on a Russian corvette, and expect to repeat the upset of two years ago in Chesham and Amersham, which is just 40 kilometres due South down the B5120 and the B4506. But it would be a fucking embarrassment for everybody in the Oppositions if this turned out to be a three-way marginal, as the latest Survation poll predicts, with the Conservative holding the seat by fewer votes than Russia has warships left in the Black Sea. A few days before Nads decided to shut down the show and go ballistic on Rishi Sunak, Omnisis scratched their head over how they could poll their panel about Nadine Dorries without telling them they were polling them about Nadine Dorries. So they decided to ask very generic questions, that could apply to at least one other MP. First shot was about whether MPs who haven't spoken in Commons for more than a year should lose their seats. The Great British Public definitely think they should.

Of course there are many other MPs than Nadine that are concerned here, and only those succumbing to the public frenzy Rishi Sunak whipped against her would instantly conclude it was all about her. Her definition of Rishi here, not mine. So Brits do think their MPs have a duty to speak in Commons at least once a year. And Nads certainly wants us to believe we all check Hansard at the close of every business day, to track who has spoken and who hasn't. But I'm inclined to think the Great British Public should be careful what they wish for, as most MPs actually have nothing of substance to say, as they are only needed to show up at divisions. And a lot of those who do speak have made it a habit of talking fucking bollocks out of their arse, because there is sadly no convention against that, that Lindsay Hoyle could roaringly enforce. The whips even reward them for that. Omnisis's second line of questioning was whether or not sitting MPs should be banned from hosting shows on news channels. A majority think so, but not totally conclusively.

One Brit out of five, and more in some circles, see nothing wrong with cash-strapped MPs also talking fucking bollocks in their own shows on national TV. This is shockingly much more than the combined viewership of GB News and Talk TV, the two most common perpetrators, or the membership of the Lozza Fox and Darren Grimes fan clubs, who make up most of that viewership. So we have a fifth of the allegedly adult population, and a third of Conservative voters, approving a practice they have never witnessed first-hand, and only know from select bloopers on TwiXter when the bollocks really get out of hand. But surely we don't want Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lee Anderson, Esther McVey and Philip Davies losing their livelihood amidst very official concerns that their new jobs ring enough alarm bells to be found worth of scrutiny and strongly worded advice. But we shouldn't let such trivial considerations jeopardise the last bastion of Jake's free speech, should we? If this is the price to pay for an adult, fair and balanced democracy, so be it. Let freedom ring, and donkeys be led by donkeys. With all due apologies to the donkeys, who are kinder and smarter than 30p-Lee.

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes and just for that one moment I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, you'd know what a drag it is to see you

(Bob Dylan, Positively Fourth Street, 1965)

When she said, "Don't waste your words, they're just lies", I cried she was deaf

And she worked on my face until breaking my eyes, and said, "What else you got left?"

(Bob Dylan, Fourth Time Around, 1966)

When the endless saga of Nadine Dorries had run its course, Rishi Sunak urgently needed some new dead cat to make himself look good and ignite another culture war. He found it with the reinstatement of National Service, now dubbed the "Great British National Service" by a think tank close to Starfleet Admiral Penny Mordaunt. It might solely have been Sebastian Payne's genius plan, the same Seb who unsuccessfully tried to be selected as the Conservative candidate taking a walloping in Selby and Ainsty. Or it's just Penny taking her cues from David Cameron, who already proposed it in 2007 and then in 2010, and had to back down both times. Or she might have chosen to follow the proverbial "best international practice" and follow in Emmanuel Macron's footsteps, forgetting he had to seriously water down his plan after public outcry. So we definitely needed to hear the Great British Public's take on the matter, and we got just that from a poll conducted by J.L. Partners on behalf of Onward. Who are, wait for it, Sebastian Payne's business and the one who gave Penny the idea. So totally unbiased on the levels of support the plan enjoys all across This Isle.

I'm not saying the poll was massaged, but we almost never see the same levels of support all across the regions of England on any issue, or a situation where Scotland and Wales almost agree with England. The question in itself is not openly leading or biased, but the sequence of questioning in the poll is quite a build-up towards a favourable answer. Starting with a massive array of issues facing British youth today, and instilling the idea that they are not patriotic enough, and thusly need some sort of reeducation. I also smell a rat with some of the poll's other crosstabs. There is no visible 'gender gap', and I've seen enough polls to know there is always one, no matter which question you're asking. The generational differences are also quite less prominent than you would expect on such an issue, which has all the ingredients to be highly controversial, and generate at least scepticism, if not outright opposition, among the younger generations.

I'm not saying this looks as credible as voting intentions for the next presidential in Russia. But it is certainly no coincidence that the proposal has been in the making for a few months already, and surfaces in the open only now that we know that Vladimir Putin is enforcing a massive reeducation plan of his own, to indoctrinate and militarise Russian teenagers. But these findings fit the pre-written script of the British Tik Tok Generation being summat like a cross between the Lost Boys and Jimmy Cooper, which is about as modern as Conservative thinkers dare to go. So the wee boys definitely need the strong and stable authority of a father figure, which they can only get with National Service. And we'll take the wee girls too, after all. I might be a wee smitch biased here, probably because I don't believe there are such overwhelming levels of support for National Service, unless you wrap it up in some carefully chiseled narrative about how wretched the kids are. Then Onward had their pollster probe another angle, to emolliate the initial findings, about how to make National Service more attractive.

So we are told now that the most popular option would be a voluntary service of more than two months, mixing military and non-military coaching. Sebastian Payne obviously studied these findings before writing his column, and still found a way to twist them. He concluded that the Great British National Service should be an opt-out, while 'voluntary' does mean an opt-in, not something that will fall on you just because you were not paying attention enough to the small print. The most intriguing part is that four months elapsed between the period when the poll was fielded and its disclosure by J.L. Partners, just one day after Payne published his column. Did Payne really need that long to digest all of the poll's findings? Or did he need that long to convince Starfleet Admiral Mordaunt to endorse it? Or was she onboard from day one, and they needed that long to concoct the narrative and coordinate their moves? Perhaps Sebastian tried to convince Penny that the best way to make the British youth man up was an outright ban on Tik Tok, and she didn't like it because it might lose votes. Inquiring minds surely would love to know.

The deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount, but nothing really matters much

It's doom alone that counts, and the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn

(Bob Dylan, Shelter From The Storm, 1974)

I've got my dark sunglasses, I'm carrying for good luck my black tooth

Don't ask me nothing about nothing, I just might tell you the truth

(Bob Dylan, Outlaw Blues, 1965)

The main problem for Mordaunt and Payne is that you can't commission a visibly biased poll, procrastinate for four months before deciding how to use it to support a dubious point, and not expect somebody else to catch the ball and throw it back at you. That's just what the allegedly Tory-friendly YouGov did with their own National Service poll, conducted and released barely a week after Payne's column triggered a semblance of debate about that new squirrel. And it's no exaggeration to say that it pretty much demolished his case, forensically probing all possible options he had laid on the table. First of all, YouGov tested the public's mood about a compulsory National Service in all its variants, and there is definitely no popular backing for such options. Even the one-month community service, plausibly the least controversial of all, elicits nothing better than a neat split right down the middle.

It's interesting to see what the political crosstabs of the poll deliver. Quite predictably, Labour and Liberal Democrat voters conclusively oppose all sorts of compulsory National Service. But Mordaunt and Payne were surely expecting lots of support from Conservative voters. Alas, poor Penny, it didn't work well either. Her own voting base clearly have massive doubts about the wisdom of such proposals, even if outright opposition is much lower than among the general population. When you can't even conclusively convince your own voters, you dead cat instantly transitions into a lame duck and it has to be taken off the table. Especially when there is evidence from abroad that similar schemes are failures, or even deliver the exact opposite results from those you claim they would.

YouGov also probed their panel for their support for voluntary forms of National Service. These options elicit far more popular support, which doesn't mean they would be workable in practice. I can easily picture the British Army rolling their eyes in disbelief at the prospect of hiring new recruits for just one year. There is definitely a very good reason why the standard enlistment contract now provides for a period of 12 years in service, which you could call return on investment. And also a very good reason why you can't resign the Regular Army before four years, and then only with one year's notice. Because one year is what you need for basic military training. I can't imagine that the Starfleet Admiral, with her intimate knowledge of all things military, is not aware of that, and why and how it would make one-year enlistment totally unworkable. Not to mention the abysmal level of pay for new recruits, currently £18,687 for the whole duration of training, less than 60% of the UK's average wage for a full-time job. Can't expect many volunteers on that level of pay, can you?

You might think I devoted too much space to this, as it was just a fleeting blip on the radars, and not even one on yours. I just thought it's worth dissecting, as it is quite revealing of how the government of the UK works these days. So out of road it no longer matters they were out of fuel long before. Even their favourite smoke-and-mirror trick, picking a phony culture war with the lefty wokies, has run its course and died in a ditch. This government is desperate for ways to distract the public from their many failures. RAAC, cost of living, benefits, Daniel Radcliffe... oops, sorry... Khalife, you name it, you got it. It is quite telling that their first reaction to the RAAC scandal, when it first surfaced many a month ago, was to sweep it under the rug until after the snap general, so that somebody else would have to deal with it. That Rishi Sunak at PMQs denied that Keir Starmer had ever raised the issue of RAAC, when Starmer's many past warnings are a matter of public record. Then I also find the whole Khalife story fucking hilarious, despite the sinister background. How the fuck could the best police force in the whole galaxy need three fucking days to find a lad who was summat like 15 miles away from the prison he had escaped from, and had done no slicker move than just crossing the Thames? Were they busier chasing suffragette-coloured stickers on bus stops, as police forces across England are prone to do these days?

And me, I nearly got busted, and wouldn't it be my luck

To get caught without a ticket and be discovered beneath a truck?

(Bob Dylan, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, 1966)

Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand and rivers that ran through every day

I must have been mad, I never knew what I had, until I threw it all away

(Bob Dylan, I Threw It All Away, 1969)

It took Conservatives four years to Get Brexit Done, which is admittedly faster than building a ferry in Glasgow, though some would say it still needs a lot of finishing touches. And British public opinion is no longer enamoured with it, poll after poll says. Or they don't. Because the Great British Public may be short on dosh because of Brexit, but they're not short on contradictions about it. And the ways and means to get out of it. Or not. Redfield & Wilton, them again, probed their panel about their feelings about Brexit and the remote possibility of ever rejoining the European Union. As a hors d'oeuvre, they asked whether or not the issue is settled, or if it is more like a cold case waiting to be reopened. The replies here expose only one of many layers of contradiction in the Great British Public's minds.

