Jeremy's Den: 2024

09/12/2024

Welcome To Their Nightmares

We trust that time is linear. That it proceeds eternally and uniformly into infinity. But the distinction between past, present and future is nothing but an illusion, albeit a stubbornly persistent one. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not consecutive, they are connected in a never-ending circle. Everything is connected.
(Albert Einstein)

The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on.
Not all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
(Omar Khayyám, Rubáiyát, in Edward FitzGerald's translation, 1859)

Now it didn't get according to plan, did it? When I first started drafting this post-mortem, my chosen soundtrack was Rush's A Farewell To Kings, so the article could be cleverly titled 'A Farewell To Trump'. Doesn't sound so clever now, does it? When the bombshell news started falling, the obvious fallback option was to switch to Alice Cooper's Welcome To My Nightmare. Just slightly tweaked by the inclusion of the alternative version of "The Awakening", with a second monologue by Vincent Price, that was released only on the album's reissue in 2002. And also the addition of "Ballad Of Dwight Fry" from the earlier Love It To Death album, that had been added by Alice Cooper himself to the soundtrack of The Nightmare TV special back in the day.

Images. Click. Bigger. You know that already, don't you?

Let me get something off my chest first. I'm still shell-shocked by what we have read on Twitter, during that fateful first week of November, from people I thought were sort of my kindred spirits in our shared opposition to absolutist transgenderism and wokeism. First clapping for Kemi Badenoch like lobotomised seals. Then cheerleading for Donald Trump like drunken rednecks going, "Oi! Oi! We've beaten the woke". Naw, you have done nothing of the sort, bros, you didn't have a vote in either. All you have done is proving that the fanatical obsessive anti-woke monomaniacs can be as viciously stupid as the fundamentalist woketariat. Having said that, the most amazing thing about that election is that it took them a month, probably just because of a constitutional deadline or else it would have taken even longer, to get the final certified counts in all states. Finally we have it, and it shows how disastrously off the polls were. And they will hear about it for the next seven generations, from Elon Musk at least. Exhibit A is the trendlines of presidential polls since the 2020 election, with the 2024 result marked big at the tail end, to show how far off they were.

So now Donald Trump is the 45th and 47th President of the United States. More accurately he will be on the 20th of January at noon, only the second man, after Grover Cleveland, to get elected for two non-consecutive terms and thusly get two Presidential Numbers. Just like the Kings Jameses of England and Scotland. Anyway, contrary to what some of his most feverish supporters claim, the Orange Baboon did not bag a majority of the popular vote. He got only 49.84%, not a majority but nevertheless the largest number of votes for any Republican presidential candidate since the party was founded. He did not overtake Joe Biden, though, who still remains the candidate from any party with the highest number of votes ever, with 81.3 million in 2020. Funnily even the Last Day Polls, exclusively those released on the 4th of November, still had Kamala Harris leading, though by just a teeny weeny 0.6%. My own last prediction was based on a wider selection over the last week, that had Harris leading by 1.7%, which made it plausible that she might win the Electoral College by a hair. Obviously a 0.6% lead would have meant a defeat, as it is far two low to overturn the significant Republican bonus embedded in the make-up of the Electoral College.

But, at the end of the day, not even that tiny lead happened, and Donald Trump won by 1.48%. By far the stupidest question about the American elections was asked by the BBC, wondering aloud if the polls failed. Of course, they fucking failed, they got absolutely everything fucking wrong, and mostly by bigger margins than in 2016 and 2020. Starting with the popular vote for the presidency. This is a complete fiasco that, unfortunately, gives some credibility to Elon Musk's whiny self-serving narrative about the 'legacy media'. The British public have witnessed summat very similar, very aptly described by the great Suzanne Moore in one of her recent Letters From Suzanne. We too have seen how the notionally left-wing media, including the once-revered Guardian, have become echo chambers of feral bourgeois conformism. We too have seen how different opinions are dismissed, not on their merits or lack thereof, but because of where they were published. The same kind of 'guilt by association' that 'progressives' vociferously denounce when it is applied to them. That's how the punditariat totally missed the very real impact of Trump's populist demagoguery on huge swathes of the American electorate, and how it could very easily be duplicated by Nigel Farage here.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best coloured man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
(Lyndon B. Johnson)

Devil's Food © Alice Cooper, Bob Ezrin, Kelley Jay, 1975

The Black Widow © Alice Cooper, Dick Wagner, Bob Ezrin, 1975

It’s a political victory that our country has never seen before.

(Donald Trump, 5 November 2024)

American pollsters love dissecting the electorate into all sorts of demographics in their post-mortems of a presidential election. It's based on exit polls, so can be expected to be less unreasonably inaccurate than their pre-election polling. But possible mistakes are irrelevant, as what I intend to do is compare the demographic breakdowns of 2020 with those of 2024, which used the same methodology. Only the differences between the two matter. not the numbers per se. And we even might get some explanations of why Kamala Harris lost so convincingly, other than the punditariat's usual talk about the economy, the cost of living, immigration and wokeism. Unless some of these demographics lead us to exactly these topics, and of course they will. No spoiler here, you have already read the other post-mortems, and so have I, so we both have a pretty good idea why it went so badly for Democrats. Which is neither 100% the economy nor 100% the backlash against wokeism. Of course, we now know what the real explanation is. It's Trump's dance moves, stupid. I will not bore you with all 137-or-so available items, as pollsters tried everything short of the favourite colour of socks, so let's try the most obvious first, sex and race.

The punditariat's common wisdom is that everything in America is about race, though you can just as demonstrably say that everything is about sex. Just ask Donald Trump. Anyway, one of the Democrats' most damaging mistakes, exemplified by Barack Obama's summat patronising campaigning and widely shared by Labour here, is that they have the 'minority vote' locked in. Clearly they haven't, and it was one of the factors in their across-the-board defeat. White and Black voters have barely moved from where they were in 2020, but Latinos and Asians have. Another of Kamala's mistakes was thinking that she had the female vote locked in too, because of the atrocious anti-abortion laws passed in Republican states since the Trump-packed Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. Clearly she hadn't, and she has lost more votes among women than among men. Could the same reasons be behind all these failures? Let's try and find out, and for this let's intersectionalise it, as the woketariat always urges us to do. What we see is quite stunning, and contradicts a lot of the Democrats' post-mortem narrative.

White women, who were obviously one of Harris' prime targets with her strong pro-abortion stance, have barely moved from one election to the next. The very small changes within the Black electorate are not enough to have had a significant impact on the final outcome. But the race-sex intersections of the Latino electorate tell a very interesting story. Harris lost Latino men to Trump on quite a brutal swing, and also lost considerable ground among Latina women. First factor must have been Trump and Vance's brutal anti-immigration stance, which worked beyond their wildest expectations with a community who were probably migrants themselves two or three generations back. The simplistic stereotypes of migrants 'stealing our jobs' and 'living off welfare', very common among the British far-right too, found an audience in a community who pride themselves on their success. Basically living the mythical American Dream thanks to hard work and strong values. Wokeism surely had a part in it too. Harris' supporters are quick to retort she did not campaign on it, but Trump did and it definitely had an impact on communities who are more likely to embrace traditional values, especially people who are also more likely to be Catholics. Another crosstab tells us that Catholics went 52-47 for Biden in 2020, then 58-40 for Trump in 2024, another quite brutal change of direction. And there goes a massive chunk of the Latino vote, and it lost Harris Nevada and Arizona. But the Generation Game was also a massive surprise for Democrats.

The biggest change is quite clearly among the TikTok Gen Z. They were 14 to 20 four years ago, so probably more than half of them were new voters, and they massively defected to the Red Side Of The Force. I'm quite sure the Biden administration's stance on Israel and Gaza had very little impact, as it would have influenced mostly the 25-29 University-dwelling age bracket, and it barely moved away from the Democrats. Then it's quite an impressive achievement that the supposedly most woke generation drifted away from the Democrats much more significantly than the older generations, 30 to 64, who are the building blocks of the United States' active workforce. The implication is quite devastating for the Democrats, that the economy and the cost of living, major concerns for the working-age electorate, might have played a lesser role than The Young Ones feeling fed up with the massive woke indoctrination they are subjected to as early as kindergarten. After all, YouGov had already found that wokeism, or rather its rejection, was the key motive for 26% of swing voters, those who switched from Biden '20 to Trump '24 and brought him back from the dead. Finally another crosstab defeats the Democrats' usual narrative than only uneducated people, plausibly Hillary Clinton's 'deplorables' and Joe Biden's 'garbage', vote for Trump. The only category that switched sides are those with a college degree, accounting for a quarter of the electorate, who went 51-47 for Biden in 2020, and then 51-47 for Trump this year. As much as I agree with Mister Ed, that Trump's return is nothing to celebrate, Democrats definitely need to address the real roots of their defeat rather than relish in stubborn denial, if they want to restore their credibility before the 2026 midterms.

This is a dark, dark day for people around the globe. The world’s largest economy and most powerful military will be led by a dangerous, destructive demagogue.

(Ed Davey)

Do you know what it is? I want to be a whale psychiatrist.

(Donald Trump)

There is widespread common wisdom among the American punditariat, also relayed by the British media, that no Democrat has ever won the Presidency without winning Pennsylvania. And it's actually not true. Grover Cleveland did in 1884 and again in 1892. Then Woodrow Wilson did in 1912 and 1916. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1932. Finally Harry Truman won the election and lost Pennsylvania in 1948. Then you might think that no Republican ever won the Presidency without winning Pennsylvania, but that's equally untrue. Richard Nixon lost it in 1968 and George W. Bush twice in 2000 and 2004. Pennsylvania is not even the best bellwether state as they chose the winning candidate in only 34 of 43 presidential elections since 1856, the first where the 'modern' Republican and Democratic parties faced each other. But this time, they did, ad did the other two competitive Rust Belt states.

