Jeremy's Den: June 2024

The gentlemen are all well and good, but if you want something doing, it’s the little people every time. And you won’t even notice. That’s the thing about us. Nobody pays us any attention, because we don’t matter.

(Albert Mullion, Endeavour: Quartet, 2018)

You know my opinion. It doesn’t matter who wins elections. Nothing changes. You want to change the world and you can’t even change your socks!

(Mary Cox, Our Friends In The North: 1964, 1996)

Remember to click on the images to get larger version of the charts.

There is definitely a deep sense of impending doom when The Islington North Gazette starts openly advocating tactical voting to make sure the Conservatives are not just defeated, but utterly trashed and binned. Oddly, they are also downplaying the Liberal Democrats' chances, implying that they might just double their number of seats, when generic polls and a pinch of tactical voting hint it could be more like quintupling. Right now, there are some stunning findings in the trends of voting intentions. It is the punditariat's unshaken narrative that Labour's lead could only shrink dramatically in the run-up to the election, as it did in 1997. But it's just not happening. Of course, both Labour and the Conservatives have lost votes under the two-pronged surge of Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats. but the gap between them is stubbornly steady, it has even increased by a minute amount since dissolution. The Great British Public may be less enamoured with Labour than they once were, but the priority remains the same. Rishi, Rishi, Rishi, Oot, Oot, Oot.

I must also confess that I have been going through an intense Solstice Of Discontent over the infamous Multilevel Regression with Poststratification polls, which have become the pollstertariat's latest performative fad. Pollsters have discovered a new toy when Electoral Calculus brought the MRP method into the public domain, and can't seem to stop playing with it. They are also quite fashionable because the punditariat love to pontificate on the definitive conclusions you can draw from these polls, and fortunately for their credibility, are never asked by their friends in the media to explain the vast discrepancies between successive MRP polls that have been conducted in the same time-frame. The pollsters have an obligation, per British Polling Council rules, to disclose the fullness of their findings. So we know what the implied vote shares are in each of the Three Nations, as Northern Ireland is never included. Processing these vote shares for projections of the 632 seats of This Bigger Isle, through my model and Electoral Calculus, delivers some interesting results.

More In Common's own projection matches my model, give or take, but is quite different from what you get with the Electoral Calculus predictor. It's the other way round with Savanta and YouGov, whose own predictions match Electoral Calculus and stray away from my model. This does not hide the most disturbing fact that these three polls, despite being fielded in the same period and published on the same day, can't agree on the election's results, other than saying that Labour will win, which we already all knew without their help. If the best you can do, using the very same techniques, is that Labour will get this or that exact number of seats, give or take 110, it does cast a massive shadow of doubt on all MRP polls. Besides, the implied vote shares in all three cases pretty much match the involved pollsters' findings in classic generic polls conducted over the same period, but with massively bigger samples that would heavily influence any weighted average of voting intentions you might calculate at any point in time. This is why I have decided to set aside all MRP polls, no matter who conducted them and what they predict, from my own Polls'O'Polls for the rest of the campaign, and use only the standard generic polls. There is still a baker's dozen of those every week, so I'm not really taking any risk here, as this is another case where exclusion begets diversity.

There are times when the best you can do is to create a fog. What a life!

(James Kavanagh, Kavanagh QC, 1998)

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

(Otto von Bismarck)

This week's Poll'O'Polls, again based on the weighted average of a whole weekly polling cycle from last Friday to yesterday's last releases, opens the door to an odd prospect. Labour winning in a bigger landslide than Tony Blair in 1997, while bagging fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. This is based on the aggregate of the last 17 polls, with a super-sample of 41,705, the exact displacement in tons of the ill-fated German battleship Bismarck. We're not quite there yet, but it surely can't be ruled out. That's the kind of situation that has proponents of proportional representation predictably howling at the moon, in the name of inclusion and diversity that can only be achieved by coalition governments. Their favourite claim is that coalitions force political parties to seek consensus and water down their most controversial proposals, because it happens that way in Germany. Which is an asinine claim because we have evidence of just the opposite right here in Scotland, with extremist proposals propelled into law by an activist minority abusing their power as kingmakers. Just as asinine as the claim that proportional representation is more democratic, when the direct consequence of a coalition is a government agenda spawned by backroom deals after the election, that nobody actually voted for. So, if first-past-the-post delivers a majority on whatever share of the vote, as it usually does, so be it, and we're definitely heading for that again this year.

The noticeable rise of Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats' return to shape will obviously influence the election's results. But the key to it still remains by how much Labour lead the runner-up in each constituency, because that's how FPTP is designed to work. And right now, it still massively favours Labour. The interesting side of the story is what the Great British Public make of all that polling. It's not like you can escape it, is it? Every newspaper and TV channel wants to have 'their' poll, so they jump at your face even if you don't want to know. Which is pretty much their sole purpose in your life, innit? Not so much probing you as shaping the narrative. That's also the perfect recipe for a self-fulfilling prophecy, but we don't want to get too philosophical for now. The narrative that polls have helped shape has kind of become the Frankenstein Monster, the creature has escaped his creator and is now living his best life rent-free in our minds. Labour will win the election. Fucking Labour will fucking win the fucking election. To nobody's surprise, Britain at large has totally bought it, above and beyond what the script writers intended, as Redfield & Wilton found out the last time they asked what people think the outcome of the election will be.

