Jeremy's Den: March 2024

Fun? You call being soundly thrashed by a demoted bunch of oiks and yokels “fun”? Winning is everything. I can’t for the life of me see the point of playing a game if you don’t intend to grind the other fellow into the dust.
(Jeremy Aldermarten, Kavanagh QC: The Sweetest Thing, 1995)

Doing precisely what we’ve done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they will expect us to do this time. There is however one small problem. Everyone gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds.
(General Melchett, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

As always, click on the images for larger pop-up versions.

The recent trends of voting intentions polls show the usual fluctuations, some of them the direct result of pollsters' different methodologies, but still credit the Labour Party with a substantial lead. Their voting intentions have even gone back up in the most recent polls, after some earlier signs of weakness. The Conservatives have probably reached their Last Chance Saloon stage, with some polls even going back to patterns last seen in the last days of the Truss Interlude. Even Jeremy Hunt's Scorched Earth Budget has backfired, so high is the level of distrust in the government, and I will explore than in more depth later. The Conservatives' prospects are very unlikely to improve now, especially after Theresa May's decision to stand down at the general. Despite all her flaws and failings, she was one of the few adults left in the room, and the vacuum can only be filled by absolutists who make Margaret Thatcher look like a compassionate liberal. So I certainly am not counting on these trendlines taking another turn towards the Conservatives any time soon, especially as the Reform UK vote is steadily rising.

Voting intentions polling is usually, almost always actually, coupled with a question about whom the Great British Public consider as the potentially best Prime Minister. We Think added a touch of comic relief to this, just after the Labour Party announced that David Rowntree, formerly the drummer for Blur, had been selected as their candidate for the newly recarved West Sussex constituency. They probably haven't told him it was notionally a Con-LibDem battleground in 2019, and has all the traits of a three-way marginal on current polling. But they probably hope that Dave will confirm that third time's a charm for him here. We Think jumped at the opportunity to inject a fun twist to their otherwise serious polling, asking their panel which of these pop stars, or almost stars, would make the best Prime Minister. I would have chosen Jarvis Cocker, but never mind. And if you shudder at the thought of the Gallagher brothers running the UK, consider there would probably be less infighting between them than between the factions of the Conservative Party. Just saying.

Back to the serious standard version of the primeministerial contest, this one too steadily delivers a significant lead for Keir Starmer, even if it's never as big as Labour's lead in voting intentions. A third of Brits still won't choose between the two contenders for Number Ten, but the level of doubt about Starmer has significantly gone down over the last month or so. But the Labour Party should not get complacent or too comfy because of a steady influx of favourable polls. They should also keep an eye on the populist absolutists of Reform UK. Their voting intentions have risen quite spectacularly since the New Year, and they have transitioned from a fringe party into a credible presence in many regions, and a plausible threat to Labour incumbents in the North of England. Can Starmer's increased popularity really act as a shield against this?

Of course nobody is claiming that Keir Starmer is faultless, not even himself. He is just as gaffe-prone as Joe Biden, and doesn't even have the excuse of old age and a partially functioning brain. He will never admit it, but he is just lucky. Margaret Thatcher would have made mincemeat of him at PMQs. Even John Major would have, for fuck's sake. But Sir Keir is lucky to have Rishi Sunak on the other side of the dining table. Even when Rishi nicks one of Labour's ideas, the abolition of the non-dom status, he manages to make a fucking pig's ear of it and make it predictably pointless. Just say you won't enforce it for a year, and then offer tax-evaders a four-year grace periods, and it will be totally inefficient. Ironically, that kind of watering down was reportedly also what Sly Keir had in mind, after Peter Mandelson told him that his focus group found it too harsh and bad for business. Now, all Keir has to do is to climb on his moral high horse and pledge he will never renege on it, will enforce it with immediate effect and with no grace period, and he will look more radical than Attlee and Corbyn. Which would probably earn him praise from both The Hisptershire Gazette and even The Torygraph, who seem to be terminally fed up with Rishi's shenanigans.

Haven’t you smelt it? There’s something afoot in the wind. The huddled masses yearning to be free. I’ve been supping the milk of freedom.
(Baldrick, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

I believe that, with the renewal we have seen in Britain, we should be in the best position to lead Europe at the beginning of the next century and into the future.

(Margaret Thatcher, 1984)

We all know that Brexit has been a tremendous success, don't we? Because Jacob Rees-Mogg told us he can't even count all the Brexit Benefits. By which he probably means the countless people who have been forced to live off benefits by Brexit. But never mind, we are all heading to the happily-ever-after sunlit uplands over the rainbow, where Keir Starmer will Make Brexit Work. That's the same where he also will Make Trident Work. You just have to wonder which will come first, either of these or the next Liberal Democrat Prime Minister. Anyway, the Great British Public are no longer enamoured with Brexit, now that they have got a taste of the real one, and show massive buyers' remorse in poll after poll. Now they know it was not just a bad idea, but also that successive governments handled it like shit. And these constant replies quite unavoidably incite a lot of pollsters to ask the £64k question, "what's next, wouldn't you love to rejoin the EU?", and the answer is just as predictable as the question being asked. Of course, the Great British Public wants to rejoin the EU, and they have said so for more than two years now. If you remove the undecideds, the average vote over the last four weeks is 57.6% Rejoin to 42.4% Stay Out, a much wider margin than Leave won by at the 2016 Referendum.

Of course, I'm as predictable as anyone, and you surely expect me to tell you once again that this is a biased approach to the debate, as it puts just one option on the table while there are actually several available. I won't rant about that again, as polls also reveal that a strategy to rejoin the EU might be self-defeating because of one factor, the Euro. Lots of stuff has been said about EU member countries having an obligation to join the Euro, which was sometimes true, sometimes false, and sometimes both because rules have change over time. Today, every country that joins the EU does have an obligation to join the Euro. Opt-outs, as the UK enjoyed and Denmark still does, can no longer be granted. But there are two conditions, that are also massive loopholes. New EU members have to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II) for two years, and then meet the convergence criteria about deficit and debt. But joining ERM II is voluntary, so you just don't join, which is what Sweden has done, and the story ends there. Then meeting the criteria is a matter of national policies, and all you have to do is deliberately not meeting them, which is the easiest thing to do, and that's it. But the Euro is still seen as an absolute obligation by the Great British Public, and is quite a mighty deterrent.

The above numbers come from the latest We Think poll, as they ask the Rejoin question every week in two different forms. A neutral one first, that provides a baseline hugely favourable to rejoining the EU, and another introducing the Euro as an obligation after rejoining. And you can see that the Bogeyman Effect works fully. While the pure question delivers a significant lead for Rejoin, the Euro-inclusive wording turns it around, and would see the UK choosing to stay out on a quite similar margin to the one it chose to leave in 2016. Even LibDem voters are repelled by the prospect of joining the Euro, probably the most surprising part in that anti-Euro consensus. Of the Three Nations Of This Isle probed here, because pollsters always forget the Fourth Nation On That Other Isle, only Scotland would still choose to rejoin, and by a wider margin than we voted to remain in 2016. If you discount undecideds and abstainers, Scotland would go 72% to rejoin in the neutral option, and 68% when the Euro is thrown in the broth. SNP voters are even more determined, as the prospect of adopting the Euro actually swings them towards rejoining. That's what happens when the alternative is keeping the pound, I guess.

You’d be surprised what people can live with.

(Jimmy Perez, Shetland, 2016)

Look at this! I mean, this stuff’s about as convincing as Dr Crippen’s defence lawyer!

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

Dog moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. And so does the Great British Public. They are definitely ready to send Keir Starmer to Number Ten, but are still not enamoured with him. Especially after the much-talked-about Curious Incident Of The SNP Motion In Commons. It's hardly surprising that The Hipstershire Gazette argued that Lindsay Hoyle should be exonerated and forgiven for the massive Commons fiasco about the SNP's Gaza motion because, even if their column is mildly critical of Keir Starmer, it also "inadvertently" exonerates and forgives Labour. If the only lesson learned from that chaotic episode is, "Do better next time, boys", why should they even try? You can't avoid the obvious, Labour do have a recurring problem in Keir Starmer and where he is leading them. Or rather, where he isn't. But they daren't face it, even when somebody puts it in plain sight. Which is what Savanta did in a recent poll, when they asked their sample how good or bad Keir Starmer has been on a handful of key topics, oddly mixed with questions about anti-Semitism and islamophobia.

