Jeremy's Den: January 2024

Always look for the truth from the ground up, rarely from the top down. Journalists are never real journalists if they are the agents of power, no matter how they disguise that role. Real journalists are the agents of people.

(John Pilger)

Even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere. Because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

(George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945)

Remember to click on the image for larger easier-to-read versions.

The main outrage story around New Year's Day was, of course, Liz Truss's Resignation Honours list, which Rishi Sunak tried to sneak to Charles's desk under cover of the perennial New Year's Honours list. That Liz Truss was allowed to allocate one gong for every four days of her disastrous tenure was just another sign of Sunak's weakness. He can't antagonise anyone in the Conservative Party, or that person would instantly rise a mob of twenty rabble-rousers threatening to vote against the government on the first available vote. This has become worse than a lame duck Premiership, it's a dead duck Premiership where nothing can be achieved any longer. The sooner it ends, the better. Gamble on May, Rishi, you have nothing to lose. Well, not more than if you procrastinate until October.

In the meanwhile, the trend of voting intentions polls has been fluctuating between ups and downs for Labour, who still remain the overwhelming favourite. Of course, a thousand voices from all corners of the political spectrum warn them to not feel so smug about it, because they could still lose the election. Oddly, all examples mentioned to enhance the warnings come from abroad. Because British electoral history says something different. No party leading by 18% four months before a general election has ever lost it, at least not in that sense. Polls said the election was a tie in December 1991, so it was no upset that Labour lost that one. Except for the BBC's exit pollsters, that is. Polls also said that the Conservatives were leading by low double-digits in January 2010, so everybody knew Gordon Brown was doomed. Except himself, that is. The only convincing example the doubters could quote, but oddly don't, is also the most relevant one in the current situation. 1997. Labour led by around 20% in January polls, and ended up winning by "only" 12.5%. Even if Labour's current lead shrunk in a similar way, they would still win convincingly and bag a bigger majority than Boris Johnson last time aboot, despite the mostly unfavourable boundary changes.

But could Labour themselves still be the architects of their own downfall? That's the awkward scenario the spads don't want to dangle too openly under Keir Starmer's nose, because that would be stressing that he is definitely not the kind of buoyantly inspirational leader Tony Blair was, in the early days at least, even when he's trying hard. Precisely because everybody sees that he's trying hard, and it doesn't come naturally. Even The Hipstershire Gazette are expressing some discontent at Starmer's lack of ambition. Then I am quite thrilled to see John McDonnell in The Hipstershire Gazette making the exact same point I made on New Year's Eve, that any political vacuum left by Starmerism will be filled by far-right populism. There is already compelling evidence of that in the country of my birth, where Marine Le Pen's National Rally scores points and gains votes every time Emmanuel Macron shifts his policies to the right, most often on the basis of polls saying that public opinion agrees with this and that and whatnot. Governing by polls is a slippery slope, and campaigning on the least divisive proposals while dropping the few really progressive ones, as Starmer clearly intends to do, is just the first step down that slope. Which is the perfect transition to my next point, waiting for you just beyond the song.

Every winter you see whole flocks of birds flying North for the winter. Do you know why they fly backwards? Because they want to see where they’ve been, because that’s how they know where they’re going.

(Dev Ayesa, For All Mankind: Legacy, 2023)

One of the painful things about our times is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision. Let doubt prevail.

(Bertrand Russell)

One of key factors in the incoming Sunak Clearance election is how much damage Reform UK can inflict on the Conservatives by fielding candidates in all constituencies. Or, contrary to the punditariat's common wisdom, aren't Labour the ones most threatened by the rise of the populist far-right? A subplot is which leader would maximise their vote, Richard Tice or Nigel Farage? YouGov conducted a comparative poll, back in November, but oddly chose to disclose their findings only after the New Year. But there are still some interesting lessons to be learned from it. As usual with YouGov, this poll did not survey Northern Ireland. But UKIP and the Brexit Party were never really a thing there, so that doesn't alter the picture, and they already have their own variants of loonies anyway. Let's have a look at what sort of voting intentions the poll found, but don't focus on Labour's 21% lead over the Conservatives, even if it's quite close to what we have now. The figures are almost two months old, and what matters most is how the numbers change when we shift from Tice to Farage as leader of the Gammons Party. Contextualise and focus on the relative rather than the absolute, for once.

And there are reasons to sit back, take a deep breath and think twice in there for both Labour and the Conservatives. The most obvious one is that a Farage-led Reform UK would snatch additional votes equally from Labour and the Conservatives. Mostly in England, of course, as the numbers for Scotland and Wales show they are statistically immune to Nige's charm. It gets even worse when you look at the breakdowns for the meta-regions of England. It shows that the Reform UK vote is fairly evenly distributed all across England outwith London. That's something you couldn't deduce from the 2019 results, as the Brexit Party withdrew from all Conservative-held seats. Which mechanically lessened their vote shares, especially in the massively blue South, and almost as much in the Midlands. But now Reform UK are propelled to new heights by the poll's common sense assumption that all parties would field candidates in all constituencies. And Farage's return would make that even better than peak UKIP in 2015, which was just 12.6%.

These voting intentions are bound to have an impact on the seat projections. It is worth remembering that the Brexit Party got 20% or more of the votes in 2019 in only five constituencies. One in Wales (Blaenau Gwent) and four in the North of England (Barnsley Central, Barnsley East, Doncaster North, Hartlepool). All were Labour seats before the election and held by Labour, and I discount the disastrous 2021 by-election in Hartlepool and something of a one-off industrial accident. The reshuffling of constituencies from the 2023 Periodic Review left only three such seats (Barnsley North, Barnsley South, Hartlepool), which shouldn't make Labour feel safer, as the recarving actually made all three notionally closer shaves. Which becomes painfully clear when you look at the seat projection from the Tice Scenario, where these exact three seats are already predicted to fall. But the Farage Scenario is not what it looks like at first sight, there are some evil twists in it.

You might think that the Farage Scenario is not that bad after all, as it hurts the Conservatives and favours both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. But things are not quite what they seem to be, as you see only the end results of the process here, not what the process actually does. The Farage Scenario actually allows Reform UK to snatch twelve seats off Labour, and only two off the Conservatives. It then irons that out, and more, because the higher Reform UK vote share makes the Conservatives more vulnerable in a number of competitive seats, with seven of these switching to the Liberal Democrats and another ten to Labour. So what we actually have is a perilous situation for both top contenders in the next election, and you can only guess if it can get worse. The only time they ran for a national election, the frivolous 2019 European Parliament election, the Brexit Party did better than UKIP had ever done at earlier such elections. So why should we refuse to believe that Reform UK can also outperform the best of UKIP at a general election? We will know soon enough, unless they have more bark than bite, and can be bribed into standing down in key Conservative seats. Which could surely happen under Tice, as Farage seems more determined to get his gallon of Tory blood. Rishi Sunak is obviously feart of that, as he rolled out the heavy artillery for the benefit of The Torygraph's readers. This is gonna be fucking fun, innit?

It's just Etonians and public schoolboys passing around rewards between each other, creating a ruling class that's even more sharply defined probably than it's ever been in recent times.

(Mick Lynch)

I always disagree, however, when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.

(George Orwell)

Once you've started going down that road, there's no stopping you. So More In Common raised the stakes just in time for the New Year, and released an alternative reality poll, where respondents had to state their voting intentions if Nigel Farage was leader of the Conservative Party instead of Rishi Sunak. Which is not as far fetched as it sounds when you consider they may get Sue-Ellen Braverman in the real world after the election, which would surely lure a lot of the Reform UK herd back where they came from. Just where Nigel and Sue-Ellen want migrants to go. Anyway, that fancy scenario would have instant consequences. In broad strokes, cut the Reform UK vote by 5% and reduce Labour's lead over the Conservatives by the same 5%. Of course, that would be very unevenly distributed across the various nations of the UK, as the baseline situation is also quite diverse. The poll did not cover Northern Ireland, so I will also keep them out of this. The luck of the Irish. Which is definitely not a McCartney song, by the way.