It is quite revealing of the scale of Harris' defeat that all three were seen as marginal Democratic holds by the last batch of polls, and also by the punditariat's Last Day ratings, and ended up being marginal Republican gains. There is massive irony here, on three different levels. First, the difference between the last prediction and the actual result is tiny, around 2%, so it is within the margin of error of standard polls. I can't wait to hear pollsters arguing along this line, that they were less than a margin of error away from getting that election right. Second, even the newly-hatched herd of Trump-leaning pollsters eventually underestimated the Trump vote and put Harris in the lead. Third, the Harris campaign were totally played by the Trump campaign, who baited them into spending all their time in these three states late in the campaign, and never missed an opportunity to expose Harris's weaknesses and multiple faux pas, with the very efficient help of Elon Musk and the FSB's swarm of Twitter bots. Then the other three most watched swing states, that all went to Joe Biden in 2020, were also very bad news for Kamala Harris.

Nobody expected Harris to hold Arizona and Georgia, but Nevada was a different matter. It had often looked in the danger zone at past elections, either presidential or for its Senate seats, and finally come back to the Democratic column thanks to a last minute surge in the Latino vote. It worked totally differently this time. It came into play quite late in the campaign, which may have made the Harris campaign complacent, and then it kept swinging back and forth in polls in a way that probably made the Harris campaign over-confident over a repeat of the usual last day surge. The Democrats' hubristic belief that they had the minorities' votes locked in no matter what played against them too, as it definitely didn't work that way this time. Harris won only two of the state's seventeen counties, so pretty much Las Vegas and Reno, and with reduced margins. Local media definitely identified a swing of the Latino and Filipino vote towards Trump as the key factor. Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric probably worked unexpectedly well among communities who are themselves third or fourth-generation descendants of immigrants. But it would be wrong to set aside the impact of negative messaging about wokeism among massively Catholic voters who embrace socially conservative values, as many Democrats appear willing to do. This is definitely a part of the electorate where the horror stories about men in women's sports, no matter how overhyped and amplified by Twitter bots, were bound to influence the vote, as more and more made headlines all along the campaign.

We’re the garbage can for the world. We are. We’re a garbage can. We’re like a garbage can.

(Donald Trump)

I want to protect the women of our country. I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.

(Donald Trump)

Then we have three states that could have made a difference in a wholly different context, and qualified as swing states. North Carolina and Florida went for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but both had also gone to Barack Obama in his historic victory in 2008. Obama then lost North Carolina but held Florida in 2012. This year, North Carolina kept swinging back and forth, and often appeared as the tipping point state that would deliver the Presidency to Kamala Harris if Pennsylvania failed her. Democrats were less bullish in Florida, but it looked like it could again be put in play for quite a long time after Harris became the candidate. Texas has not gone to a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976, but Democrats nevertheless had great hopes for it in the long term, mostly based on its demographics and a less strong Republican dominance than in many other Southern states. At the end of the day, all three went to Trump more conclusively than the last batch of polls predicted.

I could ramble on on why Democrats failed miserably in Florida and Texas, where their main hopes lay with the young Latino electorate, and just rehash what I said earlier bout Nevada or the Latino electorate in general. Also don't forget that the rift between Democrats and Latinos started some years back, when an over-zealous woke activist found it smart to rebrand them as 'Latinx', and they deeply hated it. Trump's rhetoric about undocumented migrants damaging the prospects of hard-working people who had fully integrated into American society was also heard favourably, as it did have the ring of credibility when the messaging was done smartly enough to erase the obvious racist undertones of the original raw version. Democrats forgot the obvious, that Republicans too can be smart, and they really found out it was a big mistake. Finally, I kept an eye on three Blue States that were never actually in play, even if Redfield & Wilton added two of the them to the list of swing states they polled regularly. It was in fact a good idea to watch them, as they also show another side of the Democrats' unmitigated debacle.

Minnesota was a state to watch for only one reason, that it was Tim Walz's state, so Republicans would have loved nothing more than to toggle it to their side. But it has also been reliably Democratic at every presidential election since 1976. Election Eve polls still predicted the result there would be quite similar to 2020, and it ended up being significantly closer, effectively making it a marginal hold for Harris. The results were just as damning in New Mexico and Virginia, which had qualified as swing states in the distant past, until 2008 actually, but delivered double-digit leads for Joe Biden in 2020. Election Eve polls said Harris would hold both with reduced margins and the actual result was worse, with her lead almost cut in half in both. That's an average 2.3% swing towards Trump in both states, slightly lower than the nationwide swing but in the same ballpark. Such results, in two states Democrats thought well out of the danger zone, show how badly pollsters misread the electorate. And also that Trump's victory was unavoidable, which even the pundits who predicted a Harris victory until the very last day are saying now, on the strength of 20/20 hindsight.

Let’s put Liz Cheney with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.

(Donald Trump)

So we have won. This is decisive. The world will be never ever like before. Globalists have lost their final combat. The future is finally open. I am really happy.

(Aleksandr Dugin, 6 November 2024)

Of course, the fun part is to compare how I predicted the Electoral College would look like on Election Eve, and what actually happened. Not on Election Day, but four days later, as some counts were unbelievably slow. Of course the result was already obvious on the day after, as Trump had cleared the 270 votes hurdle some time during the night. And was instantly celebrated by most deranged Russian fascists, Nigel Farage and Elon Musk. Trump surely has the friends and sycophants he deserves, some of which even deserve being called psychophants. Sorry, couldn't resist. Before you throw rotten tomatoes at me, I just have to remind you that Nate Silver also predicted the Electoral College would go to Harris 270-268. Being just as wrong as the most celebrated and most self-promoted Beltway Pundit, the John Curtice of America, is quite something, innit? Notice that it's not just the overall result that went off piste, but also the allocation of the states to one of the 'party strength' categories. Which was also very commonly missed by all the learned pundits from East Coast to West Coast.

I got only the solidly Democratic states right, though Harris's lead shrunk in all of them, compared to Biden's lead in 2020. Even in California, Trump got closer and flipped 8 counties out of 58, leaving Harris in the lead in only 26. Harris also lost ground, of all places, in the District of Columbia, a clear hint that even the most Democrat-leaning Black electorate were not fully satisfied with her. Otherwise, there was a domino effect of tectonic shifts across the board from Leaning Harris to Solid Trump, moving the huge majority of states to less favourable ratings for the Democrats. Quite significantly, only the swing states still qualify as Weak Trump, as he gained votes in all states without exception. It is quite fun to look at all my earlier predictions, that actually highlight how badly Harris did. Her foundation of unmissable Electoral College votes was always 226, and that's what she got in the end. There was a widespread consensus that seven states, with 93 votes, genuinely qualified as 'swing states' and would decide the election. Against all polls, Trump won all seven of them, a marked contrast to 2020, when seven out of eleven then identified as swing states went to Joe Biden and four to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump must be eternally grateful to Elon Musk and the swarms of Russian bots that were allowed to roam free on Twitter to boost the Republican campaign. It worked better than expected, as Trump not only overturned the 2020 result, but also did better than against Hilary Clinton in 2016. He won the same thirty states he had won back then, and added Nevada to the list. Quite a feat. And now, to lighten the mood, I have a good question for 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?'. How many persons have been President of the United States? Not 47, even if Trump is the 47th, but 45. Because two blokes now were elected to two non-consecutive terms. Grover Cleveland was the 22nd President from 1885 to 1889, and then the 24th from 1893 to 1897. Trump was the 45th from 2017 to 2021, and will now be the 47th. Even Barack Obama got that one wrong when he stated he was the 44th person to sit in the Oval Office. He was only the 43rd even if he was the 44th, because Cleveland. But Trump nevertheless scored a first that is unlikely to be repeated any time soon, as he is the first convicted felon ever elected to the Presidency.

It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard.

(Donald Trump)

If Trump comes to the UK, I will be out protesting on the streets. He is a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser.

(David Lammy, 2017)

There were many remarkable things about the House of Representatives elections. Of course the pollsters got them wrong, but not in such a dramatic way as the presidential election. The most striking part is that both dominant parties gained votes on their 2022 results, with third-party and independent candidates squeezed into near-extinction, and that the final headcount of seats was pretty similar to 2022. The trendlines show that polls predicted a Republican surge late in the campaign, though the very last batch turned away from that and cruelly fuelled the Democrats' hopes that they would take back control of the House after all, even on a very wee margin. It did not happen, but it doesn't mean that Trump will have full powers, and the very small number of seats changing hands means that about half of the Republican Representatives are still not fully aligning with the extremist MAGA mob.

The most troubling part is that it took them a full month to get all seats declared, the worst performer being California, the home of the most brilliant techbrains in the known Universe. Of course Elon Musk and the other Trump courtiers were quick to make fun of that, conveniently forgetting to mention that several Republican states were almost as slow, and also performed worse on the presidential vote count. From where I'm sat, the second most flabbergasting part was Democrats bragging about getting the first 'openly transgender' member of Congress elected, in Joe Biden's home state of Delaware. The backstory of this election shows how far back the Democrats' involvement in 'gender identity' politics goes, and how it has switched the 'progressive' establishment into positions that are now unacceptable for massive parts of the American public, only a small minority of which fit the 'far-right bigots' narrative conveniently spread by the woke-compliant activists and influencers. There was a interesting sequel though, with the Battle Of House Loo, culminating in a proposed bill to validate and affirm women-only private spaces. Republicans clearly won that first skirmish when their iconic target conceded defeat and complied with the policy, as enforced by the Speaker of the House.