It's quite the understatement that Starmer, whatever his qualifications as a QC, KC or DPP, has failed to make his case. Especially as the burden of proof is totally on him, and he doesn't even get half of the Great British Public agreeing that he has made Labour more electable. Of course, there is a very questionable item in Savanta's list, the one about the Covid crisis. It's not up to the Opposition to take the lead in a national emergency, it's the Government's job, so this one is quite irrelevant. But all the other items are relevant and revealing. I have often said it, and this poll only confirms it, the major risk for Labour is that victory will be theirs by default. Which is never a good way to start something you want to paint as a time of change. Attlee had a wave of popular enthusiasm carrying him, because the people wanted change and believed he would deliver it. The same was true for Blair, no matter where he actually went after his first term. Starmer has none of this, and even Labour voters have their doubts. The subsample of Labour voters from the same poll, based on current voting intentions and not past votes, shows is quite clearly.

Starmer has the clear support of only two thirds of presumptive Labour voters at best, and only half about Brexit. Which kind of fits with what I was mentioning earlier about Brexit. When a clear majority of the Great British Public agree that Brexit was a fucking disaster, and that the UK would be better off rejoining the EU, it doesn't really make sense to keep cuddling the vocal Europhobes. Doing that only makes the elephant in the room an albatross around your neck. Keir Starmer should acknowledge once and for all that discussing Brexit and its fallout will embarrass the Conservatives much more than Labour. "Lexit", as the "left-wing" Brexit was once called, makes sense only to Owen Jones and the loony fringe who still think Yanis Varoufakis is the best economist since Thomas Aquinas. Labour in power should stop pushing any discussion of Brexit under the rug, as only an open and honest debate can let us explore all the possibilities. Not all of these involve the EU, which could be a saving grace for Starmer, as going down a road not taken would save him the bother of taking sides in the "rejoin or stay out" debate. And we all know that Keir loves nothing more than non-committal ambiguity.

I laugh in the face of danger. I drop ice cubes down the vest of fear.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

It started badly, then it tailed off a little in the middle, and the less said about the end, the better. Apart from that, excellent.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

For a fair and balanced perspective, I must also share with you what the Great British Public think of Rishi Sunak, as revealed by the most recent iteration of the Ipsos Political Pulse. Of course, they probed the minds of their panel about Keir Starmer too, but I have dealt with him already. So let's just focus for now on the soon-to-be-former Prime Minister. Even after a long line of polls, columns in The Hipstershire Gazette and expert analysis telling us the Great British Public don't think much of Keir Starmer, it now appears they have an even dimmer view of Rishi Sunak. This last poll even breaks with tradition and precedent, in a worse way than Sir Lindsay Hoyle, as we were used to hear that Rishi Sunak personally had a better image than the Conservative Party collectively. And now this poll tells us it's just as bad, and sometimes even worse, when the panel are asked if this and that trait does or does not apply to the Temp Prime Minister.

The most devastating blow to Sunak's pride in the first batch of replies is that he is not even considered as smart as Baldrick, as people think he doesn't have a plan, cunning or not. Being out of touch with the common people, and not understanding the problems facing the UK, appear like minor slaps on the wrist by comparison, don't they? It gets even worse when you concatenate this with the replies to the second batch of items probed by Savanta. Rishi is seen as incompetent, bland, dishonest, weak and inexperienced. Definitely not what you have the right to expect from the leader of the Fifth Greatest Power On Earth. Or the one that was the fifth when Rishi was propelled to Number Ten, might be the eighth or ninth now. So it seems a fair conclusion that people don't trust him to get the big decisions right. Which could be a fitting epitaph for his short career in Robert Walpole's chair.

To contextualise, as the pundits always ask us to, we should ask ourselves if Rishi Sunak is really worse than Boris Johnson or Liz Truss. Don't answer that one too quickly. After all, he did not fake his own death, even if he faked a lot of other more trivial things. And he did not tank the economy and the currency, even if the newly recarved Spring Statement might be considered a nice try at doing just that. Sunak's problem is that Johnson and Truss will definitely be mentioned in history books, even for the wrong reasons, and he won't. Not even as a footnote. When he leaves, he will probably end up between the Earl of Aberdeen and the Earl of Chatham in the list of Prime Ministers by length of tenure, and nobody remembers who either was. Having outlasted Anthony Eden is probably not as grandiose a success as you might think, as it did not really end well for Eden either, did it? Because he was as bad in a crisis as Sunak is considered to be, probably. It has sometimes happened in history, that a party destined for a humiliating electoral defeat was saved by its charismatic leader. For all we know, that will not happen to Rishi Sunak.

Perhaps he can feel his power waning, or maybe it’s less emotional and more neurological. Either way, he’s not a safe person to know any more.

(Calvin Sarwar, Shetland, 2016)

Moral dilemma of the day. Should one throw a lifebelt to a drowning rat?

(Julia Piper, Kavanagh QC: True Commitment, 1996)

The current rolling average of voting intentions in my Poll'O'Polls remains immensely favourable to Labour generally, but also all across the Three Nations Of This Isle and the regions of England. We now have this quite extraordinary alignment of the stars, where the Conservatives are smothered to woodchips in Scotland, Wales and London, have Reform UK breathing down their neck and very plausibly outvoting them in the North, and do barely better in the South than in the Midlands. Even gambling on the date of the election wouldn't help, even if the public want it to happen at the earliest opportunity, to at last get the whole farce behind us. Now Rishi Sunak has officially ruled out holding the election on the 2nd of May to coincide with the local elections. Jeremy Hunt must be livid as having just one Election Day in the year would have saved a fuckload of millions, to both country and party, who may then have had enough at the bank to refund Frank Hester. I think we can rule out an election during one of Commons' multiple holidays, but that still leaves plenty of slots in June or July. But I definitely can't see it happening, so we will likely have to suffer until the autumn now.

We have been having a rather active polling week, so my current Poll Mash is made of the last seven polls, more than usual, that were fielded by Lord Ashcroft, Deltapoll, More In Common, YouGov, Survation, Techne and We Think between the 7th and the 15th of March. That's a super-sample of 14,738 and it credits Labour with their now familiar lead of 20%, the equivalent of a 16% swing from the Conservatives to Labour since the 2019 election. With these rather dismal numbers in mind, the question on everybody's lips is how the Chancellor's Great Matter, his Farewell Statement delivered on the 6th of March, can possibly help curb the trend, when even Tory grassrooters have nothing kind to say about it, Scottish Conservatives are enraged by it, and MPs agree that it won't save them from dalekification. But pollsters felt they had to speedpoll it, and Savanta once again beat YouGov to it, with a poll conducted on the afternoon of Hunt's statement. And it delivered the most incredible results when the panel were asked about their level of support for the key measures in it.

The weirdest result here is the high level of support for cutting the National Insurance Contribution, which is a small short-term gain against a massive long-term loss. Do people not know what the NIC is funding, mostly state pensions? Scrapping it completely, as Jeremy Hunt has implied he wishes to do, would bring down the whole welfare and benefits system, on top of the state pensions. Doing it anyway would require a replacement mechanism, that would probably come wrapped in copious amounts of red tape, and could only be funded by a rise of income tax, as Hunt himself had to admit under pressure. But, as always, the Great British Public contradict themselves when Savanta asks them whom they think will benefit from this budget.