Oddly, this tepid support for re-opening the case quite fits with a slightly earlier poll from Opinium. Of course, the Opinium poll can also be read as a not-too-subtle way to massage the results. Offering a rainbow of options, when the core issue is a straight Yes-or-No question, surely has some ulterior motives. Like offering Keir Starmer a branch to clutch at, about negotiating closer ties with the EU in the future. The problem is that Starmer totally fucked up the first opportunity he had to get serious about that, when his talks with Emmanuel Macron reportedly "skirted around specifics of Brexit". Looks like "Don't mention Brexit" has become the new "Don't mention the war". But even Basil Fawlty couldn't make that one funny. Now, if we are to believe the Opinium people, that a quarter of Brits want closer ties to the EU, there is an oven-ready way for this. Joining EFTA and the EEA, which would guarantee access to the European Single Market, a very obvious way to start curing some of the evils of Brexit.

We know that both Labour and the Conservatives are desperately seeking voters. But this is surely not an excuse for Labour failing to think outside the box about Brexit and our relationship with the European Union. Keir Starmer should instead be extremely happy that putting the EFTA-EEA option on the table would be a sure way to circumnavigate the Brexit-EU issue and avoid taking any 'controversial' stand about that. It would also shield Starmer from other difficult issues like joining the Euro and the Schengen Area, which can definitely be used as scary bogeymen by the Brexiteer mob. But this is probably not the last word we will hear on these issues, if we go back now to the Redfield & Wilton poll and their next question, about the people's appetite for a "Rejoin The EU" referendum. Or lack thereof.

Here we have another shining example of the British people's ability to hold two totally contradictory views in the same breath. Just do the maths and we have 14% who think the matter is settled and should not be re-opened, but we should have a referendum about it within five years. This can only encourage more creative ambiguity on Labour's side, and more Remoaner-baiting on the Conservative side. As if both have a vested interest in keeping Brexit in the public's eye, to use it as a political football in the run-up to the incoming snap general. In the meanwhile, pollsters will still be able to charge thousands of pounds for polls about our voting intentions at a referendum that will never happen, and the metropolitan punditariat will devote endless columns to it, filled with the appropriate gravitas. Once the cat is out of the bag, you can't put it back in its tube.

And the locusts sang off in the distance, the locusts sang such a sweet melody

Oh, the locusts sang off in the distance, the locusts sang and they were singing for me

(Bob Dylan, Day Of The Locusts, 1970)

Englishman stranded in the blackheart wind, combing his hair back, his future looks thin

Bites the bullet and he looks within for dignity

(Bob Dylan, Dignity, 1994)

Of course, Redfield & Wilton also asked the unavoidable follow-up question, how their panel would vote at a hypothetical future referendum about rejoining the EU. Which again leads us in a different direction. The original raw results, before all the pollster's wizardry is applied, show a majority ready and willing to rejoin the EU. The various crosstabs are also quite consistent with what we intuitively thought. Younger generations are more likely to vote to rejoin, left-wingers too, and Scotland wants it more than England and Wales. Interestingly, Wales has more conclusively switched towards the EU than England, moving from 52.5% Leave to 58% Rejoin, versus from 53.4% Leave to 51% Rejoin. Scots are the most consistent, moving from 62% Remain to 61% Rejoin. Of course, it would be more relevant to compare the 2016 results to the poll's findings after all the weighting has been done, and undecideds and abstainers removed. Then, Redfield & Wilton predict 62% Rejoin overall, 60% in England, 68% in Wales and a whopping 72% in Scotland.

Then we must consider the overall trend of polls that surveyed hypothetical voting intentions at an implausible referendum about rejoining the EU. Here I'm using voting intentions weighted by likelihood to vote, but still including undecideds. I'm not convinced that the relatively high level of undecideds adds uncertainty here, as I'm ready to bet they would ultimately go any way the wind blows. Which would favour the Rejoin side, who already enjoy a much bigger lead than Leave in 2016. With such numbers, it's fucking hilarious that the Liberal Democrats made themselves an easy target for EU zealots, when Ed Davey admitted that rejoining the EU is "currently off the table". Which is factually true, but this is one of these days when your cleverest choice is to just shut the fuck up. Admittedly, it would be nice to know what Labour actually stand for some time before the next election, but I'm not holding my breath. Clearly a New Brexit Deal is not the answer, as nobody has the fuckiest scoobie what it actually means, and the EU has already said that the UK can shove any dream of a renegotiated deal up is arse anyway.

There is quite an awkward fallout of all this pro-EU polling in Scotland, as the SNP has made it official party policy that a vote for the SNP is a vote to rejoin the EU, with the alternative narrative that a vote for Independence is a vote to rejoin the EU. This is coupled with Alyn Smith's performative dismissal of EFTA as a halfway house, which is definitely not the best way to get positive vibrations from the EFTA member countries. Of course, this is only the SNP weaponising the EU question for short term political gain, as they obviously would never have adopted this passive-aggressive attitude if the Alba Party had not endorsed Scottish membership of EFTA after Independence. Angus Robertson logically went one step beyond, trying to turn the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election into a plebiscite about the EU. Can't wait now for The Scottish Pravda's headline after the SNP lose the seat. Guess it won't be anything like "Scots reject EU membership". Clearly, this is not a matter to be decided by Alyn Smith and Angus Robertson without proper debate, and not even by a pre-scripted SNP Conference. Only the Scottish people an make this decision, and the SNP will have to accept it requires another referendum, not a party decision behind closed doors.

So many roads, so much at stake, so many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake

Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take to find dignity

(Bob Dylan, Dignity, 1994)

This situation can only get rougher, why should we needlessly suffer?

Let's call it a day, go our own different ways before we decay

(Bob Dylan, We Better Talk This Over, 1978)

In a few months, or maybe just a few weeks, the Great British Public will face a tough choice. Will they keep the party in charge, who are allergic to a wealth tax, will never allow a second referendum on Scottish Independence, are trying to water down their commitments to tackling climate change, and will not repeal zero-hour contracts? Or will they vote for radical change and put the party in charge, who are allergic to a wealth tax, will never allow a second referendum on Scottish Independence, are trying to water down their commitments to tackling climate change, and will not repeal zero-hour contracts? Tough choice, indeed. But thank Dog for Opinium, whose last poll tells us the Great British Public have no doubt about which party is the best fit to form the next government. Let's see first how much they feel some select descriptors fit the party who oppose a wealth tax because their donors hate the idea.

Now, enough with the joking, what you have above is what Brits think of the Conservative Party. But you had surely guessed it from the ultra-low ratings. Which you can pretty much sum up as "fucking wankers who have totally lost the plot". This is also reflected in the public's view of the achievability of Rishi Sunak's Five Pledges, or Five Goals, or Five Vaguely Phrased Ideas, who have now become eight, after YouGov already made them six. And it's quite an understatement to say that the public are not convinced. Just 10% think that any of Rishi's goals is completely achievable, which does not mean it will actually be achieved. Even if you add the half-arsed 'mostly achievable' rating, not one of the items bags an outright majority of believers. Ouch.

To be honest, the Great British Public's opinion of the party who oppose a wealth tax because their donors hate the idea, the other one, is not stellar either. Of course Labour have better ratings than the Conservatives, but they too don't get an outright majority on any item. Even the foundation of strong believers is not that strong, barely into double digits. The worst for Labour is that the public, albeit by a very tiny margin, think they are not ready for government. They have failed to make their case beyond reasonable doubt, which again puts them in the unsafe grey zone where they might get a massive mandate by default. Not because of what they are, but because of what they are not. Not the best way to start a new era in British politics. Clement Attlee and Tony Blair had both been dealt a much better hand back in the day.

There's the awkward feeling in this, that the public are like, "OK, we decided we would vote for them, so let's convince ourselves now that they actually deserve it". But there is still an element of lingering doubt at the back of their minds. That comes with the realisation that the party and the wannabe PM they intend to vote for now are no longer the ones they would have voted for if the election had been held just a year ago. New Starmer has finally eclosed from the chrysalis, but the butterfly is a disappointing sight. Will it now stand its exposure to the light until Election Day?

I bit into the root of forbidden fruit with the juice running down my leg

Then I dealt with your boss, who'd never known about loss, who always was too proud to beg

(Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?, 1978)

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you

Never understood that it ain't no good, you shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you

(Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone, 1965)

Notwithstanding all the above polling, the Labour Party do have a problem. The Great British Public may think that the Conservatives are shit at their job and need replacing, but they are still not conclusively convinced that Keir Starmer is their perfect match. Redfield & Wilton have an array of sixteen items to assess that, and their most recent delivery shows that Keir Starmer still has work to do to convince public opinion that he is totally fit for purpose. Bear in mind too that Redfield & Wilton almost always find better results for Starmer when they ask their panel who would be the best Prime Minister, but replies to the detailed list of prime-ministerability criteria do not match.

Quite strikingly, we know that the state of the economy is a major concern, and here Starmer and Sunak are pretty much tied. If Starmer becomes Prime Minister, as current polling suggests, he will start with a deficit in credibility on one of the three major issues of the day, probably because Labour's proposals for the economy also lack in credibility, and not just with Conservative voters. Another worrying result, from Labour's perspective, is that Starmer does not do really well, not just on items that define leadership, regardless of the person's political affiliation, but also on items that you are inclined to label 'left wing'. Like caring for the people, bringing them together, openness or truthfulness. This could lead us to an endless philosophical debate. What is the best situation? When the people love a party but have doubts about their leader? Or when the people love a leader but have doubts about their party? But we surely can agree that the worst is what is happening right now to Labour, when people have doubts about both the leader and the party.