Obviously Republicans and Elon Musk were quite silent about the House, as it was a whole galaxy away from the Trumpian tsunami they were expecting, and would have bragged about until the next elections. They surely expected better that a quasi-repeat of the 2022 midterms, that were a setback for them. There was no Trumpian landslide two years ago, and even less so this year, as they actually ended up with fewer seats. As I expected, Democrats gained back one seat each in Louisiana and Alabama, three each in California and New York, and lost three in North Carolina, as the Congressional vote aligned with the Presidential vote in districts that qualified as marginals in 2020. This has not worked everywhere though, as American media have identified sixteen remaining 'crossover districts', those with split loyalties. Thirteen districts went to Trump and a Democrat for Congress, who will undoubtedly be at the top of the Republican target list at the 2026 midterms, and just three went to Harris and a Republican. Now that the Republican majority has shrunk to just five seats, it will be interesting to watch how the Trump administration handles the House, and how House Republicans handle the very predictable attempts by the Trump administration to make them endorse the full MAGA agenda, up to its most deranged parts. How much they value checks and balances over party loyalty will be a key factor in the next two years.

Congratulations to Donald Trump on your victory. We look forward to working with you and JD Vance.

(David Lammy, 2024)

Trump controls both houses. The one where Melania lives, and his.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 29 November 2024)

Before the elections, I had selected twelve key Senate races, different from the twelve states to watch at presidential level, and none of them went quite the way I expected. Back then, Democrats were bound to lose Montana and West Virginia, and there was still a very remote possibility that Republicans would lose one of the Nebraska seats to an Independent. At the end of the day, Democrats lost Ohio and Pennsylvania too, and Republicans held Nebraska, admittedly in a rather lacklustre way. That was when you could still imagine Democrats keeping control of the Senate, with a 50-50 tie being resolved by Vice President Walz's tie-breaking vote. Then voters decided their best option was to absolutely shatter this angelic vision to bits. Let's start now with the four seats that switched from the Democrats to the Republicans, including two that not even Nate Silver saw coming.

The loss of Montana and West Virginia was fully expected. Democratic Senators had clearly outstayed their welcome in states that voted for the Republican presidential candidates continuously since 1996 and 2000 respectively. Pollsters got the Montana race almost right, with Jon Tester overperforming Kamala Harris by 7%. But West Virginia ended up far worse than the two Senate polls fielded there predicted, matching the presidential result. But the real shockers came from Ohio and Pennsylvania, where veteran Democrats Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey were expected to fight off the riding red tide, even by just a few votes, and failed eventually. It was actually a much more brutal awakening for Casey than for Brown, as only three polls out of several dozen predicted a Republican gain in Pennsylvania, while those fielded in Ohio were evenly split and had sent flashing red light alarms for two weeks before the election. This is kind of a dinosaur extinction event for the Democratic Party, as Brown and Casey were among the last of the old style blue collar Democrats, who had the kind of working class appeal that the new woke-compliant generation will never have. Their loss. Then we have the four Democrats who now qualify as an endangered species, as they have managed to hold their seats in states that switched their presidential vote from Biden to Trump.

The most interesting here is Arizona, where the result was pretty much a duplicate of 2018, while the presidential vote swung to Trump by 3% and gave him the state's eleven electoral votes. That's quite different from Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, where the Democrats significantly lost votes from their 2018 results. Those three have a common pattern, weak Democratic holds for the Senate combined with weak Republican gains for the Presidency. So maybe the Blue-Senators-In-Red-States curse won't hit them as it hit Brown and Casey. After all, this quartet have six years to consolidate their position, until the 2030 midterms, and the whole American political landscape will probably be dramatically different then, possibly including all four states switching back to a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028. My last select quartet are seats that were never really expected to change the balance of power in the Senate, and haven't. Though one of them came surprisingly close.

Of course we're talking Nebraska here, the one that could have been the major upset in this electoral cycle. Libertarian-turned-Independent Dan Osborn outpolled Republican incumbent Deb Fischer for most of the campaign, then the prevailing winds shifted and Fischer held her seat with her majority cut by two-thirds. Hers was a clearly lacklustre performance in a state that went to Trump by 20%, and also when compared with the other Senate race in Nebraska. A special election, which you know now is American for by-election, was held off-cycle to fill a vacancy and the Republican candidate won it by 25%. The other three seats are quite representative of this year's voting patterns. The Florida seat was an ultra-marginal gain for Republican Rick Scott in 2018, and Ted Cruz in Texas faced a tougher challenge back then than he ever expected. Both cruised to re-election this year, with much larger margins than polls predicted. It worked the other way round for Democrat Tim Kaine in Virginia, who saw his winning margin cut almost by half. Interestingly, he nevertheless outperformed Kamala Harris by 82k votes and 2.7%, which is indeed quite a verdict on her piss-poor campaigning skills in the last weeks before the elections.

Let’s be fair about this to Elon Musk, and we all find him to be a little bit kooky. But if it’s him or Trump and one of them’s got to make the decisions, Elon Musk taking control of everything sounds a lot better to me.

(Bomani Jones, Have I Got News For You? US, 19 November 2024)

I’d like to see the Democrats’ version of storming the Capitol, though. They would… everyone would have little wicker baskets. They’d all be listening to podcasts on the way.

(Richard Osman, Have I Got News For You?, 8 November 2024)

The comparison between my last prediction for these Senate elections and the actual results shows pretty much the same patterns as the presidential election. Republican candidates did better than predicted and expected in swing seats, and there was a general shift towards weaker ratings for Democrats and stronger ones for Republicans. Even Minnesota, Tim Walz's home state, and iconic Deep Blue states like California, New York and Delaware, Joe Biden's home state, saw Democrats underperform and the states lose their usual 'Solid Dem' status. It wasn't always bound to be that way, and these results illustrate the very negative downballot effect of Kamala Harris's failure. She literally dragged even confident Democrats with strong starting positions down with her. This is probably as good a reason as any for the Democratic Party choosing not to give here a second chance in 2028, and opting for a full reset and the erasure of the Biden years instead.

This year's results are especially disappointing for the Democrats as they had progressed at all three elections of the previous six-year Senate cycle. The Senate is now back to 2018, Trump's first and so far only midterms, and I can only predict uncertainty for the 2026 midterms, when 33 Class 2 seats will be up, plus a special election in Ohio for JD Vance's former seat. Republicans will have 20 seats up, including one in a state that went to Kamala Harris (Maine). Democrats will have 13 up, including two in states that went to Donald Trump (Georgia and Michigan). The Democrats' best hope for a gain will be North Carolina, as the seat was only narrowly held by the Republicans in 2020. But they already had high hopes to switch North Carolina at this year's presidential election, and it failed quite conclusively. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take back control of the Senate next time, and current patterns make that highly unlikely, as well as the profile of the seats that will be up. Unless Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk fuck up considerably in their new jobs, which can of course not be ruled out.

But, as you might expect, the story doesn't end here and now, and it looks like we can expect some further plot twists. Senate Republicans sent a first message of defiance to Trump when Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted to confirm Joe Biden's lame-duck judicial appointments, which predictably sent the whole MAGA mob into a hissy mantrum of rage. Then they sent a much more powerful message when they elected John Thune of South Dakota, a known Trump-sceptic, as the next Senate Majority Leader against John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, both staunch Trumpistas. I think there is a subliminal warning to Trump here, that he will be a lame-duck President from day one as he can't ever stand again, and that he'd better not try to bully them into complete submission to his personal whims. Or Elon Musk's. This show of force led to rumours that Trump planned to shut down the Senate to fast-track his government nominations without scrutiny as 'recess appointments'. Which would have been totally unconstitutional and pretty much a coup, and thusly very unlikely to actually happen, though I wouldn't put it past Elon Musk to have advised the Orange Baboon to do just that. This unprecedented power grab has almost certainly been blown to smithereens now, but it hints that the next four years may well be quite a bumpy ride of skirmishes between Congress and the White House.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the radical left lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our country.

(Donald Trump, 28 November 2024)

It is estimated that Trump’s mass deportation plans could cost around $88 billion. Which is still less than what the Democrats spent on booking Beyoncé.

(Roy Wood Jr, Have I Got News For You?, 8 November 2024)

The gubernatorial elections, for Governors in eleven states and Lieutenant-Governors in five states, were quite demonstrably the least suspenseful in this cycle. Nobody expected anything to change, and nothing did. Not completely actually, as two Lieutenant-Governorships changed hands, but in opposite directions so they cancelled each other out, resulting in a global Net Zero. And nobody really cares about the Lieutenant-Governors anyway, so what the fuck? These races were also surveyed far less often by the pollstertariat, but the most significant were, with generally satisfying results. The only one that could have been somewhat competitive was New Hampshire, where a Republican Governor was seeking re-election in a Democratic state at presidential level. Some polls hinted that the seat would flip, but it did not happen, with Kelly Ayotte winning with an outright majority of the popular vote.