What's the logic here, between supporting the government's proposals, and saying in the same breath that they won't benefit anyone? The net ratings here are massively negative for almost all demographics, just close to a tie for middle-income families and business owners. But twice as many Brits think the budget does not benefit them personally as think it does, which surely explains why it has not triggered any semblance of Tory revival in voting intentions. And this was only the public's knee-jerk reaction to the announcements. They were of course subjected to further interrogation later in the week, and it didn't get better, as you will see below the fold and John Lennon's almost punk rendition of the most appropriate rock classic for this moment.

That’s the spirit. If nothing else works, then our total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

(General Melchett, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

I know that, even if things can sometimes seem dark now, our future together is golden.

(Boris Johnson, resignation speech, 7 July 2022)

Of course, YouGov couldn't allow Savanta to be the only pollster probing the minds of the Great British Public about what passes as a budget in Jeremy Hunt's mind, but is actually more an object lesson in sabotage, leaving the next government skating through a shark-infested minefield of "tough choices". The YouGov poll was fielded mostly on The Day After, and delivered a far less glorious verdict than the Savanta poll, after their panel had the opportunity to digest Jezza's cunning plan and sleep on it. Part of the shift is also due to the wording of question, not asking the panel if they support or oppose this or that proposal, but if they think it's a good idea or a wrong priority. And you thusly make the elements of doubt plainly visible.

YouGov also offers a more extensive view of the public's reaction, including measures that Savanta did not mention. After thinking it through, the people are far less supportive of the freezing of taxes on alcohol, which they obviously see as endangering public health. There is also a visible shift about the reduction of the NIC's rate, surely because more people see it as the honeytrap it is, trading a short-time benefit for a long-term massive loss. Brits are also not convinced at all by the measures that were inspired by the radical state-averse libertarians, those who take their cues from Britannia Unchained and think Ayn Rand is the greatest political thinker of the past millennium. Of course, the public smell a giant rat when the government funds tax cuts for the wealthy with cuts in public spending. They know that what's good for the gander is not also good for the goose, because they have learned the hard way that trickle-down economics are a fucking fraud that has never worked anywhere ever. That's instantly reflected when YouGov asks them what the effect will be on "the country", by which they of course mean "the UK", and it's not even a hint of an endorsement.

The general feeling that Hunt's Farewell Statement is likely to do more harm than good to The Country is quite widely shared across all demographics, geographics and politics. Even Conservative voters are not flocking in droves to support it, and mostly rate it as much ado for nothing. It doesn't get better when YouGov shifts the focus to their panelists' personal situation. Twice as many think the budget will make it worse as think it will make it better, and there is again a massive consensus that it will change jack shit. Here too, Conservative voters are not supportive of their own government, even if they are less gloomy than the rest of the electorate. What makes it worse is that these political crosstabs are based on current voting intentions, not on the remembered 2019 vote. When even your rump electorate, those who are supposed to be the most devout and supportive, don't believe in you, your electoral prospects are surely even worse than you think.

This rather somber appraisal only reflects the public's generally gloomy mood. Brits don't believe we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and most still think the worst of the cost-of-living crisis is yet to come. A belief that can only be boosted by the generally dire economic prospects, including the depreciation of the pound against major foreign currencies and the plausibility of a recession. Its now looks like a reasonable prediction for 2024, that the UK will do worse than any country in the European Union, and also worse than Russia after Putin forcibly converted them into a war economy. But it would be foolish to believe that Labour can turn the tide in their proverbial First Hundred Days. Can't happen, won't happen, isn't even meant to happen as their policies don't differ that much from the Conservatives'. The sad truth is that the Treasury is so skint we can't even dream of a stimulus plan such as Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan Act, or even a significant anti-inflation effort similar to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Because either would require billions of pounds of public spending that we don't have, because the Conservatives have spaffed too much on ineffective projects that failed, and we will never get any of it back. Even fair taxation of the Non-Doms will never reap enough.

I am intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.

(Peter Mandelson)

This is a crisis. A large crisis. It’s a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpets throughout, 24-hour porterage and an enormous sign on the roof saying, “This is a large crisis”. A large crisis requires a large plan. Get me two pencils and a pair of underpants.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

As you might expect, the seat projection from this batch of polls is again a massive landslide for Labour. After all, we're voteswise again treading the same waters as three weeks ago, and six weeks ago, and nine weeks ago, and... The distribution of the vote across the nations and regions varies, and so does the allocation of seats, but the picture remains the same. For a long time, I used the moderately successful 2005 general election as the benchmark for Labour's current performance. The time for this is long past, and 1997 is the obvious reference now, that polls predict Starmer's New New Labour will surpass. What my model says now is a 242-seat majority for Labour. That's almost 100 more than Attlee in 1945, and almost 50 more than Blair in 1997. The only party that ever got more seats at a general election were the Conservatives at the 1931 election, on 459 seats. Which are commonly misreported as 470 because the 11 seats of the Ulster Unionist Party are added to the actual Conservative headcount. And that predicted debacle is surely the best reason why so many Conservative MPs have given up and are standing down, closer by the day to their previous record in 1997.

The other prognosticators, such as Electoral Calculus or Election Maps UK, show pretty much the same evolution as my model in their seat projections. Electoral Calculus also add probabilities to their projections, which makes them even more hurtful for the Conservatives. Right now, their expert estimate is that there is a 1% probability that the Conservatives emerge as the largest party but without a majority, a 4% probability that Labour are the largest party but without a majority, and a 95% probability that Labour get a majority. Electoral Calculus also factor in what could happen within a 90% confidence interval, if they move the swingometer to the edges. Right now, this more sophisticated calculation concludes that there is a 90% probability that Labour will bag between 327 and 537 seats. At worst, a tiny majority with the Conservatives, on 239 seats, remaining a viable party ready to put up another credible fight, and the SNP weakened but holding a majority of Scottish seats, on 39 seats. At best, the annihilation of both the Conservatives and the SNP, who would then bag just 42 and 6 seats respectively. Of course, median projections don't go that far, but 440ish Labour seats looks like a reasonable conclusion these days.

All this accumulation of bad polls and disastrous seat projections has sent a wave of depression across the Conservative Party, who are now openly discussing the plausibility of massive losses at the incoming local elections, which is probably the best deterrent to holding the snap general on the same day, if Rishi Sunak ever genuinely contemplated it. The flip side of holding the election in the autumn is that more Tory MPs might be tempted to follow in Lee Anderson's footsteps and defect to Reform UK. After all, there is a mathematically strong case that they would have better odds as Reform UK candidates than as Conservatives, especially in the Red Wall seats first gained in the Johnsonmania wave of 2019. It's where the plot thickens as there are several plots going on. There's the fairly public one to bring back Boris Johnson, which would work fine if he was still an MP. So we might as well forget about it for now. Then there is the secret one, that only the Telegraph, the Sun, the Mirror and the Daily Express had heard of, and quite cheekily revealed on the Ides of March. Ousting Rishi Sunak and anointing Starfleet Admiral Penelope Mordaunt after the English local elections. Which would be a wee bit daft as she is extremely likely to lose her seat to Labour at the general. Or perhaps because the Great British Public would go like, "What the fucking fuck?", if they got their fourth leader in as many years, and as many months before the general. But, as the late great Frank Zappa once said, there is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. And that seems to be especially true of the Conservative Party. So let's just pop the corn, and wait and see.

You could talk your voice dry, but you might not be able to convince people. You give them enough bling and you make your point.

(Nandini Das, Fortress Britain, 2023)

It would be an unconscionable restriction on the freedom of expression and the vitality of broadcasting if nothing likely to offend anybody could ever be broadcast.

(Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Code of Programme Standards)

Something of a political earthquake happened in Eire on the 8th of March, quite appropriately on International Women's Day, when proposed amendments to the Constitution were soundly rejected in a high-turnout double-barreled referendum. Obviously the ancestral and now confirmed wording, that dates back to 1937, is instantly recognisable as reactionary and rooted in a deeply misogynistic view of society, as then imposed by the Catholic Church. But the proposed changes did not make matters better, quite the opposite, as they were spawned from just as controversial an ideology, mixing woke intersectionalism and queer theory. The best part is obviously that the four polls conducted before Referendum Day did not hint at the final results. Even if all the undecideds had finally chosen a No vote, the Yes defeat would not have been so massive. So you have to conclude that voters deliberately gamed the polls, and a large number of them just lied about their intended vote. Which made the crushing debacle even more of a shocker for the Yes camp.