For the second time since they started asking, Redfield & Wilton found a clear majority of the public genuinely thinking Labour will win with a majority. The first time was weeks ago, and irrelevant as it was too far from the last mile. But now we're in it, and the feeling is overwhelming. It's not just that a majority of the people feel it, it's that majorities of all people feel it, no matter which slice you extract from the cake. Even Conservative voters have conceded, when they realised their own party already had, at the second the election was called. In the immortal words of Bryan Ferry, now my finger points at you, another loser, I see you're courting more despair, no hope, not a glimmer. BMG Research also asked their own panel which kind of outcome they predict and it's even worse, can you imagine that?

If you're a gambler, now is certainly the right time to wager a tenner on a small Labour majority, say about the same as David Cameron's in 2015, and another on a hung Parliament. No need to risk more, as the odds for either must be like 10,000-to-1, so you win fucking big anyway if a strange twist of fate makes either happen. Or you may choose to man up and go all the way, putting your tenner on a Conservative win at 100,000-to-1. And if that happens, Bob's your uncle and Baby, you're a rich man. Fucking rich enough to move to your tax haven of choice, thusly avoiding five more years of Tory rule and the tax hikes they inevitably would have to enforce to fund their whole manifesto, even if they're denying it now. Because, ye ken, we must always believe everything that's in the manifestos, mustn't we?

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

(Otto von Bismarck)

Politicians should wear sponsor jackets like Nascar drivers, then we know who owns them.

(Robin Williams)

The big existential question now is whether or not the Labour Party will bag more seats than there is actual seating in the House of Commons' chamber, which is 427, as you all surely know. Or, alternatively, how many Labour MPs will have to be sat on the Opposition benches for lack of space on the Government benches, as happened already under Tony Blair. It has surely not escaped Stephen Flynn that the massive irony in this would be that Labour would have to dislodge the SNP MPs from their seats, in the chamber as well as in the real world, to occupy the far-left corner nearest to the door from the Speaker's perspective. Because that's the only way you can have all Opposition MPs sat in one big rainbow block, if the Labour landslide overflows into the other side of the chamber. That kind of Red Tsunami is, again and again, the most likely outcome and nothing in this week's polls contradicts this.

Then the Speaker would still have to decide where to put Nigel Farage, in case he actually gets elected. Next to George Galloway would have been the obvious choice, if Catman wasn't bound to be kicked out of Rochdale and lose yet another seat, the fourth in his career, either from actual defeat or from standing down to avoid actual defeat. This would have been the most appropriate seating plan for the MP for Moscow and the MP for Gaza, the only two openly bragging they would represent foreign interests and not their constituents. To enliven the speculations about what could have been and will never be, we also have had a new episode in the neverending series of alternative reality polling. This week's comes from Deltapoll and surveyed four alternative scenarios of what could have happened if Rishi Sunak had fulfilled one or the other of his infamous Five Pledges. Of course, that would have been a game-changer.

To sum it up, if the Conservatives had been competent, efficient and in touch with the people, they would win the election. And if my mother had wheels, Bob would be my uncle. Or summat. Despite the obvious irrelevancy of such polling, there are nevertheless some valuable tidbits of information in it. Making the NHS work again would have been Rishi's best unique selling point, and allowed him a slightly bigger majority than Boris Johnson's in 2019. Taming inflation and cutting taxes are definitely big vote winners too, though the tally would have been closer to 2015. And stopping the small boats is the worst vote winner of all and would have put Rishi just past the majority hurdle which, as you surely remember, is 322 so long as Sinn Féin don't take their seats. In a way, this also helps put the people's alleged priorities in perspective. If immigration policies have far less game-changing potential than the cost of living, taxes and the NHS, why this obsession in making them some alpha and omega of the campaign? That's clearly a message Labour should also pay attention to, if only to find reasons in it to tell Nigel Farage to shut up and fuck off.

Well, as my mother says, you never stand behind a gift horse with his mouth open. He will be laughing at you while he kicks you right in the los cojones.

(Dwayne Rawlings, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2022)

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king, the palace becomes a circus.

(Turkish proverb)

One of the oddest events of the campaign so far is obviously Keir Starmer needing Tony Blair's help to find out what defines the two sexes known to exist in the human race, and all but a handful of non-human animal species. I guess nobody had 'Tony Blair discusses genitalia' on their 2024 Election Bingo Card, even if he wasn't against surrounding himself with dicks and cunts when he was Prime Minister. But there is a distinctive veneer of 'fuck around and find out' for Keir Starmer here, with his belated epiphany that cuddling 0.1% of the electorate can be quite counter-productive when it could potentially alienate 51%. It could really be a sub-zero-sum game for him now, as he alienates both activist tribes in this debate for the exact opposite reasons. It is also quite obvious, even to the inexperienced viewer, that Keir Starmer benefits hugely from Rishi Sunak's massive loss of popularity, that's being shown by poll after poll. This naturally has direct consequences on the perennial 'preferred Prime Minister' polling, where Sly Keir is now literally skyrocketing.

