Jeremy's Den: April 2024

The best way to take control over a people, and control them utterly, is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.
(Adolf Hitler, Main Kampf, 1924)

All that is necessary for evil to triumph, said Burke, is for good men to do nothing. And most good men nowadays can be relied upon to do precisely that. Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish.
(Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What's Left Of It, 2005)

If you want to know what a Zombie Apocalypse looks like, go no further than the House of Commons. I didn't make that up, Harriet Harman did, the former Labour Minister who was the UK's first Minister for Women in 1997, and is now standing down after 42 years as an MP. That's pretty much the current mood at the Palace of Westminster, including among Conservative MPs. Everybody knows it, the Tories are finished, washed up, fucked. The sooner the election comes, the better, says everybody except Rishi Sunak. And possibly Humza Yousaf too, if he can be arsed to pay attention to the polls. But Labour was obviously dealt a devastating, and possibly, lethal, blow when Owen Jones announced he had cancelled his membership of the party. Naw, just kidding, they fucking didn't. And reprinting it from The Hipstershire Gazette to The Scottish Pravda didn't change anything, as nobody either side of The Border gives a frying duck. Not even more unhinged shitweaseling, undercover campaigning for the Tories, can change the basic facts, that Labour are able to maintain a massive lead over the Conservatives, no matter what anyone says or does, including Labour themselves.

To be honest, and I have said it before, people who are criticising Keir Starmer for shifting to the right are missing the point. Starmer has given up on being Blair 2.0 a long time ago. The Labour Party are not channeling their Inner Thatcher either, even if some recent statements may make you think otherwise. Starmer has another cunning plan, and you need look no further than the White Cliffs of Calais to find out what it is. Becoming the English Macron. Familiarise yourself with Macron's ideological twists and turns, and you will see that the glove fits. This is a bold gamble, and possibly a risky strategy, so some people have warned Starmer that Labour's current lead may well shrink on Election Day. They usually refer to the 1997 election as an example, as Labour's lead then was higher than today in most polls, and then went down to 12% on Election Day. So I dove deep into past polls, to check what actually happened in 1997, and compare it with what we have now.

I assumed that our election would happen in early November, as an October election would be awkward because of the long Conference Recess. So I traced polls covering one year, from May 1996 to April 1997, compared to what we have since November 2023. The figures are the weighted average of polls, calculated week by week. There are more wild variations in the pre-1997 polls because there were far fewer than today, sometimes not even one per week, and it increased only in the last three months. This is in sharp contrast with today, as we have had an average of six polls per week since the 2019 election, and sometimes more than one per day. It's hard to draw a definitive conclusion from all this, as the 1997 polls were prone to quite wild random variations, while a larger number of 2024 polls makes them more consistent through time. But the political climate, and the obvious desperation in the Conservative camp, make it quite plausible that Labour's lead will remain in the same region, and possibly even increase, when we get closer to the long-awaited Election Day.

To make up for its lack of a moral compass, the British public is prey to sudden gusts of kitschy sentimentality followed by vehement outrage, encouraged by the cheap and cynical sensationalism of its press. Spasms of self-righteousness are its substitute for the moral life.
(Theodore Dalrymple, Who Killed Childhood?, 2004)

All governments suffer a recurring problem. Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

(Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965)

There has been some fracas a few weeks ago about the UK Government's new definition of extremism, as laid out by Michael Gove. This was bound to be problematic, like past attempts to define hate crime, that basically ended up sounding like the proverbial definition of pornography, "I can't say what it is, but I know it when I see it". Michael Gove himself must have felt he was skating on thin ice here, as he hid behind the ancestral Parliamentary Privilege to mention specific examples of extremism, instead of doing the breakfast TV rounds with them. This of course led to Gove being called to come down to the nearest Wetherspoons parking lot for a manly confrontation. There is of course a massive irony in this, that it fell into the same news cycle as the controversy over Frank Hester's openly racist remarks, which definitely fit Gove's definition of extremism, and his donations to the Conservative Party. What extremism is and how a democratic society can protect itself from it can be debated until the Sun turns supernova, and the matter wouldn't be exhausted. But you can look at it from different angles, like More In Common did, starting with which actions the public finds acceptable, to deal with extremism.

It is interesting to see that the Great British Public, who are massively suspicious of any attack on free speech and civil liberties, also approve of police actions that can be described as restrictions on free speech and civil liberties. The wording of the options is of course a wee bit weighted, and plausibly biased, as you can't miss the obvious connection with recent Free Palestine and Just Stop Oil protests. But the organisers of these protests can only blame themselves if their actions are considered abusive by the public, especially when these actions are of a repetitive nature. This begs the follow-up question, about which forms of protest or political activism the public consider legitimate and acceptable, and More In Common dutifully surveyed that too. Interestingly, the Great British Public approve of the more traditional means of protest, including the use of social media, that has become quite mainstream now. But they don't condone targeted actions that would potentially endanger somebody's personal safety, or lead to genuine hate speech. Which sounds quite sensible, even if the question did not cover all modes of protest that have emerged over the last few years.

So we will not know, at least for now, what the British public think of activists blocking roads, or damaging works of art. I have a hunch a majority would have found both unacceptable, regardless of their opinion of the government's restrictive policies. Michael Gove was also a victim of bad scheduling, as his announcement collided with the passing of a new law in Hong Kong, weaponising the very fuzzy notion of national security to further quash dissent and harass dissenters. This signaled the complete alignment of the "special administrative region" with repressive policies already enforced in the rest of China, and final demise of the "one country, two systems" myth. Even in a functioning democracy, there is always the suspicion that governments will abuse abstract notions such as national security, or the even fuzzier concept of 'reasonable' restrictions, to jeopardise civil liberties and free speech. It is legitimate because it has already happened, even if the UK is not the worst offender here. But you can only wonder how far the British public would allow the government to go, before chuntering discontent turns into open rebellion and public disobedience.

It’s a tricky question, but not as tricky as, “what’s the difference between a pickle and a gherkin?”

(Lee Mack)

You don’t have to believe it, you just have to say it. There is no harm in discretion.

(Thomas Cromwell, The Tudors, 2009)

Since times immemorial, and even before the first drag queens took the stage in Ancient Nineveh, pollsters have been using well-oiled and perennial lines of questioning about politicians. Do the people like them? approve of their politics? find them competent? find them electable? would let them walk their dog? More In Common have given this another angle of attack, asking their panel if Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are assets for their respective parties. Sadly they omitted the obvious mirror question, whether or not they are assets for the other party. But I guess it can be easily deduced form the replies to the actual question. First we learn that Brits are split three-ways about Keir Starmer, and I have a hunch even more would have gone negative until they realised the only alternatives are Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting. Ye ken, the devil you know...

Even with a dismal overall rating, Keir Starmer has one significant positive. A strong majority of Labour voters agree that he is an asset for the Party. Rishi Sunak doesn't even have that, as less than half of Conservative voters consider him an asset, and almost a third think he is not. In another recent poll, these same voters gave Rishi Sunak a shot across the baws. More than a third wanted him gone, and fewer than half wanted him to stay. Even the Old Geezers who cast their first vote at the Macmillan election are not really fond of him. This is why Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, both superb assets for the Labour Party, trying to sabotage Sunak definitely makes sense. If defeat is inexorably written in the stars, then do your best to make it a fucking bloodbath, so you can get rid of the bloke who would have resigned anyway. Even Machiavelli hadn't thought of that one.

All of this adds only one layer of faux puzzlement to the perennial question, why the fuck are people ready to propel Labour to Number Ten if they have such a dim view of Keir Starmer? What are Keir's real qualities, other than being the best candidate by default? If the people are so keen on getting rid of the Tories, while harbouring doubts about Labour, why are the Liberal Democrats and the SNP free-falling in the polls? And, most important of all, why are more and more people inclined to think that Reform UK would be a better opposition to a Labour government than the Conservatives? It says a lot about the sorry state of British politics that Keir Starmer will enter Number Ten as the least popular new Prime Minister in recorded history, and also the one with the least political capital to spend. Which can only be the entry point to a very slippery slope of perpetual discontent.