In the immediate fallout of these stunning results, even The Hipstershire Gazette had to concede they did not signal a return of conservatism in Eire, but total incompetence on the government's side. It was just the result of the total lack of professionalism on legal matters, that deconstructionist and intersectionalist activists have already shown in Scotland and Spain. Their pig-headed arrogance made them dismiss warning from genuine learned experts, that the jargon in which they always wrap their things would have unavoidable unintended consequences, as their sense of entitlement and empowerment makes them think that they always know best, even when they obviously don't. Jargon is no substitute for writing proper legislation, which has to be clear, concise and precise to be efficient. They thusly got what they deserved, and it might well have an unintended, but related, consequence at the next Dail election, as the most recent polls show a significant drop in voting intentions for Sinn Féin, far from brilliant prospects for the three parties of the governing coalition, and more attraction for the various shades of independent candidates.

Sinn Féin's fall in the polls has obvious causes, that mirror the unexpected results of the referendums, and Scots are best placed to understand what is happening and why. Sinn Féin are being punished for endorsing absolutist wokeism, to the detriment of their foundational fight for Irish Reunification, just as the SNP are being punished for going soft on Independence and pushing the Greens' woke agenda, the most salient parts of which are rejected by the electorate. Interestingly, the Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool fielded a poll in Northern Ireland just days after the referendums, and it does not send the same message at all. Sinn Féin emerge from it stronger than ever at a general election, and the DUP seriously weakened by the Traditional Unionist Vote party quite efficiently splitting the loyalist vote. Unlike the only previous poll, the UUP would not gain a seat on these new numbers, but the DUP would lose two. Belfast East to the Alliance Party, and Upper Bann to Sinn Féin, leading to the unprecedented situation where the Republican parties would bag a majority of the seats.

It is quite likely that a Westminster poll reflects different priorities to those that would dominate an election for the Northern Ireland Assembly. There is also a massive twist here, as voters know that Sinn Féin will never take their seats in Commons, and what they exactly stand for is thusly irrelevant when their voters just want to send a message of defiance to the colonial power. Therefore, we also need another poll for the next Assembly election, where Sinn Féin do take their seats and can influence the policies of the devolved Executive. It would probably be more likely to reflect any repercussions of the Eire referendums on the other side of the border. I would be surprised if there weren't any, as there is a small socially conservative Republican electorate in Northern Ireland too, who might switch to Aontú, who stand for just that as they split from Sinn Féin in opposition to woke politicking. But the unluckiest of unintended consequences could be to reduce support for Irish Reunification, which is already weak in Northern Ireland, if the people prove reluctant to unite with a country that has become summat of a hub and beacon of wokeism in Europe.

Can you imagine a pub with just black people, just Irish people and just dogs? Like, that's the most craic I’ve ever heard in my life.

(Aisling Bea, QI: Quagmire, 2020)

If God had wanted us to stay at the same place all the time, he wouldn’t have invented TripAdvisor, would he?

(Cassie Perez, Shetland: Red Bones, 2013)

Sometimes it is a welcome gust of fresh air, and also quite sensible, when a pollster decides to look past the headcounts of voting intentions, and goes probing into the electorate's motivations behind their votes. More In Common did just that in a recent poll, surveying Scottish voters. They polled only voting intentions for Westminster, so we can infer their findings apply only here, and not to Holyrood. Some of the motivations are quite predictable, and others more surprising, including the fact that few of them have anything to do with what people consider the main issues politicians should deal with, which More In Common also polled. They examined only the electorates of the main parties competing for Scottish seats, which I dare not call "Scottish parties", fearing that some nitpicker would again say "English parties, not Scottish" about two of them. Anyway, I have highlighted what you could call "negative" motivations in a darker shade, and the rest can be considered "positive" motivations. Let's start with Conservative voters.

It is quite amusing that the main motivation of Scottish Conservative voters is to oust the SNP, seeing how polls say they have only the tiniest of chances of doing that. And that denying Labour a victory comes as almost a second thought, or even a third as it is less important than signalling their dislike for Humza Yousaf. I will not even try and psychoanalyse the deeper reasons for this, as all may not be genuinely political and admissible in court. But I will not mock Conservative voters for having representation of their own interests as their strongest positive motivation, as it's present in pretty much every corner of the political spectrum, has always been, and is a legitimate position in a democracy. I will only stress the irony embedded in 8% of Scottish Conservative voters choosing policies on gender identity as a motivation. Because it begs the follow-up question, whose policies? Kemi Badenoch's or Penny Mordaunt's? Is there even an official Conservative Party line on this, or are they just trying to dodge the issue because there isn't actually any? Labour voters next, who are not immune to some strange twists of thought either.

Unsurprisingly, Labour voters are strongly motivated by kicking both the Conservatives' and the SNP's arses on their way out. But they also have quite a lot of positive motives that fit with the main issues they think politicians should address, like the NHS, the economy, climate change and housing. Interestingly, they are not as concerned with "gender identity politics" as Conservative voters, as it comes only 19th and last in their shopping list of motivations, and is mentioned by only 1% of them. It's just odd that they also mention Labour's policies on Brexit, as it does not look like there are any. Other than what you could call the Jerome K. Jerome policy, watching the dead dog slowly float down the river. Interestingly, Ukraine and Gaza are very low in Labour voters' motivations, as they were in Conservative voters' motivations. Which means it would be extremely foolish for the SNP to campaign on Gaza, as in a waste of energy and resources. Also because it isn't in the SNP's voters' main motivations. But other more directly political concerns are.

Nobody will be surprised that SNP voters put Independence at the top of their motivations, and by a strikingly large margin. And it would certainly rate even higher if the SNP could be arsed to actually campaign for it. Even their first negative motivation, not having a Westminster party controlling Holyrood, is far more genuinely political that Conservative and Labour voters chuntering, "I don't like the Nats". When you look at the whole array of responses, you see that SNP voters are actually more politically savvy than Conservative and Labour voters, and also more likely to be motivated by a positive approach of what their preferred party is proposing. They put serious political issues closer to the top of their list, which could be interpreted as, to put it bluntly, them being more politically mature. Which is kind of ironic when you see the SNP drifting into the muddy waters of student politics, and sometimes even schoolyard politics, since the toxic deal with the Greens. But even having the most articulate and politically literate voters can't change the headline result from that poll, voting intentions of 34% for Labour, 29% for the SNP and 18% for the Conservatives. Quite a letdown, innit?

You can stand here looking glaikit all day if you want, I don’t mind, but if you’re going to think on your feet, you’ll have to be a wee bit quicker than that.

(Jimmy Perez, Shetland: Blue Lightning, 2014)

Don't rely on old chums. Your enemies sometimes sit alongside you as opposed to opposite you.

(Alex Salmond)

The SNP have now suspended Fergus Ewing for supporting a vote of no-confidence in Lorna Slater, which is what every sensible person would have done. Fergus is urging the SNP to tell the Greens to fuck off, which is what every sensible person would do. And George Foulkes, in between two shots of pink gin, wants Holyrood to be dissolved if the SNP don't win a majority of Scottish Westminster seats. And nobody pities him enough to tell him he should lay off the booze while teaching himself what Scottish electoral law actually says. In a word, business as usual. Not entirely though, as some media outlets also made a big deal of The Curious Incident Of Willy Wonka In Glasgow, which probably does not have as much earth-shattering potential as they tell you. Oddly, few even mentioned the Council by-election in the Hillhead ward of Glasgow, which certainly sends a much more significant message. Because this ward is in the middle of the Glasgow Kelvin constituency of the Scottish Parliament, where Patrick Harvie has made a habit of standing and losing, safe in the certainty he will get a list seat anyway. But do the trends of Holyrood voting intentions polls support the view that Paddy will always lose?