Rishi Sunak must have known that this election would be the Election Of Discontent, more than any other that came before. Even John Major in 1997 had better odds, and that's saying a lot. Now that the Great British Public have heard all the manifestos, though probably not actually listened to what's in them, polls pitting the two major parties against each other become more meaningful. We Think poll their panel weekly about whom they think will do better on a range of key issues. Their last findings, the last but one before Election Day, confirm the massive gap in credibility, or perhaps more simply in peoples' hopes, between Labour and the Conservatives.

Quite clearly, the people have lost confidence in the Conservatives and are ready for a change. They opine, more than ever, that their expert opinion is that Labour will be considerably better at dealing with the most important issues currently on their minds, the NHS, the cost of living and the economy. But also on issues that generally favour right-wing politics, like crime, defence and immigration. The message to the Conservatives is loud and clear, and unambiguously merciless. You've had your chance, your second chance, and your third chance, and you've fucked up every step of the way. So now we say you are no Parliament, begone, and give place to honester men. Or summat.

So the average verdict has Labour 24% ahead of the Conservatives, not surprisingly when you look at the voting intentions polls. But there is a dark side to all this polling. People are pretty much never asked if they think that Labour is good or expected to be good, in the absolute, just if they are better than the other lot. This is setting the bar at the lowest notch as there is a wide consensus that this is the worst government anyone has seen in their lifetime, even from people who were alive and thinking during the Thatcher years. So all this line of questioning is pretty much like asking if Elton John is a better singer than Sam Smith, which is a fucking no-brainer for anyone with even minimal taste, but without ever mentioning Robert Plant or Freddie Mercury. Labour HQ should consider this before rejoicing too loudly. It actually does not say much, and certainly not what you love to think it says, when the people's verdict is just that the current lot are so shit at the job that anything else will do.

His sort’s nowt a pound, and shit’s tuppence. As my grandma used to say. Northerner.

(Fred Thursday, Endeavour: Trove, 2014)

Football, beer, and above all gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

(George Orwell, 1984)

You may have noticed that the incoming general election, which will determine the future of the United Kingdom for the next seven generations, or summat, is competing for headlines with the Euro. Which have nothing to do with the currency most commonly used within the European Union, but with Eleven Men And A Ball (To Say Nothing Of The Dogs), officially the UEFA Fußball-Europameisterschaft, to give it its proper name in the language of the country that's hosting it and delivered Nigel Farage's most recent passport. For some unidentified reason, Deltapoll had the weird idea that they had to poll the Great British Public's level of interest for both events. Or, as they worded it, how excited we feel about either. I genuinely haven't the fuckiest scoobie what they were attempting to prove here, except perhaps digging up some clichés about regional differences, generations and politics. The sad truth is that more Brits are excited by fitba than by the election, though a majority don't give a fucking shit about either.

Now there is something of a generational divide here, bundled with generational similarities. On one side, all generations are more excited about the Euro than about the election. On the other side, the younger you are, the more likely you are to feel excitement about either. This is especially true about the election, probably because the older generations have seen so many of those that they don't care any more, but still have fond memories of 1966 or whatever they celebrated last. Which may differ depending on which nation you belong to or identify as, though the poll says it's not as obvious as you would think.

It's quite intriguing to see the Welsh are more excited by the Euro than by the election, though their side was out long before the campaign started, and Rishi Sunak didn't even know. Interestingly, Scots are equally excited by both, which actually means very little by either, despite Angus Robertson travelling all the way to Germany to boost the Tartan Army's morale. England thusly again sets the tone, having more interest in both events than the other two nations of This Big Isle. Londoners even come out on top in both categories, when you would have thought there are lots of more exciting things to do in the Imperial Capital, like Eddie Izzard butchering Hamlet. What about the political divide then?

What Deltapoll surveyed here is based on the remembered vote at the 2019 election, not current voting intentions. And I genuinely fail to see any strong logic in their findings. Why would LibDem voters be more excited than the rest about fitba? Do they expect Ed Davey to make a cameo at England's matches in a lion passant costume? Why would they also be more excited about the election than Labour voters, when all they can hope is coming third? I can easily understand the Conservative voters' lack of enthusiasm, as nobody wants to watch their Via Crucis unfolding in real time on all channels, but you would expect Labour voters to be more motivated to even just pretend they're enjoying the show so far. Maybe Keir Starmer's multiple "what the fuck?" moments have curbed their enthusiasm, or it might be the fallout of their "my father was a toolmaker" drinking game, that looked like a great idea at the time, but not so much now.Ye ken, all good things...

People over things. People over beer. People over football. People over TV. People over pickled onions.

(Jon Richardson, Meet the Richardsons, 2023)

Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, the rights of woman merit some attention.

(Robert Burns)

The whole gender thing has made quite a smashing entry into the campaign, more memorable than Bambie Thug at Eurovision, thanks to Tony Blair's aforementioned casual remark and Keir Starmer's reaction to it. Which again managed to make everyone unhappy as he heavy-handedly implied that some self-evident truths are alright when told by a man, but 'toxic' when told by a woman. it's obviously not the last we hear of it, as proponents of gender self-identification within the Labour Parliamentary Party might rebound on one of the Liberal Democrats' manifesto pledges, that proposes to "recognise non-binary identities in law and remove the need for medical reports for those wanting to change their legally recognised sex". No less, all wrapped up in Stonewall-scripted rhetoric, and totally in character for a party that gets millions in donations from pharmaceutical firms who manufacture puberty blockers. Lord Ashcroft, whom I can't imagine being in favour of this, dutifully had his elves poll their extended panel about it, and the results are obviously not what Ed Davey wants to hear.

