Jeremy's Den: February 2024

Hit them with everything but the kitchen sink, then give them the sink, and when they raise their heads, drop the plumber on them.

(Algis Budrys)

Use what talents you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

(Henry Van Dyke)

I've said it earlier, and facts confirm it week after week. There is a curse on the Labour Party as, each time they reach a very favourable position in the polls, they do something really daft that has the potential to wreck it. Self-immolation by stupidity. I'm thinking Green Deal and Rochdale here, of course, and will rant about these at more length later. But there is always a fun side to that, and we had it this time too. There was The Scottish Pravda and The Torygraph simultaneously predicting doom, gloom and a plague of locusts on Labour on the basis of one poll from Savanta, that had been fielded mostly before the worst of the Rochdale fiasco hit the fan, and had already been contradicted by two later polls, from Redfield & Wilton and Deltapoll, when their luminary hit pieces were published. But the best part was Owen Jones, editoranting in The Hipstershire Gazette, and giving this unique insight into a wee lad who found the Hamas terrorist atrocities "not proven", and was now ferociously denouncing pro-Hamas conspiracy fantasies because they had been mentioned by a Starmerista. Shitweasel Jones detransitioning back into his Weathervane Jones persona. But none of this had any devastating earth-shattering impact on the trends of voting intentions polls, that remain hugely favourable for Labour.

I was quite chuffed to see The Hipstershire Gazette publishing an editorial, which is supposed to deliver their official line, stating in seven paragraphs what I have been telling you for months in one sentence. That the main feature of current polls is their volatility, and that they are likely to deliver an unenthusiastic victory by default for Labour. Then noli equi dentes inspiciere donati, as they say at the Inner Temple. You don't need to pay John Curtice's consultant fee to see the Great British Public's votefluidity, it's in plain sight in the polls themselves. The headline results alone already hint at that, with Labour's lead swinging between 11% and 25% within the same month. Even if the resulting trend is still Labour leading by 18-20%, the fine print also reveals interesting fluctuations. I'm talking of the polls' crosstabs here, mostly the regional ones within England, but also the purely demographic ones. This, and the recent by-elections, can only fuel Labour's existential debate about the best electoral strategy. Either trying to gain back the socially conservative Brexiteer Northern working class, who helped Boris Johnson take down the Red Wall in 2019. Or consolidate their gains among the socially liberal and fiscally conservative middle-class in the Home Counties. Are Keir Starmer's U-turns evidence that this choice has already been made?

Politicians don’t want the truth. They want soundbites and happy stats. Whatever selective data just gives them a headline or serves their narrative.

(Elinor Shaw, Silent Witness: Death By A Thousand Hits, 2024)

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

(Carl Sagan)

There have been two by-elections in England last week, which the Conservative Party conclusively campaigned to lose. I went further back in both their electoral histories, as both were once Labour seats a generation and change ago, and have undergone quite some change since. Which makes them both the perfect target seats for the Starmer variant of the Labour Party, seats that Labour held under Tony Blair, but seemed to have irremediably lost since. Both are now back in the Red Pile, with strongly contrasting backgrounds but strikingly similar voting patterns. The oppositions will celebrate these as the ninth and tenth by-election losses for the Conservative, beating John Major's record of eight between 1992 and 1997. Then you have to go back to Harold Wilson's time, when the then-ruling Labour Party lost fifteen seats at by-elections between 1966 and 1970. Prognosticators will notice that both these earlier records were the prelude to a defeat at the next general election. Now let's look at Kingswood first, as it was the first to declare, and also the more relevant for projections into the near future. And this time, I did not stay up until the wee hours of Friday for the results, just collected them from Wokopedia at breakfast time on Friday.

Should Keir Starmer wholeheartedly rejoice at these results? On one hand, yes, as there was a 16.4% swing from the Conservatives to Labour in Kingswood, which would deliver a massive better-than-Blair majority if repeated all across England at the general. The 28.5% swing in Wellingborough is far less relevant because of the special circumstances there. As I said earlier, Kingswood was the one to scrutinise as its context was closer to what will happen at the general, a clear ideological contest with no distractions on the side. There was obvious tactical voting by potential Liberal Democrat voters, and Labour can only hope that this will prevail at the general. But there are also warning signs that there is no Yellow Brick Road to Number 10 in this Chronicle Of A Victory Foretold. The obvious one is the large vote share for Reform UK, with a wee smitch of vestigial UKIP on top. It's the classic situation where the Reform UK vote is larger than Labour's majority, and can only fuel speculation about possible deals between them and the Conservatives. It would not mean that all Reform UK votes would pavlovianly switch to Conservatives, but it could make Labour's task much more difficult in dozens of seats, especially in the Red Wall regions. Not to mention that Reform UK can also be a refuge vote for disgruntled Tory voters who can't make themselves switch to the Reds, and that was certainly the case in Wellingborough, on top of spoiled votes for all the fantasy candidates.

There is a third by-election on the event horizon now, in Rochdale, that may be much more uncertain than you would think. It hardly qualifies as a safe Labour seat and has had a quite checkered electoral history. It became even less safe when George Galloway decided to stand there, just to piss off Labour, as he did before in Batley and Spen. But an unexpected twist of fate happened when it emerged that the Labour candidate Azhar Ali had kind of preemptively outgallowayed Galloway in the realm of incendiary conspiracy theories about the terrorist massacre on the 7th of October. This of course caused quite an outcry on the right, who had quite conveniently dug out the incriminating evidence themselves, but also much unease within Labour, who handled the situation as badly as was possible, and then some. And now they have a fucking self-engineered mess on their hands that could get disgraced former Labour MP Simon Danczuk elected, this time as the Reform UK candidate. Not what anybody had on their Rochdale Bingo Card. The problem is that this incident highlights a serious lack of professionalism on Labour's side. In this day and age of instant unfiltered information, they should have known Azhar Ali's conspiracist rant would surface sooner and later, and their vetting process should have discarded him. Or they didn't know and it's even worse. Ali hid damaging facts to get the selection, and is unfit to become an MP. Which is quite likely to not happen anyway now.

As private parts to the gods are we! They play with us for their sport!

(Lord Melchett, Blackadder II: Chains, 1986)

I don’t think politicians should have to apologise for everything. People come up to me and say, “You did your best. We understand”.

(Kwasi Kwarteng)

The next election after the election will obviously be that to choose a new Conservative leader. There is every chance that the line-up will be pretty similar to the one they had in the never-ending leadership election they had after Boris Johnson left. Minus those who stood down at the general election and those who lost their seats. So it might nor be such a crowded field after all. Odds are we will still have Sue-Ellen Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat. But probably not Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt. And we definitely can't rule out Liz Truss trying to stage a comeback, if her voters spare her a humiliating defeat, which is kind of a tossup right now. The real question though is whether or not the Great British Public will show any interest in this new ferrets-in-a-sack-race, or switch to the more thrilling and articulate new series of The Great British Sewing Bee. More In Common nevertheless felt the urge to survey it, and came-up with a very imaginative line-up, including some that will never stand because nobody have ever heard of them, even in their constituency.