There are also major discrepancies in the impact of a Farage Tory Party across the regions of England, as shown by the raw crosstabs from the poll. It would of course seriously harm Reform UK, but in quite different ways. The most surprising part is that a Farage-led Conservative Party would pretty much dalek out Reform UK in the North, and even attract Europhobic Labour voters in the North East and Yorkshire. The second most surprising, in the opposite corner of the spectrum, is that it would not improve the Conservatives' chances in the South. It will be surely quite a shock, for both Labour HQ and CCHQ, to discover that Farage is a repellent for the posh Southern middle-class, and at the same time efficient bait for the socially conservative Northern working class. Besides also super-charging the Conservatives in Red Wales and London.

Nevertheless, it would not change the outcome of the election. Labour would still win, albeit with a smaller majority than standard polls predict. After all, Labour's average lead would be roughly the same as in 1997, and we already know that's more than enough to deliver a landslide despite the adverse effects of the last batch of boundary changes. Even with unexpected losses in odd places, Labour would still come out of this with more seats that the Conservatives bagged in 2019 under Boris Johnson.

There are quite a lot of lessons to be learned from this alternative universe, for both Labour and the Conservatives. The most salient is of course that a change of Alpha Dog midstream would not change the Conservatives' fate, and that would still be a crushing defeat. Losing less that half your seats, when regular polls predict you would lose more, can hardly be called a success. It's not even convincing damage control. But Labour should also worry that embracing Farage would not be a death kiss for the Conservatives, and would even attract quite a number of Labour voters in the least likely places, where they thought they had gained back or solidified their dominance. There is already summat of that in recent regular polling, in regions where Reform UK would do well, but that alternative timeline makes it more painfully obvious. Interestingly, it would have far less impact in Scotland than anywhere else. Standard polls already say that the Conservatives might gain a couple of seats here, due to the SNP's crash-landing. And even a Faragified Conservative Party would concede most of the Scottish battlegrounds to SNP-Labour one-on-ones.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

(Benito Mussolini)

Il n’y a de place dans l’histoire que pour ceux qui voient loin et large.

(Jacques Delors)

We have almost reached the fourth anniversary of Boris Johnson Getting Brexit Done, or summat, and you might think some odd Brexit Euphoria might be a factor in the Reform UK vote recently going up. But YouGov have taken the opportunity to probe the Great British Public about Brexit, and euphoria is definitely not what they found. This time, they did not ask about Brexit being a resounding success or more like a plague of locusts, as we already know the answer to that one, but about the shape our future relationship with the European Union should take. The Conservatives and Reform UK will definitely not like the findings, but the SNP and the Liberal Democrats surely will. And it will feel quite awkward for Labour, so long as they maintain their stance of Not Getting Brexit Undone. Because that's not what the Great British Public support, and neither do Labour voters.

Now, if we consider this as summat of a mock referendum, and weed out the undecideds, only 41% want our relationship with the EU to remain the same, which is pretty much the official Conservative and Labour position. 34% want us to get further estranged, as Reform UK are rooting for to restore the Empire or summat. And 59% want to rejoin the EU, which will fill the SNP and the Liberal Democrats with joy, and even make them sing an ode to it. It is definitely not a surprise that Brits now want to rejoin the EU by a much wider margin than they chose to leave it eight years ago, as it has been the trend of polls ever since we were faced with what Brexit really meant. Definitely not the sunlit uplands with £350m a week going to the NHS. Labour voters now want to rejoin even more overwhelmingly than the proverbially Europhile LibDem voters, though it's unlikely to make Labour HQ reconsider, even it that would be the only U-turn the public would welcome. But the Great British Public's favourite option is by far joining the Single Market, that would win a bespoke referendum 66-34. The only spanner in the cogs here is that Brits don't really know what the Single Market is.

Of the seven statements submitted by YouGov, the first five are true and the last two are false. You know I'm not one to brag, but I got six right without reading YouGov's article about the poll. I only missed the one about the European Court of Justice. The intriguing part is that at most half of the panel got the answers right, and a sizeable part just don't have a clue. Yet this is the only option that can plausibly be put on the table to mitigate the Brexit disaster, so long as the political establishment, SNP and LibDems included, ignore the alternative scenario of joining EFTA. Which gives you the choice to join the Single Market by signing up to the European Economic Area agreement. That's the one middle-ground option that could gather support from Europhiles without letting Brexiteers use the Euro as a repellent, and Labour don't even mention it because they are feart of the Brexiteer faction in their own ranks. They should pay attention to another poll, fielded by We Think just before Christmas, that asked their panel if Brexit would make their life better or worse in 2024.

The wording implies "even worse than it already was in 2023", so it's quite impressive that a third of Brits think so. Even Leavers can't bring themselves to say that Brexit will make their lives better. But half of Brits saying it will make no difference is not necessarily as reassuring as it sounds. I think it's more like people thinking that we have endured so many calamities already that it can't possibly get worse. But it surely can, as the handful of free trade deals the Conservatives love to brag about can't mitigate the Brexit calamities, as they cover only a minuscule fraction of the UK's trade and our dominant trade partner is still the EU. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the EU, as amended in April 2021, has major in-built flaws, including the spawning of massive amounts of red tape, the cost of which is inevitably passed to the final customer. And even that may implode because of the provisions about Northern Ireland, that the DUP is using as a political football in totally unrelated disputes. So we surely haven't seen the last of the Brexit Plagues.

Nobody voted for this mess. I blame the charlatans who peddled the falsehoods that Brexit would be easy, it would be cost free. I wouldn't trust them to run my bath, let alone the country.

(Betty Boothroyd)

Leaders make choices that keep them up at night. If you’re sleeping well, you’re not doing your job.

(Peter Fulton, New Amsterdam: Good Soldiers, 2019)

Has Rishi Sunak chosen the proper campaign narrative, announcing "tough choices" in his back-to-work interview with The Torygraph on the eve of Commons' return? The real heavy stuff is out in the open now, and The Torygraph felt they had to devote a special article to it, in case we hadn't got the gist from the interview itself. Make no mistake, crippling the welfare system and the civil service are the ends, cutting taxes is just the means, that Rishi hopes will make him look good with the loony libertarian Truss-loving faction of the Conservative Party. Obviously this shouldn't be the Prime Minister's prime concern, as only a small fraction of the Great British Public fully identify with that ideology. The majority's concerns are definitely far away from it, as life is becoming more difficult by the day for them. The roots of it can be traced back directly to policy choices made by the Conservatives since the 2015 election freed them from the last shreds of restraint the Liberal Democrats had imposed on them during the Coalition term, and these were already tiny. Redfield & Wilton's weekly assessment of the two primeministerial contenders continues to prove that Brits have had enough of Rishi, even if they are not really enamoured with Keir.

Keir Starmer obviously has a lot of questions to answer, probably more than Rishi Sunak, about where he really intends to take the UK after the election. Including his exact stance on some NHS trusts openly promoting a gender ideology narrative that is rejected by a majority of the electorate. Sly Keir will have to clarify this, and give up his mix of non-committal and contradictory statements that look more like obfuscation than creative ambiguity. But the electorate still give him better ratings than Rishi Sunak on all sixteen items tested by Redfield & Wilton. Sunak had the upper hand in some domains when they started that polling, like the economy and most of the traits defining leadership skills. But this is now long gone, and Keir Starmer is leading by 11% on the average of the qualitative assessments, fairly similar to his 10% lead as the best potential Prime Minister. It wasn't always that way, as Starmer quite often appeared less attractive and convincing on the detailed issues than he was on the fairly general assessment of his primeministerability. Which probably just means that more of the public are willing to set aside their doubts about Starmer, as Sunak is more and more of a massive disappointment.

But the media, aided by several pollsters, have found a way to reshuffle the deck chairs in a peculiar way. There is certainly summat of a concerted campaign in English media right now, bringing Reform UK and Nigel Farage back to front stage centre, as they have done in the past with UKIP and the Brexit Party. There is little factual ground for that, as Farage is neither a candidate at the next election, yet, nor a party leader, though he certainly is the organ grinder to some monkeys out there. Whatever the ulterior motives behind it, More In Common polled the PM race with three entrants in the three possible one-on-one matches. Their baseline for the Sunak-Starmer confrontation is consistent with Redfield & Wilton's last poll, which says 57-43 for Starmer with undecideds erased. But they otherwise have some surprises in store.