I was actually surprised by the high level of opposition, as a standalone gender self-identification usually gets a less unfavourable reaction when it's polled, though still being opposed by a majority. But here, even the student generation oppose the proposal, albeit by only a tiny margin. Opposition runs strong across all the usual standard demographics, and Scotland is not much different from England here, despite the SNP's and Scottish Greens' obvious support for that kind of measure, as they probably fancy its enforcement in England and Wales as some way to bring back the atrocious Scottish GRR Bill through the back door despite Keir Starmer's refusal to lift the Section 35 Order that's blocking it. I have a hunch that this extended proposal is more strongly rejected than the usual self-identification proposals because of the inclusion of 'non binaries', which a bunch of entitled attention-seeking 'celebrities' have turned into the kind of fashionable metropolitan bourgeois luxury belief that the average Brit loves to mock. There are also some interesting patterns in the political crosstabs of the Ashcroft poll, especially the changes between the remembered 2019 votes and the current voting intentions for next week.

The most interesting shift is among Labour voters, who have moved from a tiny plurality of support among Corbyn's hard-core base of 2019 to a slightly bigger plurality of opposition among Starmer's more diverse base of 2024. That's typically the kind of evolution that Keir Starmer should factor in, now that he has managed to get rid of Lloyd Russel-Moyle and Michael Cashman, These were just baby steps in the direction Labour must take to regain the trust of critical women's rights activists, and are not taking for now. Though it was still good to hear Keir Starmer telling David Tennant to shut the fuck up, after Tennant told Kemi Badenoch to shut the fuck up, in the most deranged misogynistic pus-soaked diatribe of the year. SNP voters have noticeably moved in the opposite direction, in a pattern that is plausibly the mirror image of what happened with Labour voters. Shrinking from a big tent voter base to the hard-core ones can only exacerbate support for questionable ideological positions that have been supported for years by the party's leadership against the will of the people. These are interesting changes because they can only help Labour get more in touch with the real people, if they really want to and take the time to think it through, while the SNP are drifting more and more out of touch with the real people outwith their self-inflicted echo chamber of fringe activists, and there is no way it can end well.

I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots, and I’m going to wear a brown coat. But that won’t turn me into a fucking cocker spaniel.

(Germaine Greer)

The Irish people will only be free, when they own everything from the plough to the stars.

(James Connolly)

Just like everywhere else in the UK, the pace of polling in Northern Ireland has massively increased. Instead of one every three years, and then one every three months, we now get one every three weeks. Of course, Northern Irish pollsters will have to get into real overdrive if they want to deliver just one more before Election Night, but that's a start, innit? The sad truth is that England-based pollsters have not conducted a real poll of Northern Ireland for more than five years, the last one being Survation in November 2018. The only English presence there since then had been the Institute for Irish Studies of the University of Liverpool, who have surveyed general election voting intentions once in 2023 and once in 2024, and Assembly voting intentions once in 2022 and once in 2023. Then all the legwork has been left to Belfast-based Lucid Talk. So we have had three polls this year, and just one since dissolution, and it looks like some minute shifts are occurring.

Lucid Talk's last poll shows a movement within the Republican side, from Sinn Féin to the SDLP, that probably hints at a return to the 2019 balance of power between the two. Back then, there was discontent about Sinn Féin's abstentionist stance, that meant that anti-Brexit Republican voices were never heard in Commons. This year, it might also be a verdict on Sinn Féin's appropriation of absolutist wokeism, that is also costing them support in Eire. But there are also interesting shifts within the Unionist camp, with a much weakened DUP losing votes to the UUP, and also quite a number of Unionist voters shifting their support to the big tent non-communitarian Alliance Party. So we now have two polls in a row predicting that the Republican parties will hold the same seats they bagged in 2019, while the DUP will be the big losers, conceding South Antrim to the UUP and Belfast East to the Alliance Party. This would increase Keir Starmer's working majority by two, as the SDLP are committed to supporting a Labour government at all meaningful votes. Ed Davey could also brag about such results, as the Alliance Party are pretty much the Liberal Democrats' joined-at-the-hip partners in Northern Ireland. Then we can only guess how a very weakened DUP would impact the work of the devolved government during the three remaining years of the current Assembly term. Possibly a lot.

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

(James Connolly)

The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.

(George Carlin)

The updated trends of voting intentions in Scotland, per Full Scottish polls, are still not good for the SNP. This was bound to happen when the Party Of Independence effectively ceased prioritising independence while claiming they are still campaigning for independence without having any leverage to actually achieve independence. This was made even more brutally obvious when Keir Starmer slammed the door shut to their noses and told them to fuck off even before they even had an opportunity to ask, kindly and respectfully with tam in hand, for a Section 30 Order starting the process for a second referendum. The small recent swing, from Labour back to the SNP, seems to have been compensated by a renewed swing from the Conservatives to Labour, and the predictable result has not changed. A worse setback for the SNP than in 2017, and the plausibility of a return to where they were in October 1974.