The intriguing result here is that the public's favourite is Penny Mordaunt, and she is even the only one with a net positive rating. People certainly only remember her cosplaying Starfleet Admiral and carrying a big sword at the coronation, as her last real Ministerial job was under Theresa May and she didn't leave much of a mark. Which is just as well, as her most remarkable public statement was that homeopathy is good for the NHS, but probably only in small doses. She has said a lot of other stupid things, and then denied she said them, so we will probably never know the truth until Stonewall UK endorses her as a valued ally. Honestly, seeing Braverman and Badenoch reaching the final stage of the selection, and submit to the popular vote of 80k retired white straight men from the Home Counties would make more sense in the current shape of the Conservative Party. Unless the 1922 Committee remembers the fucking trainwreck that brought Liz Truss to power and why, and decide it's better for party and country to avoid repeating that and instead go for an uncontested contest. Which could happen if they convince everyone but one to stand down, as they did to ensure Rishi Sunak's speedy victory. Then they could choose who should stay and who should go from the preferences of the Conservative voters' subsample of the More In Common poll.

Bad luck is that the voters also want Mordaunt, and with an even bigger net positive than the general population, always with the caveat that she is actually poised to lose her seat, so would be out of the actual competition. And the least unpopular fallback option, Kemi Badenoch based on the net ratings, is far far behind. Then, if we stick to those who do have a chance in the real world, we then have James Cleverly and Sue-Ellen Braverman. Which would actually be quite an event. Just picture the Little England gammonish Conservative grassroots, who would pick Nigel Farage over girly swot David Cameron every day of the week, having to choose between three Black candidates, all of whom made their political debut in their pet hate multicultural London. I can already feel some heads exploding from where I sit. Too bad all of this is purely hypothetical, and the final choice will depend on whom actually survives the Tory Cull, which constituency and which faction they represent, and how far down the radical right rabbit hole they are prepared to go. The good news is that it would probably repeat the post-1997 scenario and keep Labour in charge for three terms. The bad news is that it would probably repeat the post-1997 scenario and keep Labour in charge for three terms.

These are not the days of Alfred the Great. You can’t just lop someone’s head off and blame it on the Vikings.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen. Und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Some in the "progressive" media have started discussing the issue of the Muslim vote at the next election, which the Labour Party is allegedly losing. Or not. Survation conducted a poll of British Muslims in late January, that sheds some light on the reality and the magnitude of the problem, if any. Interestingly, The Hipstershire Gazette chose to publish an incomplete report of this poll, including a very biased and misleading headline. And also allowed their resident Hamas-fanboy Owen Jones to indulge in another of his predictable anti-Labour and anti-Starmer rants, again twisting many facts beyond caricature, as any well-informed person can instantly see. The Scottish Pravda felt they had to relay it almost verbatim, without wondering if it's actually relevant in Scotland, as the poll's sample is massively English. But what does the Survation poll actually say? The caveat here is that their sample was only 682, which results in a larger than usual margin of error, about 3 to 4% depending on the weight of each option offered. But it still does not quite say what the aforementioned columns imply. The snapshot of voting intentions is not that conclusive.

The breakdown of the past votes is sketchy, and we don't know how many of the 13% of "others" went to the Greens and Liberal Democrats, which would have been meaningful in comparisons with the current voting intentions. There are nevertheless two important findings in that poll. The first is the large number of undecideds, much higher than what polls usually find in the whole electorate. The second is that voters lost by Labour don't switch to the Conservatives, who are also shown losing a lot of votes. Those who choose to break away from Labour switch to other left-wing parties, or at worst the Liberal Democrats, while a significant number switch from the Conservatives to Labour. The overall conclusion is that it's not that bad after all, and there are other parts of the electorate where you would see similar patterns, so the religious divide might not be as real as multiple headlines assume. Another way to assess the situation is the level of popularity of the two big parties and their leaders.

The net results clearly give it away. The Labour Party bags a net +22 and the Conservative Party a net -53. Keir Starmer gets a net -12 and Rishi Sunak a net -62. British Muslims don't have a problem with the Labour Party generally, but with Starmer specifically, and they have a massively bad image of the Conservatives. Again, this is a pattern you are likely to find in a lot of cross-sections of the electorate, and based on very different motivations. But the movie is just as important as the snapshot here, and Survation caught it by asking their panel in which direction their feelings about the two big parties have evolved over the past year. And it's quite the surprise. The whole panel have a slightly less favourable view of the Labour Party, but the Labour-voting part have a slightly more favourable opinion. While everybody has a strongly more unfavourable view of the Conservative Party, including their own Muslim voters.

The general feeling is that claims that Labour are losing touch with the Muslim community, and losing the Muslim vote, are somewhat premature. The Conservatives have lost a lot more, albeit from an already much weaker position. Another mistake is to consider British Muslims as an homogeneous voting bloc, which they are no more than other categories within the electorate. But, in true British fashion, they are also prone to contradiction. The Survation poll says that 85% consider that the position of political leaders about Israel and Gaza will be an important factor in their vote. Yet only 15% list it among their three most important issues. The cost of living, the economy and the NHS are considered more important, as they are by the whole British electorate. Of course, the aforementioned by-election in Rochdale will be summat of a test of all this. It has now become an arena of utter confusion, and all we can say for sure is that George Galloway is not chasing the Muslim vote per se, but the pro-Hamas vote. While Simon Danczuk is chasing the conservative working-class vote, which is a reality in the North of England. What survives of the Labour vote between two-pronged attacks from these two will be quite interesting to watch.

The devil shows up, pretending to be your friend. That’s the problem. All this social media bollocks, it’s the devil, I’m telling you, it’s evil. Toxic.

(Jack Hodgson, Silent Witness: Invisible, 2024)

The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

(Mark Twain)

Quite bafflingly, Labour have now kicked the floodgates wide open on another controversy that has the potential to hurt them a fuckload more that hypothetical losses in the Muslim vote, with their screeching reverse ferret on their carved-in-stone £28bn Green Deal. Which actually did not come as a complete surprise, as it had already been made conditional on the state of the economy, the oven-ready excuse also used by the Conservatives to water down their own meagre plans. But Rishi Sunak will obviously challenge Keir Starmer on that too at PMQs, as soon as his speech writers have found the appropriate one-liner, and he can deliver it without triggering the permaoffended. But this will soon pass, and Labour should worry more about public opinion, who clearly don't like that latest move, no matter how the party belabour to justify it. YouGov speed-polled the surface of that issue, asking their panel how seriously they think Labour are taking tackling climate change. Well, not that much.

It's not a good start when the people tell you they don't think you take an issue seriously, that you should deal with resolutely as it is a growing concern. Even a third of Labour voters and Londoners have doubts. And, aye, I am treating London as a Fourth Nation here, because that's probably what they think they are, and also because they have quite different attitudes to the rest of England. Opinium probed their own panel in more significant ways in a poll commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, an independent pro-Net Zero think tank and researcher. For some reason, the ECIU chose to keep their press release succinct and did not comment on all the aspects of the poll. Neither will I, as you can sift through the tables under the link above to get the full picture. More relevantly to my core purpose, I will tell you more only about the questions where the panel are invited to boo the Labour Party and its leader. Because that's what the wording of the options leads them into. Then, the party first.

It's quite interesting that the "positive" option here refers directly to something most of the public would spontaneously associate with the Conservatives. And the "negative" option is a statement with which anyone could agree on any issue, if Labour's past changes of plan have already disappointed them. So it's quite loaded, but not necessarily outright dishonest. Because that's also how you would phrase the choices to simply characterise more strongly the two sides of the debate. The people are not really on Labour's side here, and it is a widely shared opinion. Of course, there is just the sort of political divide we routinely see in every poll's crosstabs with the 2019 votes. Londoners are more accepting of Labour's U-turn than the rest of England, and Scots are too, probably because of the economic and emotional weight of the oil and gas industry here, despite it being definitely a dying sector. Now, how the public asses Keir Starmer personally here.