Vermont, Bernie Sanders's home state and also the one where Kamala Harris got her biggest margin of victory outwith Washington D.C., was definitely one to watch and it did not disappoint. Not only did Republican Phil Scott hold the Governor's seat more easily than polls predicted, and also with a bigger margin than at the previous election. But the Lieutenant-Governor's position, that had never been polled, also quite sensationally switched to the Republican Party against the Democrat-backed Vermont Progressive Party. But the most watched races happened in North Carolina, ending on a double slap in the face for the Republicans. Incumbent Democratic Governor Josh Stein held his seat on a 5% swing towards him, on the same day the state's presidential vote swung towards Trump by 1%. Of course he was helped by his Republican challenger Mark Robinson being a completely deranged maverick, who was too much of a lunatic even for the most extremist in the MAGA mob. There was an instant trickle-down effect on the race for Lieutenant-Governor, with Democrat Rachel Hunt gaining the seat on a 2.5% swing from the Republicans. Obviously the next term won't be a walk in the park for Stein and Hunt, as Republicans retained control of both houses of the State Legislature, but that was just the kind of success local Democrats needed on an otherwise dark day.

When Donald Trump is given a choice between hiring someone comically unqualified or horrifically immoral, only he has the courage to say , "Why not both?"

(Roy Wood Jr, Have I Got News For You? US, 26 November 2024)

The American people don’t know what’s best for them. I do. I know exactly what they need. They’re like little children. We have to hold their sticky fingers and wipe their filthy mouths.

(Frank Underwood, House Of Cards: Chapter 56, 2017)

Finally, they had elections for the State Legislatures, with 85 chambers in 44 states up, putting 65% of the State Senates' seats and 85% of the State Houses' seats in play, 5,693 seats overall. The State Legislatures are a major pillar of American democracy, in a way Europeans can't even start to imagine. Federalism grants them far more power than our devolution, and even the powers of German Länder are less extensive. States' Rights have always been a core issue in the American political debate. In the early days after the American Revolution, the Federalist Party, contrary to what the name implies, favoured a strong central government while the Democratic-Republican Party, the big-tent liberal coalition that later spawned both the modern Democratic and Republican parties, favoured decentralisation of power. In later eras, Sates' Rights became a major manifesto commitment for Democrats, as a way to salvage pro-slavery laws before the Civil War, and then for Republicans, as a way to 'protect' civil liberties against an 'intrusive' federal government, which has also become one of Elon Musk's favourite talking points after his conversion to Trumpism. Back to the present day, these elections ended up as another setback for the Democrats.

The very last predictions, based on the punditariat's consensus, hinted that Democrats would gain control of both Houses of the State Legislature in Arizona and New Hampshire, while Republicans would gain the Houses of Representatives in Michigan and Pennsylvania. It did not work that way at all, as only the Michigan House of Representatives changed hands from Democrats to Republicans. On top of that, Kamala Harris's running mate Tim Walz suffered an unexpected personal blow in his home state of Minnesota, where the House of Representatives swung from a Democratic majority to a tie. Ironically, Democrats even managed to lose seats in some iconic Blue States like California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Vermont. The overall picture after all these elections is thusly that of significant blows for Democrats, although it would be quite an exaggeration to call it an unmitigated disaster.

At face value, the Republican Party and Donald Trump have won the trifecta of Presidency, House and Senate. But Trump's victory in the Electoral College is not the result of a landslide in the popular vote, Republicans are weaker in the House of Representatives than before the elections, and the seeds of rebellion have already been sown in the Senate. Donald Trump would be well-advised to not listen exclusively to JD Vance and Elon Musk, and overplay his hand, as some prominent Republicans would love nothing more than reminding them that the MAGA faction are a minority in Congress, and that The Donald himself will be a de facto lame-duck President on Inauguration Day, and has pretty much just one year to act before everyone goes on the campaign trail again for the 2026 midterms, and all support for Trump's Musk-influenced extreme 'reforms' vanishes to avoid spooking voters. Can Trump now be denied the absolute power to make an absolute shitshow of his second Presidency? Possibly, though it would require all non-MAGA Republicans in Congress to show some baws, which is not everybody's forte. Or will the Beltway Establishment take its cues from Alaska, where Republicans dominate the popular vote, but a Coalition of Democrats and not-totally-batshit-crazy Republicans are in charge? Obviously won't happen, but wouldn't it be nice?

Ah, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears

Bury the rag deep in your face for now's the time for your tears

(Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, 1964)

20/11/2024

In Every New Poll A Headache

May the wombat of happiness snuffle through your underbrush.

(Native Australian greeting)

Hastings, mon ami, tell me. To blow up the English Parliament, was it a sin or a noble deed?

(Hercule Poirot, Murder In The Mews, 1989)

Back home now, as the world recovers from Donald Trump's comeback to the White House. Today's soundtrack is Roxy Music's second album For Your Pleasure, which could have been the best British album of 1973 if King Crimson had not released Larks' Tongues In Aspic on the very same day, David Bowie Aladdin Sane four weeks later, and Pink Floyd The Dark Side Of The Moon three weeks earlier. And, of course, there were also Paul McCartney's Red Rose Speedway and Band On The Run that same year. Those were the days. The usual bonus tracks are at the top, from the non-album single Roxy Music released a month to the day before the album. And again at the bottom, with live versions taken from the later Viva! album. Enjoy one of the greatest art-rock masterpieces of all time.

As you surely know, the images look better if you click on them for larger versions.

For a fleeting moment, it looked like the Big One in British politics was Kemi Badenoch becoming leader of the Conservative Party. So let's deal with than one first, once and for all, while I am still angry at all the lefties, feminists and gays entertaining massive delusions about her. Kemi Badenoch knowing what a woman is, and shouting it from the rooftops with a megaphone at every opportunity because it made good headlines, does not make her a good leader or even a good person. She is as much of a hard right radical as Nigel Farage and that's the only thing that should matter if British politics had not been totally polluted by transgenderism. Don't be mistaken or delusional. The only fallout of Kemi Badenoch taking the Conservatives even more to the right, to cuddle Reform UK voters, will be to convince Keir Starmer and Labour that the only safe course for them is to swing further to the right too. So that was definitely a very bad day for the UK. At least Robert Jenrick was totally faking it, but the Tory grassroots saw through it, and that's why he lost so convincingly to Badenoch. But we should also see the bright side of the silver lining. Keir Starmer will never again get the titles mixed up at PMQs and call her 'Prime Minister', as he did repeatedly with Rishi Sunak.

Now I could argue that the real Big One happened just a couple of days earlier, with the first poll since the general election finding the Conservatives ahead of Labour. This was fielded by BMG Research on 30 and 31 October. It took Labour 119 days to get there, the same duration as George Canning's Premiership, which can't be a good omen in any timeline of the Multiverse. After the 1997 election, Labour was not overtaken by the Conservatives in polls until 14 September 2000. That's 1,232 days, and it held just for a fortnight and seven polls, never to happen again until Tony Blair's second landslide in 2001. Even David Cameron did better after the 2010 election, as it took him until 26 September to lose a poll to Labour, 143 days after the election. Then, just three weeks after the first, a second poll fielded over the Remembrance Week End also had the Conservatives coming first. The trendlines of voting intentions have thusly become far less stellar for Labour than they probably expected after just four months in charge.

The Labour Party are now licking their wounds from the American election results. No shit, mate, they really are. First they were accused of unacceptable foreign interference in the campaign by Elon Musk, the bloke who made Russian interference in the campaign bigger than it ever was. Then the hundred staffers they had sent on a staycation to North Carolina couldn't prevent Kamala Harris's brave and stunning defeat. Now Keir Starmer's spads and Peter Mandelson's focus groups are saying there are lessons to be learned from the American elections, something the woke wing of the party don't want to hear, because it doesn't fit what is said on Bluesky, in the echo chamber inside their groupthink bubble. But Keir Starmer doesn't look better, emphasising the 'special relationship' between the UK and the USA in the wake of Trump's election, as if the world hadn't changed since the days of Michael Sheen and Dennis Quaid... oops, my mistake, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. But, despite relentlessly saying what he thinks people want to hear, Keir Starmer's personal ratings since he became Prime Minister are still conclusively in the red, unlike himself.

Broadly speaking, half of Brits now think Sly Keir is shit at his job and only a quarter think he is any good. He now has a net rating of -26, 130 days after the general election that took him to Downing Street. It took Boris Johnson 316 days to reach the same level of discontent after the 2019 election, though he admittedly benefited from some weird Covid Euphoria early in 2020. For a possibly more relevant comparison, it took David Cameron 715 days, well into 2012, to reach a similar net negative after his ascent to power. If that's any consolation for Keir, Liz Truss already got a net -36 on 7 September 2022, or one fucking day after her appointment. But nobody can possibly beat Liz at that game, can they? Keir's main problem is that he has managed to make himself unpopular, in such a short time, with all demographics. Men and women, old and young, Englanders and Scots, Scousers and Cornish, you mane it, he's got it. The only subset of the electorate who still see him favourably are Labour-voting Remainers, and that's certainly not the grassroots base from which you can reframe yourself as a success story.

He hasn’t the brain power. He is just a low-voltage nutcase.

(Gina Hudd, They Do It With Mirrors, 1991)

I love this, this idea that door-knockers and canvassers can make any difference. Like, if door-knocking worked, then, for a start, we’d all be Jehovah’s Witnesses with excellent broadband.

(Angela Barnes)

I have a problem now with all these voting intentions polls. Which is in fact not a new problem, as it was there already before the election. These polls tend to be very volatile, as you can see from my selection of six from the last seven conducted over the last fortnight, so I can't help suspecting that the electorate is actually far less volatile than the polls are showing, and it's all about different methodologies. We also have fresh memories of polls massively missing the results of our election, and that it was only a fluke that the actual headcount of seats won was not too different from seat projections made before the election. Then the American elections reinforced the feeling that pollsters couldn't hit a barn with a Storm Shadow if their life depended on it. Which is not irrelevant as several renowned and respected British pollsters did survey the American elections, and ended up as crassly wrong as the natives. And the methodologies are pretty much the same anyway, which is the crux of the problem. But my selected batch of six are quite interesting, as we have two each from three pollsters. So we can see an evolution, if not an actual trend, and it does not look good for Labour.