In the meanwhile, Anas Sarwar has boldly gone where no politician has gone before, starting an election campaign before the previous election is over and done. I can understand why Anas wants to be his own man and come up with his own ideas, when Keir Starmer is remote-controlling Labour's campaign in Scotland. But throwing stuff around two years before it is relevant is a risky move, which might easily transition into a dick move, as it leaves the SNP more than enough time to escalate into fiscally undeliverable proposals and the Conservatives more than enough time to take the piss out of fiscally undeliverable proposals, and blame Labour for starting it. You would think that Anas would have noticed that Holyrood voting intentions are unstable, showing that the Great Scottish Public have doubts about Labour's ability to govern, ad that it's time to shut the fuck up. You'll burn that bridge when you come to it, Anas, as it won't move in the meanwhile. Right now, you'd better keep your eyes on next week's ball, especially as current polls confirm that the key to your success is over-performance in the key battleground areas.

I have broken down the current predicted votes by region. Of course the Westminster constituencies don't fit exactly into the regions, as used in the Holyrood elections, but it is still close enough even now to give a reliable picture of what is happening. The SNP's main handicap is that their vote is quite evenly spread. Admittedly, there is a 12% gap between their highest and lowest predicted vote shares, but that's relatively evenly spread when compared to Labour. Here we have a massive 37% gap between their highest and lowest, and a predicted vote share roughly thrice as big in Glasgow as in the Highlands or the North East. This predictably produces very lopsided seat projections, with Labour scoring massive gains all across the battlegrounds in the Central Belt.

The best example of this is Labour bagging a full slate in Glasgow, that nevertheless remains The Yes City by 54-to-46 in YouGov's latest IndyRef poll, that has No winning 53-to-47 nationally. Labour also come close to a full slate in the West, Central and Lothian regions, completing their tsunami across the Central Belt that also includes the southern reaches of Fife. The seats gained elsewhere (Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Dundee Central, Kilmarnock and Loudoun) are just the icing on the cake, besides granting them a majority of Scottish seats in Commons. There is also some sort of poetic irony in the North East delivering the highest contingent of predicted SNP seats. Back to where the comeback started thirty years ago under Alex Salmond's leadership. Just before John Swinney temporarily stalled it during his first leadership stint, by losing one seat at the 2001 election, out of the six previously held. History don't have no mercy in this land.

Reality cannot be ignored except at a price. And the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

(Aldous Huxley)

When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.

(Dylan Thomas)

The situation in Wales is similar in some ways, and highly different in other ways, to the situation in Scotland. In Wales too, they have a beleaguered and unpopular First Minister who is more deadwood than sail for his party. Unlike Scotland, the First Minister's party is riding high in the polls, well above their nearest competitors and their own previous result, thusly on their way to a massive success. Because we have the SNP and they have Welsh Labour, riding on the coattails of English Labour with the obvious goal of making the Conservatives' defeat the most crushing possible. Labour's voting intentions may have dipped slightly in the most recent Full Welsh polls, but Wales still loves Labour a fucking lot more than Scotland loves the SNP.

Labour's dominance is also illustrated by the breakdown of voting intentions by region. Just like in Scotland, the Westminster constituencies don't fit perfectly into the now-disused Senedd electoral regions, but with far fewer discrepancies as the number of seats was the same in both cases. The Labour vote is also unevenly distributed, as it is heavily concentrated in the three Southern regions. These three regions are actually quite small, their combined area being about a quarter of the nation, but they are home to three fifths of the population. The massive Mid and West region accounts for half of the nation's area but only one fifth of its population. The North region has the remaining quarter and fifth.

The main pattern here is that the rise of Reform UK is splitting the right-wing vote in a very effective way. The Brexit Party was not very successful in Wales in 2019, bagging 5% of the vote while standing in 32 out of 40 constituencies, all those that did not have a Conservative incumbent. Now Reform UK are coming back with a vengeance, just like in the English North and Midlands, who also had a lot of Leave voters in 2016. The other intriguing result is that Plaid Cymru are no longer very present in the South, whereas they once had a strong voter base in places like Llanelli and Cwm Rhondda. But tactical voting there obviously favours Labour, and it shows even in constituencies that have been safely Red for generations. In the North of England too, we see perennially safe seats turn into deep sinkholes, which does not help at the end of the day, but that's the way it is. Labour have only conceded the rural Mid and West, as the seat projection shows.

Labour could of course choose a more aggressive stance in Mid Wales, and go challenge the Conservatives in their remaining seats there. A cost-benefit analysis still proves this would probably be futile, but they have another oven-ready and potentially more promising option. Helping the Liberal Democrats from behind the curtains in Brecon, Radnor and Cwum Tawe, that proverbial marginal that keeps swinging between the LibDems and Tories. It would not cost Labour anything, quite the opposite actually, as all they have to do is fold their operation there and reallocate the resources elsewhere. An additional seat for the LibDems would be of no consequence for the Labour majority, as they will never gain it anyway, but it would highlight the rejection of the Tories a wee bit more. I call that a win-win strategy, and surely Labour HQ don't seem averse to that kind of bold move.

I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies. They are better company and their feelings towards you are always genuine.

(Dylan Thomas)

We’re losing people, man. Young people, working-class lads and lasses. It came automatic to us, it was in our blood, but it’s not like that today. You hear them, it’s “Let it all hang out, brother. Everybody do their own thing”.