There is obviously some ulterior motive behind the wording here, as it is harsh enough to be borderline offensive. Even the "positive" option is not that good, when you think of the underlying subliminal message embedded in the concept of "fiscal rules". And the "negative" option is definitely more negative that it needed to be, as you get the distinct impression that they are playing the man, not the ball. That's probably why the results are slightly less unfavourable than with the first question, though hardly an endorsement either. Like most "qualitative" polls, this one is just as good as the question it asks, and the public's real mood is probably less harshly critical than what we have here. But Labour should also beware of the long-term reactions, once everybody has slept on it and worked out the actual consequences. You may have less public borrowing and spending on one side, but you also have fewer incentives for change on the other side. And the public have already shown that they endorse the need for change, even if they are divided on the means to achieve it. Also, whichever way you spin it, U-turns never make you look good, especially if the talking points to justify them borrow heavily from your opponent's usual catchphrases.

We’ll wake up one day in a world without soul. No souls left. I don’t want the tech bros taking my soul.

(Jack Hodgson, Silent Witness: Invisible, 2024)

Where we have gone wrong in our society is to confuse grievance with fairness, and allow that conflation to impersonate justice.

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

It is quite revealing of the sad state of British politics that a twitterstorm of faux outrage in a latte cup arose from Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer trading barbs about something Rishi Sunak had actually not said, and that the whole media establishment peddled the revisionist version of it, even The Torygraph using a demonstrably incorrect descriptor of Sunak's soundbite. But it can't obscure the fact that Sunak's characterisation of Starmer's position on women's rights as "99% of a U-turn" was actually a fucking good joke, and one that would definitely have hit home if it had been told on any other day. If Rishi took time to read the room, quite literally on that fateful day, he wouldn't fuck up everything and even his best lines, and for that Keir can be eternally grateful. In the meanwhile, my moving snapshot of voting intentions has not become any better for the Conservatives, or the SNP, as we now have Labour leading by 20% GB-wide and by 4% in Scotland. Then it could be much worse. It's not like one of the Conservatives' former Ministers would now be helping Labour with their campaign. Err... wait... checks notes... One is!

What we have here is the aggregate of the last six polls, fielded by Opinium, We Think, Savanta, Redfield & Wilton, Deltapoll and YouGov between the 14th and the 21st of February. That's all that were published after the fateful by-elections, with a super-sample of 10;759 and a theoretical margin of error of 0.94%. Slightly earlier, Redfield & Wilton conducted a one-off poll with a sample of 5,000, which is not included in my PollMash as it is now past its shelf date. They used the larger than usual sample to dig into the differences in voting intentions along three lines: the financial situation, the area of residence and the level of education. Those who are familiar with such studies that intersect sociology and psephology will surely find nothing new in there, but it is still important to have a poll shedding a light about which factors do influence our vote. The financial situation and the area of residence are classics and the results are quite what you expect from common wisdom. The urban poor are more to the left than the wealthy rurals, who also have quite a tendency to like the Brexiteers, even if Brexit has been like a curse of locusts to rural England. To each their own.

The baseline, taken from the whole sample, is just a snapshot of where the British electorate stood in the first week of February. As always, what matters most are not the voting intentions in the absolute, but how they vary when different differentiating criteria are applied. The first two divides are quite generally accepted and as non-controversial as can be, even if a bit cliché by now. I suspect that the crosstabs by education level will always be more controversial and opened to questioning, as reflecting a sort of social Darwinism. But we can't deny that there are some visible differences.

Let's be clear. The level of education you reach in your teens, or late twenties or whatever, does not pre-determine your whole life and social status as an adult. Neither do I imply that a "lower" level of education makes you less politically literate or savvy. There's even a whole TikTok Generation of University dwellers, right under our noses, that proves the exact opposite point. Groupthink-infused luxury beliefs don't make you an intellectual or political "elite", and it's actually quite a disheartening thought that the next likely generation of MPs and Ministers will come from that fringe caste. Besides, the real dividing line here is between primary school level and all the others, rather than between the other categories, that are actually less different than rich and poor, or urban and rural.

Controlling the way people think is a valuable commodity, something people pay a lot of money to be able to do.

(Jack Hodgson, Silent Witness: Death By A Thousand Hits, 2024)

The truth is the world is not as simple as we want it to be. It can’t just be boiled down into an equation. Especially when it comes to human beings.

(Margo Madison, For All Mankind: Perestroika, 2024)

Some concern has been expressed in Labour circles after the last by-elections, that the party might feel too buoyant and risks getting complacent in the final mile before the election. While Neil Kinnock is absolutely certain that they will win the fucking election, and we obviously have an expert talking here. Though, to be honest, he actually said that he is convinced they will not lose, and this covers a much wider array of outcomes than simply winning, doesn't it? But Keir Starmer is a fortunate man indeed, as the Conservatives are really keen on inflicting terminal damage on themselves. Which would be the predictable and unavoidable result of Rishi Sunak being deposed or forced to resign if the English local elections deliver what everyone expects them to deliver, huge Conservative losses as a prelude to a Westminster Extinction Event. I will of course contextualise that bold prediction later. The 1922 Committee allowing another round of Civil War just weeks before the election would be like opening a window in the Space Shuttle for fresh air, but we surely can't put it past them. Especially if their cognitive functions are impaired by the sight of polls projecting into a 227-seat majority for Labour, again better than Tony Blair, and still boosted by unprecedented gains in the Leafy South and more than solid results in Scotland.

It's actually easy to simulate different seat projections to the ones polls currently deliver. I've done that and my model says that Labour would still get a majority if their lead over the Conservatives in England outwith London fell by 12%, from its current 18% to a mere 6%. Provided that they maintain the same vote shares, as predicted by the polls, in London, Scotland and Wales. But losing that many potential votes, around 1.5% per month until the election, would be worse than complacency. It would be like being asleep at the wheel while a black cat is driving. And is thusly quite unlikely to happen. Now, if we switch to the other extreme, and stipulate that London, Scotland and Wales would deliver the same results as in 2019, Labour would need a 10% lead in the rest of England to bag a majority. And this is again far below what polls currently find, and would require losing 1% per month until the election. The alarm bells would be ringing all over the place long before that. So it's not extravagant to assume that Labour will go on doing really well in the polls, even if some damage control is needed along the way, and will plausibly end up with at least a Johnson-like majority, if not an Attlee-like one.

We are flawed, unpredictable, and full of contradictions. It’s exactly these traits that make us so resilient. That give credence to the improbable idea that anything is possible. Even in the darkest of times.

(Margo Madison, For All Mankind: Perestroika, 2024)

What we’ve got, after several million quid, is a nothing burger.

(Laurence Fox, Royal Courts of Justice, 29 January 2024)

The UK government have just poured an additional £3.3bn into Northern Ireland, on top of the £1bn already sent their way a few years ago to appease the Democratic Unionist Party. This definitely raised eyebrows in Scotland and Wales, who can only dream of getting proportionate amounts as extra Barnett consequentials. Which begs the question what is it good for? If anything at all. At face value, it was worth it as Stormont at last reconvened, a new Executive was formed and a First Minister from Sinn Féin was appointed without massive hissy fits from the DUP. All of it just five days before the deadline that would have triggered the mandatory dissolution of the Assembly and a snap election. The massive paradox and irony is that it did not benefit the DUP in polls, but boosted the UUP and TUV, their direct rivals for the various shades of the Unionist vote. The first poll of Northern Ireland in 2024, again one for the next Stormont election, also showed voting intentions for the SDLP and Aontu rising, when Sinn Féin remained stable and in the top slot. But what actually matters is not how the latest poll compares with the previous one, but how it compares with the last election, and here we get quite a different picture.