At the end of the line, Starmer still does better than Sunak on the average rating for all sixteen items, but Starmer loses more ground than Sunak, in comparison to the 'Best Prime Minister' rating. This is highly unlikely to go in a radically different direction before the election, because Starmer himself has sown doubts in the minds of the electorate. If the people genuinely want a strong leader who understands their problems and will fix them, Starmer has not proved beyond reasonable doubt he is this man. He only has an advantage because Sunak has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is not, so two negatives end up making a positive. Such ratings only highlight the fragility of Labour's position, which is also illustrated by the recent by-elections. Winning an uphill battle in rural Yorkshire is one thing, losing a much easier one two doors down from your own turf is quite another. All this makes it impossible to have any certainty about the next election, no matter how big a Labour majority the current batch of polls predicts.

He pushed the window open wide, felt an emptiness inside

To which he just could not relate, brought on by a simple twist of fate

(Bob Dylan, Simple Twist Of Fate, 1974)

Your lover who just walked out the door has taken all his blankets from the floor

The carpet too is moving under you and it's all over now, Baby Blue

(Bob Dylan, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, 1965)

Today's Snapshot Of Polls includes the five most recently published, conducted by Techne, We Think, YouGov, Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll between the 20th and the 25th of September. That's a super-sample of 8,588 with a theoretical margin of error of 1.06%. This time, it looks like I've caught Labour again on the lower oscillation of the polling sine wave, as they are leading by only 16.3%. I can't help wondering if there is some sign from Dog in the continuous dismal state of the Conservative vote, just as we have reports of RAAC found inside the already crumbling Houses of Parliament. That would be quite the metaphor of the dismal state of the English Government. Even if Labour make their own mistakes day after day, and see it reflected in some weaker polling, with some votes even trickling down to the Liberal Democrats in several regions of England, Britain's mood is still strongly against the Conservatives. Recent announcements, like tax cuts for the wealthiest part of the electorate, make a change of course unlikely any time soon. And we are left wondering why Rishi Sunak is so keen on measures that will please only people who would have voted for the Conservatives anyway, but are likely to swing undecideds the other way.

The most disheartening part of the Conservatives' campaign, because they are already on the campaign track, make no mistake, is Rishi Sunak turning his back on any serious commitment to tackle climate change. Including measures that nobody ever proposed, and he totally made up off the muff, for a soundbite that GB News would love. I won't even discuss the ethical implications of this massive U-turn, all that could be said has already been said in the media. Besides, who can really be surprised at the Conservatives using a very serious issue as a political football in a concocted culture war of their own making? Who hasn't become totally accustomed to the Conservatives kowtowing to corporate interests, and making the voices of two dozen vociferous extremist MPs count more than the voice of the people? Because, as another YouGov poll has found out, giving up on the environment is not that popular.

These results are of course more subtle than a straight Yes-or-No question, which is the whole point of offering options to your panel. But it's also my unalienable right to simplify it in a totally binary way, and tell you that the main conclusion is that 65% of Brits, including 58% of Conservative voters, want the Net Zero target in 2050 to be kept. While a minority of just 17%, and only 29% of Conservative voters, want it to be dropped. So, even from the cynical perspective where you prioritise the next election over the future of the planet, Sunak is wrong. He did not just misread the room, he even misread hos own corner of the room. Admittedly, a quarter of Brits want some parts of the green agenda to be relaxed. I don't generally agree with this, as it would open the door to a slippery slope, except on one point. The phasing out of gas boilers. For full disclosure, I don't have a dog on this flight as I don't have a gas boiler. But many people do, and are not convinced that it's worth spending £20k on a massive and noisy contraption and roadworks in your back garden. But the most unholy alliance of English Conservatives and Scottish Greens are ready to coerce if they can't convince. Both should reframe their belief and offer alternatives to their beloved heat pumps, that are just as carbon-neutral, less costly and less disruptive. That would be common sense, which they both sadly lack.

Let's overturn these tables, disconnect these cables, this place don't make sense to me no more

(Bob Dylan, Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power), 1978)

If dogs run free, then what must be must be, and that is all

(Bob Dylan, If Dogs Run Free, 1970)

The current projection of voting intentions is far from the best Labour and the Liberal Democrats have ever had, but it's definitely too soon to celebrate a Sunak Revival, as The Telegraph does with only flimsy evidence to support it. Labour's predicted lead over the Conservatives is fairly similar to the findings of the last Deltapoll poll, that The Telegraph use as their Exhibit A, yet the seat projection still predicts massive gains for both Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with the Conservatives down to the number of seats they bagged in 1997. My model predicts a 171-seat working majority for a Labour government, and they wouldn't even need the Scottish and Welsh seats to bag it. The projection you get from Electoral Calculus on the same polling numbers confirms it, as their internal mechanics are slightly more Labour-friendly, as they have been quite consistently ever since generic polls registered double-digit leads for Labour.

This is not the best result ever predicted for Labour, but it's presumably the best they can plausibly get in the current political alignment of stars. What Labour have to fear most now, besides themselves, is the effect of the Liberal Democrats going on a wild rampage across Middle England, in search of easy-to-pluck seats. Ed Davey may not be the most astute politician in the current line-up, but his brand of aggressive campaigning has worked quite well so far at by-elections. It does not mean the same approach, focusing on potholes and the local Council felling trees, will work as well at the general election, but Ed is not aiming for 100 seats, as his ill-fated predecessor Jo Swinson was. If he's actually targeting between 30 and 40, he will probably succeed, though that would probably require the LibDems bagging a couple more points in the popular vote. Ed's efforts to cuddle lifelong Tory voters in the Home Counties may not always meet with the approval of his own Conference delegates, but he still has a way around that by granting the local constituency parties a lot of autonomy about their choice of campaign themes. Something the more rigidly structured and centrally controlled Labour can't mimic, so the Nimby Whisperer may well outfox Sir Kid Starver in the most unlikely places.

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety, you fight for the throne and you travel alone

Unknown as you slowly sink and there's no time to think

(Bob Dylan, No Time To Think, 1978)

Too much of nothing can make a man a liar,

It can cause one man to sleep on nails, it can cause others to eat fire

(Bob Dylan, Too Much Of Nothing, 1967)

We've had two more Full Scottish polls since my last update, one from Redfield & Wilton and one from YouGov. Plus a Partial Scottish from Find Out Now, surveying only voting intentions for the 19th of October Independence Referendum. Naw, just kidding, it's just a generic IndyRef poll as the actual IndyRef won't happen before the Sun turns supernova, which leaves the SNP plenty of time to collect more mandates. The Find Out Now poll is definitely the most interesting, as they invented a new genre, the Pick'n'Mix poll. They offered eight options and you just had to choose which one best fit your pre-scripted narrative. Let's just say that's not how really professional polling works. The pollster applies his methodology and weighting and delivers one result. You just don't tell your client to choose which results he likes best. Anyway, whichever option you include does not change the overall long-term trends by much. We're still stuck with a small No lead.

So we have the Markov Groundhog Dayjà Vu Effect all over again. The condensed snapshot of just the last three polls says so. Just as significant is the level of support for holding a second referendum within the next year, which is surveyed by Redfield & Wilton only. Two months ago we had a small plurality opposing it, and it switched to a small plurality supporting it a month ago. This month, it has swung again to a small plurality opposing it. We are thusly back to a highly precarious scenario, where the Scottish public agree that we should have a referendum within the next five years, and regulated by the existing Section 30 rules. This does not look like a winning combination, especially if you add the public's view on Alister Jack's outlandish conception that a referendum should not happen unless we have 60% Yes in the polls for a generation. And Scots also agree with that. What the fuck? Can't believe anyone would fall for that, as it does nothing to secure a Yes victory, it just makes the referendum less likely to happen.

The question now is whether or not there is a way to break the circle, and sail back towards a Yes majority. There's no oven-ready recipe for that, and the SNP quite obviously don't have the fuckiest scoobie. Now they're toying again with the 'de facto referendum' plan that they first supported because it was Nicola's idea, then rejected because it was Nicola's idea, then brought back because they have no better idea. It's an understatement to say that this has more holes in it than a Russian submarine in Crimea. The SNP may piss themselves and whine as much as they want, the English Government's reply is at least consistent. Section 30, the whole Section 30, nothing but Section 30. And, as much as I hate saying this, they're right. The Section 30 rules have been there for 25 years now, and are as unmoveable an object as there ever was, whatever the irrepressible force you're imagining you're applying on it. The only strategy is to strongarm the English Government, as Alex Salmond did when he had just six MPs to back him. Yet David Cameron fully believed that this sextet could disrupt Commons to a grinding halt, and capitulated without a fight. Why hasn't the Scottish Government ever tried that again? Could they just be biding their time, and gambling on being kindly granted DevoMaxMax by the incoming Labour government?

Everybody's doing something, I heard it in a dream

But when there's too much of nothing, it just makes a fella mean

(Bob Dylan, Too Much Of Nothing, 1967)

I hate that foolish game we played and the need that was expressed

And the mercy that you showed to me, who ever would have guessed?

(Bob Dylan, Dirge, 1973)

Every picture tells a story, or so they say. And every poll tells a story. Now there's a tale of two polls who tell different stories. Let's just say first that I find The Scottish Pravda are venturing on very shaky quicksand when they print that the YouGov poll is evidence that a plausible Labour majority in Westminster is threatened. It is not. Full stop. And it is quite fun to see The Times peddling the same narrative. Which does not make it right. Bullshit peddled from a pro-SNP perspective smells the same as bullshit peddled from a pro-Conservative perspective. Whichever way Scotland votes, this month's polls still say Labour would get a majority from England alone, and quite plausibly even without the London seats. Besides, one poll is not evidence that a full reversal of fortunes is taking place, especially as it comes from the one pollster with a history of always overestimating the SNP's vote shares. Let's just say this last poll looks quite different on the chart, including in comparison to YouGov's previous delivery five weeks before.

Whoever is right about the next general election's outcome, it definitely looks fucking hilarious that Alison Thewliss chose this moment to open a second front in the SNP Civil War, just days after SNP HQ conveniently vacated a seat for her in New Glasgow. As this is clearly a war by proxy against Stephen Flynn, you have to wonder what he has done wrong. Not paid enough tributes to Nicola? Not supportive enough of the Yellow-Green Axis? And why are SNP HQ also attempting to purge Lisa Cameron in East Kilbride? Anyway, whether or not you are totally convinced by any of the last four Full Scottish polls, or none, we will soon have a real life test of their reliability. The Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. We know that there are many marginal seats in Scotland, which is why so many change hands on rather small changes in voting intentions, and Rutherglen and Hamilton West is definitely one of them. Predicting the outcome of any specific seats is risky business for any prognosticator, but Electoral Calculus does it, and updates his predictions every month. My model does it too, as it is based on a bottom-up approach to translating polls into seats. So here's what we have, from both sources, on the Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency.