All three pollsters see Labour losing votes, starting from an already weaker position than at the general election, and surely we need to find some explanations for this. I'm not ready yet to deliver my post-mortem of the American elections, as Donald Trump may have some more surprises in store, but there are some lessons to be learned from them. Not just because some of the major factors at work are the same, but also because we have this uncanny habit of importing American political fads without questioning their validity. The most obvious example is wokeism, that has totally infected the Establishment Left, but also impregnated one of the many factions in the Conservative Party. Then there is illiterate student politics, that have turned the legitimate political support for the unalienable rights of the Palestinian people into an abject mash of unhinged anti-Semitism and promotion of Islamo-Nazi terrorism. The latter had little impact on our last election, but definitely worked against Labour. I fully expect the former to become much more of a factor in the near future, and to make things even more difficult for Keir Starmer than the last batch of polls, that translate into a massive loss of seats and the plausibility of a hung Parliament.

What the seat projections from the most recent polls reveal is quite worrying. Even the more Labour-friendly Opinium predicts a significant loss of seats compared to just two weeks ago. There are better than even odds that we would end up with a hung Parliament, where Labour would have to rely on a deal with the Liberal Democrats for a workable majority in Commons. This is not a good prospect because the LibDems are desperate to repaint themselves as 'true progressives' and have become worse woke absolutists than even Nadia Whittome. That's where I have to mention a post-election poll by the American branch of YouGov, that found 3% of American voters considering wokeism a factor in their vote, pretty much the same proportion as in the UK. But it rises to 26% among swing voters, those who have knowingly handed over their country to Trump's assorted squad of FSB assets, conspiracists and sex pests. My gut tells me we're close to seeing the same trend here, and we already have a poll of Wales, that I will discuss further down the road, that may already be evidence of that as it shows an even bigger swing towards the radical right represented by Reform UK than the average GB-wide poll. Labour should consider themselves warned, though they probably won't listen, as it is what the Establishment Left usually do. But mark my words, this won't end well.

You toffs don’t notice much what’s going on down among the workers, aren’t worth.

(Chief Inspector Japp, The ABC Murders, 1992)

Plenty happens in a village. Always something. That’s just my point. There’s always something.

(Jane Marple, A Caribbean Mystery, 1989)

My snapshot this time is based on the last four GB-wide polls, one each from More In Common, Opinium, JL Partners and Techne. I have also added the last Full Scottish from Norstat and the last Full Welsh from Survation to the broth, as both have been fielded in the same time frame. They also both cover more than Westminster voting intentions, and I will tell you more about it later. We thusly have a GB-wide super-sample of 7;846, a Scottish super-sample of 1,512 and a Welsh super-sample of 1,919. And the end product is as bad for Labour as you can imagine, now just 1.4% ahead of the Conservatives, and with dismal results in Scotland, Wales and the regions of England that used to be Labour heartlands. There are definitely similarities with what happened years ago in several European countries, and just a few weeks ago in the United States. Labour seem oddly unable to see what's happening, and are only offering more examples of their willingness to kowtow to faux progressive lunatics, rather than pay attention to the multiple voices of the people, no matter how contradictory they sound. When will they learn that dismissing inconvenient non-conforming opinions as 'bigoted' and 'far right' no longer works, and that it will come back to bite them in the arse?

To illustrate my point, a few days ago, The Hipstershire Gazette gave us more insight into our collective madness, with The Curious Incident Of Kebab On Diwali Night, definitely worth a read. This may sound like an isolated incident, but it is a sad reminder of the abject culture of coercion and cowardice that wokeism has infused into society. All it takes is one person fabricating an imaginary 'rule' or 'tradition' that never existed, whining and faking offence, pretending that she speaks 'in the name of the community' when she only represents her own opinion and prejudice. And instantly Labour and Keir Starmer fall to their knees and kowtow to an extremist fringe of special interests, or in this case one Conservative MP with a bag of vegan chips on her shoulder and desperately seeking her five seconds of media attention. Of course, discontent translates instantly in a very alarming seat projection, with Keir Starmer doing worse than Theresa May in 2017, and reduced to go begging for a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats.

On current numbers, Labour would suffer some quite iconic blows, which would also hit Keir Starmer quite personally. Wes Streeting in Ilford North and Jess Philips in Birmingham Yardley defeated by Galloway-compliant Hamas-hugging independents. Kim Leadbeater in Spen Valley and Nia Griffith in Llanelli unseated by Reform UK. And it could easily get much worse as Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, Shabana Mahmood and Bridget Phillipson are all predicted to be in the danger zone, just some hundred votes ahead of their closest competitor. That should definitely ring a massive alarm bell, but will it? Or is it already too late for Keir Starmer to overcome popular discontent? In related news, Labour are now down nine MPs since Mike Amesbury was withdrawn the whip on 27 October for behaving quite heavy-handedly, not to say ham-fistedly, with a constituent. In just 115 days, less than George Canning was in office, Keir Starmer has lost more MPs than John Major during a full Parliamentary term. But I guess that's not exactly the kind of record Keir enjoys holding.

Mike Amesbury showed more integrity than anyone we’ve seen in Labour recently. Because, if you watch again, you will see every single punch was thrown from the left.

(Nabil Abdulrashid, Have I Got News For You?, 1 November 2024)

The budget wasn’t that bad. I mean, bus fares are more expensive, but pints are cheaper. Which means the night buses are going to be less crowded, but the people on it will be drunker.

(Nabil Abdulrashid, Have I Got News For You?, 1 November 2024)

Now we have had Rachel Reeves's first Budget, which you can alternatively see as the first Labour budget in 14 years, or the 15th Conservative budget in a row. Whatever floats your goats, as it is all a matter of differing perspective, which the lack of really bold innovation can only fuel. Of course, we were then subjected to a polling blitz as it was a perfect opportunity to give the pollsters' teams some work to do, rather that paying them to stay at home for lack of willingness to return to weekly voting intentions polling. But I will spare you the absolutely frighteningly boring prospect of leafing through all these polls, and expose you only to a few select highlights, which are enough anyway to get a pretty good idea of the Great British Public's mood. Which is not exactly cheerfully festive, despite Christmas Season being already open for like six weeks. First we have Savanta, asking the key question that every sleuth asks at the start of every investigation, "Cui bono?"

And we have one of many explanations why Brits are not happy bunnies with Reeves's first Budget. We don't think it will benefit us personally, and by quite an impressive margin. Reeves even gets a negative rating on working people benefiting from the Budget, which might have been a convincing talking point for her and Starmer. If only their answer, when asked to define what working people are, had not been ass waffling and muddied as when they're asked what a woman is. The Great British Public agree that the Budget will benefit low earners and young people, but that's just not good enough when their main concerns are focused on the cost of living and the cost of housing. Part of the Chancellor's mission statement is also to be summat of a Mr Motivator, including stuff in the Budget that will be incentives for the common people to act in ways deemed good for the community, if not for themselves. Alas, poor Rachel, another poll from More In Common shows that the public do not feel that way at all. The verdict is that the Budget will neither encourage people to save more, nor to spend more. Which may seem quite contradictory at first glance, but is actually quite natural when lots of people say they have a hard time making ends meet or even affording the essentials.

That's when you notice that the sales of dog food have increased, but because the people are eating it themselves, not feeding it to their dogs. Because there will be no dogs left in the UK soon, as we are heading for a Dog Cull worse than the Badger Cull. Dogs are being abandoned by the thousands as we speak, starting with the Lockdown Puppies, tied to a post outside a Council pound that will execute them after seven days, because no-kill shelters are already swamped and can't accommodate new arrivals. Back to the Budget, I also have my doubts about the More In Common poll because of the bit about people moving away from the UK. That's too obvious an echo of the claims that abolishing the non-dom status will force the poor billionaires into exile, as if there was something evil in making legal tax evasion illegal at last. Just as their two items about business sound like a replay of Kemi Badenoch accusing Labour of being bad for business, while they are struggling to be as business-friendly as possible without actually duplicating all Tory policies. Then we had another poll from BMG Research, probably wanting to adopt a more rational approach by probing their panel about the impact of the Budget on an array of specific issues.

Of course, this kind of assessment is also very likely to be shaped by the dominant narrative, which is definitely more influenced by doom-and-gloom headlines in the right-wing press that by the messy opinion columns in the already discredited metropolitan 'progressive' journotariat. To be honest, I can't imagine a Chancellor knowingly proposing a budget that would have no positive impact at all, except on funding public services, which the public see as the only really positive point, and properly regulating business, which is strictly speaking not a budgetary matter. We also find in this poll the idea that Labour is bad for business, and will do nothing to help with the cost of living or improve the common people's individual situation. That's again a full echo of the opposition's talking points, and quite plausibly not a really fair assessment of what the Budget will achieve. It is also fair to remember that the Great British Public already had quite a negative view of Rishi Sunak's sole budget earlier this year, and what we see here is also the result of a loss of confidence in all parties. By the way, before I forget, I may have exaggerated the part about people eating dog food just a wee smitch, but the incoming Dog Genocide is real. Sadly. And that will be far worse than the Great Massacre of 1939.

Labour inherited the budget black hole from the Tories, so you’ve got to pay tax on that as well now.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 1 November 2024)

This was the first Labour budget in 14 years. One controversial move was to raise the cap on single bus fares from £2 to £3. What the Government don’t seem to realise is that a lot of people have to use buses, especially if they’ve bought a train ticket.