Even if the very concept of Nigel Farage ever being able to compete for Prime Minister is narniaesque, there are still some interesting findings in this poll. The hilarious, and slightly disturbing part, is that the Conservative voter base would have a hard time choosing between Sunak and Farage if the choice was ever offered. This suggest a quite alarming meeting of the minds between the residual Conservative voter base, as the breakdown is based on current voting intentions and not past votes, and the grassroots Conservative membership to whom we owe the disastrous Truss Interlude. But some of them seem to still have hold of their senses, as more potential Tory voters would pick Starmer over Farage than Starmer over Sunak. But we also have, quite embarrassingly, more potential Labour voters choosing Farage than Sunak over their own Lider Maximo. It's quite sad to see voters falling for the media stunt, trying to legitimise and undemonise Farage's extremist views. The same has been done in France about Marine Le Pen, and see where it has led them. Far-right narratives infecting the whole political establishment unchallenged. It can happen here, it already has.

Margaret Thatcher’s real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible.

(Geoffrey Howe)

If we're gonna kill hundreds of innocent people, we're gonna do it by the book. Is that clear?

(Marcus Kane, The 100: Exile, 2014)

After 13 years and change in charge, because it's not 14 yet even if we have crossed the line into the 14th year, the Conservatives have an absolutely abysmal record, and have really left a trail of blood behind them. Everything might have been done by the book, most recently Britannia Unchained, that is, but it proved lethal to more than we will ever know. Underfunded healthcare, homelessness, DWP bureaucracy, bailiffs, energy companies, you name it, you got it, and there are many more killers out there. There is the distinct stench of a conspiracy of despair in everything the Conservatives touch and destroy, and the Great British Public are no longer in the mood to accept being taken for fools. We Think track the public's assessment of the current government weekly, and I haven't regaled you with their findings for a long time. Now seems like the right time to take a look at that again, to be clear where we stand at the start of the Tory Downfall Election year.

The results are merciless. On average of the twelve items selected by We Think, the government's net rating is -56%, with half of the items below a net -60%. Even on defence, which was always supposed to be one of the Conservatives' fortes, they get a net -18%. This comes just a few days after the Royal Navy announced they had to lay up two major units so that they can man two others due to be commissioned shortly, as they don't have the manpower to do both. And it seems to be just the beginning of a major rundown that would cripple the Royal Navy into third-power status, when it has already lost the top spot in Western Europe to France. There is no example of such a planned self-immolation since Margaret Thatcher's 1981 Defence White Paper which, if it had been implemented, would have handed Argentina victory in the Falklands War on a silver platter. But having a very dim view of the Conservatives' achievements does not mean the public have an unlimited supply of confidence in Labour's abilities to deal satisfactorily with their concerns.

On the same array of issues, We Think found only 37% of Brits on average trusting Labour, against 18% trusting the Conservatives. Which still leaves 45% who won't pick either, and have probably already lowered their expectations of what a change of government can achieve. Labour may have a better rating on all issues bar none, but that does not make their anticipated victory less of a choice by default. There are many signs around of a country suffering from a collective depression, with few incentives to shake itself out of it. The key explanation is probably, as it has been constantly over the last two years, the cost-of-living crisis. Another poll, fielded by YouGov just before Christmas, found that 60% of Brits have already made cuts to their spending, and 40% expect to have to make more in the future. No surprise that even Keir Starmer can't make people believe in sunlit uplands on the far side of the rainbow. Especially not Keir Starmer, actually. Not when the people feel that the Opposition has nothing better to offer than more of the same, with a thin layer of progressive veneer scattered here and there. And even that feels like it may wear off pretty quickly.

This job requires more than simply following the law. It requires knowing when not to.

(Thelonious Jaha, The 100: Earth Skills, 2014)

With great power comes great responsibility.

(Peter Parker, Spider-Man, 2002)

After 806 consecutive polls over 772 days putting Labour in the top spot, we have reached the point where Labour could see their lead cut by half on Election Day and still win the election. There hasn't been a better alignment of the stars for Labour since 1997, and the only question now is whether or not they will totally fuck it up in the months that remain before the people's verdict. Which can definitely happen, and Rishi Sunak is definitely counting on it, rather than any imagined success for his government. The current weighted rolling average of voting intentions from my updated PollMash has Labour leading by 19.9%, which is better than what I had on New Year's Eve. This is not really surprising if you factor in a new poll from Ipsos, that shows that the Great British Public now trust Rishi Sunak as much as they once trusted Liz Truss. That first Poll'O'Polls for the New Year includes the last six ones, conducted by Redfield & Wilton, Lord Ashcroft, Deltapoll, YouGov, Techne and We Think between the 11th and the 19th of January. That's a super-sample of 12,326, with a theoretical margin of error of 0.88%. And, naw, it does not include that MRP poll YouGov were so proud of, and The Torygraph so outrageously misrepresented on behalf of the Conservatives' fear-mongering campaign, just to get their sorry arses skelped by one of YouGov's Heads of Research. Not because I don't trust it, but just because it's weeks past its sell-by date.

The breakdown of current voting intentions in the regions of England again shows some serendipitous situations for Labour and some hazardous ones. But the past polls over the last two years have already proved that Labour can make up for weaknesses in unexpected places with strengths in just as unexpected places elsewhere. They just have to make that last for another four months, or another ten if Rishi Sunak really can't let go and keeps entertaining wild hopes of a Conservative come back. In other news, we also have clear signs of a downfall of the Liberal Democrats' voting intentions pretty much all across the UK. Most visibly in the Leafy South, where they too entertained wild hopes of a massive come back. But this is possibly not as much of a surprise as you might think at first glance.

Because there might be some spanners in the cogs lying in wait to derail, of all things, the Liberal Democrats' campaign. I'm of course referring to the endless influx of revelations about the Post Office scandal, the worst miscarriage of justice of the millennium. And how it may affect Ed Davey's future, despite his laborious attempts to shift the blame to the Post Office's managers, when there are clues that he actually failed his duty of care and supervision as Junior Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs in the Coalition Government. Whatever Mister Ed's actual responsibility is in the cover-up, and it is probably quite heavy, there is no doubt the Conservatives will throw him under the bus to avoid closer scrutiny of their own involvement by proxy, that was already revealed in the House of Lords nearly three years ago. But Mister Ed is not the only one who should answer tough questions, as shown by the list of Ministers in charge of Post Office Ltd since the early days of the scandal.

Bear in mind that Post Office Ltd is owned 100% by the UK Government, and overseen by what is currently known as the Department for Business and Trade, the official denomination of which has changed twice since 2010. Overseeing Post Office Ltd is within the remit of a Junior Minister, whose official title has changed five times since 2010. Interestingly, "Postal Affairs" vanished from the official title in 2015, as if somebody wanted to hide that part of the remit from the public's eyes. Twelve Ministers have been in charge, almost one per year since the early days of the revelations about the scandal, four Liberal Democrats under the Coalition and then eight Conservatives. To whom I should probably add Labour's Ian Lucas, who was in charge under Peter Mandelson in Gordon Brown's last Cabinet, when Computer Weekly first mentioned the problems with Fujitsu's Horizon software. But I grant him a half-hearted benefit of the doubt as the scandal did not really become public knowledge until Private Eye started investigating it in 2011. But resignations won't solve the problem, and former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells handing back her CBE has only symbolic value. What is needed is first the blanket overturning of all the unsafe guilty verdicts that Rishi Sunak has already announced, which they will all vote for because it makes them look good in an election year, and then a systemic reform, removing powers of investigation and prosecution from Post Office Ltd and all other public bodies having similar powers, and handing them over to the proper authorities. The Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales. Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland.

You're only as sick as your secrets.

(Calvin Dunn, Silent Witness: Effective Range, 2024)

Who knows what hellish future lies ahead? Actually, I do. I’ve seen the rehearsals.

(Terry Wogan)

As you might expect, this week's seat projection is hugely favourable to the Labour Party, hinting at a more spectacular landslide than 1945 and 1997, and delivering a 220-seat working majority. More than Labour had seats after the 2019 election, let that sink in. And it's again helped by a disastrous performance by the SNP, who would even let the Conservatives sneak in two gains in Scotland while being driven to their second worst performance ever in England and Wales, surpassed only by the 1906 election. The oddest thing we have now is that an East-West divide seems to have taken precedence over the proverbial North-South divide. Labour are scoring big all along the West Coast of England from Cumbria to Cornwall, often at the expense of the Liberal Democrats whose hopes in the South West have pretty much been squashed into Surbiton Avocado Purée. But they're also doing far less well than usual all along the East Coast from Lincolnshire to Hampshire, while still scoring unprecedented gains in some of the inland counties closer to the Commuter Belt. This has surely drawn Labour HQ's attention, even if it does not really warrant a reallocation of resources, in a general situation where Labour can definitely do without the Riviera seats. And the Scottish ones too, for that matter.