There hasn't been any tectonic vector shift here recently, even if there is again a smallish move away from the SNP and towards Labour. We only have one new Holyrood poll this time, a new Full Scottish from Redfield & Wilton, as Survation polled only the Westminster election this month. It was fielded before Police Scotland opened the Pandora's can of worms of Humza Yousaf's Hate Crime Act, with their en fanfare announcement of their new network of ratting outposts all across Scotland. Which are not all queer sex shops and mushroom farms. And you can also rat anonymously on line. I obviously don't know what impact that latest episode can possibly have on voting intentions, as we indeed have had advance warning, so everybody has probably already made up his mind on this Act, and how much of a threat it is for our civil liberties and free speech. Spoiler: a fucking mahoosive one. Anyway, our very last poll is not much different from the previous one, and hardly better than it.

The Yellow-Green Axis is still predicted to take a massive drubbing, with the SNP losing a third of their seats. The prospects of the alternative Traffic Lights Coalition are not that good either, as they would bag 63 seats, two shy of a majority. But the very hypothetical Labour-SNP coalition would again bag an impressive majority on 84 seats. So it might well be down to what kind of risk First Minister Anas Sarwar would be ready to gamble on. Aye, you heard it right, Anas Sarwar. Because there is one tectonic shift in that last poll, as Anas Sarwar is now the Scottish people's Preferred First Minister. For the first time ever since that kind of polling is conducted. Not by a wide margin, but a first is still a first. And everybody remembers their first.

I don't think this is just a transient whim, as both Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar are more popular than Humza Yousaf. There is another obvious alarm in the Yousaf-Ross match. Douglas Ross is less unpopular than Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, and also outperforms the Conservative Party's voting intentions on the Preferred First Minister question. While Humza Yousaf does not get any significant support outwith the SNP's electoral base, not even from the Greens, if you compare his ratings as Preferred First Minister with the SNP's voting intentions. I would say that Humza Yousaf is plausibly on much shakier thin ice than he or his court are ready to admit. But the SNP obviously don't have any plausible replacement, except perhaps Angus Robertson, but he has already ruled himself out rather than to face the unavoidable scrutiny any First Minister is likely to be subjected to. But the lines might also move faster than we expect. It would take very little, like Fergus Ewing defecting to the Alba Party and triggering a larger exodus. Never say never...

You did the right thing. You’d hate the white pudding suppers in Edinburgh.

(Jimmy Perez, Shetland, 2018)

Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?

(Billy Connolly)

All of Scotland has been celebrating recently, when the transport regulator allowed one more private operator to provide overpriced transport from London to a few towns North Of The Wall. Or not, as this hit us at the same time as the shocking news that the Scottish Government was cutting down efforts to Keep Gaelic Alive, and that Justin Timberlake wants to turn a cinema into a bar. But if this ever changing world in which we're living makes you give in and cry, try reading The Scottish Pravda, who always find a way to rejoice at the weeest things, like one lone poll from Survation saying that the SNP might not be heading for an extinction event after all. Alas, poor Humza, this was contradicted three weeks later by the aforementioned Full Scottish from Redfield & Wilton, that was quite consistent with their earlier findings. At the end of the day, the general trends of voting intentions from successive Full Scottish remain quite stable. Labour and the SNP are still tied, just as they have been in these polls for the last four months.

But there are of course variations from one poll to the next, that go way beyond what you could blame on random variations. Some basic facts remain unchanged though. A tie between Labour and the SNP in the popular vote delivers a plurality of seats for Labour, as they benefit from the cumulative effect of two factors. The majority of the SNP-Lab battlegrounds are marginals, and the regional distribution of the votes steadily shows Labour over-performing across the Central Belt, where most of these seats are located. On top of this, the outcome in Con-SNP battlegrounds is not guaranteed to always go the SNP's way, even if the Conservatives are shown losing fuckloads of votes by every poll. You need to have the Conservatives losing half their votes to see them losing all their seats, and the current trends don't conclusively show this happening. So we have to make do with confusingly contradictory polls, quite possibly until the last mile before Election Day.

In their last Full Scottish, that probed only the Westminster voting intentions, Survation also asked their Scottish panel their honest and objective opinion of a wide array politicians, many more than pollsters usually include. Some of the names may not be really relevant to Scottish politics, but the results are nevertheless quite interesting, and sometimes even hilarious. The most politically relevant is of course that both Humza Yousaf and Stephen Flynn are less popular than Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar. Which will surprise only those who haven't been paying attention over the last few months, and don't realise how toxic the SNP brand has become in the minds of many Scots.

But there are even better findings when you consider the net ratings, discounting those who did not express a clear opinion of the persons tested. The one that always cracks me up is that the Greens are less popular than the Liberal Democrats and Douglas Ross, which says a lot about the public's view of their student politics that reflect only the luxury beliefs of the woke faction of the metropolitan middle-class, to the detriment of rural Scotland. Survation made it even worse by adding Richard Tice, the current leader of Reform UK who is keeping the seat warm for the return of Nigel Farage. The net ratings say Tice is more popular than the Greens, the Conservatives and Humza Yousaf. Not bad for a bloke who wouldn't know where Grangemouth is on a map, and probably hasn't the fuckiest scoobie why it has become a campaign issue. And this also explains why Reform UK, despite all the good reasons Scots have to reject them, have created quite an upset in several recent Holyrood polls, that hint they could be getting their first MSPs if the election were held next week.

Play hardball? What is that like, shinty or something?

(Sandy Wilson, Shetland: Dead Water, 2014)

Wales is a ghastly place. Huge gangs of tough sinewy men roam the valleys terrifying people with their close-harmony singing. You need half a pint of phlegm in your throat just to pronounce the place names.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

Late last month, Redfield & Wilton released a new iteration of their Full Welsh polling. Obviously, it did not go against the prevailing trends, and still showed Labour as the dominant political force in Wales. It is very unlikely this will change in the few months before the Tory Downfall general, even if the general mood of Welsh Labour leadership contest has the potential to tarnish their image. It certainly does not help that Economy Minister Vaughan Gething first shamelessly played the race card, a sadly predictable move in the age of woke identity politics. And then found himself embroiled in an all-too-familiar controversy about one of his donors. Or how you climb on the moral high horse of changing politics, without changing the way you do politics. The contest was polled several times, both before and after Mark Drakeford officially resigned. There was no ringing endorsement for either of the candidates in these polls, though it is not totally clear whether the Good People Of Wales wanted neither, or just couldn't be arsed to give a frying duck.

The subsamples of Labour voters were not really more conclusive. Gething certainly had better prospects than his only remaining rival, Education Minister Jeremy Miles, but you didn't see a tsunami of enthusiasm here either. Interestingly, Health Minister Eluned Morgan could have been a serious contender too, if she hadn't decided to drop out when the race was officially called and endorsed Gething. In the end, Vaughan Gething has won by just a wee margin, and Jeremy Miles looked happy to play the sore loser. Now the new First Minister will have to pick up the pieces of a divided party, and also try and project a different image of the party and his government. All you see from the outside is a strong current of performative wokeism in overdrive, stronger than within Scottish Labour or English Labour. Which does not mean they get everything wrong. For example, the much-derided 20mph speed limit was an excellent decision, and even some earlier critics now acknowledge it. The Welsh Conservatives might still think this is their variant of their beloved culture wars, but the real world, especially foreign countries where the limit has been in force for many years, definitely proves them on the wrong side of history. Welsh Labour's real problem is that the electorate have a rather dim view of their performance in government, as shown by a recent poll from More In Common.