Electoral Calculus's prediction dates back to 28 August, and won't be updated for another week at least. It does not include the most recent polls, which tended to be more SNP-friendly. My prediction does, and also includes candidates from all parties or nuances that are contending there. With all necessary caveats in such a situation, I think it's safe to say that Labour will gain back the seat on a bigger margin than in 2017. But also a smaller one than they were led to expect from a long line of polls that instilled a false sense of security in them. Then the ones to watch here will be the Scottish Greens. It would definitely be a fucking treat if the SNP lost the seat by fewer votes than the Greens bagged. And surely loads of fun to watch the linguistic contortions the SNP would have to resort to, to explain that the Greenies did not actually split the vote, but the ISP did and are to blame for the defeat.

I fought with my twin, that enemy within, till both of us fell by the way

Horseplay and disease is killing me by degrees while the law looks the other way

(Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?, 1978)

Nothing was delivered but I can't say I sympathize

With what your fate is going to be for telling all those lies

(Bob Dylan, Nothing Was Delivered, 1967)

A lot of fucking hilarious things happen in Scotland these days, and not all of them at the Edinburgh Fringe. None of them at the Edinburgh Fringe, actually, as this year's "Funniest Joke" wouldn't have passed the "schoolyard joke" test when I was a kid, and is not even the best in a shortlist of really calamitous ones. The best comical value for a lot of money was in fact offered by Lorna Slater, the Minister for No Skills and Circular Reasoning or summat, when she claimed that "Westminster is terrified by the Bute House Agreement", while campaigning to make sure that the SNP lose the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. Reality check, Lorna, they're fucking not. The don't even give a fucking flying fish, for all we know. And, even if they took it seriously, which they don't, they're probably counting on the snap general to fuel the Unionist narrative that Scotland is done with the Nats. From our perspective, the trends of Scottish Parliament voting intentions matter more. And the last two polls have made them, quite unexpectedly, look better for the Yellow-Green Axis.

Humza Yousaf should not consider better poll numbers as a validation of his willingness to go ahead with a reform of the legal sector, that is widely and concurrently criticised by all stakeholders. The key element here is allowing the Scottish Government powers over the regulation of legal professionals. Which amounts to giving the executive branch control over the judicial branch. If you want to justify that by the usual "best international practice" bollocks, you will have to rely on precedents from Russia, China or Iran. I'm not sure how that will fit into an array of allegedly "progressive" credentials. This is why the Holyrood part of the Redfield & Wilton poll came as quite a shocker, especially when read back to back with the Westminster part. But we should not dismiss this lightly, and first look back at the past for precedents. And there are. The SNP did poorly at the 2005 and 2010 general elections, but became the governing party in Holyrood in 2007, and then the majority party in 2011. Both votes aligning is indeed quite a novelty in the grander scale of Time, seen in the post-referendum era. So it's not implausible at all that they would disalign again now, and save the pro-independence majority at the next Holyrood election, as the Redfield & Wilton poll predicts.

Uniform national swing says that these numbers would deliver a five-seat pro-independence majority. My model is less favourable, reducing it to just one seat on 65-64. Which a Green tantrum could transition into a minority on 63-66 if their innate sense of inclusivibility compels them to order the SNP to disinclude the Alba Party and their two predicted list seats in the North East and West, and the SNP sheepishly comply. Now the real question is not to find reasons why the Redfield & Wilton poll is wrong, but why it may be right. In a word, whether or not there are valid reasons why Labour would underperform by nearly 5% at the Holyrood election. And there are, of course. There is even an oven-ready explanation in the last instalment of Ipsos's Scottish Political Pulse survey. Scots are not really happy bunnies with the Scottish Government's achievements during the current term, but are also not convinced Labour would do any better. There is also a trace of that in their ratings of the political parties and leaders.

First, I do know that "there is no such thing as Scottish blah blah blah". But it's just fucking labels, and that's not the fucking point, capice? The point is that the SNP now has better ratings than Labour, and Humza Yousaf has better ratings than Anas Sarwar. Even the fucking Greens have better favourables than Labour, even if Paddy and Lorna personally lag behind Anas. And a comparison with the previous Ipsos Pulse shows that Humza's favourables are up, while Anas's are down. At first, I was tempted to argue that the whole Redfield & Wilton poll was a paradox, but actually it isn't. When you think twice, it does make perfect sense. Scotland wants to send as many Labour MPs to Westminster as possible, whatever the fallout for the SNP, because the absolute immediate priority is to kick out the fucking Tories with the biggest walloping in living memory, and Labour has to be the vehicle for that. But Scotland also thinks that the Glasgow Branch Office of the United Kingdom's Labour Party have not convincingly made their case and are not ready to govern here. The two are not mutually exclusive. After all, 2005-2007 and 2010-2011 have set precedents, a fuckload of Labour MPs coupled with an SNP government. And my earlier scenarios for a Lab-Lib-Green coalition in Edinburgh were probably not that solid anyway.

Sing your praise of progress and of the Doom Machine, the naked truth is still taboo whenever it can be seen

Lady Luck, who shines on me, will tell you where I'm at, I hate myself for loving you, but I should get over that

(Bob Dylan, Dirge, 1973)

It's a restless hungry feeling that don't mean no one no good

When everything I'm saying, you can say it just as good

(Bob Dylan, One Too Many Mornings, 1964)

In the meanwhile, the Holyrood part of the YouGov poll delivers better results for the Yellow-Green Axis, but not by much. This one predicts a wee three-seat pro-Independence majority, but this time without the bother of having to ponder whether or not the Alba Party heretics belong in it. In the opposite corner of the spectrum, Reform UK would bag a list seat in Highlands and Islands, which could easily be spun as an embarrassment for the Unionists. The seat projection is not as good for the SNP as you might expect from a quick glance at the predicted vote shares, because YouGov's regional crosstabs again show Labour over-performing in the key areas where it matters most, their battlegrounds with the SNP in the Inner Central Belt. Despite a more satisfying vote prediction, the SNP would still have to brace themselves for significant constituency losses in these regions, mostly in Central and West, while they would snatch only Galloway and West Dumfries from the Conservatives, and also lose Caithness, Sutherland and Ross to the Liberal Democrats.

All these polls, and the often conflicting results they deliver, illustrate how the next Scottish Parliament leaves many Scots facing impossible choices. Lots of Scots are in profound disagreement with some of the Scottish Government's flagship policies. Gender recognition reform, the botched Return Deposit Scheme, "inclusive" guidelines for schools, Paddy Harvie's dogmatic support for heat pumps, you name it, you got it. Ironically, Rishi Sunak's U-turn on Net Zero targets also brought under the spotlight the fact that the idiotic heat pumps plan is actually a Conservative idea, and that the Scottish Government sticks with it only because it's the only way to get additional funding from Westminster. Which, in that case, is not an unacceptable infringement into devolved matters. No shit. But recent polls also hint that many Scots have a hard time accepting Labour as a viable and credible alternative. We may have some clue as to why in YouGov's version of various politicians' popularity ratings.

Obviously nobody emerges unscathed from this assessment, but some are more hurt than others. It's fucking hilarious to see that Nicola Sturgeon is still more popular than Humza Yousaf. But that's probably how English Conservatives also feel when asked to rate Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. The New One may actually be worse than the Old One, but the Old One has a better public relations team. It's actually funnier that Mhairi Black also gets a better rating than Yousaf, even if it's hard to imagine a solid reason why she is included in that poll, now that she has announced for the third time that she will leave politics at the next election. There is also some oddity in these results. Anas Sarwar has a better net rating than Humza Yousaf because he bags far fewer negatives, yet Scots are shown switching away from Labour. Probably because Scots grant Keir Starmer a strong net negative, and tend to agree that a Labour government in Edinburgh would be remote-controlled from Labour HQ in SW1, and totally reject that option. Sadly, YouGov did not test Paddy Harvie and Lorna Slater, so we will have to wait for another poll to know how deep into negative territory they are now buried. For our amusement, YouGov also surveyed the popularity of the English Royals in Scotland.

This is of course totally irrelevant to the real issues of current Scottish politics, but there are still some fun sides to it. Interestingly, Scots do not massively reject the very concept of the monarchy, and are neutral towards the Royals in general. Anas Sarwar will be pleased to know that he bags the same net rating of -9 as Camilla. The two Conservative politicians in the survey, Rishi Sunak and Douglas Ross, will be less pleased to find out that they get roughly the same massively negative net ratings as Harry and Meghan. The puzzling part is that Charles, Wills and Kate all get strong net positives, better than any Scottish politician or any of the English politicians also surveyed here. Now I fear what SNP HQ would make of that if they find out. Another argument to support their narrative that "now is not the time" to question the English monarch as head of state of an independent Scotland? As William is even more popular than Charles, the time many not come for another couple of generations. Though this should obviously be up to the Scottish people to decide democratically in a referendum.

Now you must provide some answers for what you sold that's not been received

And the sooner you come up with them, the sooner you can leave

(Bob Dylan, Nothing Was Delivered, 1967)

Fifteen jugglers, fifteen jugglers, five believers, five believers all dressed like men

Tell your mama not to worry because, yes, they're just my friends

(Bob Dylan, Obviously Five Believers, 1966)

Scottish political debate took quite an unexpected turn last week, when Kenny MacAskill, the Alba Party MP for East Lothian and former Justice Secretary, very unwisely tweeted that he thinks the whole of Scotland, not just the ruling class, should atone for the evils of slavery. He developed it past that one-liner on his blog, though none of his arguments make the case any stronger. This was a poisoned debate right form the start because people tended to focus on the issue of slavery only. We thusly ended up with a discussion about the gradation of evil between different forms of slavery. Which could only lead to a polarised debate with sometimes quite ugly arguments, and was actually not the main point raised in Kenny's post. What Kenny was advocating was endorsement of the broad concept of collective responsibility, with a side order of the sins of the fathers tainting the sons for seven generations. Both are flawed concepts, but none more so than collective responsibility, from both a legal and a political perspective. There are fundamental ethical reasons, far beyond political opportunism in the context of the burgeoning Cold War, why we did not hold it against the German people after the downfall of Nazism. And why we should not use it against the Russian people today just because they repeatedly voted war criminal Putin into office. That's why I advised Kenny to watch Judgment At Nuremberg again, Stanley Kramer's landmark 1961 movie, that was coincidentally available on the BBC's iPlayer at the same time. But he probably didn't.