If you’re the sort of person who worries about personal criticism, if you’re the sort of person who allows the attacks from others to get under your skin, you shouldn’t be leader.

(Michael Gove, Leadership bid launch, 2016)

I don’t want an eagle, they can soar too high. Be a pigeon and shit on everything.

(Thomas Wolsey, The Tudors, 2007)

A lot has already been said about the comments made by Frank Hester, a major Conservative donor, about Diane Abbott. The combination of blunt racism and sexism, on top of a death threat, has definitely gone down very badly with the Great British Public and triggered widespread indignation and reprobation. While there is plausible cause for Hester to be taken to court by Abbott, for real hate speech and not the Scottish variant of it, the political reactions have been quite puzzling. The Labour Party did not offer unconditional support, and even managed to get themselves embroiled in another self-inflicted controversy, about whether or not Abbott should be restored the whip in return for standing down at the incoming election. It's quite flabbergasting that nobody in Peter Mandelson's focus groups signaled how fucking outrageous that was at that precise moment. But the Conservatives did not handle it better, thinking that a half-hearted rebuke would end the matter. It didn't, it stuck, and demands to return the money Hester had donated grew even louder with time. Of course, this had to be polled, so Opinium did it, with summat eyebrow-raising results.

We have become used to calls for cleaner and less corrupt politics, but only half of Brits think the Tories should have returned the money, while a third have no problem with them keeping it. It's not even a true generational divide, as the TikTok generation and the Boomers are pretty much in agreement about it. It's also quite amusing to see England emerging of this survey as more 'ethical' than Scotland and Wales, with half as many thinking that the Tories should have just taken the money and run. Having the spotlight squarely on the Conservatives right now must not make us forget the bigger picture, that all parties have accepted donations from very objectionable sources quite regularly, even those on the left. This incident clearly raises the broader issue of political funding, and Opinium submitted a wide array of options to their panel, to be assessed as acceptable or unacceptable.

There are also surprises and contradictions in these findings. A mix of membership fees and fundraisers looks like the public's favourite option, but immediately begs the follow-up question, how do you regulate fundraisers? My hunch is that the public would agree to a limit on the amounts, just as they do with individual donations, but that is not specified in the poll's wording, and thusly remains unresolved. The poll also did not include the option of combining public funding and regulated private funding, which is common practice in European Union countries. It does not, all by itself, eliminate corruption, but makes it far more difficult and far more visible when it happens. At the other end of the spectrum, the United States are the textbook case of unregulated private and corporate funding opening the door wide to corruption, though its supporters would probably just call it 'influence', which doesn't make it better. The current legislation about political funding in the UK is summat of a mixed bag, neither totally corrupt nor totally transparent, but with enough loopholes in it to make embarrassing situations likely. The current Hester situation is just one very visible example, and not even the most scandalous despite the racist and sexist context. Just think of all the 'Cash For' scandals, and the lack of fully convincing safeguards since they happened.

You can go on, and on, and on about the past... but I'm not really that interested in the past.

(Kwasi Kwarteng)

Religion is like a penis. It’s a perfectly fine thing for one to have and take pride in, but when one takes it out and waves it in my face, we have a problem.

(Maggie Smith)

The Henry Jackson Society, a neoliberal-cum-neoconservative think tank based in the City of Westminster, have found it reasonably clever to commission a poll from JL Partners, comparing the attitudes of British Muslims with those of the general population of These Isles, and then enroll The Torygraph to deliver their verdict on a handful of cherry-picked findings of that poll. Which, in the current flammable mood of The Realm, is quite risky business, like stuffing a live grenade into a can of worms and chucking it into an underground minefield using a cricket bat. And then doubling down on it by asking only people who agree with your scripted remarks about the poll's findings to comment on it further. Which is as credibly "non partisan" as The Hipstershire Gazette soliciting Freddy McConnell to comment on the Cass Review. The Torygraph also chose to headline with the poll's most 'shocking' findings, and barely mentioned the fifteen items linked to a broader conception of society, its legal foundations and how it should handle sensitive and possibly controversial issues. But there is a lot of food for thought in that part too.

So we see that Muslims are more likely to be socially conservative than the average Brit, and also more likely to want tenets of their faith prominently featured in common law and public life. The comparison with the general population is not the most relevant here, as 40% of Brits say they have no religion at all. It would have been more relevant to poll Church of England only, or Catholics only, and see where the differences with Muslims were. I'm quite sure the socially conservative attitudes and the commitment to religion in public life would have been much closer in both cases. Or ask animal rights campaigners about mandatory use of vegetarian food in school meals, and you would probably find massive support too. I'm not saying the poll is totally irrelevant, just that it knowingly used a basis for comparisons that could only increase differences, and in that respect it is biased. The rest of the poll's surveyed items is hardly better, as it ventures further into issues that are typical 'culture wars' stuff. And it again conveniently finds that British Muslims are, as Owen Jones would call any other community expressing the exact same views, 'hateful bigots'. Then the saddest flaw in biased polling and pre-scripted comments on it is that it totally misses the real issue. How an extremist fringe of politically radicalised islamists are trying to boost their influence on British politics, using the same tricks as the Putinists and transgenderists. Spreading fake news, obfuscating, testing the limits of the people's tolerance and cosplaying victim when they're rebuked.

There is an obvious logic in a conservative think tank and a conservative paper aiming the spotlight at Muslims, and avoiding a discussion of prejudice and bigotry among Christians, which I would have welcome as a devout practising atheist. But they also forgot another angle of attack, that would have been just as revealing and much more fun to watch. Single out a reliable sample of 1,000ish militants from the Loony Woke Left, Novara Media Tendency, and ask them only the questions about Hamas, Israel and Palestine, and 'Jewish Power'. I have a very strong hunch their replies would be fairly close, and in many cases even more shocking, that what the poll found, and The Torygraph relished to stress, from British Muslims. But they wouldn't go down that road, as that would be abhorrently unfair, and we wouldn't want to deprive the middle-class metropolitan wokesters of the benefits of 'white privilege', would we?

Can we permit a religious creed to be immune from criticism simply because its adherents claim that this criticism is insulting? Criticism of ideas or religion must be allowed, even if those criticisms are harsh or aggressive.

(Joe Channing, Judge John Deed: War Crimes, 2007)

Everything is interrelated and what we see with our eyes is only a shallow form of a much deeper reality.

(Jared Morehu, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2015)

Pollsters have slowed down quite noticeably earlier this month, so I transiently feared I would have to go for a smaller Poll'O'Polls, to avoid picking two from the same pollster. But pollsters have gone back to serious business now, and I have a Mash Of Seven this time, conducted over the last ten days. The super-sample is 12,094 with a 0.89% theoretical margin of error. And you can see there are quite visible fluctuations from one poll to the next. But all are potentially a nightmare scenario for the Conservatives, and not in a good way. Spoiler alert: the weighted average of this batch says Labour is leading by 21.8%, a bigger lead than a month ago. And they're also leading by 1% in Scotland, whatever the SNP says.

What is most striking in the weighted average of these polls is that the Labour vote in England is much more evenly spread that ever before, more than at any election in recorded history. And so is the Conservative vote, in an obvious ripple effect. The main surprise is seeing the Liberal Democrats doing better in the Midlands than in the South, which is a complete waste of good votes, as they are distant third fiddles in Con-Lab battlegrounds there and their only serious prospect is holding their by-election gain in North Shropshire. But that's not the most important new finding in this new batch of polls, as the LibDems are not a threat to anyone. Reform UK are, and have now reached the third place in the popular vote, with especially strong support in the North of England. Which will come as a surprise only to those who weren't paying attention, or entertained the delusion that Reform UK's crash landing at the Rochdale by-election doomed them once and for all.