The Great Welsh Public are split on Mark Drakeford's record as First Minister, and even a sizeable part of Labour voters think he has done a poor job. It probably can only get worse soon, as Welsh farmers are on the brink of a full-blown jacquerie, just like French and German farmers before them. Some are up in arms against European Union regulations, others against the fallout of Brexit, but all against governments asking them to work in a more sustainable way. The general population disagree with Labour supporters on education, but agree on the NHS and the economy, that the Welsh Government has not been up to the task. It's quite ironic that Jeremy Miles, as Education Minister, has a better rating here than Vaughan Gething on the economy, and nevertheless lost the leadership contest. Then there would be no fun in scanning polls if you did not find one that contradicts the previous one. And I have of course found that in the leaders' favourability ratings from the last Redfield & Wilton Full Welsh, which found quite a different view of Mark Drakeford to the More In Common poll.

You might want to argue that the wording of the question explains the differences, but I would still see a major contradiction between 29% of the panel approving of Drakeford's actions and 45% thinking he does a good job as First Minister. But never mind, they main point is probably not this one. Keir Starmer is more popular than Mark Drakeford with the Welsh public at large, an even more strikingly so with Welsh Labour voters. That's quite a contrast with Scotland, where Anas Sarwar is slightly more popular than Keir Starmer, both with the general population and Labour voters. Notwithstanding this, Labour's electoral prospects show similar patterns in both nations, as they are predicted to do better at the Westminster election than at the devolved Parliaments' elections. A very practical choice to pick the best horse to outrun the Tories on one side, evidence of doubt about Labour's actual fitness to govern on the other. And that's probably not as puzzlingly paradoxical as you might think.

Never ask for directions in Wales, you’d be washing spit out of your hair for a fortnight.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

When a man is tired of Leeds, he is tired of life.

(Samuel Johnson, more or less)

Say what you will about The Hipstershire Gazette, but they definitely had a sense of impending doom on the weekend before the fateful Rochdale by-election, with the twin vultures Galloway and Danczuk already circling above the carcass of Rochdale Labour. Galloway had obviously gone after the traditional Labour electorate all along, counting on discontent working for him. It didn't help either, on top of Galloway's aggressively incendiary campaign, that a number of local Labour activists publicly shifted their support to Danczuk in the fallout of the Azhar Ali debacle. All these events did not cheer the voters, and it's already summat of a miracle that 40% could be arsed to turn out. If I was in a joking mood, I would tell you that, if you want to know what Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions really look like, you just have to look at the Rochdale Labour Party. But it's hardly a joking matter that the once great Party Of The British Working Class has become such a running joke of factionalism and political posturing. Or maybe it is, isn't it? Then odds are they will learn nothing from that fucking trainwreck, write it off as an unlucky accident and move on. Which is probably not the right attitude now that the unthinkable has happened and Big Brother's Catman is back in Commons on an obsessively anti-Labour agenda. But Labour's Big Chance may be just beyond the event horizon now, as Catman is ready to desert Rochdale after just two weeks, for a race in which he would undoubtedly take a massive drubbing and look like a fucking twat.

I have singled out David Tully, a local businessman who campaigned on local issues, as coming second with one-fifth of the vote is quite a feat, spectacularly better than almost all independents at any Commons election. The most surprising part is clearly Simon Danczuk doing so poorly, as he looked poised to pick up the pieces and siphon a sizeable part of the Labour electorate. It backfired massively, as they turned to Galloway, and probably part of them to Tully too. Now the real question is what the fuck such a fiasco means for Labour in the grand scheme of things. Has it set a wrecking ball rolling, as George Galloway obviously expects? Or is it just a fly on the windshield that will be wiped off next time it rains? To be honest, nobody has the fuckiest scoobie, especially as generic polls do not show a significant drop in Labour's voting intentions in the North of England. Quite the opposite, in fact, and we have Redfield & Wilton's most recent poll of the Red Wall to prove it.

The voting intentions here are consistent with trends seen all across the North, and more favourable for Labour than what we usually see in the Midlands. There is even the now usual alarm, that the Reform UK vote is rising and benefiting from the collapse of the Conservative vote. Exactly what did not happen in Rochdale, where former Conservative voters have gambled on David Tully being the best anti-Galloway candidate. It looks like we need another by-election in the North West to test the robustness of both scenarios, and there may be one coming in Blackpool South. But it can happen only after the full House votes to suspend Scott Benton, and after a recall petition is launched and receives enough votes. And then we would have to wait another five weeks before the by-election. The Conservative whips are of course in no hurry to hold the vote, so we're probably talking late April or early May here. In the meanwhile, the Labour Party have to be content with Redfield & Wilton's findings, that put them first in the Red Wall's choice for the party most able to take care of the issues that matter most to them.

Of course, not all is perfect in that poll, mostly the rather high number of people who select Reform UK as their top choice to do well on the most pressing priorities. It is rather obvious that Reform UK take chunks from both the Conservatives and Labour here, as their best scores are on issues that can accommodate some variant of populist demagoguery more easily. Which only makes Labour's perennial dilemma more relevant, that trying to shoot two birds with the same scone may prove too much. Even more so if they try to get three birds in one go. Northern social conservatives, Muslims, Southern hipsters. There are definitely more ways than one in which a multi-pronged electoral strategy can fail, and Rochdale offered no clue here, as Labour were invisible and inaudible for the most important part of the by-election campaign. This is where a Blackpool South by-election could help, as its demographics are radically different from Rochdale's, despite being just some 50 miles apart as the drone flies. Labour could thusly test some campaign themes that would be more relevant to the North West as a whole, and also find out how their target audiences react to these in other parts of England. George Galloway being now busy elsewhere, not representing Rochdale in Commons, we can only expect less disruptive campaigning and more focus on the day-to-day issues in Blackpool.

I don’t care if he’s been rogering the Duke of York with a prize-winning leek. He shot my pigeon!

(General Melchett, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

The masses are worked up because they’re so poor they are forced to have children, simply to provide a cheap alternative to turkey at Christmas.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

In recent months, Keir Starmer has reached the envied but dubious, or dubious but envied if you like it better that way, status of Middle Class Hero. At least, that's what Redfield & Wilton's most recent update of their classic Blue Wall polling strongly implies. Or confirms, as we have already seen multiple hints of that in previous polls from different pollsters. A lot has been said already, including by me, about the constant gap between Labour's voting intentions and Keir Starmer's personal ratings, either as the people's preferred Prime Minister or in assessments of his credibility on a wide arrays of issues. This was quite significant in the South, where the two-horse race between Sunak and Starmer was always closer than in the rest of England, and Sunak's ratings on the issues were always better than his result as the preferred Prime Minister. So this new poll comes as quite a shocker as it is the first to say otherwise.

Of course, Keir Starmer still bags just a wee lead as the preferred PM, significantly smaller than in most GB-wide polls. But the key finding, which is a noticeable change from earlier polls, is that Starmer's average assessment on the main issues is pretty much the same as on his primeministerialability, when Rishi Sunak's is now quite markedly lower. We never had anything like that before, as the general trend was Starmer losing points when the focus shifted from a general assessment to the detailed issues, while Sunak always gained some. Starmer's better standing also has a ripple effect for the Labour Party, when the panel are asked about their level of trust, or distrust, in the two major parties. Redfield & Wilton probe their panel about a baker's dozen of issues, from which I extracted those the panel also choose as their main concerns and priorities. Ranked in order of importance from left to right. And the Labour Party do have an advantage here, even by a hare's breath on the economy, which was so far a Conservative forte in the eyes of the Southern electorate.

But has the Global South really recovered from its addiction to the Blues? The regional subsamples of all recent voting intentions poll say that it has, and this poll confirms it. The only caveat is that Redfield & Wilton's selection of Blue Wall seats is more likely to shift as they all voted Remain at the 2016 referendum, and also have a higher than average Liberal Democrat vote. These were even criteria for including these seats in the polling pool. But it does not invalidate the poll's findings, as it provides evidence of how far away from the Conservatives voters in these seats are ready to go. And that's a very significant 19% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, coupled with a drop in the Liberal Democrat vote because of tactical voting.