For those who haven't seen it, the movie does not deal with the Nuremberg Trials we all remember, but is a fictionalised version of the lesser known Judges' Trial held in the same city a few months later. There are many strong moments all along, like Montgomery Clift's haunting performance as a young man forcibly sterilised for what we would now call a learning disability. Or Burt Lancaster's monologue, portraying a former Justice Minister and judge under Nazi rule, where he pleads guilty to what he pretty much admits were collective crimes. But the key points are elsewhere, in the closing arguments of the American prosecutor (Richard Widmark) and the German defence lawyer (Maximilian Schell), and the ruling by the American judge (Spencer Tracy). The defence lawyer's main argument is that, if we open the door to collective responsibility, we can't know where it will end. As an example, should British governments also be held accountable for Auschwitz because they chose to appease Hitler for domestic political expediency, when it was still not too late yet to stop him? This is not as far-fetched as it sounds, it's actually a very sensible, valid and relevant point, though it definitely sounds better as delivered by Schell. The judge does agree with it in his ruling, rather than siding with the prosecutor who pleaded collective guilt, as he declares sentences based solely on individual responsibility and guilt. A point that is emphasised during the very last meeting between Tracy's and Lancaster's characters after the trial. That's how it should be, and always remain, in our justice system. Even when facing politicians advocating the poisonous concept of collective responsibility for whatever ulterior motive.

But the concept of collective responsibility is not just a legal monstrosity. It is also indefensible from a political perspective, especially for someone who speaks from the progressive side of the rainbow. It was first embedded deep into the Catholic Church's dogma for centuries, and one of the foundations of anti-Semitism, because "the Jews" had murdered Jesus. It's one of the founding myths of Christianity, from Matthew 27:24-25, which was written ex post facto with little care for actual facts, and repealed by the Catholic Church only in 1965. Sadly, in one of these karmatic collisions history seems to love, it is also a cornerstone of Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, where reprisals after every terrorist act are based on collective responsibility. But we in the enlightened Global West are no better, as our very own islamophobia also stems from that abhorrent concept, and the far-right's narrative that all Arabs and Muslims, because they always conflate the two, were to be treated as suspects after 9/11, the London bombings or Bataclan. Let's not forget either that collective responsibility for the atrocities of Nazism was the basis of the treatment of Germans in Soviet-occupied Eastern European countries, leading to their mass expulsion commemorated in the German stamp above. I won't bore you with more historical examples, we all know they abound. And that too should be food for thought for anyone who peddles the insanity of a time-travelling collective responsibility for something none of us had any hand in. Only medieval minds believed that you had to atone for somebody else's sins.

You'll see by his grave, on the stone that remains, carved next to his name

His epitaph plain, "Only a pawn in their game"

(Bob Dylan, Only A Pawn In Their Game, 1963)

I got mixed up confusion, man, it's killing me

There is too many people and they're all too hard to please

(Bob Dylan, Mixed Up Confusion, 1962)

YouGov have just released the latest instalment of their sporadically irregular survey of Wales, which had not been conducted for almost four months. Quite interestingly, YouGov's Full Welsh polling does show some 'house effect' favouring Labour, just as their Full Scottish polling favours the SNP. The party currently in power in both cases, though I will refrain from building a full-fledged conspiracy theory on that. And we also had the fully expected monthly update from Redfield & Wilton, who poll Wales far more often than YouGov. The seat projection from the YouGov poll is definitely better for Labour than what we got from the previous two Full Welsh, both conducted by Redfield & Wilton. But Redfield & Wilton also found Labour progressing, though far less spectacularly. I won't take sides in that War Of The Polls, as Labour gaining a lot of votes in Wales is just as plausible as them gaining only a few. Especially when all pollsters agree that the Conservatives will do poorly at the next election there, the Liberal Democrats are far from being able to snatch back even one seat, and that even Plaid Cymru's two notional seats are not as solid as we thought.

Both polls also tested the next Senedd election, still with the default option of the current constituencies, regions and electoral law. The seat projection from the YouGov poll is consistent with the Westminster part of the poll, with Labour bagging an outright majority from the constituencies only. The regional crosstabs again highlight that the opposition parties do better when their vote is not evenly spread, as the alchemy of AMS offers them opportunities in regions where they overperform. The interesting part, in relation to future reform, is that the current electoral law grants compensatory seats as consolation prizes to two parties who fail to make their case in the constituencies, resulting in a Rainbow Senedd with six parties represented. The only noticeable change from earlier polls is that the Greens wouldn't get any seats this time, even in the metropolitan Southern regions where they usually perform better than average.

The seat projection from the Redfield & Wilton poll is radically different, as the Senedd voting intentions they found also differ quite strongly from the YouGov poll. I must admit I am quite puzzled, especially by the massive surge of the Liberal Democrats on the list vote. I haven't seen any sign in any poll, that the Welsh Liberal Democrats are getting better at any future election, so this alone raises some legitimate doubt about the whole poll. I'm not saying it should be entirely discarded, but it surely is an outlier, not just from the findings of other pollsters, but also from Redfield & Wilton's own findings in earlier polls. So allow me, just this once, to unsuspend disbelief and say that this poll is to be taken with a barrel of salt.

Now, the Welsh Government have finally unveiled their full plan to reform the Senedd, expand its membership and change the electoral law. Honestly, there has been a lot of hypocrisy displayed already from both corners of the political compass. Hypocrisy on the Conservative side is quite blatantly obvious, and the column in The Hipstershire Gazette has correctly pointed to it, so I won't elaborate any further. But there is also a fuckload of hypocrisy on the Welsh Government's side. Rhun ap Iorwerth is totally disingenuous when he claims that introducing full proportional representation means that all votes matter. It is just a lie when the vote takes place in six-member constituencies. Everybody can do the maths here, and see that it sets a de facto threshold of 14.3% of votes cast for a seat. A hurdle only three parties are bound to clear in all constituencies. Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats have slim chances of bagging a seat in one or two of the new rural constituencies, and the other parties have jack shit. So the new electoral law will make the next Senedd less diverse, not more. Suck it up, mates, it's just basic maths.

You're right from your side and I'm right from mine

We're both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind

(Bob Dylan, One Too Many Mornings, 1964)

You know what they say about being nice to the right people on the way up

Sooner or later you gonna meet them coming down

(Bob Dylan, Foot Of Pride, 1983)

Labour are still doing well all across England. There might be some signs of weakness in Yorkshire and the Midlands, where they are no longer predicted to bag a majority of the popular vote. But we are still very far from the situation that prevailed throughout the 2010s, when the Midlands were Tory-leaning battlegrounds, and Yorkshire an accident waiting to happen, which it did in 2019. Labour's positions there are more secure, especially if the Reform UK vote remains high, and they snatch most of their voters off the Conservatives. It will probably stay that way for so long as some Bermuda Triangle of Labour votes does not appear between Catterick, Oswestry and The Deepings. It has in the past, most recently in 2019, so you never know. Interestingly, the unexpectedly high vote share for the Liberal Democrats in Yorkshire works against Labour in this round. Especially in North Yorkshire, where the Conservatives would hold five seats out of nine. This time, Rishi Sunak saves his arse by quite a wide margin, and Downton Abbey remains blue.

The seat projections also show some improvement for Labour in the South, where the ebbs and flows of voting intentions always carry quite a number of seats with them. There is an interesting situation down there, especially in the South West, where the Liberal Democrats are predicted to bag an exceptionally high vote share. In this case, the two opposition parties are actually helping each other defeating Conservative incumbents, not treading on each other's feet. It's quite revealing of current voting patterns that the Conservatives are predicted to bag their worst result ever in the South West, their worst since 1950 in the South East, and their worst since October 1974 in East Anglia, that tended to be a wee smitch redder in the days of yore. That's 39 Conservative seats lost in the South West, compared to the 2019 results, 41 in the South East and 23 in East Anglia. There is also a tough choice ahead for Ed Davey Doon Sooth. Should he concentrate resources in the South West, that he has already correctly identified as the most promising target for the Liberal Democrats? Or should he spread them all across the Leafy South, at the risk of creating more three-way marginals that the Conservatives could plausibly hold by fewer votes than their total number of seats UK-wide?

Now Rishi Sunak has another by-election coming, to be held on the 19th of October, as Groper Pincher has resigned and gone away. His former seat of Tamworth, Staffordshire, has an interesting background. In the days of yore, it was called South East Staffordshire, with almost the same boundaries as the current seat. There was a by-election there in 1996. Four years into a disastrous fourth consecutive term for the Conservatives, and one year before they lost a general election in a landslide. See where this is leading? There is no such thing as a coincidence, innit? Back then, Labour gained the seat on a 22% swing, and then held it for 14 years and three full terms. On a similar swing this year, which is a very plausible scenario, Labour will gain the seat back. For good measure, I have also added data on how Tamworth Borough, which covers three quarters of the constituency, and elects its Council by thirds on a four-year cycle, has voted at the most recent Council elections. Now don't scratch your head figuring out how elections by thirds on a four-year cycle, a quintessentially English thing, work. They just don't have an election on leap years. Simples.

I've said it already and will say it again, local elections are not accurate predictors of the next general election. Except when they are, which definitely seems to be the case these days, when there is clear evidence that the exponential growth of potholes is directly linked to lack of government funding for the Councils, since the demise of the ring-fenced Pothole Fund two years ago. Voters may be tempted to lay that too on the government's doorstep, after venting their dissatisfaction with their Council at local elections. Labour definitely have a fair chance at this one, as it is not a place for tactical voting. It's Red-on-Blue straight down to Election Day, with the Liberal Democrats watching from the public's gallery. Labour will probably be helped by the presence of a Reform UK candidate this time, when the Brexit Party did not field one in 2019 as it was a Tory-held seat. If Reform UK bag around 5%, their currently predicted vote share in the West Midlands, it could deliver a fatal blow to the Conservatives. We just have to see now if as many Labour grandees will spend a day there as in Rutherglen and Hamilton West. If they do, it will be a clear sign they have their hopes up.