This recent rise of Reform UK looks interestingly quite like what happened already in France. If you go back 20 years in French electoral history, you get a feeling of déjà vu here. Because their National Front, now self-identifying as the National Rally, started along the same patterns. Attracting former left-wing voters in the post-industrial wastelands in the North and East, as well as older voters along the South Coast. They played on the discontent of those who felt left behind by a liberal globalisation and were quick to blame the mythical 'Brussels', and those who fancied themselves the 'first line of defence' against trans-Mediterranean immigration. Poll after poll shows history repeating itself in These Isles, which will surprise only those who never paid attention. If Keir Starmer fancies himself the English Macron, as I think he does, he should beware the English Le Pen. Who will not be Richard Tice, but a triumphantly returning Nigel Farage, who I suspect is just biding his time for now and waiting for the right moment to stage a comeback.

What we see is what we think we see. And what’s really there is most likely something we haven’t even seen.

(Jared Morehu, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2015)

Winning is easy. It’s how you lose that makes you real winners.

(Arnie Langstone, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2015)

The Conservatives may think they’ve bought themselves some time, with Rishi Sunak procrastinating about the election date, but the worry now is that they may have already used it. Today's seat projection is just more evidence, with Labour projected to bag a 290-seat working majority, better than any Labour Prime Minister in history ever achieved. The Liberal Democrats too are benefiting from the terminal state of decay of the Conservative Party, despite also losing many votes, and are coming closer to Ed Davey's Magic Number, 40 seats. Reform UK are strong enough to inflict some scratches to Labour in Yorkshire, but not enough to derail the tsunami. At the end of the day, their presence still harms the Conservatives more. So what could possibly go wrong now? Other than everything that can possibly go wrong, that is.

Quite surprisingly, as there was no ongoing lobbying for it, We Think polled their panel earlier this month on how they would vote if the House of Commons was elected on proportional representation. They found that the change would lower the vote shares for both Labour and the Conservatives, and boost "Others", like small local parties and independent candidates. Which does not mean you would get a massive number of independent MPs, as a vote share almost as big as the LibDems' would actually be split between a whole spectrum of minor lists. I have attempted a simulation, assuming the vote in England would involve nine regional lists and not a mahoosive national one, then factoring in either no threshold for representation or a 5% threshold. The comparison is with the seat projection from the same poll's standard question, which was less good for Labour than average. The poll did not include Northern Ireland, so you only have the 632 seats from This Big Isle. And both simulations say that a coalition of Labour and the Liberal Democrats would be enough for a majority. Which is good news as they would not need to seek help from the Greens, and would thusly avoid kowtowing to the toxic caricature of woke extremism the Greens now embody, in England as much as in Scotland.

We also had two of the now fashionable huge-sample MRP polls at the end of last month. One from YouGov with a GB-wide sample of 18,761. One from Survation, on behalf of Best For Britain, with a GB-wide sample of 15,029. In both cases, the pollster also offered a seat projection, based on what the MRP deduces from the GB-wide results, for each seat. Both confirmed the well known trend, that the Conservatives are heading for a massive drubbing, and that Keir Starmer will plausibly get a bigger majority than Tony Blair. From where I sit, another useful contribution is that both included subsamples for Scotland, Wales and London that are big enough to be included in my sequences of Full Scottish, Full Welsh and Full Londoner. I'll come to that further down the road. Just rest assured, for now, that neither delivered any weird or upsetting seat projection. Just more hints that Labour will be the big winners, and that the SNP too should brace themselves for a hurtful Election Night.

You can't call us losers just because we haven't won.

(Sam Breen, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2015)

I’m slightly concerned for Scottish police, though, if it’s taken them a year to find Gary the Gorilla.

(Jon Richardson, Have I Got News For You?, 5 April 2024)

Scotland's Great Matter right now is of course Humza Yousaf's Hate Crime Act coming into force on April Fools Day. There was definitely a sense of civil disobedience brewing since we were reminded of that fateful event by really terrible communication from Police Scotland, including the infamous Hate Monster, that instantly became a target of infinite jest, before being mysteriously disappeared. The Scottish Pravda ignored the ruckus for more than a week, until they thought they had found an angle of attack in statements by J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk. It would have been more convincing if they hadn't resorted to a transparent dogwhistle, designed to dismiss them as billionaires under far-right influence. Which is the basic knee-jerk reaction of the woke mob, as everybody who does not kowtow to their Articles of Faith is obviously a fascist. Nicola Sturgeon's close friend Val McDermid has certainly become one as she voiced her concerns about threats to freedom of speech in The Times, that well-known far-right publication. No shit, Sherlock. Then came what I like to think was the final nail in the coffin for this absurd legislation, The Curious Incident Of Murdo Fraser In The Database. When a lacklustre Tory MSP stands up as a champion of free speech and does all the legal legwork for those who will be later accused of a fake crime.

It was indeed quite fun, or possibly quite sad, to hear some SNP zealots going, "if you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear", or summat similar from the collection of tough-on-crime mantras we usually expect from Sue-Ellen Braverman. It was odd to see them doubling down on their narrative, when the top coppers in Scotland publicly denounced the new legislation as dangerous and unworkable. It was also quite revealing that even the usually woke-friendly Hipstershire Gazette could not find any serious argument to support Humza Yousaf's position, other than his own statements, and had to acknowledge the opponents' talking points instead, including criticism of the infamous 'non-crime hate incidents'. Then April Fools Day came and went, and nothing happened, as later reports showed the whole machinery being clogged by thousands of frivolous reports, and even The Scottish Pravda had to admit the Scottish government had made complete clowns of themselves. It was like a cross between a dud and an own goal, and even summat of a farce when the Polis had to publicly admit they would take no action against J.K. Rowling after she baited them into doing just that. Perhaps the absurdly bureaucratic Online Ratting Form acted as a weapon of mass deterrence, who knows? But that sequence will certainly not improve the SNP's or Humza's popularity ratings, that were polled by IPSOS a few days before April Fools Day.

Before you ask, IPSOS probed their panel only with qualitative questions. They did not poll voting intentions for any referendum or election, sadly. But there are nevertheless some interesting results in here. The most obvious being that Humza Yousaf, after one year in power, is less popular than Nicola Sturgeon, even after a whole year where various revelations about her tenure have surfaced. If you consider the net ratings, discounting those who don't have a firm opinion, the Scottish Branch Office of the Labour Party is more popular than the SNP. To hammer the point home, Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer are both more popular than Humza Yousaf. This makes the Conservatives' ratings pretty much irrelevant, as they are nowhere near being competitive in any Scottish poll, whereas Labour clearly are, and could also be boosted by the Scottish public's assessment of the SNP's performance in government, which was also surveyed by IPSOS.

This shows a massively unfavourable assessment, with double-digit net negatives on all issues except the climate crisis, which bags 'only' a net -7. The SNP's usual excuse is that their freedom of action is limited by Westminster, even on devolved matters, because they never get the appropriate level of funding through the Barnett Formula. Which is certainly partly true, but does nothing to address the public's concerns about very costly and inefficient policies like the Deposit Return Scheme, which was doomed by badly-drafted legislation right from the start. Even if they tried to blame the UK government for the fiasco, the Scottish Government themselves had admitted earlier that the scheme was not solid enough to succeed. Incidents like this one obviously stay in peoples' memory and can only undermine their trust in all policies, even those who have real merit on their own. But the real problem is clearly a lack of professionalism on the government's side, which has been highlighted many times, and a tendency to fast-track measures that are seen as ineffective virtue-signalling, and disregard expert advice. Which can only lead to predictable own goals and more public discontent.

In a full democracy, ideas alone don’t undermine anyone’s peace. The legislation about this is the usual buggers’ muddle nowadays.