As the campaign unfolds, I fully expect the proponents of proportional representation (PR) to be again on the warpath, this time trying to convince the Great British Public that it would be dangerous and undemocratic to grant the Labour Party too much power through the current First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral law. By a lucky coincidence, or just smart insight, We Think asked their panel about just that two weeks ago. The PR Fan Club have clearly not got their message through, as a majority of Brits still support FPTP and it appears to be a fairly consensual view. I like to think the public have actually heard the arguments in favour of PR, thoughtfully weighted the pros and cons, and concluded that the remedy would be even worse that the evils it claims it would cure.

You don't even have to look as far as Israel and its multipolar Knesset to realise the dangers of PR, some European Union countries offer just as convincing evidence. The most common situation, given the trends of recent elections there, is a seemingly sane center-right party in government submitting to the whims of a far-right party that failed to gain the top spot through the popular vote. But it works at the other end of the spectrum too, as we have seen repeatedly in Scotland with the green tail wagging the yellow dog, even as we have only a partially proportional system. You could argue that FPTP does not totally avoid extremist fringe factions imposing their views on the majority, as we have seen again with the atrocious Rwanda legislation. But factions have always existed, and will always exist, within the kind of big-tent parties favoured by FPTP. What happened with the Rwanda bill is a failure of leadership, not putting the extremist rebels back in their box and proceeding on a less outrageous version reflecting more measured views. That's a power party leadership has, to rein in factions within a big-tent party, and would lose if the temptation of extremism was fueled by a totally distinct party.

This place stinks like a pair of armoured trousers after the Hundred Years War.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder II, 1986)

Religion was supposed to unite humankind in harmony and bland smiling, but it has mainly succeeded in tearing it apart, like a bear in a maternity ward.

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

While we are focused on the Tories Oot Election in the UK, another one is due soon in Éire. Or the Republic of Ireland, as the United Kingdom's government insisted on calling it for fifty years before the Good Friday Agreement, even if that wording never appeared in any iteration of the Irish Constitution and is actually quite offensive to Irish ears. The election must be held no later than March 2025, but there is no constitutional obstacle to an early dissolution and a snap election. I'm not hypothesising that it will happen in 2024, just saying that it could. Especially as the current trends of polls are very favourable to Sinn Féin, who have been marinating in opposition technically since 1927, and de facto since the Civil War in 1922 broke them up into the pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty factions. The governing coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Greens have seen their voting intentions go down quite significantly, and would now bag only a combined 40% of the popular vote, 10% down on their 2020 results. Sinn Féin is now the first party in the polls, around 30% most recently.

The current Dail is the 33rd since 1918. Only 5 of the previous 32 served a full term (1938-1943, 1992-1997, 1997-2002, 2002-2007, 2011-2016). The 6th (1927-1932) and 24th (1982-1987) Dails don't qualify as they were dissolved eight and ten months, respectively, before the scheduled end of their five-year terms. An early election in 2024 can't be ruled out, as a matter of political expediency for the governing coalition, who have seen their majority eroded by defections since the 2020 election. They bagged a total of 84 seats out of 160 at the election, a 9-seat majority, and are now down to 80, which is still a 1-seat majority as the Ceann Comhairle (Speaker) is not counted. Current polling, and the number of seats that can be approximately deducted from it, says the coalition will lose a lot of seats and the election will deliver a hung Dail, in such a configuration that a strong and stable coalition would be difficult to assemble, and plausibly impossible.

The current 33rd Dail has 160 members, elected from 39 multi-member constituencies. The 34th Dail will have 174 members, elected from 45 multi-member constituencies, with 3 to 5 members each. A seat projection for the Dail is a tough exercise, even more perilous that for the House of Commons. Because of their electoral law, the infamous Single Transferable Vote, that combines the worst of all worlds. It's a pretendy proportional representation that allows, as we know from hard experience with the Scottish Council elections, massive tactical voting on the second and lower preferences. Organised tactical voting between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cost Sinn Féin many seats in 2020. Their own lack of confidence also cost them some, as they did not field candidates in several constituencies, a mistake they will surely not repeat at the next election. With these caveats, and to the best of my abilities, the current coalition would lose the election, bagging 74 seats and 13 shy of a majority. But Sinn Féin on 50 seats would be even further from a majority, and less likely to convince enough allies for one. The outcome would then by in the hands of the Labour Party, who have been in an unholy coalition with Fine Gael seven times already, and more plausibly depend on the Independents, who could provide enough votes for a continuation of the 2020 coalition. So the only certain thing in an uncertain universe is that the next Irish Election Night will be as nail-biting as the previous one.

The toughest foe of all is the foe you can’t see, is your old friends and your old enemies plotting together and sinking a knife in your back.

(Andrew Wallace-Nadrill, Julius Caesar: The Making Of A Dictator, 2023)

Hope life doesn't get too dull, not being able to pass laws over Scotland.

(Dougal McAngus, The Black Adder, 1983)

The incoming Tory Cull Election is the perfect moment to put Independence squarely on the table again, and avoid being lured into debating the merits and flaws of the Scottish Government. I'm not convinced yet that the SNP have started this campaign, if all they have in store is fearmongering about Independence being off the table if they lose seats. Which is untrue simply because Independence does not belong to them, or any party, but to the people who support it. Half of Scots now, certainly more and more in the near future. This felt like the right moment for The Scottish Pravda to publish a column with which I, for once, heartily agree. Because it makes the point that, whatever constitutional conventions say, Scotland has de facto become a colony. Though I would not put the starting point in 1924, but much earlier than that. Back to 1746 with the Act Of Proscription and the Heritable Jurisdictions Act, which sought to eradicate traditional Scottish culture and political organisation, a typical colonialist move that also happened in the Americas and Africa in one form or the other. But a full debate on the fine points of Scottish history is yet to happen, and admittedly it's better to focus now on our present, and how the support for Independence has evolved since the 2014 Referendum.

The last addition to these trendlines is the first Full Scottish poll of the New Year, fielded by Redfield & Wilton between the Sixteenth and the Eighteenth Day Of Christmas. I'll let you count on your fingers to find out when that is. It is an improvement on the last batch of polls of the Old Year, as it shows No leading by just 1%, 47% to 46%. Or 50.6% to 49.4% when you discard the undecideds and abstainers. But we must also still consider the long-term trend, which is not yet as reassuring as this lone poll. Because, as Aristotle was keen to remind us, Jack Sparrow doth not a summer make, or summat. The weighted average of the last six Independence polls, which cover the period from mid-October to the present, is both somewhat positive and somewhat negative.

We are obviously in a better position than in September 2014. Factoring in the margin of error shows there is definitely a path to a Yes victory, as even the worst case scenario is slightly better than the 2014 result. There is also an incentive for optimism if you consider only the sequence of the Redfield & Wilton polls, for consistency. They found Yes leading only once out of fourteen Full Scottish, and that was back in November 2022. Their current result is also the closest they have found since, and a clear improvement on the ten polls they conducted in 2023, which showed No leading by 5% on average. But we aren't close to being asked our choice in a referendum, and the next opportunity to indirectly express it may be the next general election. Or not. Scottish voters were asked about that in a recent Lord Ashcroft poll, and they massively agree that this election will not be a de facto whatever about Independence, but about who's in charge in London. Even SNP voters see it that way.

It's easy to see how this perception of the next general election influences Scottish voting intentions, and we'll come to that in a wee while. The surest thing is that the way the media will spin the election results in Scotland will do more harm than good to the Independence cause. Now we can all chant for the 1001th time that when there's a will, there's way. And that would still not answer the key question. Is there a way the SNP will find the will to seriously campaign for Independence, instead of sending garbled and contradictory messages, or should we bypass them once and for all and move to an independent Independence movement? I know the answer, and you surely do too. But recent events show we're not one step closer to this than we were four years ago. And we are sadly unlikely to progress in that direction so long as the SNP stay on the same course, preempting and appropriating the whole Yes Movement for their sole benefit, and making it all about themselves.