I ain't looking to block you up, shock or knock or lock you up

Analyze you, categorize you, finalize you or advertise you

All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you

(Bob Dylan, All I Really Want To Do, 1964)

The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth

We'll play it out the best we know, whatever it is worth

What's lost is lost, we can't regain what went down in the flood

(Bob Dylan, Wedding Song, 1973)

Labour are now facing quite an intriguing situation in Redfield & Wilton's select batch of Red Wall constituencies, where their predicted vote share has gone quite sharply down while the Conservatives' went up. In the latest instalment of this targeted polling, Labour are no longer credited with a majority of the popular vote, and their lead over the Conservative has sunk to a lower level than their GB-wide average or their England-wide average. This targeted polling of select constituencies is of course not fully representative of the whole North, but the regional crosstabs of many recent generic polls also send an alarm to Labour. Part of this is the lower projected vote share for Reform UK. Some of them are clearly leaning towards tactical voting for the Conservatives, which would jeopardise Labour's chances in battleground seats across the North. It is not a massive trend yet, but has the potential to put many more seats in play than Labour wishes, most prominently in the rural parts of Yorkshire. Not all these seats are as ready to switch as the Selby and Ainsty by-election led Labour to believe, even if Labour still enjoys high levels of trust, as the party most able to fulfill the people's expectations on the issues they consider the most important.

It's too early to assess the damage done to the Conservatives in the North by the abrupt, yet not totally unforeseen, pruning of the last surviving branch of HS2 Phase II, the one to Manchester. On the one hand, you can argue that it proves that leveling-up was always an empty promise, and support Andy Burnham's view that Northerners are once again treated as second-class citizens, and that HS2 should go ahead as planned. On the other hand, the whole thing was already a massive trainwreck without trains, long before Grant Shapps argued it would be fucking stupid to not cancel it, after years arguing it would be fucking stupid to not complete it. In the meanwhile, Labour HQ, in trademark Starmerite fashion, are testing the water at both ends of the pool. They are fully committed to building HS2 in full, but also to not making a decision until they have all the information about it. You have to wonder what information they think they don't have, when evidence of the total fuckup has been all over the news for months. I'm not sure the whole mess and its fallout will improve Keir Starmer's ratings in the Red Wall constituencies, where he was doing rather well before, despite some perceived weaknesses.

Northerners still massively support Keir Starmer as the better tentative PM, albeit not by an overwhelming margin. But his ratings on the array of character traits are far from stellar, lagging a handful of points behind Labour's voting intentions and the party's ratings on the key issues of the day. Yet there is nothing lethally damaging or exceptional in this, as you find the same differences in pretty much all polls. Whether it's GB-wide or targeted on one specific region or cross-section of the electorate, the Great British Public are not warming up to Sly Keir, even after more than three years of him as the face of the Labour Party. In a way, Labour can consider themselves lucky that we still have the monarchy, and thusly only parliamentary elections. If we had presidential elections, the next one might not turn out that well for them.

Heard your songs of freedom and man forever stripped, acting out his folly while his back is being whipped

Like a slave in orbit, he's beaten till he's tame, all for a moment's glory and it's a dirty, rotten shame

(Bob Dylan, Dirge, 1973)

Your grandpa's cane, it turns into a sword

Your grandma prays to pictures that are pasted on a board

Everything inside my pockets your uncle steals

Then you ask why I don't live here, Honey, I can't believe that you're for real

(Bob Dylan, On The Road Again, 1965)

Redfield & Wilton's latest survey of their select sample of Blue Wall constituencies again illustrates one of the many paradoxes in today's British politics. The gap between Labour and the Conservatives has widened Doon Sooth, while it as narrowed in the North of England. This is not unprecedented and probably just evidences the volatility of the polls when new events unfold. It does not threaten Labour's prominence so far, as the ebbs and flows of their fortunes in one region are matched by symmetric flows and ebbs in another region. But Labour should also be prepared for the day when the movements will not cancel each other, but have a cumulative downward effect. It has happened to the Conservatives last year after the Truss Debacle, it has happened to Labour in 2019 and I certainly don't believe that what has already happen can't happen again. It can, just as what has never happened before can happen tomorrow, if we give it a chance. Like Labour leading the Conservatives by 2% in the South, which has never happened even to Blair and Attlee. And with quite a high level of confidence in their ability to deal with the people's priorities too.

The current voting intentions in this select sample of the Blue Wall are obviously not a perfect match for the South as a whole. They highlight the biggest challenge for the opposition parties. The relative weight of the Labour and Liberal Democrat votes define a fine balance between a blessing and a curse. As the last poll of Mid Bedfordshire shows, the main threat is turning too many seats into three-way marginals where the Conservatives could survive by a bat's whisper. What works in Labour's favour is that they are also trusted to do what's needed more often than the Conservatives on most of the issues the Blue Wall panel consider the most important. The Liberal Democrats also score much lower on the key issues than their voting intentions, which might lessen the appetite for tactical voting in their favour. But another important factor plays against Labour. The Blue Wall voters still think, against all odds, that Rishi Sunak is a better fit for Prime Minister than Keir Starmer.

There is obviously a massive amount of contradiction here, as Starmer does better than Sunak on half the character or political traits selected to define primeministerability. But that's part of the game and the unavoidable inextricability of polls. Or their inextricableness, opinions differ. Such sub-national polling also reminds us that we're not looking at a uniform landscape here, where statistics would rule absolutely. We still lack a major component here, who exactly will be the candidates. The unexpected result of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election was a healthy reminder that choosing the wrong candidate at the wrong moment can lead to disaster. Which is something Labour definitely have to ponder, before they throw too many incumbents overboard and replace them with mass-produced Starmer-compliant drones raised on ChatGPT. Or before they send too many Streeting-clones in search of glory in Tory-held battlegrounds. Each region and county is a play within a play, each constituency is a play within a play within a play, and there are always some where Hamlet survives.

Well, there's fist fights in the kitchen, they're enough to make me cry

Then the mailman comes in, even he's gotta take a side

Even the butler, he's got something to prove

Then you ask why I don't live here, Honey, how come you don't move?

(Bob Dylan, On The Road Again, 1965)

They got some beautiful people out there, man

They can be a terror for your mind and show you how to hold your tongue

(Bob Dylan, Foot Of Pride, 1983)

If I was one of London Labour's election planners, I wouldn't worry too much about the incoming snap general, even if the party has lost some of its spunk in the sunlit tofu fields of Hipster Waitroseshire. They may very well face more serious challenges at next year's London Assembly election and Mayoral election. The two mayoral polls we have so far show two-term incumbent Sadiq Khan doing quite poorly, with his voting intentions half-a-dozen points lower than generic Labour in Westminster polls. YouGov has also tested the popularity of various A-list political figures with the London electorate. The Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall looks more like a B-list for now, as huge majorities just don't have any opinion of her. Then it's fun to compare the ratings from the general population with those from the subsample of Labour voters. Londoners really don't like Sunak and Hunt, but they don't really like Starmer, Khan and Corbyn either, as all five get a net negative rating. But the really fun part is that Jeremy Corbyn is more popular than Sadiq Khan with Labour voters. That's definitely not what we were led to expect by Labour HQ and the metropolitan punditariat. Real quinoa for thought, innit?

Now the big issue in London is still the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) and its extension to the whole of Greater London on the 29th of August. The most amazing thing about the ULEZ controversy is Labour's appallingly feeble defence of it. They could have killed it right away by reminding Londoners that it was conceptualised by Boris Johnson, and extended because Grant Shapps, in his days as Transport Secretary, blackmailed the Mayor of London about funding for Transport for London (TfL). But Labour found it more expedient to water down their Net Zero commitments, while the UK Government used alleged popular discontent as an oven-ready excuse to cast doubt and ultimately renege on all climate-conscious policies. And the reasons for this are pretty transparent on both sizes. Conservative donors hate Net Zero. Labour found it convenient to blame the Uxbridge fiasco on ULEZ, to avoid scrutiny of their boy Beales's own flaws. Yet polling proves that Londoners are not up in arms against ULEZ. They have actually never been, and we have another poll to prove it, this time from YouGov.

It's not a massive endorsement, but it's still a net +5 with the general population, and a net +55 with Labour voters. On similar results, the Conservatives would just say "our voters love it, so suck it up and fuck off". Then you must assess the real extent of the alleged problem. According to the 2021 census, there are 3 million cars in Greater London, for a population of 9 million. About 2 million are owned by households in Outer London, the area covered by the last extension. Statistics from the Greater London Authority say that only about 10% of these are not ULEZ-compliant, so summat like 200,000 clunkers needing phased out. And the Greater London Authority does indeed have plans to help people who can't afford an outright replacement. But just do the maths. If they spent all the dosh left in the scrappage fund on these, which they won't, if would pay for 61,000 new cars, not even a third of what remains to be scrapped. Then you can opt for a free transport pass, which TfL value at £1,500 a year for bus and tram only. Just more evidence of the extortionate rates they charge. And that's surely one of the reasons Londoners massively think the Mayor is not doing enough.

Like all things in the Imperial Capital, transport follows hipster-compliant pricing mechanisms. Overpriced and sub-par like a Waitrose tofu sandwich. If you want unlimited travel within the whole of Greater London, and all available means of transportation, that's a Zones 1-6 Travelcard, which admittedly covers a bit more than Greater London. But you need Zone 6 to go all the way from Orpington to Uxbridge, or Bexley to Surbiton, and that's £285.70 per month. A monthly card covering a similar area in Berlin is €114 per month, or £98. Same in Paris costs €72.90 per month, or £63, thanks to heavy public subsidies. I know first-hand that the quality of service is just as crap in Paris as in London, but at least you pay less, and I've heard it's definitely better in Berlin, and you still pay less on top of that. Maybe Sadiq Khan should listen, and make plans to remedy the awful state of the London Underground, with its high levels of air pollution. And then lay out a long-term roadmap to make all means of public transport more affordable. Best international practice says it's doable, and it would certainly make the Mayor more popular than unquestioning funding of doubtful virtue-signalling businesses, that even groups within the Labour Party oppose. Or deploying bigbrotherly surveillance that only fuels Lozza Fox's whining obsessions.