If we subscribe to the basic axiom that there is a fortified watertight moat between the two sides of the communitarian divide, what we have is a realignment within each camp, boosting the two largest parties in a way last seen at the 2017 general election. But there is still time for change as the next election is not scheduled before the 6th of May 2027, unless someone creates another crisis out of the blue in the meantime. It's not the easiest task to project seats from polls in Northern Ireland, as they use the dreaded worst-of-all-worlds Single Transferable Vote. You can only extrapolate that the second-and-higher preferences would work along the same dividing lines as at the previous election, follow very similar patterns, and thusly deliver something that is several seats remote from real proportionality for the main parties. Just for your information, pure proportionality would deliver 30 seats for Sinn Féin, 23 for the DUP and 14 for the Alliance Party, on the basis of the very last poll. But educated precedent-based analysis says otherwise.

I assume here that the Northern Ireland electorate game STV in a more rational way than Scots use it at our Council elections, or the slightly less extravagant AMS at Holyrood elections. In the sense that they actually pick their second choices within the same camp, and don't crisscross from one corner of the spectrum to the other to make whatever point. You just have a number of higher preferences from the moderates on both sides, and plausibly mostly from SDLP voters, going to the Alliance Party and boosting them in and around Belfast. What I venture now is that the vote shares in the last poll are close enough to the last election to deliver only minimal changes, you could even say marginal, in the allocation of seats. And, more importantly, no change in the balance of power between Unionists and Republicans. Unless some tectonic shift happens in the meanwhile, like the Labour government finally allowing what the Northern Ireland Act has always explicitly allowed but never happened, the Border Poll. There may well be a timeline out there where Irish Reunification happens before Scottish Independence. All the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has to do is ask. Will Keir Starmer U-turn on that too, renege on his vocal opposition to it, and let Hilary Benn just do it?

Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

(William Butler Yeats, The Circus Animals’ Desertion, 1933)

The slave who is not able to embrace his revolt does not deserve to be pitied. Only struggle makes you free.

(Thomas Sankara)

This month, we have again had the situation I like the most about Scottish polling. Two Full Scottish polls from different pollsters, fielded just a few days apart and delivering radically different results. One came from Ipsos, who have an unfortunate track record of being outliers with their previous Full Scottish. The other from Redfield & Wilton, who have had some odd findings of their own in the past, but align more closely with the general trends found by other pollsters. So you have to toss a coin, depending on what you want to believe, or what you want to prove. Or you lay both on the table, to avoid suspicion that you are ideologically driven to ignore one side of the coin, like sources close to the SNP do when they don't like what a poll says. The fun starts with the Independence Referendum voting intentions, where Ipsos find Yes leading by 6% and Redfield & Wilton find No leading by 4%. Which again makes the general trendlines more favourable, showing the gap closing between Yes and No.

The trendlines obviously show some inertia, and we should certainly not over-react to either poll. Or ignore either because it does not fit a pre-digested narrative. Or brush aside the obvious fact that polls don't win a referendum, especially when there is no credible scenario where that referendum actually takes place. Because it would be quite delusionally asinine to assume, even for just one second, that a pledge to hold the fucking referendum is part of the secret negotiations now underway between Labour and the SNP. It's probably not even on the table, and it would be beyond daft of Keir Starmer to make that concession now that we have even odds Yes would win. Because that's what the snapshot of the six most recent polls say.

It's quite revealing that no pollster is still probing his panel about what would be the ideal conditions for holding the referendum. They all know that it would be just rhetorical questions, and that there is no need to fuel speculations about something that won't happen, no matter who's standing at the Government's Despatch Box in the New Year. The SNP may still peddle the fairy tale that they will have some leverage on the newly-anointed Labour government after the election, but they obviously don't believe a word of it. Except perhaps Pete Wishart. Why would Keir Starmer give the SNP anything but the finger, when there are massive hints in the polls that he will never need their votes, and would indeed more easily find common ground with the Liberal Democrats, if needed. Let's face it, the higher Yes climbs in the polls, the less likely a second referendum is. And that's not even a paradox, that's just the brutal logic embedded in Section 30 of the Scotland Act, and the unavoidable consequence of the absolute English domination over all British institutions, as enshrined at the very core of the Westminster System. And it will stay that way so long as the Scottish Government don't have their heart in it, and fail to put up a real fight.

The spirit is smothered, as it were, by ignorance. But as soon as ignorance is destroyed, the spirit shines forth, like the sun when released from the clouds.

(Thomas Sankara)

In the old days, they never bothered with candles in Shetland. You’d just stick a wick in a puffin, and away you go!

(Robbie Morton, Shetland, 2016)

Now we're reaching, in the immortal words of Frank Zappa, the crux of the apostrophe. What our two latest polls have found about the next Holyrood election. The one where even a teeny weeny difference in voting intentions can switch a full haggis of seats, because so many seats are marginals and the infamous tweaked list vote actually does little to correct that. Interestingly, the trendlines of Holyrood voting intentions, that were once on a collision course, are now statically parallel. And statistically too. For the constituency vote, that is, as Labour and the SNP appear tied on the list vote. More importantly, the Conservatives have gone down again over the last few weeks, now significantly below their 2021 result. And the Greens have also lost some ground, welcome evidence that ill-prepared student politics are losing their power of attraction.

The main problem here is that recent polls are a mixed bag, even when they don't contradict each other. And it gets only marginally worse when they do. The Additional Member System was designed to prevent any party from getting an outright majority, which would have happened at every election if only first-past-the-post had been used. It would have worked even at the chaotic 2007 election, but in favour of Labour instead of the first SNP minority government. But 2007 was a lifetime ago, and a minority government in Scotland's current political climate would be doomed even before being sworn in. That's why Nicola Sturgeon so desperately needed the Yellow-Green Axis. Not to support pretendy progressive politics. Not even to pass regressive woke and genderist legislation, it was just a side effect. But to get a majority of MSPs behind the First Minister, and thusly avoid even the weeest possibility of a vote of no confidence. Which only highlights the massive irony in the way later events unfolded, and also in the way even the most Axis-friendly polls predict that they will lose their majority.

Only later polls will tell us if the Ipsos poll should be retrospectively treated as an outlier, bur even that one is quite a disaster for the current Scottish Government, and especially for the SNP. Redfield & Wilton's last poll is treading pretty much the same waters as their previous ones, and does indeed deliver a seat projection that is quite remarkably close to 2007. But every potential First Minister in 2026 would obviously try to be in a safer place and command a majority. Let's say, for argument's sake, that the First Minister Presumptive will be Anas Sarwar. He would be plausibly facing two winning hands, a Unionist coalition on 78 seats, or a Labour-SNP coalition on 85 seats. Caution would advise against a Traffic Lights Coalition, that would bag only 62 seats. In a way, you could wish that the actual election delivers what that poll says. Nothing better than the people throwing spanners in the cogs and bringing unpredictability to boring political games.

And it’s no better for the poor wee bastards with green energy. Those wind turbines are killing machines! The whole place is just feathers and decapitated puffin!

(Robbie Morton, Shetland, 2016)

Here is the land where time doesn’t just stand still, it often loses its internet connection too.