(Monty Everard, Judge John Deed: War Crimes, 2007)

No one expects politicians to be angels, we expect them to produce sensible and workable laws.

(Suzanne Moore)

Another can of worm has been opened recently, which could lead to a very divisive and confusing debate, that of assisted dying. For once, neither the SNP nor the Scottish Greens are responsible for venturing into that minefield. Liam McArthur, the Liberal Democrat MSP for Orkney, started it when he tabled his Assisted Dying For Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill at the end of March. It is considered a public health matter, so it is devolved in Scotland, but there is a real possibility of the issue being raised in England and Wales too, in which case the House of Commons would have to vote on it. Whatever happens, MSPs and possibly MPs would have to make their own mind here without the oven-ready cover of 'best international practice', as legislation varies substantially from one country to the next. Foreign experience can nevertheless be used to avoid provisions that have been likened to eugenics in other countries, most notably Canada. McArthur's proposal opened the door to significant change, so of course had to be speed-polled. Which Opinium instantly did, with a poll conducted only in Scotland and with a sample of over 4,000, which makes the results really significant. The first step in the survey was of course about support to the concept of assisted dying.

The results of this poll are unequivocal, and offer a strong argument to campaigners who support the bill. 78% of Scots support the right for anyone to seek assisted dying, and here the problems start. Because the wording of the question mentions only this, and says nothing about the person offering assistance to someone who seeks assisted dying, Furthermore, it also specifically asks about legislation 'in the UK', not in Scotland. In a way, which kind of works against the poll's intended purpose, the significant differences between Scots Law and legislation that applies to England and Wales make its lines of questioning almost irrelevant to the actual debate that McArthur's bill could trigger in Scotland. Other than identifying public support for a rather vaguely worded principle, and showing that it applies in similar proportions across all commonly used demographics and politics. But other crosstabs also offer a preview of which parts of the electorate are more likely to oppose a change in legislation.

There is definitely nothing surprising in these cross-sections of the Scottish population. A strong divide along religious lines has always existed about what is literally a life-and-death issue, and you would see something quite close in crosstabs with non-religious philosophical beliefs. The crosstabs with ethnicity are less relevant, as they could lead to over-simplification, and probably reveal nothing more than which religious denomination is more or less dominant in a given ethnicity, and thusly likely to influence their responses. This does not resolve the poll's in-built ambiguity, which is in fact further highlighted by the follow-up question. Though relying on a Scottish panel only, Opinium did not ask how people wanted their MSP to vote specifically on McArthur's bill, but how they wanted their MP to vote if something similar was hypothetically tabled in the House of Commons after the next general election.

It is quite predictable to find significant support for MPs voting according to their conscience, as a lot of people expect their MP to do just that all the time, rather than toeing the party line. It is also quite obvious that no party would whip their MPs one way or the other here, but would instead grant them a free vote. There's always the risk that MPs or MSPs would not actually vote according to their conscience, but according to what they imagine their constituents think. This is probably why earlier attempts to legalise assisted dying were defeated once in the House of Commons, and twice in the Scottish Parliament. And also why several Scottish political leaders, or ex-leaders, have expressed reservations. For all its flaws, the Opinium poll still has one merit. Showing that the Scottish public have given the issue a thought, and are ready to accept a change in the law, to make sure that assisted dying becomes explicitly legal, rather than being implicitly not-really-illegal thanks to a creative interpretation of loopholes in Scots law. And if this boosts efforts to also change the law in England and Wales, that would be a welcome sign that some of Scotland's credibility and influence has been restored.

What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another.

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche)

The world began to crumble when feelings started overruling facts. You shouldn’t favour a comforting lie over an inconvenient truth.

(Ricky Gervais)

On top of a sequence of very bleak polling, briefly culminating in YouGov's MRP poll predicting they would be down to 19 MPs at the incoming general, the SNP have been dealt another blow by their partners in crime... oops, government. It was widely expected, and Scotland's worst kept secret, and then the Scottish Greens confirmed it at their Spring Conference. They will field enough vanity candidacies to break the record of the largest number of lost deposits by any party in Scotland's electoral history. The crux of the apostrophe, as the late great Frank Zappa would have said, is that the bulk of these doomed candidacies will happen in the Central Belt, where the key SNP-Labour battlegrounds are located. There is a high probability this could cost the SNP summat like a half-dozen seats as, no matter how loudly the Greenies deny it, past votes and current polls show they would snatch more votes from the SNP than from Labour, likely in a 2-to-1 ratio. Just when the trends of Full Scottish polls are just as bad for the SNP as they ever were, flatlining on a tie in the popular vote between them and Labour, which we already know would deal Labour a larger number of seats thanks to the geography of their vote.

The most recent batch of Full Scottish polls, including the two MRP super-polls that had Scottish subsamples of 1,300 and 1,700, all point to significant losses for the SNP and convincing gains for Labour. There is quite an oddity in this sequence. As you can see in their 31st March entry, Survation published two sets of data for their MRP poll. One is the seat-by-seat detail, from which it is easy to calculate national vote shares, assuming turnout in every seat would be the same as in 2019. The other is their raw polling results, before the MRP algorithms were factored in. And the two don't match, and by quite a wide margin. Astonishingly, even the best case scenario for the SNP, where they outperform Labour by 5.5%, does not deliver the 41 seats Survation claimed they did. And also by quite a wide margin. Go figure.

There is a lesson to be learned from these polls. A large and growing share of Scottish voters, including some who have faithfully supported the SNP since the days of Alex Salmond, are hugely discontented by the current shenanigans of both the party and the Scottish Government. And they are determined to make them pay for it at the earliest opportunity, even if it is not a Scottish Parliament election, and thusly unlikely to change the government's pet policies. The only way this could change is the SNP having a clear strategy to achieve independence. Which they don't have, as it is painfully obvious they make it up as they go. The latest variant, politely asking Keir Starmer for a Section 30 Order, is even the least convincing of all. If you are to bargain, you must have something the other lad wants. And it's painfully clear the SNP will have jack shit after Labour bag a massive majority, that they would have even without their Scottish seats. So Keir Starmer will tell Humza Yousaf to fuck off, and then what? Aye, Paddy Harvie will seek to 'work constructively' with Labour. No shit.

Sometimes, in order to defeat evil, one must learn to consort with the devil.

(Thomas Cromwell, The Tudors, 2008)

There’s two main reasons you’re not allowed back into Scotland. If you get quiz questions wrong about Scotland, or if you get a tan, those are the two.

(Iain Stirling)

Humza Yousaf's position did not get better, quite the opposite in fact, when Police Scotland released their own statistics about the first week of enforcement of the Fake Crime Act. They showed a massive number of reports on April Fools Day, which would have irremediably clogged the system if it had gone on for a whole week. More significantly, and highlighting how farcical the whole thing is, 96% of reports led nowhere, including 98% on the first day. Their figures, not mine. Three new Full Scottish, one conducted by YouGov right in the middle of the period when the Fake Crime Bill made headlines, one conducted by Redfield & Wilton and one conducted by Norstat in its aftermath, could act as a reality check for the Yellow-Green Axis. Or it won't, because they definitely live in an alternative timeline. I have already shown the results of their Westminster polling above, which show the SNP taking a more massive drubbing than in any earlier Full Scottish. They also found contradictory results in an hypothetical future Independence referendum, two polls going for No and the third one for Yes. Which is not significant by itself, but as part of a trend. Which has not improved.