In these times of compassion when conformity's in fashion

Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in

(Bob Dylan, Foot Of Pride, 1983)

Socialism, hypnotism, patriotism, materialism, fools making laws for the breaking of jaws

And the sound of the keys as they clink, and there's no time to think

(Bob Dylan, No Time To Think, 1978)

Just when I thought I had ranted enough about the situation in London, out of the blue and with a bang came a new Full London poll from Redfield & Wilton. Our ubiquitous pollster for all seasons surveyed both Westminster voting intentions in the Imperial Capital, and alternative scenarios for next year's Mayoral election. Their findings turned out to be as much as a shocker as their last Full Scottish. Which is again not enough reason to dismiss them, but an incentive to address the questions these results raise. The Westminster voting intentions are far from stellar from Labour. They're not even matching their 2019 result, and are 7% below 2017, when Jeremy Corbyn was at the helm. But Labour are nevertheless predicted to gain seats, as the Conservatives are trapped between rock and a hard rock by surges in both the Liberal Democrat and Reform UK votes. Despite a mediocre result, it still counts as a 4% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, enough to swing some battleground seats. This poll was conducted before the new controversy triggered by Diane Abbott publicly denouncing the way Labour HQ treated her. The next Full London poll, from whomever, will reflect the impact of this new incident, and I honestly don't expect it to be positive for Labour.

The voting intentions for the Mayoral election are even worse, and comparison with the previous Redfield & Wilton poll of this race are quite alarming for Sadiq Khan. Especially with the revamped electoral law, which is now chemically pure First Past The Post, instead of the Instant Runoff used in previous elections. Since Khan can no longer count on transfers from the array of candidates formerly-known-as-progressives, the probability of his defeat has skyrocketed higher than a North Korean ballistic missile. He is even directly doomed if Jeremy Corbyn stands as an independent, bagging more votes than the first time Redfield & Wilton dangled that scenario, and almost a quarter of the votes that went to Khan in 2021. So the time has come for Keir Starmer to answer two tough questions. Is Sadiq Khan taking the rest of the Labour brand down with him, and should the party preemptively dump him? Or should they strike a deal with Jeremy Corbyn to avoid humiliation in the ballot box? Well, that's three questions, but you get the gist, don't you?

The intriguing part of this poll's Westminster findings is that its regional crosstabs predict that Labour would lose two seats in Inner London to the Conservatives (Battersea, Putney) and gain seven in Outer London (Beckenham and Penge, Chingford and Woodford Green, Chipping Barnet, Finchley and Golders Green, Harrow East, Hendon, Uxbrige and South Ruislip). The Liberal Democrats would gain Bermondsey and Old Southwark from Labour, and Wimbledon from the Conservatives. This signals quite a tectonic shift in London's political geography. For decades, Labour have lived comfortably with the belief that Inner London was theirs, bar a couple of Posh Blue enclaves, while Outer London had equal shares of Red and Blue. But this new poll says the exact opposite. Just the kind of situation that makes future elections more unpredictable than they already were.

After scratching my head for a wee while, I found an explanation for this intriguing turn of events. Covid and the cost of housing. It's now common wisdom that Covid and the successive lockdowns convinced quite a number of people, mostly young ones, to seek greener pastures outwith the Imperial Capital. Which also explains the Labour surge in parts of the Leafy South that have become the Outer Commuter Belt. But the skyrocketing housing prices have also made Inner London a hostile environment even for the Labour-voting high-maintenance blue-haired tofu-munching hipsters making fortunes off interior design businesses. Some kind of migration must have thusly happened, but only to areas where there's an organic Waitrose less than one Deliveroo away, the Outer London Boroughs. It will be quite interesting to watch how all this impacts the results of the incoming snap general, and whether or not there is some sort of seat swapping between Inner Hipstershire and Outer Hipstershire.

You don't have to yearn for love, you don't have to be alone

Somewhere in this universe there's a place that you can call home

(Bob Dylan, We Better Talk This Over, 1978)

Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit, he spoke to me and I took his flute

No, I wasn't very cute to him, was I?

But I did it because he lied, and because he took you for a ride

(Bob Dylan, I Want You, 1966)

Notwithstanding, the difference between the Westminster results and the Mayoral results may offer Keir Starmer a way out. Simply arguing that is not really political discontent about Labour, but a highly personal beef with Sadiq Khan. Labour HQ could use Khan's approval ratings to support that, and devise an alternative strategy. Khan's record as Mayor is seen favourably by less than half of Londoners, and even one in five Labour voters judge him unfavourably. Khan's defence team could argue that many are sitting on the fence, and that he still bags net positives with most of the demographics. The problem is that the age brackets with whom Khan is the least popular are also the ones most likely to get out to vote, and vote against him. Being popular with genderfluid overage students and middle-aged Pret branch managers doesn't weigh much if they spend Election Day tiktoking from their stepfather's basement or walking their chihuapoo on Hampstead Heath.

The Redfield & Wilton poll also bluntly raises another issue. Could a third Khan candidacy just be one too many, as happened to Ken Livingstone in 2008? Half of Londoners what Khan to reframe his trauma and go, and so do half of Labour voters. Khan does not have a net support for a third candidacy in even one of the demographics crosstabbed by the poll. This might be a question of principle for some, not allowing anyone to hold elected office for too long, and the demographics most likely to vote for Khan are also the ones most likely to oppose a third term from that end of the compass. For others, it is just personal and translates into "Khan fatigue", and these have enough weight and a high enough level of rejection to turn the overall result conclusively against Khan.

The road out of a potential trainwreck could thusly combine two of my earlier hypotheses. Dumping Khan and striking a deal with Corbyn. It's probably too late already for the former, Starmer has allowed Khan to be reselected, so he has to suck it up. But striking a deal with a bloke who could possibly bag 15% of the vote on his name only does make sense. Starmer can obviously not go the Full Monty and allow Corbyn to stand as a Labour candidate for Commons, this train has sailed long ago, even if the decision to deselect Corbyn was not popular with Labour voters. There would also be many negatives, with public opinion at large, in striking a deal with a man who openly supports a Putin-compliant vision of the war in Ukraine, antipodeanly to the majority of the British public. But Starmer has been known to make decisions out of chemically pure opportunism before, so who knows? Is Saving Private Khan worth losing some more credibility and tainting Labour's image? Or will simple hatred of Corbyn keep Starmer clear of dangerous ground? Or he might choose the simplest solution, pretend that poll never happened, and just ignore what it says. I have a hunch this will be his final answer.

Achilles is in your alleyway, he don't want me here, he does brag

He's pointing to the sky and he's hungry, like a man in drag

How come you get someone like him to be your guard?

(Bob Dylan, Temporary Like Achilles, 1966)

There's a lion in the road, there's a demon escaped

There's a million dreams gone, there's a landscape being raped

(Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?, 1978)

Even if my support for Ukraine, in their war against Russian imperialism, is and always will be unwavering, I won't ignore other issues related to Ukrainian domestic politics, which tend to be a bit chaotic. Ukraine's electoral history since independence in 1991 is evidence to that, but I won't bore you with the whole timeline. I will focus only on the 2019 elections, those who brought Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his newborn party, Servant Of The People, to power. The vote shares are slightly different from the official results, as these include blank and spoiled ballots in the calculations, which amount for about 2% of votes cast. So I have recalculated the vote shares, based on valid votes only. I have also tried to arrange the parties from left at the top to right at the bottom, which is somewhat arbitrary as Ukrainian notions of left and right are not the same as ours, and the parties' chosen colours also don't fit our own palette. Another way to arrange the parties is where they stand, relative to Servant Of The People, who are affiliated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe, the same as our home-grown Liberal Democrats. Ukraine's unicameral Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, is elected on a mixed-member system. Half of the People's Deputies, which is Ukrainian for MPs, are elected from constituencies on First Past The Post, the other half from nationwide closed-part lists on Proportional Representation with a 5% threshold for representation. The two votes are totally distinct, as there are no compensatory seats as in England and Wales, nor a mix of overhang and leveling seats as in Germany and New Zealand.

The results abundantly proved a real appetite for change, and a shift towards pro-European policies. Interestingly, only 424 of the 450 seats in the Rada were allocated. 26 constituencies remained vacant as they cover areas in the South East that were under control of FSB-funded terrorist militias, who blocked the democratic electoral process there. Ironically, this obviously hurt the three openly pro-Russian parties competing in the election, Opposition Platform-For Life and Opposition Bloc, who both self-identified as social-democratic, and the Shariy Party, who self-identified as libertarian. The next elections were scheduled to be held in October 2023 for the Rada, and in March 2024 for the presidency. Both were massively polled until the Russian aggression in February 2022 put political business on hold. Not because Zelenskyy wants to suppress democracy, as the Putin-enablers want you to think, but because the Constitution of Ukraine explicitly stipulates that elections are suspended so long as a state of martial law exists, which is the case since the Russian aggression. But that same Constitution, that predates Zelenskyy by many a year, also stipulates that elections must be held within 40 days once martial law is lifted. Here is what the very last poll held before the Russian invasion and the one and only held after it found. The pre-invasion results show that reelection was not a shoe-in for Zelenskyy as he was facing opposition on the left from the new Smart Politics party, mostly dissidents from Servant Of The People, the social-democratic Ukrainian Strategy, and 24 August, a splinter group form the liberal and pro-European Holos, mostly because of his too cautious, and not convincingly efficient, approach to eradicating corruption and getting Ukraine ready for EU membership. And also on the right from UDAR, the party led by the Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko, who has since become openly critical of Zelenskyy's conduct of the war.