(Eddie Wells, Our Friends In The North: 1974, 1996)

A few days ago, The Islington North Gazette, never short an asinine column to undermine Keir Starmer, argued that the Red Wall does not exist, even if the 'archetypal' Red Wall Voter definitely does. Their evidence is an alleged surge of the Green vote at Council elections in North Tyneside, where they actually bagged fewer votes than the Conservatives, and Labour gained back seats they had lost to defectors switching to Independents. And also Newcastle, where the Greens actually came third behind the Liberal Democrats and bagged just 2 seats out of 27 that were up. Not the best evidence that the Red Wall has transitioned to the Woke Wall, even if the Loony Left would be thrilled to see that happening. But that's only a tiny ripple on an ocean of more and more favourable covering, as everybody has gotten a whiff of the sweet smell of success surrounding Labour a week ahead of Decision Time. Which is also as good a moment as any to look at the current balance of power in the regions of England through another prism. County by county, to assess more precisely where the residual blue dots are. And also where Reform Turquoise makes a bigger impression with the electorate, and there's a lot of that.

There are indeed quite a few Blue Blobs left, Up North in rural Cumbria and Northumberland, in the wilderness around Downton Abbey and along the Southern Humber seaboard in North Lincolnshire. It's not enough to grant them as many seats as before, and Reform UK is not strong enough to snatch seats of their own in the North, so it's pretty much open bar for Labour as the regional seat projections show. Now CCHQ has, quite wisely in my opinion, advised its people to stop fighting for unwinnable seats Up North, and shift their focus and legwork to the Leafy South. It's unclear whether the recommendation also applies to Rishi Sunak's own seat in Northern Yorkshire, but it probably should, as we have even odds now that he will be the first Prime Minister to ever lose his seat at a general election since, well... forever. Before you object, Arthur Balfour does not qualify here, as he had been ousted from Number Ten a month before the 1906 election. He did lose his seat then, but as Leader Of the Opposition, thusly demoting his entry in The Guinness Book Of Records to just the first LOTO ever to lose his seat at a general election. Survation felt there is nevertheless something worth digging in down there, and their findings say that Sunak will hold the seat, albeit with his worst result since he inherited the seat from William Hague in 2015.

Rishi's seat was known as Richmond (Yorks), in case somebody would mistake it with Richmond Park in Greater London, probably not since the dinosaurs walked the Earth, but surely at least since 1918. It was a reliably Whig seat from 1798 to 1859, then reliably Liberal from 1859 to 1886. It then fell into Conservative hands except from a Liberal interlude between 1906 and 1910, and has remained quite reliably blue ever since. The new seat, spawned by the 2023 Periodic Review, is called Richmond and Northallerton, to honour the largest town within the constituency and not just the second largest where Rishi Sunak does not even live, while his distant predecessor the Earl Grey did although he never represented the seat. The boundaries have barely changed between the old and new constituencies, so the earlier votes are a relevant basis for comparison. Even in Rishi's own backyard, Reform UK is quite a presence and Labour is progressing by double digits. That's how one of safest seats in the Realm turns into a unexpected battleground, and becomes quite an adequate summary of the deep shit the Tories are in.

They believe this shite because nobody says to them that certain things are right and certain things are wrong.

(Eddie Wells, Our Friends In The North: 1974, 1996)

If you took all the fat in a sort of larger blue whale, it would weigh too much to be legally transported on British roads.

(Sandi Toksvig, QI: Tricks & Treats, 2022)

Of all the constituencies that could be polled in the Midlands, We Think selected North Herefordshire, which isn't even on anyone's radar though it may be a battleground There's no self-evident reason for that, other than the Green Party of England and Wales paying for the poll, because that constituency looks like their best opportunity for a gain in the Midlands, and they definitely needed to know. Even so, the poll's findings are a wee smitch puzzling when you look at the constituency's electoral history, which makes a Liberal Democrat gain more likely, even if current polls credit them with a lower-than-average vote share in the West Midlands. The Greens don't even have the precedent of conclusive gains at Council elections in the constituent wards of the constituency, but who am I to doubt?

North Herefordshire was left almost untouched by the 2023 Boundary Review, as there were only minor adjustments to align the constituency's boundaries with its constituent wards, as modified prior to the 2023 local elections. It now includes 99% of its former incarnation and 2% of the previous incarnation of the neighbouring Hereford and South Herefordshire constituency. The actual results of previous elections are thusly a valid base for comparison, without resorting to tedious calculations of notional votes. Now, if you take a step back to look at county-by-county vote predictions from a higher vantage point, the Midlands generally remain a battleground between deeply entrenched Conservatives and a conquering Labour, with the Liberal Democrats enjoying some success in a few counties.

On these predicted vote shares, the Conservatives would be routed out of the East Midlands except Lincolnshire, where they still have some true believers in the ancestral location of Tommy's Holiday Camp. In the West Midlands, they still have enough support for an even spread of one residual seat in each county, and possibly two in Staffordshire. If the trends hold until Election Day, that would be the worst result for the Conservatives in the Midlands since like, forever. Technically since 1945, which is the earliest election for which I have the breakdown of English seats by region. And that does mean forever, doesn't it? As we know, without looking it up, that all elections before 1945 were better for the Conservatives. This is quite an achievement for New New Labour, or maybe not an achievement at all but just the way things were meant to be all along, by just serendipity. There have been signs, many times in the last two years, that the Midlands might be the weak link in Keir Starmer's cunning plan, and now all doubts have vanished. The Midlands too will go for it, and even Conservative MPs who had fourteen years to entrench themselves in rural constituencies are goners.