Time after time, on matters great and small, we are still standing on the sidelines, mutely accepting what is decided elsewhere instead of raising our voices and making our own choices. Scotland's much vaunted partnership of Jonah and the whale.

(Winnie Ewing)

Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.

(Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Redfield & Wilton must have got the message, that it was an abhorrent dereliction of duty that they did not poll Holyrood voting intentions in their last Full Scottish of 2023, so they dutifully added their brick to the wall this time. They found the Conservatives down on their previous survey in October on both votes, Labour up on both votes, the SNP up on the constituency vote and down on the regional list vote. Which means the overall trends don't show any major change from what we had at the end of last year. The main battle is still between the SNP and Labour, with the Conservatives watching from afar, and both the Liberal Democrats and Greens managing some progress.

Quite amusingly, The Scottish Pravda devoted a detailed article to the Redfield & Wilton poll, dutifully reporting all its findings, but missing just one detail. You see it, don't you? There is no seat projection, and the readers are left to do the maths themselves. Likewise, Ballot Box Scotland continues to ignore the Redfield & Wilton polls, because they don't like what they say, and leave their readers believing that the hugely SNP-biased Ipsos poll of two months ago is the last snapshot of the next election worth knowing about. The new Redfield & Wilton poll may not be a major earthquake at first sight, but there is an astounding new factor hidden in its depths. If you look at the aggregate of both votes, Labour comes out ahead of the SNP by a nostril. This is the first time this has ever happened in any Holyrood poll since the 2021 election, and that's obviously quite a bad omen for the SNP. The seat projections confirm that, both on uniform national swing and from my model, as Labour emerges as the first party in both cases.

There is a strong element of karmatic irony in these projections. Labour wouldn't get a majority of the constituency seats, even from my model using regional crosstabs that show them over-performing in key regions where SNP seats are closest to the danger zone. It's the regional lists that would propel them to the Top Dog rung of the food chain. The key result of course is that the Yellow-Green Axis would be down to 50 seats on these numbers, with the pro-Independence camp possibly reaching 51 if the Greenies allowed the SNP to allow the Alba Party in. Then, recent news led me to speculate about what the next Scottish parliamentary majority could be. Humza Yousaf had hinted the SNP could work with Labour in Westminster, but would he extend that to Holyrood? If so, a Labour-SNP coalition, which has already been in charge of some Councils, would bag 82 or 83 seats, just a few shy of a super-majority. The more plausible Traffic Light Coalition of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens would command a smaller majority of 65 to 68 seats, still hugely workable so long as the Greenies concede that they would be third wheel in this behind the LibDems. But there are also lots of things to learn from the breakdown of seats by region.

What caught my eye first is the projection for the North East. Of course, that's the Greens going down from one seat to none. Mad Mags Chapman losing her seat, because she has consistently proved herself to be the MSP for the woke metropolitan middle-class from her former turf in Leith Walk, more than 500 miles away from the real concerns of the rural North East. There is also quite an interesting situation in Glasgow where the SNP would lose six constituencies, the three survivors of the debacle being James Dornan, Bob Doris and Nicola Sturgeon. But the oddly strong showing by the Glaswegian Greens would hand only two list seats to the SNP, leaving four incumbents off the gravy train. You just have to wonder now whom Humza Yousaf would choose to save with a top slot on the list, besides himself. The Pollok constituency is also a textbook case of how Green vanity candidacies have the potential to hurt the SNP, as Labour would gain it on these numbers with a majority only half as big as the projected Green vote. But of course the SNP will never be caught whining about the Greenies splitting the vote and getting Unionists elected, will they?

We unite behind a declaration of self-evident truth. The people who live in Scotland are best placed to make the decisions that affect Scotland. We want a Scotland that's greener, that's fairer and more prosperous.

(Alex Salmond)

You should never be so high and mighty you can't listen to somebody else and learn something from them. Leadership is as much about using the ear as using the mouth.

(Jeremy Corbyn)

I guess we can now safely expect that the SNP will lose more seats at the Sunak Clearance election than polls lead them to think. Because the Scottish Greens are hell bent on delivering marginal seats to Labour, by fielding vanity candidacies all over the nation. Which totally makes sense when you consider what The Scottish Pravda says without actually saying it, that Paddy and Lorna are already negotiating a deal with Labour HQ for token concessions on green policies. It doesn't really get better with Alyn Smith's confused ramblings in the same Scottish Pravda. Is the SNP's strategy really to aim for a hung Parliament, and then make a deal with Labour on the basis of concessions we already know Labour will never make? Doesn't sound convincing to me, but is probably just highlighting the SNP's main problem, a total lack of proper strategy beyond worn out soundbites. Or is Humza Yousaf redefining the party's strategy on his own terms, pushing ideas Starmer's way and claiming a seat at the big boys' table? We have had two Full Scottish updates to voting intentions this year. The aforementioned Redfield & Wilton poll, and the Scottish subsample of the also aforementioned YouGov MRP superpoll. Its Scottish subsample is 1,230, so that's good enough for me to include it in my sequence of Full Scottish polling.

We again have Labour and the SNP tied, which is pretty much the kiss of death for a lot of SNP incumbents. The most recent batch of polls also shows something of a plateau, after a pair that looked like outliers in opposite directions in late November. But we also have more evidence here of the fragility of many SNP seats, and also of the unusually high elasticity of seat projections, relative to rather small swings in voting intentions. The main factor here, just as with seat projections for Holyrood, is still Labour over-performing in the Central Belt, which makes quite a number of supposedly secure SNP seats competitive. To add insult to injury, we also have the plausibility of the Conservatives gaining seats in Scotland while facing a massive cull in England and Wales. Their most obvious target is the recarved Moray West and Stuff seat, Douglas Ross's home turf, that the boundary changes have morphed into a notionally marginal SNP seat. Oddly, the current regional breakdowns of voting intentions hint that potential Conservative targets in the South are safer for the SNP than expected. But that other SNP MPs might face stronger Tory competition than they are ready for. These include Brendan O'Hara in Argyll and Bute, Pete Wishart in Perth and Kinross, Alyn Smith in Stirling and David Doogan in Angus.

With these bleak election prospects on the horizon, you have to wonder why the SNP chose this moment to get embroiled in yet another controversy about a badly drafted and probably unenforceable piece of legislation. Especially when, contrary to what The Scottish Pravda claims, it is not opposed by just the proverbial "right-wing outlets", but already causing a rift within the SNP and serious reservations from Labour, which means it is highly unlikely to pass with the kind of support gathered by the infamous Gender Recognition Reform bill. Another fun part of post-Hogmanay hangover-nursing was wondering what the fuck was Mhairi Black thinking, first ratting on her once-esteemed Westminster colleagues, then denouncing a cult of personality she was a founding member of. But third time's a charm for Blackie, as she is standing down for good this year, when she already had two oven-ready opportunities to do so since the very first time she told us she would do so. Some days later, The Scottish Pravda again granted us a good laff when they fantasised about Reform UK possibly dooming the Conservatives in Scotland. Just to get rebuked by their own experts, who know that Reform UK is a non-entity North Of The Wall. But that left you wondering why the whole journotariat from Taigh Iain Ghròt to Land's End had that sudden urge to devote space to Farage's mob. That definitely sounded like kickstarting a self-fulfilling prophecy that Reform UK will do well at the snap general, as a direct result of more media exposure than they deserve.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

On a postmortem table, you are either a man or a woman. Everything else is human construct.

(Peter Cherry, Silent Witness: Grievance Culture, 2024)

We haven't had a fresh Full Welsh from any of the usual suspects yet this year, and I have already given you the snapshot of electoral prospects in Wales earlier, so I will spend a little more time on an issue I hinted at just before in relation to the SNP. Just as the SNP again painted themselves into a corner over crassly unprofessional legislation, another ferrets-in-a-sack thingy erupted on TwiXter about single-sex victim support, and more precisely the policies of rape crisis centres in the UK. As might be expected, that soon turned into a bar brawl about the infamous Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and its CEO. Quite appropriately, Sex Matters commissioned a poll from PeoplePolling on these issues. They chose to get straight to the point in just three questions, dutifully worded unambiguously with the gloves off. They actually start quite softly, first asking their panel if they agree that "women who have been the victims of rape, sexual assault and/or domestic violence should be able to access support in a female-only environment". The only surprise is that some people actually disagree with that.