(Jo Brand, Have I Got News For You?, 1 November 2024)

BMG Research also used a more familiar and practical approach, asking their panel if they oppose or support some measures included in the Budget. Interestingly, the first half of their laundry list shows convincing popular support for provisions that can genuinely be labelled left-wing, or seeking to improve social justice and equity. Brits are much more circumspect about the rise of employers' NIC, as they have seen media reports pointing to the risk of it being passed either to the staff, via lower pay rises in the near future, or the customers, via instant price hikes. But surely no business in the UK would do that, or would they? Before you answer, that's a rhetorical question, mates. Of course they will, what did you think? Rachel Reeves gets far less support when she goes against the people's perception of social justice, best exemplified by the 50% hike on bus fares. Which is not a surprise as it will hit low earners the hardest, specifically car-deprived young people and pensioners, and also contradicts the government's green strategy. But Rachel desperately needs the dosh, doesn't she?

The second half of BMG's laundry lists goes broadly in the same direction. Every item gets a majority of support, except the axing of the Winter Fuel Allowance. Which could have been avoided if New Model Labour weren't so feart of the ultra-rich owning the right-wing press and had included a wealth tax in the budget. Which definitely wouldn't have turned the UK into Fidel Castro's Cuba, as there was no wealth to tax there anyway. Oddly, two items are missing from the poll, for no obvious reasons. The ringfencing of £3bn a year for aid to Ukraine, and the halving of the inheritance tax relief on business and agricultural properties valued over £1m. Did BMG expect both to be unpopular, or did they think they don't really matter? I guess they would change their minds if the same poll was fielded today, after we have seen Vladimir Putin announcing World War Three for the seventeenth time, and Jeremy Clarkson recasting himself as Wat Tyler 2.0. Which does not actually change the true nature of the measures, but just the public's perception of them. But we are now firmly in a variant of the time-space continuum where perception trumps reality because, ye ken, both Elon Musk and the woke mob say it does, don't they?

J.L. Partners surveyed a different approach, testing the public's willingness to accept either increased borrowing or higher taxes to deal with some specific issues. The idea of borrowing to plug the deficit is something lots of people have considered in real life to manage their personal finances. The crude version of that is pretty simple. In plain English, that's applying for a loan to grant yourself a permanent overdraft that your bank would never accept. Rephrased that way, you surely see how fucking stupid that is. Especially as it is a vicious circle. Taking new loans increases the debt, which increases the debt repayments, actually just interests repayments as you're still seven generations away from repaying the capital, and that increases the deficit unless you slash other spending. So your best case scenario is that it changes nothing, and the most likely one is that it makes things worse. But the Great British Public still like that option as much as raising taxes to plug the deficit, which is indeed the smart option, because neo-liberal brainwashing has made us so taxphobic, even when the issue is adding much needed resources to defence in the context of combined American isolationism and Russian imperialism.

Oddly, the poll included a much smaller range of options when testing of acceptability of higher taxes, as if they assumed that increased borrowing was the umbrella option to cover all our financing needs. This makes sense only because Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are obsessively unambitious about taxation, and ruling out options that would bring billions to the Treasury. First of all plugging all the loopholes in current tax legislation, not just the non-dom status that will probably bring less than expected because the tax evaders have had too much of an advance warning. And of course a wealth tax, which they have ruled out only because it is anathema and heresy to neo-liberals, and New Model Labour fear the pre-arranged coordinated faux outrage in the right-wing press. So they disregarded the one truly progressive option, that could have brought £25bn or more to the Treasury, and allowed them to avoid the very unpopular reform of inheritance tax. So all they have left is more borrowing, at en extravagant cost as interest rates on international markets have increased massively over the last two years, and great uncertainty on the actual return on investment during the current term.

The world is run from wherever the merchant ships set sail off into the West. Not from castle walls, from counting houses. From the pens that scrape out your promissory notes.

(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Anna Regina, 2015)

Deliver me from that god whose face is that of a hound, but whose skin is that of a man, who liveth upon the damned, digesting human hearts and voiding filth. One seeth him not.

(Hercule Poirot, The Egyptian Tomb, 1993)

Now the biggest thing in this month's news was actually not Kemi Badenoch, the Budget or Donald Trump. Obviously it was Justin Welby. The sad story of one of the privileged high and mighty forced to resign for doing what the privileged high and mighty always do. Protecting each other from the consequences of their crimes, in this case known paedophile abuser John Smyth. The saddest, though less surprising part of the scandal, was other privileged high and mighty rushing to TwiXter to tell us what a good man Justin is, just after telling us they were leaving TwiXter because, ye ken, Trump. Unsurprisingly too, this obviously pre-scripted and orchestrated media blitz came mostly from the privileged woke high and mighty, the same corner of the political spectrum that is currently propagandising that paedophilia is just another legitimate sexual orientation that should be protected by law. YouGov couldn't miss the opportunity to probe the Great British Public about their feelings towards the Church of England. Which, in the heat of the moment, are not favourable.

Even the older generation of Conservative voters are not as enthused with The Church as they once were. Reform UK voters are also not amused, and you can't blame them when you consider how The Church has become one of the pillars of the establishment woketariat, with all the zeal of recent converts confusing fabricated guilt with genuine repentance for the dark side of the past. But one sacrificial black sheep is not enough, now that first blood has been drawn, and even voices from within The Church itself are calling for a wider purge. Even Wes Fucking Streeting is going after them now. After raising many an eyebrow, The Curious Incident Of The Bishop And The Paedo is now raising many a question about the the future of The Church within the institutional framework of The Realm. I have a hunch the supportive woketariat cannot impose an omerta of 'no debate' now, and YouGov felt it too, also testing a number of topics directly related to the Church of England's involvement and influence in British public life.

The results are quite interesting, and probably upsetting for some. The public's replies to the second, third and fourth items, and to a lesser extent the sixth too, directly point to a basic principle born out of the Enlightenment. A principle notionally embedded in the Constitution of the United States, but not actually respected there. That of Separation of Church and State, the various most essential aspects of which are supported by a clear and undeniable majority of Brits. All four of these could easily be enforced by an Act of Parliament, which of course New Model Labour will never even try,, and it would surely fail the medieval requirement of King's Consent anyway. Such a pity. In totally unrelated news, the award for the most outrageously stupid column of the month, and probably of the year, goes to Will Dunn in The New Statesman. His argument is pretty much that spooking and killing dogs with fireworks is progressive and cool because, ye ken, only old bigots love their pets, while disadvantaged kids prone to anti-social behaviour love the fracas. He just missed 'transphobia' and 'white privilege' in his word salad of asinine bullshit, but I bet they were at the tip of his pen all along. And you wonder why people hate the privileged metropolitan middle-class so much.

If I had a crossbow, I would shoot your fucking head off.

(Thomas Howard, Wolf Hall: The Devil’s Spit, 2015)

All I have, all I own, is the ground I stand upon. If you want it, you must take it. I will not yield it.

(Thomas More, Wolf Hall: The Devil’s Spit, 2015)

We have had two Independence polls recently, both fielded after Alex Salmond's untimely death. Find Out Now came first, finding a 1% swing towards No since their previous poll in January., but with Yes ahead 52-48. Norstat came second, as part of an omnibus Full Scottish on behalf of The Sunday Times, and found a 3% swing towards Yes since their much more recent previous poll in August, resulting in a tie. Was it summat of a 'sympathy vote' after Big Eck's death and the many tributes reminding us of the glorious days of the 2014 campaign? I'd like to not think so, and that it reflects the start of a genuine movement towards Yes, but who really knows? The trends of voting intentions don't really go that way, unfortunately, as we look stuck again on that dreadful plateau of 48% Yes to 52% No, even with one poll predicting it would go the other way round. It has improved slightly, but I'm still not convinced it can only get better, especially after such a long time without any serious campaigning by the nominally pro-Independence parties.

To add some spice to the haggis, Norstat also polled their panel's opinion on the Reeves Budget, a redux version of it covering only reserved matters. As expected, the measures most obviously labelled left-wing, or reflecting social justice concerns, meet with solid approval. Oddly, the reduction on beer and cider duties is not popular, though I really can't imagine why. Finally, I think the replies on Ukraine funding sadly reflect very real underlying trends in Scottish politics, and more broadly the Scottish psyche. There is no strong support for NATO here, unlike England, and even the SNP converted only relatively recently to accepting it, and it caused major friction and defections. There is also a deep distrust for anything rooted in Anglo-centric Westminster policies, and that includes defence and international alliances. On top of that, add the confluence of minds between the old Birkenstock-wearing geezers of the Soviet-funded 'pacifist' generation, and the young nose-ringed wankers of the Hamas-hugging Gen Z, both pavlovianly anti-American, within the Scottish left, and that does it. Sadly.

Finally, and more relevantly to the other topics surveyed in the poll, Norstat also tested the popularity of some political leaders. This was fielded before Kemi Badenoch was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, so they still tested Rishi Sunak, and he got his lower rating ever in Scotland. Badenoch will be featured in the next iteration, but I doubt that she will do better, given the amassed bad blood between the Conservatives and the Scottish people. But there is a new factor here. The honeymoon between Scotland and the Labour Party, which was really a thing earlier this year, has now ended. In quite a shocker for Labour, we have again fallen out of love with them, and as quickly as England.

For months, Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar were more popular than Humza Yousaf and then John Swinney. It's gone the other way now, but not because Swinney has been able to gain support. It's just Starmer and Sarwar falling from grace, and the consequences on voting intentions are quite clear. But the voting patterns, the demographics and geography of the vote, as inherited from the most recent elections, also mean that it would be wishful thinking to expect a genuine game-changing political earthquake from this.