For weeks since New Year's Day, the weighted average of the most recent polls pointed to a tie between Yes and No. But the very last four have again gone in the opposite direction, saying we're back to a 48-52 split with the No vote prevailing. I can't help thinking that quite of number of Scots are having second thoughts, like, "I want Scotland to be an independent nation, but not with that lot in charge, so let's wait a wee while before we vote for Independence". Obviously, the huge majority of Scots will never in a million years go for radical action, which would be putting the Conservatives in charge of the Scottish Government. That would be crossing the line from discontent to madness, and it will never happen. But what the weighted average of the last three polls reveals about Holyrood voting intentions definitely looks like a fucking hair of the fucking dog recipe. Plausibly propelling Labour to the top slot, thanks to the more efficient geography of their vote, and throwing the floodgates of the castle wide open for a Traffic Lights Coalition of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens, that would probably indulge in as much performative wokeism as the current Yellow-Green Axis. Obviously, the Greens are fully open to a deal that would preserve their ministerial electric bikes because, ye ken, Independence is not a red line.

We have an oven-ready explanation of the differences between the polls' Westminster and Holyrood polling in the aforementioned IPSOS poll, that also surveyed the Scots' mood about the two governments. They agree that both the Conservatives in Whitehall and the SNP at Bute House are wankers, deserve to lose the next election, and that both London and Edinburgh need fresh brains on the tiller. But rejection of the SNP is clearly much weaker than rejection of the Tories. Scots are also fairly confident that Labour are ready to take over the UK government, but not that they are also ready to rule Scotland. Surely Keir Starmer's and Anas Sarwar's personal ratings play a part here, a bit surprisingly, as the London formerly working class lawyer appears more relatable and convincing than the Glasgow millionaire heir.

It is quite unlikely that the 'good' news about MV Glen Rosa, the second of the elusive Ferguson Marine ferries, will improve the Scottish Government's public image. She is expected to enter operational service in May 2025 at best, or nine years after her keel laying. For a totally irrelevant comparison, USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ever built in the world, entered service eight years and eight months after her keel laying. For a more relevant one, MV Loch Seaforth, currently the largest ferry in the CalMac fleet, took one year and five months to complete, and she is larger than Glen Rosa. The now effective ban on wood-burning stoves in new construction will certainly resonate much louder, especially in rural communities in the Highlands and North East. The reply from the Scottish Government, that The Scottish Pravda saw fit to publish twice, will probably not be considered reassuring or even clarifying, wrapped as it is in the familiar self-aggrandising gobbledygook used when facing a difficult question. It's fair to assume that the Great Scottish Public have had enough of these displays of performative metropolitan middle-class wokeism, and it can only help Labour snatch away more votes from the SNP as time goes by.

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

(Plato)

Times like these, the game goes to the person who speaks with the loudest voice. But pretty much everyone wishes their mother was here.

(Jack Harkness, Torchwood: Miracle Day, 2011)

Redfield & Wilton also offered us a new instalment of their Full Welsh polling a few weeks ago, again covering all bases, Westminster, Senedd and Welsh Independence. This is the first Full Welsh conducted since Vaughan Gething became First Minister, and there is a mixed bag of good and bad news in it for Labour. Senedd voting intentions, the ones that will determine Gething's fate, are definitely lacklustre, lower than Labour's 2021 results and down on both the constituency vote and the list vote. Of course, this line of polling is already obsolete, and we must wait for new polls adapted to the new electoral law and constituencies for a more solid assessment. But it is still quite interesting that the instant reaction to Gething's accession is voters choosing to boost Plaid Cymru and Reform UK.

Welsh Labour must think that they have more than enough time to sort things out before the next Senedd election, in the light of the new electoral law, and that the real target is the incoming general. And here come the good news. Unlike Scotland, the party in charge of the devolved government is doing better at the Commons election than at the devolved Parliament election. But, just like Scotland, Labour is doing better at the Commons election than at the devolved Parliament election. Welsh Labour could very plausibly bag twice as many votes as the Welsh Conservatives but, like in most areas of England, a rising Reform UK could prove to be quite a spanner in everybody's best laid plans. Of the last four polls I include here, only Redfield & Wilton's is a true Full Welsh. YouGov's and Survation's results are taken from the Welsh subsamples of their recent mahoosive MRP polls.

Amusingly, Survation also published two very different and contradictory estimates of voting intentions, one from their projected MRP results, and one from the standard generic polling that came with it. But, unlike Scotland, the MRP data are the closest to the general trend of polls, and the standard generic results are at odds with it. Go figure. All polls nevertheless converge on a huge majority of Welsh seats going to Labour no matter what. But Reform UK could be a credible threat, and even snatch one or two seats, in parts or rural Wales that strongly supported Brexit, and the Conservatives at later general elections. It's not quite the same pattern as in the North of England, as working class communities are far less likely to switch to Reform UK in Wales, and far more likely to return to Labour. But Reform UK is also very likely to beat UKIP's best result in Wales, which was 13.6% in 2015 with no seat gained. Unless the actual campaign deflates their balloon, just as it unexpectedly did at the Rochdale by-election.

We’re a cosmic joke. An accident of chemicals and evolution. The jokes, the sex, just cover the fact that nothing means anything. And the only consolation is money.

(John Hart, Torchwood: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, 2008)

War hasn’t been fought this badly since Olaf the Hairy, High Chief of all the Vikings, accidentally ordered eighty-thousand battle helmets with the horns on the inside.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, 1989)

The Conservatives now have to face another potentially disastrous by-election in the North of England, after disgraced MP Scott Benton resigned his Blackpool South seat before being recalled. The seat was in Labour's hands for a generation from 1997 to 2019, and its electoral history shows that 2019 was just the kind of industrial accident that plagued Labour all along the infamous Red Wall. Labour are playing it safe here, having already selected months ago a candidate who was born and bred within the constituency's new boundaries, and has the sort of no-bullshit-no-posturing approach that is not so frequent in the current Labour Party. There is no way he will embroil himself in the kind of controversy that sank Labour in Rochdale. The demographics of the redrawn seat also hint that a single-issue candidate remote-controlled by George Galloway would have far less traction in Blackpool South than in Rochdale, and would be very unlikely to seriously dent the Labour vote.

Labour have all the reasons in the world to be optimistic about Blackpool South, as all polls confirm that Keir Starmer's Reconquista Del Norte in successful. So far. But recent polls say that the clearest and presentest threat to Labour may come from where they least expect it to. Or rather, least expected it to, until polls repeatedly pointed to it. Reform UK. The story so far is that Reform UK will plausibly bag more votes than UKIP did at their peak, the 2015 election. And that their largest reservoirs of votes are in the Red North. Which makes sense when you look back at the 2019 election, when the Brexit Party stood in all Labour-held seats and already scored big, plausibly helping the Conservatives take down the Red Wall. Redfield & Wilton's most recent survey of their select sample of Red Wall seats confirms trends we see in generic voting intentions polls, that should sound summat of an alarm at Labour HQ.

In this last poll, Reform UK are credited with their highest share of the vote since Redfield & Wilton started this survey. There is the now familiar situation with the Conservatives, that they have the least faithful electorate, but no longer the one most likely to be still undecided, as many seem to have made their choice since the previous poll, and not in a direction that will leave Rishi Sunak overjoyed. But having 23% of past Conservative voters switching to Reform UK is not even the most worrying result here for Labour. What could matter more is that new voters, those who have by definition no past vote record, are also the most likely to not bother to vote. Statistically, this part of the electorate is more likely to be in the younger age brackets, the very voters Labour is seeking to attract and could fail them in key marginals. There's another phenomenon that polls can't identify properly, because they never ask. Lower rates of voter registration, which we know, from easy-to-make comparisons between population statistics and the electoral register, are more significant in the deprived areas of the UK. Obviously including Labour-leaning seats in the North of England. So it's not as far-fetched as it sounds at face value, to hypothesise that YouGov's prediction from their MRP poll, that Reform UK will come second in seven seats in the North, could very easily morph into Reform UK gaining seven seats on Election Day.

Not a lot left, is there? This country’s sitting on coal and surrounded by fish, but they’ve closed the pits and all but scrapped the fishing fleet. Soon you’ll have to go to a Heritage Museum to remember what we once were.