The poll actually allows two levels of disagreement, "tend to" and "strongly". But the number of dissenters was so tiny here that I fused them into just "disagree" to avoid unnecessarily cluttering the top of the chart. Bear in mind though, that 3% disagreeing with the statement translates into summat like 1.5 million British adults denying women the right to female-only support. Interestingly, the lowest proportion is in Scotland, more food for thought for the unhinged gender ideologues within the SNP and Greens. The poll then goes one step further towards the imaginary confines of "transphobia", asking their panel if they agree that "a support service for women who are victims of rape, sexual assault and/or domestic violence should state clearly whether it offers a female-only environment or includes male people who identify as women". Again, a conclusive majority agree, but this time the proportion of dissenters is significantly higher.

Scotland again has the lowest proportion of dissenters of all Three Nations of This Isle. 69% of Scots agree that support services have a duty of disclosure, something the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Center has always refused to abide by. The third and final question is likely to cause the biggest splash in the wokeist puddle, asking the panel if they agree that "'when advertising jobs for female support workers, a support service for women who are victims of rape, sexual assault and/or domestic violence should be allowed to exclude men who identify as women from applying for the role". Which is of course perfectly legal in the UK, and is no basis for a case of discrimination. As the real law goes, and not a fantasised variant of it, the ideological construct of "gender identity" is not a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010. Interestingly, even Labour and LibDem voters agree with the statement, even if their preferred parties don't, or are ambiguous in Starmer's case. Finally, there's again good news from Scotland, as only 10% support the Stonewall-dictated position, against 15% GB-wide.

There are several wide-ranging lessons to be learned from this poll. That the vast majority of the Great British Public don't fall for the stunts of misogynistic intersectionalist fake inclusivibility. That politicians should not be feart of ruffling some woke feathers, and swing between cowardice and submission, because their own voters massively support the mainstream 'conservative' viewpoints and don't want to endure any variant of deconstructivist social re-engineering. That coerced groupthink is not as potent as its practitioners want us to believe and want it to be, even among the more gullible TikTok Generation. There's even a personal lesson for the Yellow-Green Axis currently in charge of the Scottish Government. On all three items, no matter how "controversial" they look, Scotland has the lowest proportion of disagreement with the statements submitted to the panel. And never forget that the darkest hour is always just before the dawn, and that woke extremism becoming more unhinged and aggressive only proves that they know their end is nigh. More evidence is offered by The Hipstershire Gazette, taking us from the already abysmal level of student politics down to schoolyard politics. It's not me, Sir, the big boys did it. Just don't confuse the final death throes with somersaults of resurgence.

Groupthink is when a group of people make irrational or substandard decisions motivated by the desire to conform, or the belief that dissent is not an option.

(Haidar Alam, Silent Witness: Grievance Culture, 2024)

Over the moon about strong support for the National Health Service. An institution I will defend to my dying day, second only to Everton FC.

(Andy Burnham)

I am going to try a different approach from my usual now, giving you a breakdown of voting intentions and projected seats by county, and not just by region. This is of course risky business, as this whole psephology thingy is based on a statistical approach and more or less complicated algorithms. The whole rational of statistics is that you usually get it right when you aggregate things from the bottom to the top. But it tends to become less accurate when you go the other way and break it up from top to bottom. But Electoral Calculus and now The Torygraph have proven they are not feart of offering a peep into the future of individual constituencies. So why not try and stop just above that, at county level? So here's what I have right now, for voting intentions in the constituent counties of the three Northern regions of England. And, before you protest, there is a tiny bit of Lincolnshire legally in the North, the part that was annexed into the artificial and now defunct Humberside County.

There is a strong Reform UK presence in these regions, which is not a surprise as the Brexit Party fielded candidates in most Northern constituencies in 2019, as they were then held by Labour. Despite poor showings at local elections, and often a lack of candidates, Reform UK could plausibly do better at the next election, even superseding the Conservatives in three counties and breathing down their neck in a couple of others. What remains to be seen is whether or not the momentum they have gathered will be enough for them to snatch any seat. The usual statistical approach says yes, it is hugely likely, and the potential three Reform UK seats would all come from Labour. Namely Hartlepool, Barnsley North and Barnsley South. All three voted Leave by around 70% in 2016, and they were also the three highest vote shares in the whole UK for the Brexit Party in 2019, as notionally recounted on the new boundaries. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the real vote confirmed what my model says here. But we still have a whole campaign between now and then, and Labour surely know which constituencies are their weakest links, and how disastrous it would be to lose them, PR-wise. So just expect them to have all hands on deck to repeal the boarders.

I can"t leave the North without mentioning a tidbit of local news that has become of national interest. To everyone's surprise, or not, Michael Gove in now embroiled in the cover-up of blatant corruption within the Teesside Freeport. Which actually comes as a surprise only to anyone who hadn't yet understood that the basic template for freeports is designed to accommodate corruption, tax evasion, embezzlement and a whole array of human rights violations. Nobody will be surprised that Mikey's main concern is not to expose the truth, which could have been done already months ago, but to avoid any embarrassment and tough questions for the Conservative Mayor of Tees Valley ahead of the incoming local elections in England. Right now, the area covered by the Tees Valley Authority has six Conservative MPs and two Labour MPs, and the current seat projection says it would be seven Labour and one Reform UK MPs after the election. Which is probably why Mikey has such an interest in the local situation, and also why it's probably too late to turn the tide.

We would all like the judicial system to be a Rolls Royce. All we can afford is an overheated Vauxhall.

(Ian Rochester, Judge John Deed: Rough Justice, 2001)

If you cut me I bleed Birmingham, that's my identity. Others would say it's being a woman, but coming from Birmingham is the single most important part of my identity. I'm not always sure I feel English or British, but I always feel like a Brummie.

(Jess Phillips)

A date has finally been set for the by-election in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, a month after its former MP Peter Bone was kicked out by a successful recall petition, and it will be held on the 15th of February. There were rumours that Peter Bone may stand as a Reform UK candidate, but even Richard Tice had to concede that fielding an arrogant disgraced sex pest was not a smart move in the run-up to the incoming snap general. Too bad, it would have been a fun trainwreck to watch, with the split of the right-wing vote delivering an oven-ready Labour gain. But we now know that Peter "Boner" dangled that threat under CCHQ's nose only to get his sex partner selected as the Tory candidate. Labour certainly made a wise choice to improve their chances, by selecting a former local Councillor and life-long charity worker, instead of opening the door to some carpet-bagging electoral tourist. Not alluding to The Curious Incidents Of Eddie In Sheffield And Brighton, obviously. The only caveat is that Labour's voting intentions have sharply nosedived in the East Midlands in the last batch of polls.

Right now, the statistical approach says that Wellingborough is not the low hanging fruit Labour hope it to be. My model says the Conservative lead would significantly shrink, from 36% in 2019 to 10% now, but not enough for a gain. Then Peter Bone himself has handed Labour an obvious campaign soundbite on a silver platter. His shenanigans are a matter of public record, even the bits he denies ever happened, and can only play against him. This is a case where you see a path to Labour defying the odds and scoring a gain anyway. After all, Peter Bone won by "only" 18,540 votes in 2019, which is pretty low by current by-election standards, and the toxicity surrounding him could convince even faithful Tory voters to stay at home in protest and in droves. Bear in mind too that Labour's overall prospects in the East Midlands are disappointing only in comparison to earlier more favourable polling numbers, but still project a gain of 13 seats on their abysmal 2019 result.

The situation is currently far better in the West Midlands, where the most recent polls hint at a complete reversal of fortunes. It involves Labour gaining 31 seats, and pretty much returning to the 1997 results. Which is obviously the most satisfying outcome Keir Starmer wishes for. This would also be quite painful for the local Conservatives, as the projection for the West Midlands shows them also losing most of their grip on the rural areas, including the Liberal Democrats holding their surprise by-election gain in North Shropshire. There is nevertheless a ray of sunshine for Labour in the East Midlands after all. The renegade "31.2p Lee" Anderson, that's "30p Lee" adjusted for inflation, is projected to lose his seat to a two-pronged assault of Labour and the Ashfield Independents, who started life pretty much as an offshoot of the local Liberal Democrats. Labour will obviously love taking the seat back from their former comrade who made a complete arse of himself over the Rwanda vote, because Labour MPs were giggling at him.