(Angus Tulloch, Shetland: Blue Lightning, 2014)

Apart from the two aforementioned Full Scottish, we also have had some polls this month with much bigger samples than usual. Only the Very Big One, fielded by Find Out Now on behalf of Electoral Calculus with a 18k sample, has a Scottish subsample surpassing the usual Full Scottish, at 2,500. The other Just Big Ones, fielded by Redfield & Wilton, Lord Ashcroft and YouGov, have smaller super-samples, and thusly Scottish subsamples of just around 500. That's half the standard Full Scottish, but I nevertheless added them to my trendlines. It's a bit like when Admiral Sir John Jellicoe GCB rallied the battlecruisers into the battle fleet at the Battle of Jutland. It's a wee smitch of a gamble that might come back to blow up in your arse, but it looked like a good idea at the time. Just note that the three smaller ones don't really change the trendlines, as they are quite consistent with the most recent Full Scottish.

We again have the familiar sight of Labour and the SNP in a tight embrace, with the SNP having recently enjoyed a teeny weeny surge. But polls come and go, and the Big Ones have this strange habit of being now as volatile and unpredictable as the Scottish subsamples of generic GB-wide polls. The last six points in my select extract of recent polls say just that. Only the first two are genuine Full Scottish. The next four are Scottish super-subsamples of super-sampled GB-wide polls. It is interesting that The Scottish Pravda took their 'expert advice', about which seats are now battlegrounds, from the Find Out Now MRP poll, the most favourable for the SNP in weeks. They're probably in for some nasty surprises on Election Night, especially as the SNP's current best case scenario in closer to the 2017 debacle than to the 2019 rebound.

Quite characteristically, The Scottish Pravda summoned their punditificator-in-chief John Curtice for both a podcast, almost as long as Vladimir Putin's infamous interview with Tucker Carlson, and a column that drowned in contradictions. The core argument was that nothing had really changed over the last year, even if everybody with a functioning brain could see that a lot had changed, and Curtice admitted in the same breath that it indeed had. Obviously I can agree with Curtice that current polls have created the possibility of an unusually high number of marginal seats in Scotland, and that the outcome is thusly quite uncertain. But arguing at the same time that Labour are not gaining ground at the expense of the SNP, while calmly stating that polls show that they indeed are, has become quite tiresome, besides being a sign of absurdist denial. The SNP's Press Office bringing back John Curtice again and again, to punditsplain us what we must think of polls, is starting to look like Labour wheeling out Gordon Brown again and again to renew his Vow. Not the best campaign argument.

Do you want to dig that hole a bit deeper? Because I can still see the top of your head.

(Alison McIntosh, Shetland, 2021)

We’re ordinary blokes trying to find meaning in a world that doesn’t have any. We’re the dispossessed now. All the certainties our fathers had are gone.

(Mark Lynch, Torchwood: Combat, 2006)

Wales will go to the polls on the 2nd of May, come locusts or Russian invasion, to elect their Police and Crime Commissioners, on the same day England also elect theirs. This is a relatively new elected position, as it was established by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. The first elections were held in 2012 and then followed a four-year cycle. More or less, as the 2020 elections were pushed to 2021 because of the Covid pandemic, and that year's PCCs serve only a three-year term to preserve the cycle of leap years. Wales has four territorial police forces (Dyfed-Powys, Gwent, North Wales, South Wales), each with an elected PCC at its head. The elections have mostly, though not always, been favourable to Labour.

Oddly, Plaid Cymru did not field any candidates at the first election in 2012, but surely realised quite early that it was a mistake, and were present in 2016 and 2021. These first three elections were held under the supplementary vote system, and all contests but one have so far required a second round. Or rather the counting of the second preferences, as there is no physically distinct second round vote. The results of the 2021 elections have shown some interesting patterns, some of which may well have unforeseen consequences at this year's election.

The two main patterns are quite obvious. First there are massive cross-transfers between Labour and Plaid Cymru, most likely spontaneous as it would be difficult to pre-arrange them on such a scale with more than one million votes cast. But the trap is elsewhere, as the original supplementary vote has been replaced by the ancestral first-past-the-post by the multi-faceted Elections Act 2022. Boris Johnson's ulterior motives behind this change are in plain sight with the Welsh results at the PCCs elections. On FPTP, the Conservatives would have bagged two seats because Labour and Plaid Cymru split the left-wing vote down the middle. But both parties seem to have missed that point as they will field four candidates each again this year, plausibly gambling on a significant slump of the Conservative vote that would clear their paths of obstacles. But that could be jeopardised by the Welsh public's dissatisfaction with the incumbent PCCs, who oversee their forces' budgets, as the cost of policing has risen faster than inflation in 2023. So these races could deliver some unexpected upsets that would leave Labour and Plaid Cymru with egg on their faces.

We’re a generation of no faith. In society, in religion or in life. All we can do is reduce ourselves to the basics. Too much disposable income, not enough meaning, that’s us.

(Mark Lynch, Torchwood: Combat, 2006)

If you let a coin fall and it falls a certain way, the next time it is just by an infinite coincidence that it will fall again the same way. Hundreds of other coins on other hands will follow this pattern in an infinitely unimaginable fashion.

(Alfred Jarry)

The next big attractions on the schedule, that will obviously mobilise a whole nation, are the English local elections, held on the 2nd of May to maximise turnout. And there are definitely two sarcastic jokes here in just one sentence. So 'tis this time of year again, where we refamiliarise ourselves with the niceties of local government in England. In Scotland, that's a pretty simple thing. We have 32 Councils that all have the legal status of unitary authorities, meaning they have power over every aspect of local government. Which sounds like a self-evident truth, but is actually not. All you need to convince you of that is a look at the map of English local government and its rainbowish colouring, that has nothing to do with the Pride Flag, but everything with the diversity of statuses. The orange-brownish bits are the London Boroughs, that are irrelevant this year as they have their own distinct electoral cycle. The purple bits are the Metropolitan Boroughs, that have the legal status of unitary authorities, or single-tier local government. The pinkish bits are the Unitary Authorities, the only ones officially known as such though they are not the only ones working as a single-tier local government. The green bits are the most juicy as reservoirs of seats for buddies. If you look closely at the map, you will see there are two sets of boundaries in the green regions, because they are the survivors of the two-tier local government, the type we had in Scotland between 1929 and 1996, albeit in three different successive configurations. Today most of the Midlands, most of the South, and most of Lancashire still have that, County Councils and District Councils on top of each other and sharing the missions of local government.

In Scotland, we also have a well-oiled cycle of an election every five years, with the whole Council up for re-election. In England, there is a diversity of choice, with Councils being elected in full, by halves or by thirds at any given election. They also have, to make matters simpler, the right to change the rules, but only if they move from partial elections to full Council elections. With one exception if there are significant changes in ward boundaries, which happens pretty much every year in a dozen or so Councils. In that case, the whole Council is up at the next election, then reverts to the halves or thirds pattern. Simples, innit? The only common trait is that all Councils follow a four-year cycle. So all the seats up for re-election in 2024 were up for the last time in 2021. Aye, four years is three years here, and that's not an Alice In Wonderland oddity. It's just because the 2020 elections were postponed to 2021 because of the Covid pandemic, but the terms still end in 2024 to preserve the integrity of the four-year cycle, probably the only thing in England that kept its integrity during the Johnson Presidency... oops, Premiership. So, quite expectedly, the number of seats up for election this year is roughly half of those that were up at the 2021 double election, and close to those that had been up in 2016. 31 Metropolitan Boroughs, 18 Unitary Authorities and 58 District Councils are up, for a total of 2,930 seats. Which will in fact be fewer after the elections because of boundary changes.