(James Kavanagh, Kavanagh QC: Dead Reckoning, 1998)

We’re not here to separate you into winners and losers. You’re quite capable of doing that yourselves.

(Lee Mack, The 1% Club, 2024)

Following in Redfield & Wilton's footsteps, More In Common have now fielded their own survey of the Blue Wall, probing the minds of the electorate in 39 select constituencies in the South of England. All went to the Conservatives at the 2019 election, but two are notionally Labour under the new boundaries, both in London. Which only illustrates the fragility of the Conservative hold on these seats, and the poll's findings do not disappoint in that respect. The voting intentions they have found are in line with all previous specific polls of the Red Wall, or with the generic subsamples of the Global South in GB-wide polls. Labour take the lead, albeit with only a tiny margin that is probably embedded in the selection of surveyed seats. The Liberal Democrats lose ground because of tactical voting for the best-placed to defeat the Conservatives. Who are themselves in disarray with the lowest level of faithful voters ad the highest level of undecideds. So you get more evidence of why so many Conservative MPs are giving up and standing down, and why so many in their ranks have already conceded defeat and started planning for their future jobs.

At face value, the More In Common poll predicts 18 seats held by the Conservatives, 17 switching to Labour and 4 to the Liberal Democrats. And it only gets worse when you simulate higher levels of tactical voting than the poll already contains. Up to seven more seats could switch to Labour, and one more to the Liberal Democrats. There are also some bad news for Ed Davey here. Despite all his efforts, more seats where the LibDems came second in 2019 would switch to Labour than to the LibDems. This shatters the foundations of The Hipstershire Gazette's Party Political Column on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, that argued the opposite. Based on the LibDems' successes at by-elections and local elections, which, as we already know too well, are awful predictors of a general election. And the incoming 2 May locals in England will not alter this trend, especially as very few Councils are up in the South West, which Ed Davey himself identified as the LibDems' most promising hunting ground. This is confirmed by the ratings of political figures and parties, also surveyed by More In Common.

Even Doon Sooth, the people think that Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are doing a better job than Rishi Sunak and the Conservative party. But the difference is not huge, which is probably why some Conservative incumbents like Leader-In-Waiting Penelope Mordaunt hope they can ride the wave of discontent and survive. She may even be right, as Labour need a 17% swing to gain Portsmouth North, and current polling suggests it will be lower than this across the South, more like 15%. Not very far, but not quite there yet. But the other significant part in the More In Common poll is that the Liberal Democrats generally, and Ed Davey personally, are not seen as positively as they were led to expect. Mister Ed even has lower positives than Nigel Farage, quite a paradox when the LibDems' voting intentions are more than twice Reform UK's. One of the possible reasons is that the Horizon scandal is still alive and kicking at the worst possible moment, and Ed Davey may not escape unscathed from the long and detailed inquiry. Polls also show that tactical voting favours Labour, as the electorate's preferred choice to unseat Conservative MPs, with some hinting that the Liberal Democrats' headcount on Election Night may be closer to 20 or 25 seats than to the 40 or 50 they were expecting just a few months ago.

It’s in mendacity that we achieve our very best. Is this your best?

(The Driver, No One Lives, 2012)

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)

But there is more to English country life than the general election, they also have a fuckload of local elections incoming on the 2nd of May. Oddly, these have attracted very little interest from pollsters, except the London Mayoral election, that has all the potential for juicy headlines ex post facto. But we'll come to that later, and first have a quick look at the West Midlands Mayoral election, the only one that has been polled so far, by the indefatigable Redfield & Wilton. The one and only Mayor of the West Midlands, who has authority over the West Midlands County, not the West Midlands Region, is Conservative Andy Street, who was first elected in 2017 by a baboon's ass's hair, and then reelected in 2021 in a more convincing way. Now his prospects for re-election are quite low, which is to be expected in the political climate of 2024, and showing now familiar patterns.

This year's election will be held on first-past-the-post, instead of the earlier supplementary vote, so only the first round of 2021 counts for comparisons. And it says we have a 12% swing from the Conservatives to Labour here, which is lower than what we see in general election polls, but still a very significant success for Labour. But also a paradoxical one, as there is no massive surge of the Labour vote, but a massive downfall of the Conservative votes as a significant number of their voters switch to Reform UK. But the number of Conservative undecideds is rather low, compared to polls conducted in other parts of England, so may be a lifeline come Election Day. New voters could also be a possible reservoir of votes, as a sizeable proportion are not even willing to vote, but nobody has yet found out what would convince them to do it. Quite mischievously, Redfield & Wilton also polled Westminster voting intentions in the West Midlands. The county, not the region.

The County of the West Midlands will be a significant battleground, as it sent 28 MPs to the House of Commons in 2019, and will now send 26.3 after boundary revisions as one of seats is a rare occurrence of a constituency straddling county lines. In this case, Kingswinford and South Staffordshire, riding the border between the West Midlands and, you surely guessed it already, Staffordshire, which houses two-thirds of the seat's area. In December 2019, the West Midlands vote was split down the middle between Blues and Reds, and they bagged 14 seats each. On the new boundaries, the new strictly West Midlands seats would have notionally gone 14 Labour to 12 Conservatives. The poll's swing from the Conservatives to Labour is higher than at the Mayoral election, on 14%. This would allow the Conservatives to hold five seats within the county, a better result that generic GB-wide polls predict. The flip side is of course that it means the Tories would lose 58% of their seats in the county, a result Labour would be more than happy to see replicated all across England.

Can I just say, not being funny or anything, but I’ve got a feeling in my bottom about this, and not in a nice way.

(Tracey Pritchard, W1A, 2015)

Yet London, Empress of the Northern Clime, by an high fate thou greatly didst expire

Great as the worlds, which, at the death of time must fall, and rise a nobler frame by fire

(John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, 1667)

Sadiq Khan is a lucky man, as London Conservatives never miss an opportunity to prove they are the stupidest this side of the Bajoran Wormhole. Last such endeavour was using a video shot in New York City to prove any point they were trying to make about London. But is Sadiq Khan nevertheless losing his grip on the London electorate? The sequence of polls about the London Mayoral Election show him losing ground in the most recent polls, after appearing conclusively out of the danger zone not so long ago. But he should avoid crying wolf about an unfair electoral law and voter suppression, when the two changes he is whining about were announced two years ahead of this round of local elections, and all parties have had more than enough time to adjust to them and campaign accordingly. Besides, this preemptive attempt at victimisation and shifting blame, in case he loses, is totally disingenuous as the Electoral Commission has for many months offered free voter ID to everyone. All you have to do is ask, literally, and they even have TV ads promoting it on all commercial channels. Or does Khan think that London is a special echo chamber where words speak louder than actions, and nobody watches Dave?

In this still favourable context, Sadiq Khan's choice of campaign announcements remains quite puzzling, especially if they faithfully represent priorities for his likely third term. It is quite odd to see him pushing for a London-specific replacement for the EU's Erasmus scheme, when official talking points from Keir Starmer's office are that Brexit is not that bad and Labour will Make It Work. Likewise, his pledge to not strengthen ULEZ is quite astonishing, when there is plenty of evidence that it was not the major factor in Labour's defeat at the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Labour can actually thank the Conservatives who weaponised ULEZ, as it avoided them the embarrassment of facing the real reason, the selection of a totally unfit woke extremist candidate. The reasons behind Khan's odd choices of campaign priorities may also be found in the most recent assessment of his popularity with the Greater London Public, which is still not spectacularly stellar, with fewer than half viewing Khan and his actions favourably.