If this country really is to turn the corner, then I say it needs to change fundamentally. Top to bottom.

(Margaret Thatcher, The Crown: The Balmoral Test, 2020)

In England, the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.

(Otto von Bismarck)

One of the campaign's main attractions is of course Clacton, the only constituency to ever elect a UKIP MP at a general election, in 2015. This is where Nigel Farage has chosen to stand this time, after giving it much thought, obviously hoping that eighth time's a charm. Three constituency-specific polls now say that Nigel has every reason to be cheerful and that, for him too, The Only Way Is Essex, especially now that Labour has decided that Clacton is not worth fighting for and have folded their operation there. In January it was not yet clear that Nigel would stand, so Survation tested another option, that I have left out here. It involved local activist Anthony Mack standing for Reform UK, and predicted that Conservative incumbent Giles Watling would hold his seat. But as soon as Nigel's name was thrown into the broth, the tide turned and Farage emerged as the winner. And now we have two more polls confirming it, undoubtedly the result of Nigel's undeniable charm and charisma, on top of his elder statesman's wisdom. No shit, mates.

So now we have an almost certain turquoise blot on the Southern Coast of Essex, but the Leafy English South at large remains a three-way battleground between the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Labour. With vastly different fortunes for the members of that triad, depending on which county they stand in. Current polling says the the Liberal Democrats would outvote the Conservatives in Oxfordshire, and top the vote in Surrey and Somerset. Because of this, Labour would come third in both, while outvoting the Tories in every other county, though with vastly different margins that would allow the Conservatives to salvage up to two dozen seats across the three Southern regions. We Think, freshly returned fro Hartlepool, have now polled two Southern constituencies, both quite odd picks. First they went to Gillingham and Rainham, that can genuinely been called one of the backwaters of Kent, as it is located on the southern coast of the Medway Estuary Inland Sea, due West of the Isle of Sheppey.

This seat has been held, since its recarving into its present shape for the 2010 election, by obscure Conservative backbencher Rehman Chishti. His only claim to fame is having been a candidate in the Conservative leadership contest of 2022 that delivered Liz Truss, and withdrawing from it after implying he wouldn't even vote for himself. In its prior incarnation as just Gillingham, the seat was in Labour's hands all along the Blair and Brown eras, and is now predicted to return to them. Even if the Conservatives held all voters who intend to desert them for Reform UK, they would still conclusively lose the seat, as the radical left protest vote is non-existent there. Let's just hope that these trends extend to neighbouring Canterbury, that hasn't been polled although it would be much more relevant and revealing, and guarantee that Rosie Duffield will return.

Don’t speak too lightly of the Old Etonians or underestimate their importance. Apart from providing this country with a number of Prime Ministers and colonial governors, we must never forget that they won the FA Cup in 1879.

(Angus Hudson, Upstairs, Downstairs: A Pair Of Exiles,1972)

Be wary of judging the past by modern morals, lest your own enlightened virtues one day fall from fashion.

(G.W. Stamfield, Endeavour: Striker, 2021)

We Think then went on with their Tour Of The South and their second pick was even weirder than Gillingham and Rainham, as they went to Waveney Valley, a totally new seat created by the 2023 Periodic Review. It is one of very few constituencies that extend across county lines, Norfolk and Suffolk in its case. Waveney Valley was frankensteined by the Boundary Commission from bits of bobs of five earlier constituencies, the main contributors being South Norfolk, Central Suffolk and Ipswich North, Bury St Edmunds. All three gave a majority of their votes to the Conservatives in 2019, and Electoral Calculus' reconstruction of the notional 2019 vote makes the new seat a safe Conservative one by a wide margin.

Yet the We Think poll, that was commissioned by the Green Party of England and Wales, wants us to believe that the general election would duplicate last year's Council elections in the constituency's constituent wards, except for the Reform UK vote, and send a Green MP to SW1. This would be Adrian Ramsay, currently co-leader of the party, who may have some name recognition locally, but not outwith that bubble as Green voters across the UK don't even know what he looks like. Which is admittedly not the best argument against the poll's credibility, but I can't help smelling a fishy rat here, even more so than in the North Herefordshire poll. So I'll stick to my educated belief that Council elections do not predict general elections, and are unlikely to be duplicated, a year on and with totally different issues at the core of the campaign. But We Think hadn't had enough of the Leafy South, and eventually boarded the last bus to Bicester and Woodstock. Quite oddly, We Think had this poll up on their usual datafiles page for a fleeting moment, then removed it without explanation, and then brought it back by surprise. I won't even try to figure out why.