The 2021 elections were the first national test other than a general election for both Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson, as Covid had pretty much suspended democratic life for a year, and neither did really well. Labour's result benefited from the huge electorates in the Metropolitan Boroughs, that are pretty much a Northern and West Midlands speciality, and thusly more red-leaning. While the Conservatives partly made up for that with the bigger number of District Councils, more common in the South and rural Midlands, and thusly more blue-leaning. The breakdowns by meta-region show it, and also the surprisingly low weight of independent candidates here, when they were quite a presence at the 2023 English locals.

Even if any election is impossible to perfectly predict, odds are that 2024 will be pretty good for Labour overall, and the Liberal Democrats here and there in the South. 2021 was not a fantastic year for any party but the Conservatives still managed to gain both votes and seats. Labour gained a few votes but lost a fuckload of seats. The Liberal Democrats gained a few seats but lost a fuckload of votes. It is quite predictable that we will witness opposite patterns this year, as local elections are the oven-ready way voters have to vent their discontent and frustration. Combine the rising anger with the Conservative government and displeasure over not getting a general election that most of England want, and you have the perfect explosive mix for a Big Blue Crash in Councils. It is made even more likely because the last of the Johnson-era elections in 2022, and the first of the Sunak-era in 2023 have already seen significant gains for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and there is absolutely no reason for it to stop, or any hint that it will.

The absence of evidence is evidence.

(Jack Hodgson, Silent Witness: Grievance Culture, 2024)

Society is under the delusion that art is something you have extra, like crème de menthe or something. But societies don’t exist with no artist. Art is a fundamental part of society.

(John Lennon)

The North is the only meta-region that hosts the three variants of local government that exist in England. Though a County Council and District Councils survive only in Lancashire, where two former districts have already been chopped off the two-tier organisation and turned into Unitary Authorities. Blackpool, that was up for election in 2023 and won't be again until 2027, as it has all Councillors elected in one go every four years. Blackburn with Darwen, that is up for election by thirds every year except the year after leap, which is one of the common variants of the four-year cycle for Councils elected by thirds. To add just a teeny weeny bit of confusion, both are formally known as Borough Councils, though they are not Metropolitan Boroughs despite covering metropolitan areas. That's where the first aspirin of the day comes in handy. Anyway, and as you probably expect, Labour dominated local government in the North at the 2021 elections.

Labour bagging 43% of the popular vote, in an admittedly not fully representative cross-section of the Northern electorate, was not a spectacularly good result. It was actually the same as at the 2019 general election, and Labour avoided serious losses only because the Conservatives were vastly below their general election score on 31% vs 39%. The main factor in their favour was the colossal weight of the Metropolitan Boroughs in the North West with their large electorates, that accounted for one third of votes cast, with half their votes going to Labour. The Conservatives, on the other hand, bagged 40% of the vote in the District Councils of Lancashire, and 36% in the Unitary Authorities of Yorkshire.

There are two unanswered questions now, as we don't have any poll of these elections. What will become of the Liberal Democrats, who had a fairly high vote share in the North in 2021, 4% above their general election result of 2019. And, probably more importantly, what will become of Reform UK. They were non-existent in 2021, despite having reached some really high scores in Labour-held constituencies in 2019. UKIP also self-destructed in 2021, losing all the seats and almost all the votes they had gained in 2016. So we absolutely don't know what the weight of the Loony Far-Right actually is in the Councils that are up this year. Guess that will be a surprise, and not necessarily an enjoyable one. There is another batch of elections unique to the North in May, for Mayors. Eleven Mayors will be directly elected in May, nine of them in the North. Two of these are new positions, the other seven have existed for quite some time and were last up for election theoretically in 2020, so actually in 2021 for shortened terms.

Back in 2021, the elections were held on a two-round system, which is actually not two physically distinct rounds, but a supplementary vote, limited to first and second preferences. This has been changed by an Act of Boris Johnson shortly before his demise, and the incoming election will be held on the ancestral first-past-the-post. Unlike Sadiq Khan, none of the Northern Mayors has protested, probably because the 2021 results would have been the exact same under FPTP, so why bother pissing down an irrelevant tree? I think it's safe to assume that the five Labour incumbents will hold their seats, unless Andy Burnham makes a last-minute decision to stand down in Greater Manchester and seek a new seat in Commons instead. Which would make sense only if there were a conspiracy to oust Keir Starmer and install Andy Burnham as Leader of the Labour Party. The two Conservative Mayors, on the other hand, are not in a totally safe position. Particularly Ben Houchen in Tees Valley, who is currently embroiled in a controversy over the Teesworks Freeport, in the wake of an investigation that was first ordered, and then slowed down, by Michael Gove. Houchen has been cleared of any unlawful wrongdoing, but the project's management has been strongly criticised. Being directly accused of not delivering good value for money is definitely not what you want in an election year, especially when the project itself is at the core of your re-election campaign. So it's probably all to play for there in May.

We’re not some kind of decadent strip show that appears on the side. We’re as important as Prime Ministers and policemen.

(John Lennon)

The early farmers grew wheat and learned to bane bread. They also grew barley, peas and lentils, so they could have made a passable vegan burger to put inside the bread but, luckily, they didn’t have to.

(Philomena Cunk, Cunk On Earth: In The Beginnings, 2022)

There are far fewer seats up this year in the Midlands. Including just one District Council in the East Midlands, where there was a lot of activity last year. But most Councils in that region are on the variant of the four-year cycle that skips leap years, so little is left for the next election. Six of the seven Metropolitan Boroughs in the West Midlands have an election this year. Birmingham elects all Councillors in one go. The last election was in 2022 and the next one will be in 2026. Dudley is the odd one out as it elects all its Councillors this year because of boundary changes, then will revert to a by-thirds four-year cycle skipping the year after leap. Overall, there is less activity there than last year, which is just as well as it will make for just one chart with all the information, and less banter.

If the results of 2023 are any sort of precedent or premonition, 2024 should again be a good year for Labour in the Midlands. Last year's elections also delivered some good results for the Liberal Democrats, which they could plausibly repeat too if they find enough candidates. The only plausible spanner in the cogs could be the unpredictable Reform UK vote. They were barely a blip in the rear-view mirror in 2021, and all will probably depend on their ability to find enough appealing candidates. I fully expect some significant changes in the Metropolitan Boroughs, which are all concentrated in the heavily populated West Midlands County, and where the Conservative lead after the 2021 elections is quite unlikely to survive. There will also be a novelty item in the East Midlands, with the first election of the Mayor of the East Midlands, head of the new East Midlands Combined County Authority. Which, as the name does not imply, covers only Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, but not Leicestershire. Just as the West Midlands County covers only part of the West Midlands. That's probably what passes for clarification of the intricacies of local government in England.

It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one’s enemies. It is the successes of one’s friends that are hard to bear.

(Oscar Wilde)

The benefits system should be there as a safety net, not as a lifestyle opportunity.

(Jacob Rees-Mogg)

The South is still full of the old-fashioned two-tier local government combining County Councils and District Councils, and is only slowly embracing Unitary Authorities, probably because the transition would leave literally hundreds of Councillors without a job, most of them Conservatives. So they are not exactly in a hurry to switch to the streamlined organisation. They also have no need for Metropolitan Boroughs, as it's mostly about small towns, villages and hamlets Doon Sooth. Think St Mary Mead or the countryscapes in Midsomer Murders. The largest city in the South is Milton Keynes on a population of roughly 300k, and it ranks only 18th UK-wide, one-quarter the size of Birmingham and half the size of Glasgow. Just with a fuckload more roundabouts. Rather naturally, the South's bottom-heavy organisation leads to over-representation of the rural areas and better harvests for the Conservatives.