Khan has fairly good ratings with Liberal Democrat and Green voters, the very ones he is begging to vote for him in order to game first-past-the-post. But these are the same voters Keir Starmer is trying to attract to maximise gains at the general election, and this makes Labour's messaging quite confusing. Khan talks to these voters from a roughly woke metropolitan perspective, while Starmer needs a catch-all narrative that will appeal to centrist voters. It is quite revealing that even The Hipstershire Gazette, who should be Khan's most vocal supporters, have bothered to publish a whole column that both highlights his plausible weaknesses, and provides oven-ready excuses in case of an upset defeat. There is a case to be made that the Khan narrative and the Starmer narrative are on a collision course, rather than strengthening each other. But Starmer has very few incentives to resolve the contradictions and reconcile the narratives, as he thinks that 'creative ambiguity' is his best strategy. Only Khan's defeat in London could possibly convince Starmer to reconsider, and this is definitely the least likely scenario.

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

I didn’t make it to public school, but I do put on the accent along with the red braces as the train goes through Bromley South. Know what I mean? I don’t think the toffs could hack it otherwise.

(Tom Buckley, Kavanagh QC: Care In The Community, 1998)

There is an interesting sub-plot to the recent polls fielded in London, when they probe the Hipstershire public about their feelings about the Mayoral election, and about the incoming general. Four pollsters have done that over the last two months, and found the exact same thing. That Susan Hall, the absolute trainwreck of a candidate the Conservatives have selected against Sadiq Khan, does better than the Conservative candidates for Commons. While Khan attracts significantly fewer votes that Labour's MP hopefuls, some of which are also miserable trainwrecks of their own, and Liberal Democrat voters switch to the Conservative side in droves at the Mayoral election. I'm sure Khan would find a way to turn these numbers into some self-indulgent narrative about racism, which would not be very smart and only alienate more voters. Because the keys are elsewhere, in the growing rejection of absolutist wokeism that is now felt all across the UK. It started months ago, but has become more prominent in the combined wake of Scotland's Fake Crime Act and the Cass Review, which even The Hipstershire Gazette had to admit has lots of merit. Khan is just paying the price for his involvement with the most ridiculously extremist variants of wokeism.

While Khan is busy promoting the last fad in virtue-signalling bollocks that just came across his desk, Labour candidates for Commons are doing well, and even steadily better. This is quite an odd tribute to the special sense of diversictionalism and inclusivibility Labour HQ have shown in their selection of candidates in the Imperial Capital. There's one for every taste here, from the deranged virtue-signaller who thinks disorienting guide dogs with rainbow zebras is progressive, to the born-again thatcherite who thinks that privatising the NHS will make it kinder. From tree-huggers to Trident-huggers, through all variants of flag-shaggers, boy-blue-and-girl-pink or red-white-and-blue. But it obviously works, and New New Labour may even bag a majority of the popular vote in London again, just like Jeremy Corbyn did.

The most recent batch of Full London polls all support the same kind of projection, with Labour gaining seats and possibly even clearing the symbolic 60-seat hurdle. Amusingly, Survation managed to publish two different estimates of the current voting intentions in London, from their MRP reconstruction and their standard polling, though there are less extravagantly divergent here than in Scotland and Wales. But everyone agrees now that six gains is the least favourable scenario for Labour, which would include unseating past Tory glories Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa Villiers. Boris Johnson's old seat in Uxbridge is seventh in line, though I wouldn't put it past Labour to lose that one the same way they did at the post-Boris by-election. Also close to the edge are the Seat Of Two Cities, after three generations in Tory hands, and Margaret Thatcher's old one in Finchley.

The actual outcome will probably depend on London Labour's ability, and Keir Starmer's personally, to juggle inconsistent and contradictory bits of messaging, and make it look like all the pieces actually fit together. Even Sadiq Khan's defeat at the Mayoral election would probably not be a setback in the context of the incoming general election. Labour started losing ground in London in 2005, because of the Iraq War and the Liberal Democrats posing as the only true progressive party, but started recovering already when Boris Johnson was still Mayor. Even in 2010, their worst result of the millennium, they still bagged a majority of the Capital's seats, despite Johnson's triumph two years earlier. So, if I were in their shoes, I would feel confident that Starmer's risky coalition of opposites will prevail in his own backyard, no matter what.

There are people who support a team year after year after year even though they always lose, aren’t there? But they’re from Tottenham.

(Alan Davies, QI: United, 2024)

My Sunday morning take: one must not capitulate in the face of evil, one must fight it and defeat it, so that the evil raises the white flag and capitulates.

(Edgars Rinkēvičs, President of Latvia)

The whole world has condemned the horrific terrorist attack that killed dozens of innocent civilians near Moscow. But Vladimir Putin wasted no time weaponising it and blaming Ukraine, against all available evidence. Because this is what Vlad The Butcher always does, lying and fabricating to feed his insane narrative that Russia is the victim. We should definitely not waste any time on these fabrications, that have already been debunked, and instead pay more attention to Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again sounding the alarm. The United States are the ones most to blame, when the Trumpists are determined to use Ukraine as a political football for short-term electoral gains. Which would never have been possible if Joe Biden has not procrastinated endlessly for two years. It is quite revealing that the Biden administration's main concern right now is Ukraine striking and disabling Russian oil refineries, because it could shrink the international oil market and trigger price hikes in the United States. Which would not be an issue if the United States had provided Ukraine with the necessary equipment to repeal the Russian invasion and end the war months ago. Recent polling by YouGov shows that the British public are fully aware that the situation has evolved very unfavourably for Ukraine.

There is nothing surprising in the results as they only reflect what is actually happening on the ground. The likelihood of an Ukrainian defeat has increased, and we should now focus on the ways we have to avoid it. With the United States' contribution to the defence of Ukraine in limbo, and plausibly stopping altogether in 2025, a lot will depend on Europe. We know that Germany is an unreliable partner, as they still live under the influence of the Soviet-funded pacifist groups of the Cold War era, and the delusion of 'dividends of peace'. Spain and Italy seem to have been spooked by France's more hawkish discourse, and can be counted out of any significant quick response. So we probably will have to rely on the unlikely bloc of France, Poland, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom to boost support for Ukraine. But that would require some bold action, when the British public are very pessimistic about Ukraine's ability to defend itself without military support from the USA.

Saying that Ukraine wouldn't be able to defend itself without the massive influx of American military aid, as YouGov have found here, is probably realistic in the short term. The Ukrainian government have already made it clear that they lack the appropriate supply of ammunition, and more specifically air defence missiles, that would allow them to properly protect their cities and the civilian population. The most efficient solution is the American Patriot missile, which the United States and other operators in Europe are reluctant to deliver to Ukraine en masse. The UK does not have anything similar, that could be offered to Ukraine in the short term. France has already delivered several batteries of SAMP/T missiles, but is also unlikely to deliver more as they are in short supply for their own defence. Furthermore, regardless of what we might be able to supply, the governments of democratic countries must also rely on popular support, unlike Russia. The level of support from the British public has been tested in a recent poll by We Think, specifically asking how our financial involvement in arming Ukraine should evolve.

There is a mix of good and bad news in these results. A majority of the British public still support military aid to Ukraine, at least at its current level. But we know that what the UK can afford to spend on it is only a small fraction of what the United States could do, if Republican obstruction vanished as if magic on Saturday. Besides, the proportion of the public who want aid to Ukraine cut down has increased, and is dominant among prospective Reform UK voters. So there is a credible risk that Nigel Farage, the party's real boss, could use this as a campaign theme, peddling the same populist narrative as other far-right parties across Europe. If Russia scores successes on the frontline in the same timeframe, this might open the door to the temptation of compromise within the British political establishment. Which is exactly what Vladimir Putin expects, and Ukraine fears the most. Which is why we have a moral duty to not let them down, and also very practical reasons, as Ukraine is fighting for us, not just for themselves. Any form of betrayal would be indefensible after all the sacrifices they have already made.

The courage it takes to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over is enormous.

(Charles Bukowski)

In war, technology and wealth are no guarantee of victory. What matters is the will to win.