Interestingly, popular support for the openly pro-Russian parties, who have since been suspended and then banned, was already down even before the Russian aggression. By the way, banning these parties was not a denial of democracy, as the Putin-enablers whined at the time. It was no more shocking than the UK banning the British Union of Fascists in 1940, and was ultimately a court ruling, not a government decision. Let's be clear about the one post-invasion poll too. It means jack shit, Churchill too would have got 80% of the vote in the summer of 1940. Then polling ceased quite abruptly, a month after the Russian invasion, which looked a bit fishy. This is why I have searched for solid evidence that opinion polls had been banned, either by law, a court ruling or an executive order from Zelenskyy. I have found no such evidence, so it's quite likely that pollsters simply decided to call it quits for now, as elections can't constitutionally be held during wartime. Which, again, is no more shocking than the UK suspending general elections during the First World War and the Second World War. Notwithstanding, it felt definitely odd to hear Zelenskyy recently saying he is ready to hold elections "if the people need it", as he obviously knows that he can't. I suppose this has to be interpreted as a counter-PR stunt, to solidify his democratic credentials, after he vehemently denounced the fake rigged elections organised by the Russian military administration in the illegally occupied regions of Ukraine. A stunt obviously aimed at both the Ukrainian public opinion, who are showing signs of discontent and restlessness, mostly about the feeble anti-corruption legislation, and Ukraine's European allies, who monitor their progress towards meeting the criteria for membership of the European Union. And, even if it's just a stunt, it is a welcome sign that Zelenskyy is genuinely committed to restoring full democracy after the war, even if he has to face an uphill battle in a postwar election.

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you had to explode

And at the last hour of need, we entirely agreed sacrifice was the code of the road

(Bob Dylan, Where Are You Tonight?, 1978)

Of war and peace the truth just twists, its curfew gull it glides

Upon four-legged forest clouds the cowboy angel rides

With his candle lit into the sun though its glow is waxed in black

All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

(Bob Dylan, Gates Of Eden, 1965)

One of the arguments most oftenly heard from the appeasers is that the United States want the war in Ukraine to last forever because the American politico-military complex benefit from it. There are more holes in that narrative than in a wheel of Emmental. First of all, the Biden administration is not that keen on the war, or else they wouldn't be leaking briefings supporting negotiation with Russia. Then the orders for F-35 fighters, meant to replace early versions of the F-16 or Soviet-built Mig-29s, predate the Russian invasion by several years. Poland ordered them in 2020, Norway and the Netherlands in 2015, Denmark in 2016. Likewise, the Abrams tanks sent to Ukraine by the US Army are mostly the early M1A1 version and were held in storage. This has not triggered any order for the more recent M1A2 version, as the Marine Corps no longer use them and the Army has several hundreds in storage. Sadly such narratives, paid for by Putin's Propagandastaffel, also fuel doubt among American public opinion, as a recent poll commissioned by CNN shows. Though their first question, about Joe Biden's handling of the situation and the USA's relationship with the two openly hostile foreign powers, is not really conclusive.

The poll is not even really convincing, whatever CNN is actually trying to prove here. The American public don't approve of the way Joe Biden is handling the relationships with Russia and China, but they didn't approve last year either. Bear in mind too that those most likely to oppose Biden on this are Trump supporters, who saw nothing wrong with him shaking hands with Kim Jong Un. The poll does show a swing against Biden's handling of the situation in Ukraine, but it takes the results back to where they were a year before, so I can't find anything really worrying in that. But it is indeed worrying that 51% of Americans think that the United States have already done enough to support Ukraine, and 55% think that Congress should not authorise additional funding to support them. The CNN poll does not provide crosstabs with the respondents' political affiliation. But a more recent poll from our usual source at Redfield & Wilton shows that Republicans are much more supportive of throwing Ukraine under the bus, as it is Trump's position.

News from Russia show that withdrawing support should definitely not be an option for the USA, when Putin is desperate enough to beg for shipments of barely improved Soviet-era weaponry from North Korea. In this context, Joe Biden hinting at first he would not deliver ATACMS long-range missiles to Ukraine was another dumb move, especially as he then relented and authorised it, because it had bi-partisan support including several prominent Republican Senators. Sloppy Joe never gets tired of peddling the same lame excuse for his procrastination, that delivering this or that weapon to Ukraine would be escalation and provoke Russia. Ukraine don't give a fucking shit about provoking Vlad The Butcher, and have already repeatedly done that with their successful strikes on Crimea using our Storm Shadow missiles and home-built Neptun missiles, or their drone strikes deep within Russian territory. American support, and ours too, is more necessary than ever after the Polish government chose to open a crisis with Ukraine, clearly motivated mainly by domestic politics in the run-up to a general election that doesn't look like a shoe-in for the incumbent right-wing majority. Meanwhile, polling in the USA hints at a correlation between their attitude to Ukraine and the perception Americans have of what the Russian invasion might bring next. Here, there have been quite enlightening changes over time.

Americans were really worried about plausible threats when they were first asked a few days after the Russian invasion, and are much more confident now. The most important finding here is surely that about US national security. When fewer people perceive a threat to themselves, fewer will support efforts to thwart the threat. There is also more and more acceptance, in American media if not in this poll, of the narrative that Ukraine is just a European affair, and that we should deal with that all by ourselves. Paralleled by the narrative that the biggest threat to US national security is China and that they should focus exclusively on it. It repeats the pre-1940 narrative that Hitler was Europe's business and the USA should devote its resources to countering Japan's influence in the Pacific. Strikingly similar narratives with a similar mix of obvious truths and dangerous delusions. Even the strong-minded and popular Franklin Delano Roosevelt could do very little against it before his conclusive victory at the 1940 presidential election. And even he had to lie about his real intentions, decisive support for the United Kingdom, during the campaign. So what should we now expect from Joe Biden, if he is re-elected at all next year, after a divisive campaign weaponising Ukraine for domestic political gain? Probably not much, as polls like this can only justify his endless procrastination, that has already cost Ukraine an opportunity to get rid of the Russian aggressors this year, and also uselessly cost many lives.

The savage soldier just sticks his head in sand and then complains

Unto the shoeless hunter who's gone deaf but still remains

Upon the beach where hound dogs bay at ships with tattooed sails

Heading for the Gates of Eden

(Bob Dylan, Gates Of Eden, 1965)

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief, looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief

Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please, make it brief, is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

(Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues, 1965)

The finishing touch today will be about next year's American Presidential election. Which has been polled, you guessed it, by Redfield & Wilton. They are really everywhere, with the calculated risk of biting off more than they can chew, or stretching their resources too thin. But polling the American presidential election is risky business for all pollsters. Basically, everybody is expecting a Biden-Trump rematch. But what do we know? Are you sure it will 2020 all over again? I'm not. In September 2007, the same point in time relative to the 2008 election as we are now to the 2024 election, the two top contenders where Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Even if the context is obviously different this year, the only sure thing is that no thing is sure. What has already happened may never happen again, and what has never happened can happen. These pearls of wisdom being shared, Redfield & Wilton's findings are not outlandish at all. All polls point to a tight race, with the possibility that Biden wins the popular vote by a very small margin, but loses the Electoral College. 2016 all over again, not 2020. So, Redfield & Wilton finding Trump leading by a very small margin is no more surprising than the opposite result, as pollsters are definitely split on this one.

The regional divides here fit the usual clichés about American politics, with waste swathes of thinly-populated Red territory against the Liberal metropolises of the West Coast and New England. It's also odd to not see Biden doing better with the Tik Tok Generation, after all the efforts he has done to embrace all their pseudo-ideological fads. And even more worrying to see the intermediate generations, the core of Working America, go so conclusively for Trump. This is not a winning hand, and also a dilemma for the Democrats. They can choose to campaign more strongly in the West and North East, and only increase the number of wasted votes in Deep Blue states, an inevitable offspring of the Electoral College system. Or they could unleash the hounds in the Midwest and select Southern states, and risk losing swing states elsewhere, like Nevada, Arizona or New Hampshire. It might even get worse if Republican strategists decide to put up a fight in New York, a supposedly reliably Democratic state, over the immigration crisis and public safety concerns. Tough choices ahead, and plenty of dosh in sight for pollsters as the election gets closer, and both parties commission more top secret internals in every state that looks even remotely like a battleground. Redfield & Wilton have also surveyed Biden's approval ratings, and the results are quite embarrassing for the Democrats.

Sloppy Joe may be more popular than Rishi Sunak, but a sitting President bagging just 39% fifteen months ahead of the election is a fucking disaster by American standards. Politics there are not a spectrum as they are here, but quite brutally binary, as befits a country where 98% of the votes go to only two parties. Nuances and factions within the parties don't matter when it comes to such polling. It's "us or them", and what may happen in between is irrelevant for the opposing campaigns. Especially when the main directions of the Republican campaign are already crystal-clear, as Trump is far ahead of his rivals in their primary. Bear in mind that American law allows The Donald to campaign from prison, assuming he will actually end up there. Unless he can't even stand, and it would be fun to see that case go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Anyway the campaign will be all about the War On Woke, leaving Europe deal with Ukraine all by themselves, and Making America Great Again Again by closing the borders and resurrecting isolationism, except from Russian blood money. And I seriously doubt that Biden has the magic wand to Make America Sane Again before the election. It doesn't get better with Kamala Harris's ratings, quite the opposite actually. Even the West and North East like her less than Biden, and that's not good at all.

Kamala Harris has, of course, attracted lots of negativity from the Trumpian MAGA base. But you have to be fair to them too. They weren't more critical or aggressive towards her that they would have been towards any other Black liberal university-educated woman from California. She just happens to wrap everything they hate the most into one person. Bad luck. To this lot, she must look as "uppity" as the Tea Party once claimed Barack Obama was, which was absolutely not a racist dogwhistle. No shit. But there are also many reasons to doubt her abilities from a different perspective, and to assess whether or not she's fit to ever become The Most Powerful Man In The Free World. She is definitely not the kind of political heavy-weight Biden himself was as Obama's Vice-President. And, despite Biden's own claims to the contrary, she has less power and influence within the administration than Biden had under Obama. She has close to no involvement in deals with Congress, a domain where Biden's proficiency as a "retail politician" made him invaluable, and a far smaller international presence outwith the Americas. Results like this poll's are definitely a bad omen for the Democrats, when there is still speculation about whether or not Biden will be "available" for a candidacy next year. If he's not, and Democrats avoid a ferrets-in-a-sack free-for-all primary by speedily anointing Harris as their "natural" candidate, the election is very plausibly already lost. That's what continuity candidates are for, aren't they?

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"

And dropping a barbell he points to the sky, saying, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken"

(Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues, 1965)

Jeremy's Den

27/09/2023

Don't Speak Too Soon For The Wheel's Still In Spin

We Must Be Dreaming