People say that I'm stoking the culture wars. Well, I'm not. I'm just fighting back. I'm just saying, shut up.

(Lee Anderson)

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

(Boris Johnson)

The Interim Defence Secretary Grant Shapps offered the Great British Public a moment of fun when he appeared on Sky News, in denial of the possibility of losing his seat of 19 years in Hertfordshire, and also quite clueless about how voting intentions polls work. But nothing can change what the polls quite consensually predict, massive Conservative losses in the reputedly safely blue Leafy South of England. One such seat might be Clacton, that was once home to the one and only UKIP MP ever elected at a general election, Douglas Carswell. Survation have just polled it with two distinct scenarios. To their credit, they freely volunteered that the poll was paid for by Arron Banks, with the overt goal of baiting Nigel Farage into standing there at the End Of Sunak election, perhaps hoping that eighth time's a charm for him. What they found is definitely quite interesting.

In the real world, the Reform UK candidate in Clacton is Anthony Mack, who has deep roots in the constituency because he spent holidays there as a kid. And he also has a TikTok account, can't make that shit up, can we? In Survation's alternate timeline, the Reform UK candidate is Big Boss Man Nigel Farage, and that changes everybody's prospects quite significantly. The most important finding is that Farage would snatch votes from the Conservatives and Labour in almost similar proportions. This is yet another sign that Labour should treat Reform UK as a credible threat, and not concentrate all their broadsides on the Conservatives, who have transitioned into sitting ducks, even in their heartlands of many generations. The only caveat is that polls have Reform UK doing far less well in the South than in the rest of England, even down to a single-digit vote share in Essex.

Another risky by-election now lies across the path to the Conservatives' defeat at the general, in Kingswood, South Gloucestershire. It was triggered by the resignation of former Energy Minister Chris Skidmore, who had already announced he would be standing down at the incoming general, and will also be held on the 15th of February. Skidmore had a majority of "only" 11k in 2019, so odds are it will be another gain for Labour, who already held the seat between 1992 and 2010. Skidmore may have acted solely out of principle, as he signed the Conservatives' Net Zero pledge into law as a Junior Minister, and couldn't support Rishi Sunak reneging on the bulk of it. But he may also have wanted to take the piss out of his former colleagues in government, by offering Labour another gain on a silver platter on an election year. The seat projection from the current batch of polls confirm this, as the Conservatives would be wiped out of the now defunct Avon County, which officially ceased to exist in 1996, but is nevertheless still used for the purpose of Boundary Reviews. These same polls hint that we are now seeing a Conservative surge in the South East and East Anglia, but coupled with an unexpectedly strong showing and massive gains for Labour in the South West.

Labour are also smelling more than blue blood, now that the LibDem vote has taken a plunge in the New Year's polls. They are now openly targeting seats where the LibDems seemed to have better odds, the kind Labour HQ had probably previously decided to bypass, but are now reconsidering. There is definitely some domino-ripple effect here from Ed Davey's loss of popularity in the polls after the revelations about the Post Office scandal, which the Conservatives are already weaponising against the Liberal Democrats in marginal seats. Labour's challenge now is to channel the disgruntled LibDems voters their way, instead of letting them flock to the Conservatives. That will be the key to maintaining a strong showing in the Leafy Southern Middle England. There are conclusive signs it is already happening in the South West, that was once Ed Davey's main target area. The Orange Tide, that carried the Liberal Democrats over 20% of voting intentions there, is now ebbing to a 13% average, and surpassed by the South East. There, they would unseat Dominic Raab, but Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove would survive in three-way marginals, unless someone finds the magic mushroom to unsplit the anti-Tory vote.

The public want honesty from their politicians. Not showy gimmicks.

(Theresa May)

The only way fox hunting would count as vermin control is if the posh twats fell off their horses and broke their neck.

(Ricky Gervais)

J.L. Partners, a usually quite discreet pollster, took me by surprise around the New Year, with a poll including voting intentions in ten select English constituencies. Nine of the predecessor seats to their selection went to the Conservatives in 2019. The last one, Leeds West and Pudsey, is the unholy stitching of one half of a Labour seat (Leeds West) with one half of a Conservative seat (Pudsey), and is notionally Labour thanks to the massive Labour majority in Leeds West. Overall, these ten seats voted 52% to Conservative to 37% Labour in 2019, and are now predicted to go 46% Labour to 34% Conservative. That's a rather convincing 14% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, that reflects the overall mood of the English electorate. It is thusly quite enlightening to see where these seats are predicted to go by that poll.

The 2019 vote shares here are those in the predecessor seats, except for Leeds West and Pudsey, where I used the weighted average of the two predecessor seats. Four out of five in the first half of the sample are predicted to switch from Blue to Red. Three of these are within London's Commuter Belt, so the switches are definitely not a surprise. The only disappointment for Labour is Gloucester, as favourable polls in the South West made it a plausibly likely gain. But you can't get them all, Tiger. Labour holding Leeds West and Pudsey is quite logical, as the new seat combines a weak Tory majority in Pudsey with a massive Labour majority in Leeds West, Rachel Reeves's seat. If the intent of the recarving was to dilute Labour votes into a more Tory-friendly pool, it's a massive miss. The second half of the selection is more satisfactory for Labour, though not perfect yet.

Here we have four Labour gains from the Conservatives, some with really impressive swings. But one disappointment is Watford, that emerges as a tie, with the Liberal Democrats holding the keys to the winning slot. It's in London's Inner Commuter Belt and even has its own Tube station, so Labour are certainly expecting an easy gain there. The poll says otherwise and implies that Labour will have to use the tactical voting card there, to lessen the influence of the Liberal Democrats. Which may prove trickier than expected as the Liberal Democrats have held a majority in Watford Borough Council and the directly-elected Mayoralty for more than twenty years. This could be the kind of seat where Labour test their best campaign tricks. Should they play the "best-placed to beat the Tories" card, hoping it will switch LibDem voters? Or should they bypass the LibDems altogether and talk directly to disgruntled Tory voters, trying to convince them that Labour would be some change, but not too much change? The potential problem is that Labour may be tempted to try both simultaneously, depending on the constituency, which would be quite a cacophony, with the obvious risk of losing on both fronts.

What’s the highest number? Or the last digit in Pi? How many snowflakes are in a blizzard?

(Helen Sharpe, New Amsterdam: In The Graveyard, 2020)

Gentlemen in London still a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here. And hold their manhood cheap, while others speak of those who fought with us on Ralph the Liar's Day!

(Richard III, The Black Adder, 1983)

I'm going to change focus this time for this entry about London, because Deltapoll thought it was a good idea to regale us with a poll of London workers about Blue Monday. Of course we all know, and have known for a long time, that Blue Monday is a myth, a complete marketing-oriented fabrication. Or, to use the technical lingo, fucking bullshit. But you can nevertheless use the opportunity to survey some serious issues, which is what Deltapoll endeavoured to do. Their sample includes 66% who live and work in London, and 34% who commute. 17% work in the City, and it does have a statistically significant impact on some of their replies to the survey. There is already a visible difference in the way the panel assess the current state of their own mental health and well-being.

It's already a bad sign that only just more than half of the panel, and less than half of City workers, consider their own mental health to be good. But there are also all sorts of divides seen here. The classic so-called "gender divide", and also clear generational and class differences. I also have a feeling that saying "neither good nor bad" is a roundabout way of saying "not that good after all", for someone who is on the edge of denial. If you read them that way, the results look even less encouraging than you might think. There are many factors at work here, and simple denial might not even be the strongest. A lot obviously depends on how the work environment reacts to hints or open signs of mental health issues. Deltapoll surely sensed that too, as they asked their panel whether or not mental health and well being are taboo issues at their workplace. And there is again more than meets the eye in the replies.