The fall in the LibDem vote is hugely significant, as Ed Davey relentlessly campaigned to prove that the Liberal Democrats were the best choice to defeat the Conservatives, especially in the South West. It worked for a while, with the Liberal Democrats transiently bagging more than 20% of voting intentions there, but it is now gone. This is in fact quite widespread, as the LibDems' voting intentions are now steadily under 10% GB-wide, and they will plausibly be outvoted by Reform UK at the general. Southern voters too have reached the conclusion that it is safer to deliver a strong Labour majority than to risk a hung Parliament, no matter how much they like the LibDems. It is also a convincing sign of the massive rejection of the Conservative Party, and that it is certainly too late now to do anything about it, especially when Rishi Sunak does not have the strongest response to public outrage about an openly racist and misogynist Tory donor. Even the mildly liberal middle-class Southerners are bound to be shocked by Sunak putting a £10m donation ahead of basic principles, and will not reward him for this.

Disease and deprivation stalk our land like two giant stalking things. And the working man is poised to overthrow us.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

When it’s coming up tea, and you’re bowling from the Surrey end, always save the yorker till last.

(Jeremy Aldermarten, Kavanagh QC: Heartland, 1995)

Among speculation about what might possibly be in the Spring Statement, Survation conducted a constituency-level poll of Godalming and Ash, a new constituency created by the 2023 Periodic Review, which is quite representative of the kind of recarving that happened in the South East of England. The Boundary Commission had to increase the number of seats in the region from 84 to 91, the largest increase in any region, in the region that already had the largest number of seats in the UK. This involved some creative redrawing, so Godalming and Ash was frankensteined from bits and pieces of four existing constituencies, all held by the Conservatives. Surrey South West (Jeremy Hunt), Guildford (Angela Richardson), Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and Mole Valley (Paul Beresford). The biggest chunk of the new seat comes from Surrey South West, so it was chosen as Jeremy Hunt's landing pad. Which looked like a good idea at the time, as the new seat would have been notionally more Conservative in 2019, but now the Survation poll says otherwise, quite spectacularly.

It definitely looks like Jeremy Hunt's spoilers about what could possibly be in the Spring Statement did not exactly go down well with voters, even Conservative ones. Not even his own variants of the War On Waste and War On Woke. It's not like he hadn't been forewarned by people who actually know how the economy works, is it? Before we go further, remember this is the new variant of South West Surrey, a seat that was not even part of the proverbial Blue Wall. Metaphorically, it's several miles behind The Wall, it's more like the Blue Keep with two moats in between. In its new incarnation as Godalming and Ash, it's almost a caricature of the Blue Leafy South East, seeing how many boxes it ticks. Think John Nettles-era Midsomer Murders and you're almost there. 94% ethnic White, 72% in the ABC1 social grades and 90% owning a car. The average household income is a third higher than the UK average, and house prices almost double. So what could possibly go wrong? Survation was quick to identify the causes. First they asked the Godalmingers what their main concerns are, and found out that the NHS and the cost of living top the list, as they do everywhere. So they probed a wee bit deeper, asking their panel which kind of bad things might have happened to them, in relation to both. And even in that typically Middle England neck of the woods, the NHS is not delivering.

I have reversed the usual colours here, as "Yes, it has happened" is the negative answer here and "No" is the positive. Here we see the all-too-familiar symptoms of an underfunded and dysfunctional NHS England. Difficulties getting an appointment and awful waiting times. It doesn't even help that a lot of them make enough dosh to afford private health care and dentistry, even down there people are also feeling the shockwave of the worst cost-of-living crisis since the end of wartime rationing, and have to resort to some self-imposed rationing in many cases, and not just on the luxuries. It's probably the most damning findings for the Conservatives generally, and for their Chancellor specifically. Even lifelong Tory posh toffs making £60k a year per household, and owning a £500k house, have a hard time making ends meet, and are coming at their once-favourite party with a vengeance, with poor old Jeremy being an obvious priority target.

It's quite frightening that, even in one of most Southern of all Southern seats, 8% of the residents have had to resort to a food bank. It is also quite revealing that, on all other items surveyed, their responses are not much different from what you would get from any random sample of the English electorate. The Conservatives have let down even their own voters, in a worse way than any government before them, and there has to be a price to pay. But, before this poll makes you too buoyant, rewind to crosstabs of current voting intentions with the 2019 votes, with undecideds and abstainers included. The Conservatives have the lowest proportion of returning voters, by a very wide margin, the highest proportion of past voters saying they won't vote this time, and the highest proportion of undecideds. This is a damning result for the Conservatives, but the uncertainty about what the undecideds will actually do introduces an element of fragility in the anti-Hunt coalition. Could he sneak through the cracks because of tactical voting, or rather the lack of it? It's quite a textbook case of why Labour and the Liberal Democrats should reach some sort of undercover agreement, which will offend only the Conservative Party, and divide the spoils between them. In Godalming and Ash, this clearly implies Labour toning down their campaign, no matter how strongly their activists on the ground want to go on a Hunt hunt, and letting the LibDems have it.

When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

I find the Great Northern and Metropolitan Sewage System interesting. But that doesn’t mean that I want to put on some rubber gloves and pull things out of it with a pair of tweezers.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

Sadiq Khan is a lucky man indeed, luckier even then Keir Starmer. First the now infamously famous Lee Anderson accused him of being summat sockpuppeted by radical Islamists, and not only refused to apologise for it, but doubled down on it and then threatened to defect to Reform UK if his Conservative comrades kept on denying him the right to be his true self. Which Richard Tice will undoubtedly not just allow, but encourage, now that 30p-Lee has done it. Then former Minister for London Paul Scully, who was once a plausible candidate for Mayor of London, put his foot straight into deep shit by calling Tower Hamlets a no-go zone, for which he apologised. But you could argue Scully was only half-wrong. Tower Hamlets may not be a no-go zone, but it has become a danger zone for Labour with the triumphant return of Lutfur Rahman in 2022. To make Khan's week even better than it already was, his Tory opponent Susan Hall also went hyperbolic about Islam and Jews and tropes. And the cherry on the cake came from where you least expected it, from actual Islamo-fascists threatening Khan over his denunciation of terrorism. In the meanwhile, a YouGov poll about the incoming Mayoral election found Khan conclusively ahead, in as good a position as he could possibly wish.

The sequence of polls about the Mayoral election say that he is clearly out of reach of his opponents, and that the few polls that said otherwise were outliers. The switch to first-past-the-post, instead of the earlier supplementary vote system, has no impact as Khan is now 9% up on his 2021 result and just a cat's whisper away from an outright majority of the popular vote. Which makes him whining that he is the victim here, because of first-past-the-post and mandatory photo ID and whatnot, quite ridiculous. Even Khan's most offensive outbursts of performative wokeism haven't altered the trends, and there is again a massive contradiction involved, as his approval ratings are far from stellar, even among Labour voters.

Almost half of Londoners have a negative opinion of Khan, and not even half of Labour voters have a positive opinion. Oddly, Liberal Democrats also grant him a net positive, but he otherwise gets net negatives in all demographics. Except the TikTok generation, but so many of them are unable to articulate an opinion that it makes their support summat irrelevant, especially as they are also the least likely to actually show up to vote. So there is definitely nothing even remotely like a "Khan Coalition" in London, even less so than a "Starmer Coalition" across the UK. This way, Khan's plausibly inevitable victory is even more serendipitous than Starmer's, and just as much of a success by default. Khan even has an asset that Starmer doesn't have. He's the incumbent, the devil they know, on top of the other lot being even more miserably lame. I have also indulged again in that risky exercise, predicting the plausible results for the London Assembly from a Mayoral election poll, this time the last YouGov poll. And it says Labour would bag a majority of seats.

In case you wonder, even a purely proportional system can deliver a majority of seats for the first party if it has a big enough plurality of the popular vote. That's the basic maths of the highest-averages method, and it works perfectly when the opposition vote is split between a large number of lists. But this election should not be London Labour's main concern now, as something worse could happen as the fully intended consequence of a butterfly effect from, of all places, Rochdale. In his incredibly vindictive anti-Labour rant after the count, George Galloway signaled his intent to endanger Labour in various places and mentioned Ilford. To decode the threat, just look at Ilford North, Wes Streeting's seat. There is already a "pro-Palestine" candidate there, who is the perfect choice to receive Galloway's endorsement. If Catman has resources for only 60 select seats, as he implied in his Rochdale speech, Ilford North will obviously be one of them. And we can expect another ugly divisive campaign, stoking the fires of hate and shamelessly exploiting the communitarian, religious and ethnic divides. You've been warned, Wes Streeting.