There is nevertheless an element of weakness in all this, as a similar wave of discontent to 2023 can wipe out quite a lot of Conservative Councillors. Last year it amounted to summat like a frenzied cull of the Tories, and mostly benefited the Liberal Democrats even in the unlikeliest places like Maidenhead. To make things summat more doomy and gloomy than they likely already are, 35 of the 44 District Councils that have a third of seats up this year also had a third up last year, and it did not end well for the Conservatives. History is of course not supposed to repeat itself, but you never know. The electorate's dominant mood was already quite anti-Tory a year ago, and also in early May last year as Rishi Sunak had not convinced anyone he could do better than any of his predecessors. This background element has not changed, it has probably even gone worse, and this applies to the Leafy South just as much as to the Smoky North. And already the starting point is not as good for the Conservatives as it was last year. Which can only encourage the punditariat to project the results of these locals on the incoming general, as the South has become an unexpected battleground for this one.

Last year, the Southern Conservatives started with 46% of the seats up for election and ended up with 33%. The Liberal Democrats rose from 21% to 27% of the seats, Labour from 16% to 21%. This year the Conservatives start with 45%, Labour with 22% and the Liberal Democrats with 20%. The Conservatives are still the first party overall, but their lead in seats is significantly lower that last year, even if the point of reference, the 2021 elections, was quite lousy for Labour. The commentariat will also look closely at the Councils that fall into the dreaded "no overall control" category. How many of these switched to a Labour or Liberal Democrat majority was a measure of the Conservatives' defeat last year, and will be again this year. Finally, the South will also have its novelty items, with the first direct election of Council Leaders in Norfolk and Suffolk. The positions are broadly similar to the elected Mayors of sub-regional entities in the North, like Greater Manchester or the Liverpool City Region, just with a different name to sound more Southern. Quite oddly, these elections have been dissociated from the County Council elections, which will both happen in 2025. Do the Conservatives just want to secure these positions for one of their own, because they anticipate upsets next year? Or could it backfire and deliver an upset already this year? That makes just two more races to watch, obviously.

What we need to do is knock together some nice, touchy-feely, sneaky, hand-in-the-bra policies.

(Hugh Abbot, The Thick Of It, 2005)

The police forces work like a mushroom farm. Keep everyone in the dark until you cover them in manure.

(Peter Ross, Silent Witness: Blood, Sweat And Tears, 1997)

Last but not least, Police and Crime Commissioners will also be up for election in England. There are currently 39 territorial police forces in England. Two of them never had an elected PCC. The City of London Police is kind of a sui generis thing, answering only to the Court of Common Council of the City of London. The Metropolitan Police answers jointly to the Mayor of London, who holds the legal powers of PCC, for common policing within Greater London, and to the Home Secretary for its activities of national interest. 37 English PCCs were thusly directly elected at the first election in 2012. It fell to 36 in 2016, in anticipation of the Mayor of Greater Manchester being given the powers of PCC for the Greater Manchester Police. Then to 35 in 2021, after the elected Mayor of West Yorkshire took over the powers of PCC within the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. The first three elections have been kind to the Conservative Party, who always won the largest number of seats even though they had the largest share of votes only once in 2021.

The electoral system has also changed from supplementary vote to first-past-the-post for the next election. It probably will not have any effect on the results, unlike Wales. The first-past-the post winner differed from the actual winner in 8 contests out of 37 in 2012, when a large number of independent candidates added to the confusion in low-turnout elections. Then there were no such cases at the 2016 and 2021 elections, which benefited from higher turnouts and were contested along more traditional party lines. But it would also be unwise to expect a Labour tsunami here, even if they do well at the Council elections. Gaining back the seats they lost in 2021 would already be a success. The greatest uncertainty is probably the turnout, which was only 15% in 2012 and rose to 34% in 2021. Will it stay in the same league as the turnout for the local elections this year? Or will it fall back below it as the very need for the positions has lost some credibility with the public? A strong case has already been made that all directly-elected Mayors should be granted the powers of PCC. The Mayors of the Liverpool City Region and the West Midlands have already expressed their interest. If more follow, that could well reopen the debate, as the Liberal Democrats unsuccessfully tried already in 2014, and lead to serious changes in the legislation. Which are sadly unlikely to simplify the organisation of English local government.

Meanwhile, an unarrested feral underclass has gone Mad Max, and police station waiting rooms are heaving like the hedgehog carvery at a Gipsy wedding.

(Malcolm Tucker, The Thick Of It, 2012)

Do you ever stop to consider just how lucky we are to be completely surrounded by genuine wonders of human ingenuity?

(Hannah Fry, The Secret Genius Of Modern Life, 2023)

Sometimes we need a good laugh to fight off the darkness of the world and the insanity of British politics. One such opportunity was offered us by the City Hall Greens, the group of Green members of the London Assembly and London Borough Councils. There are many issues currently facing the Imperial Capital. I could mention homelessness, poverty, crime, growing racial and religious intolerance, or the exorbitant prices charged by Transport for London. And it was indeed Tfl sitting in the Greenies' crosshairs. But not because of the ticket prices, but because of the number of public loos they offer in stations. The Greens even paid YouGov to field a poll on that tremendously important question, and we know their polling costs a shitload. TfL must have been totally pissed off by the results, even if they may have suspected that the Greens were just taking the piss out of them.

So there is a consensus among Londoners that TfL should offer more public loos, though one in six just don't give a shit. Or they just pissed themselves laughing and couldn't be arsed to take a side. Fortunately we were spared the unavoidable follow-up question when Greens get involved in loos. Whether they should be unisex, two-spirit, tripartite or polygender. Or it was asked and YouGov felt it had indulged them long enough and flushed the results. In the meanwhile, the trends of London polling remain very favourable to Labour, who seem to have overcome their moments of past weakness in the Imperial Capital.

There is now a very credible plausibility that Labour will get an outright majority of London's popular vote, and possibly allow Keir Starmer to do better than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017 in their own shared backyard, which was Labour's best result ever in London. Doing better than Tony Blair in 1997 is more plausible, and would also be a success, but I'm quite sure it wouldn't be as symbolically satisfying for Keir Starmer. And aiming for the bigger prize is certainly not far-fetched an unrealistic. The recent super-sampled polls have London samples of around 700, almost worth the Full London label, and show by how much Labour are now the absolute favourites.

Several factors help Labour here. Reform UK are doing surprisingly well in a usually Europhile region, though it might reveal only extreme discontent with the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are no longer some sort of "refuge vote" for disgruntled Labour voters, as they were when Corbyn was facing massive accusations of anti-Semitism, and they had managed to enroll a couple of incumbent MPs who had previously joined the long-forgotten Change UK. It's even quite a miracle that the Liberal Democrats are able to hold their notional four seats of 2019, and then only because the Conservative voting intentions have sunk deeper than the Tube station on Hampstead Heath. There is even a veneer of irony in what current London polls predict, as Labour actually don't need the extra seats there for a massive majority. Current polls even say they are doing so well across the rest of England that they wouldn't need any London seat at all. But gains there will still be a welcome icing on the cake, and quite a bonus for Keir Starmer's ego.

We have got one chance to get this right, OK? We get it wrong, we’re eating shit soup with no chopsticks here, right?

(Siobhan Sharpe, W1A, 2017)

There are only two outcomes to this war. Either Russia wins or Ukraine wins. Either quickly or slowly.