The first obvious caveat is that the wording of the question defines taboo as "something that is not mentioned in case it harms or reflects badly on someone". There is definitely a double-edge approach implied here. Are we supposed to understand "someone" refers only to the person suffering from the issues? Or can it be interpreted as also referring to the person that created the environment that led to the issues? The ambiguity is not solved by including the "it varies" option. For once, I can't see the bright side of life here, as it suggests the answer depends on whom you are talking to. That it might be easier to discuss these issues with colleagues than with managers. Another question in the poll says that 59% of the panel feel their employer takes mental health issues seriously and 36% think they don't, which is distressingly high. City workers align with the general population here, with 58% and 36% respectively. There's obviously a lot more to be learned from that poll, but I will conclude with just the one question directly related to the Blue Monday myth. Do working Londoners really feel bluer during the blue months?

Oddly, there seems to be something to it. But you have to wonder what the real reason is. Is it just the shit weather and the fewer daylight hours? Or is it more about promotions and bonuses for the past year being announced in that period? Remember the poll covers only working Londoners and look at the hints. Young middle-ranking City workers, those our forefathers loved to call yuppies, are clearly the most likely to worry, while the older generations and lower-ranking employees are more relaxed about it. So I definitely can't rule out basic recognition-related stress. Also note that there is a clear difference too between those who have heard of the Blue Monday myth, and those who haven't. Surely we have some sort of social contagion here, in a society that is already ripe with it. For that alone, I think we should always see the bright side of life; Or at least try.

I was born in London, but my parents had me move back to Nigeria to make sure I learned to speak English properly and, for that, I thank them.

(Nabil Abdulrashid)

When I am King, I shall have handsome young men around me, and we shall use women as dogs do bitches. For our pleasure and profit.

(James VI, King of Scots, Elizabeth I, 2005)

I guess I can't leave the Monarchy out of this article, despite already devoting space and energy to them in the previous one. But the new batch of revelations, or sometimes pseudo-revelations, about Jeffrey Epstein and his wide circle of associates has prompted the pro-republican think tank Republic to commission another poll from Savanta about the Windsors. Which is actually more about Charles and Andrew than about the institution. Never mind, I guess the possibility of the appearance of more evidence linking Andrew to criminal activities made it worth their while. And even if nothing of the sort ever happens, polls like this can still be used to convince Charles to distance himself more conclusively and convincingly from his wee bro, the only one of their lot who's more disliked by the Great British Public than Meghan and Harry. And will never have a Netflix six-parter to make his case, though it would probably be just as disastrous as his infamous Panorama appearance. But the questions that make up two thirds of the poll are rhetorical, as nothing of the sort will happen either. First, Savanta asked if Charles should publicly address the situation.

Half of the British public may think that he should, but of course he fucking won't. What the fuck do the fucking oiks think they are? That's not how the fucking Firm works, plebs. You have better odds of Keir Starmer raising the issue at PMQs, and you know how likely it is to happen, than of hearing Charles ever mentioning it. The same applies to Savanta's Two Of Three question, about the Metropolitan Police investigating Andrew. It's just as rhetorical and irrelevant because they have already said they won't because, ye ken, there's noting to see here. And Woking is outwith their jurisdiction anyway.

So, no matter what three quarters of the Great British Public, and four out of five Scots, think, there will never be an Andrew Windsor vs The Crown four-parter on ITV's schedule for the foreseeable future. But, then, surely nobody would want Toby Jones playing Andrew, would we? You may also have noticed that Savanta used proper Scottish and Welsh subsamples this time, instead of bundling the Celtic Nations together as they did in their previous monarchy poll. By the way, it confirms my hunch that Wales is more monarchist than Scotland, if there was ever any doubt. That works for the There Of Three question too, about the public choosing between a monarch and an elected head of State.

That's the one that, quite incredibly, was described by some lazy journos as "game changing". Because they just told you that support for the monarchy has fallen below 50% for the first time ever, but not that support for an elected Head of State has gone down too. The only factor here was a massive increase in the number of undecideds. The raw results moved from 52-34 in November to 48-32 in January. So, if you count only the votes cast, the swingometer moved from 60.4-39.6 to 59.5-40.5, not even a 1% swing. In any other poll, that would be disregarded as statistically insignificant, which it is. But, because of the subject matter, some want you to believe it's a historic turning point in English history, which it isn't. Can't wait for the next poll saying that support for an hereditary sinecure has risen again, and how many will not mention it. I guess the only part worth mentioning is that all Hundreds Of The Realm favour the monarchy, except London and Scotland, that are both exactly evenly split. Which is, incidentally, a very good reason to hold a referendum about it in an Independent Scotland, and not letting the SNP unilaterally decide that we should keep the King of England as our Head of State.

The King can be of use. He can give garden parties and open things. and save us the bother of electing some God-awful President or something.

(Tim Stamper, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact. Non-Westerners never do.

(Samuel Huntington)

What is the worst that could happen to Ukraine in 2024? Don't look at Moscow for an answer, look at Washington DC. Because the absolute worst would be Donald Trump winning the American presidential election, which would also be a massive calamity for the whole of the civilised world and bring smiles to the faces of all authoritarian illiberal abusers of power, from Buenos Aires to Budapest through Jerusalem and Moscow. The Ukrainian authorities are clearly aware of this danger, so it is no surprise that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has undertaken another World Tour to strengthen support for his country, including by earning the goodwill of often reluctant public opinions facing multiple problems of their own. The Great British Public has not been polled about Ukraine for a long time, as almost seven months have passed since YouGov fielded their last survey. But YouGov's American branch office still includes questions about Ukraine in their monthly omnibus poll on behalf of The Economist. We can thusly see how American public opinion has evolved over time about the hottest issues, the level of military aid the USA should grant to Ukraine.

There have been fluctuations over time, but the proportion of Americans who support maintaining or increasing the aid has rarely fallen below 50%. This month again, a clear majority support either of these options. Despite this level of popular support, American military aid to Ukraine has now been discontinued, after the final already approved $250m package was confirmed just after Christmas. What will happen next depends on how many cheap political points the Republican Party is willing to score, now that their primary season is officially open. In this context, Ukraine received welcome news from the UK, when Rishi Sunak announced a new £2.5bn aid package, and promised long-term support during a surprise visit to Kyiv. This is more necessary than ever when the crosstabs for YouGov's last American poll show a clear divide along partisan and ideological lines about the level of aid to Ukraine. This gives Republicans in Congress no incentive to relent on their Putin-enabling stance, as they will see it as a vote winner in their primaries. Short-term politicking again prioritised over sensible long-term strategy.

Notwithstanding, other questions in that same poll show that the Great American Public are as prone to contradicting themselves as the Great British Public. No matter what their stance about military aid, a clear majority sympathise with Ukraine, even among self-identifying conservatives. But all have a rather somber view of the current military situation and of the likely outcome of the war. This should make them much more supportive of Ukraine than they are, as a strong victorious Russia would obviously be a major threat to the United States' national security, much more so than migrants crossing the Rio Grande. But the American right are clearly not connecting the dots here, obviously encouraged by Trump's Putin-enabling rhetoric and the Republican Party's implicit support for born-again isolationism. This could, Dog forbid, win them this year's elections, but can only lead to a long-term defeat. American leaders saw the dangers of isolationism clearly in 1917 and 1940, even against their public opinion, so it is really distressing that some of them are now in denial about it.

Uncertainty about the United States' position in the very near future must act as a wake-up call and an incentive for more action in the UK. As more and more people, especially in Conservative ranks, grow accustomed to the idea that the Labour Party will win the next election, it is no coincidence that The Hipstershire Gazette is taking sides and publishing more columns that openly urge Labour to strongly support Ukraine, and do it better than the Conservatives. Interestingly, The Torygraph chose the beginning of the new year to reveal some select juicy bits from an incoming book about the war and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Its not entirely favourable portrayal of Zelenskyy is not surprising and reflects increasing discontent in Ukraine, where democracy remains alive and active. The Verkhovna Rada has proved this again at the start of the New Year, when they forced Zelenskyy to withdraw a mobilisation bill that was seen as a threat to human rights and in violation of the Constitution. Not the sort of thing that would happen in Russia and, quite ironically, not even in the UK despite us gloating about having the Mother Of All Parliaments.

Putin senses weakness like an animal, because he is an animal. He smells blood, he feels his strength. And he will eat you for his supper, with your European Union, your NATO, your freedom and your democracy.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 2024 New Year's address)

Jeremy's Den

20/01/2024

Listen To What The Polls Say

We Must Be Dreaming