It’s not enough to claim a country, you have to hold it. It has to be made secure, in every generation.

(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Entirely Beloved, 2015)

The Scots will be allowed to send to Westminster, a handful of men who will make no weight whatever. They will be allowed to sit there for form's sake to be laughed at.

(Daniel Defoe, 1706)

There have been nine Council by-elections in Scotland this month, a belated consequence of the general election, with new MPs resigning their Council seats to avoid double-jobbing. Four of these seats were preciously held by the SNP and five by Labour. After the by-elections, four seats are held by the Conservatives, one by the Liberal Democrats, four by Labour and none by the SNP. Of course, we shouldn't read too much into these by-elections, especially not take them as a sort of test run for a general election that won't happen for another four-and-a-half years. But there are some interesting results in here. Labour falling to third place and losing to the LibDems in Edinburgh is quite a shocker, with no rational explanation spontaneously coming to mind. The SNP losing Elgin City South is also a surprise as the SNP came first and the Conservatives a distant third there in 2022. But the three Aberdeenshire seats are not upsets, as the Conservatives were the first party in all three in 2022, and the SNP bagged these seats only because of the single transferable vote system. The most interesting part is what kind of vote shares the competing parties got on first preferences in these by-elections.

We can't draw too many peremptory conclusions from these, as only the SNP and the Conservatives fielded candidates in all wards, and Labour sat out the three in Aberdeenshire that were totally hopeless for them anyway. The most significant result, duly identified by the Scottish media as such, is how Reform UK fared. 8.5% of the popular vote on average, but a more impressive 11.2% in the six wards where they stood. Reform UK bagged only 0.2% at the 2021 Scottish Parliament, didn't even bother to stand at the 2022 Council elections, and then skyrocketed to an unexpected 7% at this year's general election. Their most remarkable achievement was to contribute to Douglas Ross's defeat in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, where they were the perfect outlet for enraged Conservative voters seeking revenge on Doogie over the abhorrent way he stole the selection from incumbent David Duguid, who would obviously have held the seat. And now the new Norstat poll predicts them skyrocketing again to 14%.

But that's not the most important lesson from this poll. What matters here is the massive loss of votes for Labour, while the SNP are stagnating at the same level as at the general election. Of course, the massive paradox, and the massive irony, is that such a huge shift away from Labour in the popular vote would not trigger a tectonic shift of seats back to the SNP. Partly because the swing towards Labour in July was colossal, second only, in the whole electoral history of Scotland, to the swing from Labour to the SNP in 2015. Partly too because the SNP brand are still discredited enough that they don't benefit from Scotland falling out of love with Labour again. Sadly, the right-wing parties are the main beneficiaries. What Norstat found about transfers from the general is very enlightening in this respect.

So we have Labour losing a third of their past votes, with only marginal transfers from other parties' voters. Especially noticeable is that the SNP get back only a tiny fraction of voters who went for Labour at the general. Which leads to the unavoidable conclusion that SNP voters who switched to Labour in July are still happy with it and stay there. There's quite a different message from Labour's July voters as more than one in five would switch to the England-based right-wing parties. This is actually not as surprising as it seems, as polls show the same thing happening in England, and more visibly in the North of England. So why should Scotland be immune? And, more relevantly, how could we? There is nothing in the air North Of The Wall that would make people react differently to the same events. Scotland is falling out of love with Labour, but so are England and Wales. The SNP may have hoped it would benefit them, but their Westminster cred has been too shattered to bits for that to happen. Which, as you probably expected, doesn't work at all for Holyrood, as we will see below the fold.

If you can’t cut the mustard, you’re out with the ketchup.

(Sam Campbell)

You see, tolerance can become a vice if it isn’t guided by a strong moral sense. Know what I mean?

(Alex Nicholson, The Avengers: Mission To Montreal, 1962)

Norstat of course also polled the next Holyrood election, and here too the results are quite a shocker for the Labour Party. They should listen and take this seriously, as Norstat's polls were the closest to the actual results at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, and for the Scottish seats at this year's general election. Now they find quite a reversal of fortunes from earlier this year, with the SNP again in the lead and Scottish Labour losing ground. The trendlines of both the constituency and list votes show this quite clearly. But the main beneficiary is not the SNP, as you would expect from past swingometers, but Reform UK. Looks like everybody has some introspection to do, to explain how the fuck an English nationalist party, that counted for fuck all in Scotland three years ago, is now outperforming established parties like the Liberal Democrats and Greens.

Don't think that this Norstat poll is all milk and roses for the SNP. They are still predicted to lose a fuckload of voters on the 2021 election, and do just a wee smitch better than at this year's general election. The real event here is the massive fall of Labour's voting intentions which seriously harms their prospects in seat projections. The nominally 'pro-Independence' majority is lost, but not by the enormous margin predicted by earlier polls. Right now, they would be just three or four seats short, so a minority coalition government would probably be a viable option. All they have to assume is that Labour would never agree to be part of a Unionist coalition including Reform UK. That would be the massive irony that the massive repellent power of absolutist English nationalists would help election-losing Scottish nationalists to stay in power. But don't miss the other significant result. The strongest coalition would still be one of the SNP and Labour, just don't stay stuck in the belief that it can't happen.

The transfers of votes from one election to the next are quite revealing here too. Norstat offered crosstabs of current Holyrood voting intentions, and I use only the constituency vote here, with both the 2024 general election and the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. You would surely object that the general election is irrelevant, as it's like mixing turnips and avocado. But it's actually the only clear evidence we have of Scotland falling out of love with Labour, which is this year's thing and what I want to catch, much more than the rationally relevant comparison with the previous Holyrood election.

Remember that the SNP were still massively dominant in 2021, the Conservatives still a credible force, and Labour a disappointing third. This is definitely not what we have now, even with a terrible result for Labour, so of course transfers will show a better picture for Labour if you factor in only the 2021 election. A comparison with last July's vote is actually more relevant and enlightening because it was also the timeframe when polls showed Labour becoming the first party in Holyrood again, and also the favourites to form the next Scottish government. What we see here is also quite consistent with the predicted transfers at the Westminster election, with Labour losing a third of their vote, and more of their voters switching to the right than back to the SNP. There are multiple reasons for this. First came the shafting of the Winter Fuel Allowance, and the SNP have used the full potential of this, and also of Anas Sarwar's U-turns within U-turns within U-turns about it. Then another game-changer may be the controversial reform of the inheritance tax for businesses and farms. The inheritance tax is within the reserved part of taxation in Scotland, so it's only fair that Scottish Labour should suffer some backlash over it, especially after one of their own gave credence to the idea that it's all about a programmed Farmer Cull.

We can do to the farmers what Thatcher did to the miners. It’s an industry we could do without. If people are so upset that they want to go on the streets and spread slurry, then we don’t need small farmers.

(John McTernan)

He was the big winner of the last election in the UK and he’s a very spectacular man, very highly respected. Nigel Farage.

(Donald Trump, introducing guest stars at a campaign rally)

We have also had a Full Welsh poll from Survation, which is not really good for Labour, though less radically so as Norstat's Full Scottish. But enough to make The Hipstershire Gazette reflect on the existential threat that Reform UK may represent for Labour in Wales. Not coincidentally just three days after Donald Trump's return cruelly highlighted the divorce between the struggling working class and the woke political establishment, of which Welsh Labour is a prominent and unhinged member, and always eager to prove it in the most unexpected ways. More on this later, when we take a look at the Senedd voting intentions. Westminster voting intentions show a significant slump for Labour, and no surge for the Conservatives. Instead Reform UK is benefiting from the people's discontent, like everywhere across England, and now doing better than the Conservatives.

Interestingly, Labour's crumbling voting intentions don't translate into a massive loss of seats. In Wales, just like in Scotland, Labour have secured their seats with such huge margins that it would take a much bigger swing to endanger them. Only three Labour seats were won on less than 5%, while twenty were won on more than 10%, including five on more than 25%, which makes them pretty much impregnable. Besides, the fight between the Conservatives and Reform UK for the right-wing vote means they are cancelling each other out in many seats that would otherwise be clearly in jeopardy. So the Survation poll predicts only four seats would change hands, all among the closest marginals at the general election. Ynys Môn shifting back from Plaid Cymru to the Conservatives, Clwyd North and Mid & South Pembrokeshire from Labour back to the Conservatives, and more surprisingly Llanelli from Labour to Reform UK. But it could be just the start, as Reform UK came second in 13 Welsh Labour seats last July, and are fast building a following in parts of Wales that once looked safely Labour. My model says that the next two to fall would be Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr, then Neath & Swansea East, and another nine across Red South Wales could plausibly get close to the danger zone. Many examples abroad prove that a long suppressed discontent, a stiff upper lip for the good of the party of their forebears, can lead people to quite explosive reactions when they suddenly decide enough is enough and the time for a change has come. Any change. Even the demonstrably worst one.

To Poirot too, it sounds like the tosh. But I think there is happening something mysterious. Perhaps you should be on your guard.

(Hercule Poirot, The Adventure Of The Western Star, 1990)

I don’t hold with plague, sleeping sickness, famine and cancer, but they happen all the same.

(Alexander Bonaparte Cust, The ABC Murders, 1992)

The Senedd voting intentions from that Survation poll are not good news for Welsh Labour either. They're admittedly doing better than in the two previous polls fielded in July, but they are still significantly below there 2021 result. With an annoying surge of Reform UK too, who are now in the high teens, and plausibly displacing the Conservatives as the Party Of The Right in Wales. That's not a done deal yet, but I am definitely not sure that Kemi Badenoch can snatch back enough voters in the 18 months remaining before the election. Especially as the numbers clearly say that many voters have also migrated from Labour to Reform UK in a very short time since the beginning of this year, and that's just the kind of migrants Nigel Farage will welcome with open arms and no questions asked. It has become such a clear and present threat that even The Hipstershire Gazette has taken a crash course in Welsh politics, and is warning a complacent Labour about it.