(James Cleverly)

There is definitely something new on the Ukrainian front, and a massive question mark above it. Has Volodymyr Zelenskyy made the worst mistake of his whole political career? Or was it the boldest and cleverest gamble at his disposal? I'm referring of course to the firing of Valery Zaluzhny, the former Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. All the resident Putin-enablers have predictably made a lot of celebratory fuss about that, hoping we have forgotten how many generals and admirals Vlad The Butcher has promoted, fired, demoted, re-promoted, re-fired and binned since the beginning of his criminal war of aggression. Believe me, there has been a fucking lot. But it also proves that dissent is not suppressed in Ukraine, and that it remains a democracy despite all its flaws, unlike Russia where dissent leads you to an untimely death at the hands of Putin's crime syndicate, even abroad. Sadly, the lack of recent polls about Ukraine is probably the sign of a loss of interest. The American branch of YouGov still mentions it, but only as a subset of their Biden-vs-Trump polling. Like when they ask their panel about whom they trust most about issues of foreign policy, with Ukraine being the only sub-category singled out for a specific assessment. Sadly, but not surprisingly after doubts have been cast about Biden's mental competency, Trump is the most trusted in both cases, and with amazingly similar numbers.

Results such as this should definitely ring an alarm bell in Ukraine and its allies, as we already know what Trump's plan is. Throwing Ukraine under the bus because it fits his isolationist agenda and his conscious choice to cuddle authoritarian regimes, even when they are an obvious clear and present threat to American interests. Interestingly, what is happening in Ukraine has prompted Sophia Gaston, who is Sebastian Payne's wife and a prominent member of the conservative thinktank Policy Echange, to commission a poll from Opinium about what could be our next big foreign policy challenge. China feeling provoked, like Adolf Hitler by Poland and Vladimir Putin by Ukraine before them, as Uncle Vlad told Tucker Carlson, and invading Taiwan with the kindest intention of reuniting them with their long lost family. What would be the Great British Public's reaction in that case? What would they want our government, the on-Thames one, to do? Unsurprisingly, the responses are not much different from attitudes commonly found about Russia. After poking the bear, let's boldly go ride the tiger. Possibly because what happened to Hong Kong after we deserted them is lingering at the back of our minds.

There are a couple of options in there that can be readily ruled out, those involving a direct military confrontation with China. Won't happen, can't happen, no matter how many Captains Mainwaring get a hard-on envisioning it. What is more relevant is the strong support for sanctions and reducing trade with China. Of course, sanctions should already be enforced as China is openly aiding and abetting Russia with deliveries of key components for military hardware. And we should already reduce trade to avoid the kind of Catch-22 by dependency that the EU found itself trapped in with Russian oil and gas. This is clearly a situation where past experience must guide today's choices, and lead us to anticipate predictable future risks. In not-so-unrelated news, More In Common has also polled an issue that has recently been thrown back into the arena, possibly as a roundabout way to embarrass Rishi Sunak from the right. Conscription. So what would Brits do if it was reinstated and they were called up? Go, or resist and face an as-yet-unspecified penalty? Clearly there is no enthusiasm for it in any of the age brackets that could plausibly be targeted.

Let's just say that the very idea of reinstating conscription is beyond ridiculous, and not just because polls say the public hate it. But because of the simple fact that the UK already can't afford its fully-professional armed forces, so anything bigger is no more than an absurd pipe dream, no matter how many Loony Conservatives get all worked up about it. There are also some odd findings in this poll, like Londoners and Scots being more likely to sign up for King And Country, when our usual understanding is that both are less likely to fall for the nationalistic vision of patriotism, with its pungent whiff of Anglo-centrism, and also less likely to support the Monarchy as the iconic embodiment of Britishness. Fortunately, any debate about conscription is pointless as Keir Starmer does not have it on his Fuckups Bingo Card. And it's not even the best way to defend us. The most efficient, now as it already was two years ago, is to send Ukraine all the gizmos they need to defeat the Russians. Only that can stop Putin in his dreams of a Russian Thousand Years Reich.

You can’t negotiate with a crocodile that’s bitten half your leg and is proposing to bite the other leg.

(Boris Johnson)

War is evil. Peace is the value we need to fight for. But, of course, peace has some requirements.

(Antonio Guterres)

British pollsters have ceased surveying their panels about Ukraine in June last year, probably because they feared the onset of the proverbial "Ukraine fatigue". French pollsters had too, until the French branch of Ipsos did it again early this month. You might say that what France thinks is irrelevant to us, and I would have to disagree. Not just because I am always interested in what is happening in the country of my birth, but also because Emmanuel Macron has adopted a tougher stance since the murder of Alexei Navalny, which was announced on the same day Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Paris to sign a treaty of military cooperation. Ipsos asked their panel if France should increase, maintain or decrease their commitment to four different modes of action, some softer and some harder. They published a comparison of their headline findings to the results of the last similar survey from June 2023.

These results are not encouraging at first sight, as they show clear signs of the perennial "Ukraine fatigue". Nevertheless there is still a majority in France to at least maintain the current levels of support to Ukraine. It is also worth remembering that French public opinion was always less likely to support Ukraine than British public opinion, because of the political make-up of the country. Parties who were openly supportive of Russia before their criminal aggression of Ukraine, and are now indulging in some sort of performative whataboutery, accounted for around 40% of votes at the most recent French elections in 2022. This is in marked contrast to the situation in the UK, and explains why Emmanuel Macron was at first ambiguous in his public statements about Putin's criminal imperialism. He has evolved now to significant support for Ukraine, but is not followed in some quarters of public opinion. The poll's breakdowns by political affiliation show that already on the 'soft' options.

Here you have the French political spectrum from the radical left La France Insoumise on the left to the far-right National Rally on the right, both of which were vocal Putinists until noon on the 24th of February 2022. It shows again in this poll, though the response is also influenced by other deeply held beliefs that are not related to Ukraine per se. You see some impact, both on the far left and far right, of the classic populist discourse, that money spent on Ukraine would be better spent "at home and on our own". The far right voters also can't hide their in-built hostility to all foreign aid and all refugees, wherever they come from, also quite a classic in these circles. That's something we also commonly see in the UK, and that sort of pre-digested ideological approach also influences the French response to the "hard" options.

The replies here are obviously more directly linked to pro-Russian beliefs, in turn linked to the ancestral anti-Americanism, that is a core component of both the post-Marxist and post-Fascist doxas. This is a quite common position in French politics, disguised for a very long time as anti-Atlanticism. Emmanuel Macron's soundbite in 2019, that NATO was brain-dead, obviously did not help, even if he has summat changed his approach since. The main concern now is of course how much the European Union is willing to spend on military aid to Ukraine. France is showing signs of wanting to lead the EU towards a friendlier attitude, amidst concerns about American military aid being held hostage by the Trumpist minority in the House of Representatives. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call for help after the fall of Avdiivka will probably be heard more favourably, but there is only so much France alone, or even the EU collectively, can do. Germany is a key player here, and we can only hope that advocating new harsher sanctions against Russia, in the shockwave of Navalny's murder, is only the first step. Now Germany must also suppress its inhibitions about massive military aid, stop looking over their shoulder and pretending that they can only do what the USA have already done, which is a clear dead end street to inaction, and send state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukraine. Starting with Taurus long-range cruise missiles, instead of aping Joe Biden and assigning red lines to Russia, that exist only in their own minds. Europe's safety is at stake here, not just Ukraine's existence as a free nation.

We need to be strong and demand, yes, demand, because we have no other chance to survive. In the end, we are the ones dying while we protect not only ourselves.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

Jeremy's Den

22/02/2024

Bring 'Em Down

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