What’s wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activists or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

(Rowan Atkinson)

No matter who tries to stand in our way, they should know that we will respond immediately. And the consequences will be such as you have never faced in your entire history.

(Vladimir Putin, 27 September 2022)

It's been just over two years now, when Russia started its criminal war of aggression against Ukraine. YouGov have been tracking British attitudes to this war since the beginning, literally since the day it began. They had ceased to update their full array of trackers in June last year, when the situation seemed to be getting better for Ukraine after early successes in their counter-offensive, and before procrastination in the West forced it to stall. For the second anniversary of the fateful day, they have updated their data, polling the UK, the USA and six European Union countries (France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Italy) that are also members of NATO. Their conclusion is that attitudes have barely changed over the last year. I will focus first on the British attitudes, comparing what YouGov found in their very first survey two years ago, on the first anniversary one year ago, and this year. Their conclusion is broadly correct, though not in all cases, as even the UK shows some signs of the "Ukraine fatigue" Vladimir Putin is counting on to reach his criminal imperialist goals. But, even when this happens, our support for Ukraine is still marvelously high, unlike some other countries.

On the first four items tracked by YouGov, it's interesting to see that sanctions against Russia are the only one seeing a drop in support. But the increase in opposition is barely significant, which means that the Russian propaganda, relayed by Kremlin-bribed influencers here, that sanctions are not working and are hurting us more than them, hasn't actually gained much traction. The British public are informed enough to know that, if the sanctions are not working as efficiently as we hoped, the reason is solely that greed-motivated individuals and businesses on our side help Russia circumvent them. But this is not a valid reason to water them down, quite the opposite actually after Alexei Navalny's murder, another crime Vladimir Putin must be held accountable for. Of the second batch of four items tracked by YouGov, the most important is obviously the first, the supply of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. Support for this remains reassuringly high, even higher that it was in the early days of the invasion and just a wee smitch lower than a year ago.

This is an important result, as Ukraine is relentlessly asking for more, and they are right. The British public are not falling for the argument that money spent on this would be better spent at home, which is one of the key soundbites of the populist Putin-enablers all across the West. The truth is that we should take our cues fro Denmark, who have decided to send all their field artillery, the famous French-built Caesar guns, to Ukraine. It's not a bold gamble, it's the recognition that our first line of defence is no longer on the beaches. It's in Eastern Ukraine, and we have not just a moral obligation, but also a very selfish motive, to help Ukraine defeat Russia with all we have. They are our first line of defence, and we can't allow Russia to pierce it. It's as simple as that. Only very deluded post-Marxists can swallow Putin's lie, that Russia has no territorial ambitions beyond Donbas. Vlad The Butcher has made it clear many years ago already, and again in his infamous interview with Tucker Carlson last month. His purpose in life is to restore the Soviet Empire as it was in the days of his role model Josef Stalin. That's probably the only time in his whole life he hasn't lied, and we must take him at his word here, and act accordingly. It starts with sending Ukraine all they ask, all they need, and enough on top of that to make it clear to Vladimir Putin that we will never waver and submit.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy never sort of berated me for our failure to give enough, fast enough. He’s been very philosophical, but then very clever. He’s come back and asked for the next best thing as fast as possible.

(Boris Johnson)

Doesn’t anyone know that we hate the French? We fight wars against them! Did all those men die in vain on the field at Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc simply wasting good matches?

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

The British public may have sent a reassuring message to Ukraine, but the same cannot be said of all European nations. But it shows in ways that probably say more about their domestic politics than about their official attitudes, as there are cases where public opinions are clearly at odds with their governments' positions. One of the factors is probably that the polling was conducted before the murder of Alexei Navalny, that has driven several countries into a harder stance against Russia, and its effect on public opinions will have to be assessed in later polls. The other reason is that the key pro-Putin political players are not part of government in any of the countries surveyed, so any influence they may have on public opinion means jack shit when policy decisions are made. YouGov probed their panels about sanctions against Russia, with two option to cover more ground, to just maintain the current level or to increase it with the introduction of new ones. The responses are quite similar for both options, but there are visible differences from one country to the next.

I did not include the 'maintain' option in my earlier summary of British attitudes because YouGov introduced it late in their tracking, so there are no results for February 2022 and February 2023. We clearly see two blocs here. The UK, the USA, Sweden, Denmark and Spain on one side. France, Germany and Italy on the other. It is a common finding in such polls that countries with a stronger presence of both the far-left and the far-right, like France, are less likely to be strongly supportive of Ukraine. Russia is obviously working on it, and seeking to expand its toxic influence, through a network of Kremlin-bribed lobbyists embedded in far-right political parties. While there is no obvious Russian interference within government, Emmanuel Macron has also been ambiguous for a long time, which certainly influenced French public opinion, and his recent turnaround to a decidedly hawkish posture has fueled the fires of pro-Putin faux pacifists. It's even worse in Germany, where Olaf Scholz's procrastination has a lot to do with Russian corruption deep at the heart of his own party, the Social Democrats. Italy stands out as a sore thumb here, as their Prime Minister is pro-Ukraine and pro-NATO, but some in her government coalition are highly ambiguous, and you surely have to see the impact of the vast network of Kremlin-bribed influencers there too. There are quite similar divides when YouGov surveys options that imply a more direct involvement.

"Reinforcing NATO's Eastern flank", as the official jargon goes, has always been a contentious issue, even if some countries have contributed to it. But it is almost a moot point, now that the real main issue is continued support for Ukraine's military efforts. It is a self-evident truth that they have been thwarted by our own weakness, drawing imaginary red lines that never existed in Putin's mind, to justify procrastination and cowardice. Russian imperialism is an existential threat for us, and Ukraine are our bulwark against it, probably the last one. That's why it is depressing to see such low levels of support for the delivery of essential weaponry in so many countries. But it oddly also highlights one of many inconsistencies and contradictions in attitudes across Europe. Believe it or not, the dominant opinion is that we haven't done enough to help Ukraine militarily, even in countries that have reservations about actually doing it. It is an even stronger feeling now than it was a year ago, except in Spain where it is just stable. The USA were not probed by YouGov on that specific item a year ago, but their position today is also to support doing more, even if it's by a low margin comparable to reluctant Germany.

An extended version of this poll, conducted by YouGov across twelve European Union countries, excluding the UK and the USA, has been extensively dissected by The Hipstershire Gazette with some plausible ulterior motives it is probably best not to probe too deeply. It found that the dominant feeling is that Ukraine can't win and that the most likely outcome is a "compromise settlement". But we all know that there is no such thing as a "compromise solution", because Vladimir Putin assigns the same meaning to the word "compromise" as Adolf Hitler, unconditional capitulation, and understands nothing but brute force and very direct counter-threats. Polls like this are no more than preemptive ex post facto excuses for our own failures, supporting only circular reasoning for a self-fulfilling prophecy going like, "Ukraine losing is evidence that it would have been a waste of our resources to deliver the weapons that would have helped Ukraine win". It's more than time to awaken to the harsh reality, and pay more attention to the fine points of what Emmanuel Macron has to say to shake us into that rude awakening, because he is right to show some teeth. Appeasing Russian fascists will not bring peace, it will just put more threats and dangers across our path. Just like appeasing the Nazis did 85 years ago. Will we ever learn?

We may use nuclear weapons, but definitely not in Ukraine, we still have to live there. But if we turn the British Isles into a Martian desert in three minutes flat, they won’t respond.

(Vladimir Solovyov, Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, Russia-1, 2023)

Jeremy's Den

17/03/2024

Power To The People

We Must Be Dreaming