Survation offered an interesting novelty, a breakdown of voting intentions for the 22 Councils of Wales. Which led me naturally to an estimated breakdown for the 16 new six-member Senedd constituencies. We already know these will be drawn by pairing the 32 Westminster constituencies, and that's pretty much what I did. Some pairings are obvious. The two Swansea constituencies, the two Newport constituencies, the two Clwyd constituencies go together. The four Cardiff constituencies become two, and I chose East and West, but it could also be North and South. Brecon, Radnor & Cwm Tawe and Montgomeryshire & Glyndŵr are merged for a big Powys constituency, and so on. When you have done the obvious ones, many others become unavoidable, like Torfaen and Monmouthshire, Wrexham and Flintshire, Gower and Llanelli, Ynys Môn and Bangor Aberconwy, etc... The only tricky part is when you find yourself stuck with only two non-contiguous constituencies left in a region, and have to go back four steps for a combination that works. But I got there in the end in like twenty minutes and it looks good. I'm not saying the official map will be the same, but I would be surprised if it wasn't pretty close. So, here we go, with the poll's national vote first and then the 'new' constituencies from West to East, and North to South.

Of course, you whole point of the exercise is to estimate the voting intentions for each of these 16 constituencies, and that's where Survation's breakdown by Council comes in handy. Sometimes you can use them directly, sometimes you have to use the average of two Councils as the best estimate for an overlapping constituency. It's not totally failsafe and foolproof, but it's obviously the best I could do with what the poll offered. Which is a lot, and I certainly hope they will duplicate that in future polls. And here we go with the final eight constituencies, covering the more populated areas in South East Wales.

The upside of having a detailed breakdown of voting intentions is that you get a fairly accurate view of the massive discrepancies between the regions of Wales, which you don't get if you stay with the former five electoral regions. You see how the very unevenly distributed Plaid Cymru vote can be both an asset and a liability, and where the sometimes unexpected areas of strength for the Liberal Democrats are. Or the sometimes unexpected areas of weakness for Labour, which generally have more to do with transfers to Reform UK rather than to the Conservatives, LibDems or Greens. But it isn't like we haven't seen socially conservative working class voters switch from the woke social-liberal left to the nationalist right before, innit? It would be foolish to assume that what happened in Pas-de-Calais, Lorraine, Saxony, Thuringia, Lombardy, Ohio or Pennsylvania can't happen in Wales, wouldn't it? Especially when you have multiple polls that just reflect a widespread disenchantment with the Labour government and some sort of buyer's remorse across all Three Nations of the Big Isle.

Thank God. I was sitting here going, “I’ve only just realised how stupid America looks to the rest of the universe”. But other people have done it. We’re all stupid. We’re back. OK.

(Desiree Burch, QI: Vets, 2024)

Facts, Hastings, facts. Those are the cobbles that make up the road along which we travel.

(Hercule Poirot, Murder In Mesopotamia, 2002)

The upside of having more detailed data closer to the grassroots is that it shows that the new electoral law is far less ruthless than I initially thought. Of course, the d'Hondt quota in six-members constituencies is still a massive 14.3%, but the odd mechanics of the highest averages method mean that you don't actually have to reach the quota to get a seat, once the bigger parties have snatched theirs. This is especially true when the first party, despite being weakened, is still predicted to get more than twice as many votes as its right-wing competitors. Even with Plaid Cymru losing votes, compared to the previous poll in July, we are still as close to a four-way split as Welsh polling ever was. And the wildly uneven distribution of everybody's votes means that the allocation of seats is not limited to just the four main parties.

Even the Greens would have a chance, which is not as obvious as it seems, despite getting a better national vote share than usual. Only their predicted 14% of the popular vote in my theoretical Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent constituency would get them a seat, which could even not happen on different pairings with less Green-friendly neighbouring areas. Like pairing Merthyr Tydfil with Pontypridd and Blaenau Gwent with Caerphilly. Which would obviously make less sense geographically or in the perspective of shared community interests, but could happen. The final official map will obviously seek to maximise Labour's number of seats, even if some of the pairings are more acrobatic, and they can get their way with support of just the Liberal Democrats in the current Senedd, so long as they agree to the common-sensical Powys constituency that would make continued LibDem presence in the Senedd a given, no matter how their votes fluctuate elsewhere.

The full headcount shows that the next Senedd would indeed be summat of a Rainbow Chamber with no majority, just what you would expect from proportional representation, even in a version where the hurdle is high. You have to wonder what Labour expected from their electoral reform. Getting a majority of seats on proportional representation with the D'Hondt method requires 42% of the popular vote with a single national list, and 40% if you go for a large number of regional lists. And even that works only if you have a clearly diverse political landscape with several parties competing from both the left and right. But Labour never got such a high vote share at any Senedd election on the list vote, which is probably the best estimate of what the current law would have delivered, they didn't even come close. So why choose a system that pretty much deprives them of any chance of ever getting a majority?

This poll, with all the caveats you can imagine, is quite a shocker for Welsh Labour and, more broadly, Labour HQ too. Welsh Labour would be forced into a coalition, with Plaid Cymru the only partner that could take it to a majority, and I can't imagine them being happy bunnies with that. On top of that, the massive surge of the Reform UK vote, pushing Welsh Conservatives down to fourth place and breathing down Plaid Cymru's neck, is a huge reason to not be cheerful, either in Cardiff or in London. I am sure Labour spads would be tempted to dismiss it, because that Survation poll was commissioned and paid for by Arron Banks, if they weren't getting the same signal from GB-wide polls and Scottish polls, and also from the very real votes cast at the Scottish Council by-elections I mentioned earlier. So they should definitely suspend disbelief, ditch their preconceptions and listen. Which would be a good way to avoid becoming the laughing stock of Wales with stupid bullshit like 'dogs are racist and allotments are white male privilege', that is stratospherically cretinous even by the usual abysmally low standards of woke fanaticism. Remaining deliberately deaf and blind to multiple warnings, and doubling down on their most ridiculous virtue-signalling stunts, would lead Welsh Labour nowhere, except down the same road as the American Democrats. Which may be what awaits them anyway, and even a committed social-democrat like me is close to thinking it would be a good thing, to get their feet back on the ground and their brains in the real world.

I make people aware, and I certainly don’t swan around like a fop. I’m studying conditions.

(James Ferguson, Death On The Nile, 2004)

Well, if you put your head in the mouth of a lion, you can’t complain if one day he bite it off, hein?

(Hercule Poirot, The Lost Mine, 1990)

Stuff is happening outwith the UK too, so let's end with some news from abroad. Much to nobody's surprise, given the massive amount of speculation and pressure throughout the year, a snap general election will be held in Ireland on the 29th of November. Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach Simon Harris is seeking a personal mandate after he succeeded Leo Varadkar just seven months ago. This can be a risky gamble, as Theresa May learned the hard way in 2017, but can also lead to a resounding success, as the whole UK learned the hard way with Boris Johnson in 2019. Obviously, the Irish electoral law, with 174 TDs elected from 43 constituencies on single transferable vote, the worst of all possible options, does not generate genuine landslides, but polls show that some interesting upsets could happen. The trendlines show how significantly Irish public opinion has evolved in the four years since the last election.

The most obvious change is how the Sinn Féin vote skyrocketed after their undeniable success at the 2020 election, then plummeted way below the predicted vote shares for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. It's definitely the people's verdict on Sinn Féin becoming the most unhinged absolutist woke party in Ireland, forgetting their ancestral mission statement to fight for a United Irish Republic. It will not save Ireland from woke radicalism though, as the current government coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Greens have fallen deep down that same rabbit hole, and Leo Varadkar was a prime propagandist of the toxic ideology of gender self-identification. There is indeed quite a lot of confusion among Irish political parties as Fine Gael, notionally more to the right, appears more likely to endorse woke 'progressive' talking points while Fianna Fail, notionally more to the centre-left, is more reluctant. Now, the weighted average of the most recent batch of polls, as well as the seat projection you can deduce from it, show that Fine Gael is likely to be the big winner of the incoming election, and Sin Féin the big loser.

These results are not without ambiguity and potential fragility, as the outgoing government coalition is predicted to get only a minuscule one-seat majority, less than in 2020 despite the increase of the Dail's size to its largest number of seats ever since Independence. Interestingly, the second winner on current polling would be the Social Democrats, supporters of Nordic Model policies, doubling their share of the popular vote and their number of TDs, and highly unlikely to join or support the coalition. That still leaves the notionally left-wing Labour, who have proved to be quite opportunistic in their choice of alliances in the past, to boost it. Or could Fine Gael solicit the conservative Independent Ireland, just one year old and already predicted to enter the Dail, to add their votes to the government's side? We will probably know quite quickly, as Harris has every reason to want short negotiations for the next government's formation. Now, mates, to be honest, I am truly devastated that The Hipstershire Gazette has chosen to fold its operations on TwiXter, and that we won't benefit from them wokesplaining us what the Justin Welby Fan Club groupthink take on this election is, and why Sinn Féin would have won it if they had been more woke, just as Kamala Harris would now be Leader Of The Free World™. Because they never learn.

I never realised before that common sense is as powerful an instinct as love, hatred or patriotism.

(Cedric Crackenthorpe, 4:50 From Paddington, 1987)