(John Smith, The Man In The High Castle, 2019)

Even if YouGov no longer conduct the same kind of omnibus polling about Ukraine as they did in earlier stages of the Russian war of aggression, they still give us important information about the Great British Public's state of mind, piece by piece. One of their most recent polls showed that 82% of Brits support Ukraine, and only 3% support Russia, which should already be a massive incentive for the UK government to get more ambitious and more resolute in its support for Ukraine. Even more significantly, 87% think that the Russian invasion was not justified, and the same 3% who support Russia think that it was. YouGov then went one step further, asking their panel how favourably or unfavourably they see both countries' government. Which is subtly different from generic support for their cause, and still delivers a massive advantage for Ukraine, albeit with lower support than with the basic question about choosing sides.

There is a logic in these results. It is not far-fetched to support Ukraine while having some doubts about their government's course of action. Polls conducted in Ukraine, that are much more reliable than Russian polls, show that a lot of Ukrainian citizens feel the same, and that there is growing discontent about the conduct of the war and loss of confidence in Zelenskyy. Which is in fact a good sign, as it shows that democracy is still alive in Ukraine, unlike Russia, and that dissent is not suppressed. Zelenskyy even has to acknowledge it and deal with it, as his main legislative proposal, about general mobilisation, has been blocked for months by the Ukrainian Parliament because it is highly unpopular. It is also quite probable that Zelenskyy's repeated calls for help from the West, sometimes sounding quite desperate, have undermined him in the eyes of his own people. Though they are also a necessary reminder of our duty to support Ukraine, even for just selfish motives, as they are our actual first line of defence against Russian imperialism. Another of YouGov's pointillist polls show that the British public are aware of this, and feel that Russia is indeed getting ready for a global conflict against the West.

Half of Brits think that Russia is preparing for a wider confrontations, an opinion that totally fits with Vladimir Putin's very thinly veiled threats against nations that were once part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet sphere of influence. Putin-apologists who walk among us will of course deny this and call it fearmongering, just conveniently forgetting that Vlad The Butcher has repeatedly claimed this is part of his Master Plan, most recently with his 30-minute rant about Russian history during the infamous Tucker Carlson interview. Putin may be a shameless revisionist, but his warped vision of a fabricated past at least highlights the true nature of his ambitions for the future. Then, once we have admitted the reality of a clear and present threat from Russia, the obvious question is whether or not we think we are ready to face it in case the worst happens. YouGov obviously polled that too, and their findings reveal a massive surge of pessimism among the British public.

More than two thirds of Brits are convinced the UK is not ready to face a Russian aggression. This is a clear admission of the decrepit state of the Armed Forces, and a damning verdict on the 14 years of Conservative rule, which also include gross mismanagement of our military capabilities. The UK has not bought the delusion of 'peace dividends' after 1990 as massively as most Western European countries, but has sadly succumbed to delusions of grandeur that have little basis in reality. Multiple equipment failures and lack of manpower have reduced the Royal Navy to second rank in Europe to France and even, if you count only the surface ships other than aircraft carriers, parity with Italy. The Royal Air Force officially has 25% fewer personnel and 20% fewer planes that the French Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace. The British Army has 30% less active manpower, and roughly the same number of reservists as the French Army, and lacks recent experience of combat operations. Quite ironically, the UK now also has a weaker army than Poland, who have conspicuously strengthened their military over the last two years. There is no remedy to this, because of the proverbial English ineptitude in project management, which does not just wreck high-speed trains, but also all meaningful military procurement. What's the point of investing, when you know, even before making the decision, that everything will end up massively over budget and critically behind schedule? And there is no hint that a Labour government will do anything to rectify this.

If you win your war, you are remembered for being a great politician. If you lose, you are remembered for being a terrorist.

(Vladimir Bayanov, Borgen: Statsbesøg, 2010)

They’re very French, the French, aren’t they? I suppose they’re bound to be. Poor things.

(Charles Carson, Downton Abbey: A New Era, 2022)

I have a hunch that a massive alarm will ring, both at Number Ten and at Labour HQ, around noon on the 10th of June, even if its cause is totally extraneous to the UK. That will of course be the final results of the elections for the European Parliament. Some may delude themselves, thinking that a failed Brexit has made us immune to anything that happens in Europe, but nothing can be more wrong, when what happens there is a revelator of Russian influence and interference, that is also a reality here even if some always turn a blind eye. The EU-wide aggregate of polls still shows a strong presence of the far-right and nationalist parties that are the most likely to have been infiltrated by Russian influencers. Radical left parties, also a tool of Russian interference, are likely to do better than in 2019 in several countries too, adding to the background noise of complacency and appeasement that has been so damaging over the last two years, and long before that. Russia's influence has once again been highlighted by the victory of the Kremlin's candidate at the Slovak presidential election, another clear warning sign ahead of the parliamentary elections.

But we must not forget that some countries matter more than others in the EU. That's the Big Five (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland), and now we have fresh national polls for all of them. What we have now confirms the rise of far-right parties in France, Germany and Spain. Most of them are affiliated to the Identity and Democracy parliamentary group, which is overwhelmingly pro-Russian, but some advance masked and are affiliated to the Conservatives and Reformists group, which was historically split between supporters of Russia and supporters of NATO and has shifted towards a pro-Ukrainian Atlanticist stance in the last year. There is also a lot of ambiguity among the nominally social-democratic members of the Socialists and Democrats group. While most are strongly pro-Ukrainian, some in Eastern Europe are unhinged supporters of Vladimir Putin. Not to mention the German SPD, who have made a bad name for themselves through procrastination and appeasement. Overall, the polls fielded recently hint at a slight shift away from the far-right Putin-enabling parties, but will it last when the real campaign unfolds next month?

The seat projections are more reliable now, as polls have now been conducted in 24 of the 27 member states, leaving out just Croatia, Lithuania and Luxembourg. These three account for only 29 seats out of 720, so educated guesswork remains within an acceptable margin of error. Seat projections from polls in the other countries are quite easy as the EU has made proportional representation mandatory, and the smallish degrees of liberty that are tolerated are easily translated into the calculations. The overall picture is less discouraging than one or two months ago, as there is no far-right tsunami in sight. The Putin-appeasers on the far-right and far-left will come back in greater numbers, but still account for less than 20% of MEPs. The perennial dominant coalition of conservatives, liberals, and social-democrats (EPP, Renew and SD) will bag fewer seats, but still hold a majority. They are also likely to get support from most of the nationalist-conservatives in a stronger ECR group when further decisions have to be made regarding support for Ukraine, which is bound to remain a major issue and dividing line in the foreseeable future.

The big question now is what will happen in the seven weeks left before the election. Vladimir Putin has made it clear he will unleash all his bots, influencers and bribed politicians will full force, and has actually already begun. People with a functioning brain see that Russian propaganda is becoming more and more hyperbolic and fantasised, like the successive variants of the narrative trying to link the CIA, Mossad, Ukraine, the UK and France to the horrific Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. But it doesn't matter. The Russian propagandists don't care because they know that their useful idiots in Western Europe have been conditioned to believe and relay anything, even when just a casual glance reveals it's just fabricated bollocks. Such blatant lies are not even the greatest dangers, even if they make for flashy headlines. The best line of attack for the Kremlin-bribed influencers is the silently pernicious one, when they instill defeatism into European public opinions, and lead them to the dead-end street of appeasement, the exact bait faux pacifists are always ready and willing to take. The same tactics worked wonders for the Nazis in the 1930s and for the post-Stalinists in the 1970s, counting on the combination of cowardice and a delusional sense of self-protection to neutralise their opponents in democratic countries. Have Europeans really learned their lessons?

We must wait and see. When the wheel of fortune has reached its zenith, there is only one way for it to go.

(Thomas Boleyn, The Tudors, 2007)

Jeremy's Den

18/04/2024

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