This is Endeavour Morse territory here, or rather Jim Strange territory as it includes Kidlington, where Fred Thursday exiled him for his own protection at the end of 'Endeavour'. Or Bill Bruford territory. If you know, you know. This is also another of the Frankenstein seats in the South, stitched together from bits and bobs from four different pre-existing constituencies (Banbury, Henley, Oxford West and Abingdon, Witney) to make up the numbers in an under-represented area. The four partially predecessor seats are quite a mismatched mishmash, albeit with a bigger Liberal Democrat presence than usual, and Electoral Calculus's reconstruction of the notional 2019 votes clearly places the Liberal Democrats second and Labour third. The results of last May's Council elections, in the constituent wards of the constituency, show that the Liberal Democrats are dominant in the people's hearts there. So it's quite puzzling to see the poll finding an almost perfect three-way tie. Have we found the only seat that could be decided solely by last-second decisions on tactical voting? Now that would be weird.

That pool of vomit wasn’t your usual spewed-up undergraduate rubbish. It was pastry, spinach and cheese, mostly. Two kinds of cheese, as a matter of fact. Brie and Dolcelatte. Wholemeal pastry. A sort of a… What is it? A quiche, probably. There was real ale in it too.

(Robert Lewis, Inspector Morse, 1990)

The whole place is being taken over by wankers!

(John Salway, Our Friends In The North: 1974, 1996)

To maintain a fair and balanced perspective on the campaign, Survation not only polled Rishi Sunak's constituency in Yorkshire, but also Keir Starmer's in London, Holborn and St Pancras. The seat as we know it has existed since 1983 and always been held by Labour. Coincidentally, Keir Starmer inherited it at the same election as Rishi Sunak inherited Richmond, in 2015. Its predecessor seats, St Pancras South East and Holborn and St Pancras South, were in Labour hands from 1945 to 1959, and then continuously from 1964 to 1983. Keir Starmer has done really well at every election since his arrival in 2015, always getting a majority of the popular vote. The Conservatives have always been a distant second in these recent elections, and the far-right have a far smaller presence than in other areas of London. The Survation poll shows that Starmer is not under threat and will be handsomely reelected. But it also shows a rather strong protest vote against Labour's stance on Gaza, benefiting the Greens and independent Andrew Feinstein.

Starmer has every reason to feel safe and loved in his forever home, but it does not mean that all Labour candidates in the Imperial Capital should feel the same. If you slice-and-doughnut Greater London into its constituent regions, you see where Labour have their biggest opportunities, and are heading for an unprecedented landslide on a smaller share of the vote than they achieved in 2017 and 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. There is also something that polls fail to catch, probably because they don't really ask. Could independent Corbynista candidates, like Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green or Emma Dent Coad in Kensington and Bayswater, deny Labour two gains from the Conservatives? What is the likely impact of the Galloway-sponsored candidates in Tower Hamlets? Is the second chance granted to rainbow-zebra enabler Danny Beales in Uxbridge and South Ruislip likely to spook voters as well as police horses and guide dogs, and make him lose as badly as at last year's by-election? The combination of all this could actually make for a far less triumphant narrative from Labour HQ, but we won't know until Election Night.

Inner London is what's within the boundaries of the County of London of yore, while Outer London is all the bits and bobs Greater London annexed later. Most of Middlesex, and also bits from Essex, Hertfordshire, Surrey and Kent. Then the frontier between North London and South London is The River. Not Bruce Springsteen's but the Thames of course, which does not run straight West-East. So some parts of Eastern South London are actually further North than some parts of Western North London. But never mind, that's tradition, so it's alright. Then I have kept the best part for last. It's a poll of Islington North, where Jeremy Corbyn is standing as an independent after his expulsion from Labour. It was conducted by Survation on behalf of Eli Folan, a middle-aged purple-haired they/them who runs Stats For Lefties, a pseudo-psephologist activist blog in cahoots with the absolutist wokesters at Novara Media. And Owen Jones too must be livid, as the poll didn't find what they dearly wanted it to find. That's certainly why The Islington Gazette couldn't be arsed to mention it, because it would shatter their narrative that Corbyn is the favourite because, ye ken, bookies say so.

So Jezza is predicted to lose, in the very constituency he has represented for 41 years. This just confirms the rule that people who stand as independents against the party they belonged to always lose. The massive irony is that Corbyn first won the seat in 1983 in just that way, against two former Labour MPs who had represented Islington in the previous Parliament. Both had defected to the SDP and found themselves pitted against each other after boundary changes that reduced Islington from three constituencies to two, one as the SDP candidate and the other as an independent. They both lost and Corbyn won as the official Labour candidate. And now, Jezza is toast too, a victim of his own designs. He could have ended what was after all a quite distinguished career in a more dignified way, by simply standing down. But he chose to go out with a bang, accepting George Galloway's support, and his exit may well now be just a whimper and out of the news cycle in a matter of hours. Too bad, old man.

They’re all at it, man. Everyone of them up there running the show, on the telly.

(Tosker Cox, Our Friends In The North: 1974, 1996)

Sometimes, one simply comes to a fork in the road. One doesn’t know why the path should bifurcate, where the new lane leads or why.

(The Duke of Kent, Upstairs, Downstairs, 2012)

The saga of the European Parliament elections of 2024 is not over yet, as the Parliament will not reconvene until the 16th of July. In the meanwhile negotiations are still undergoing for the definitive composition of the new parliamentary groups. But these backroom deals have been overshadowed by the unexpected snap general election in France, that has taken all EU governments by surprise, just as everyone else except Emmanuel Macron. There is an obvious connection between the two, as the bulk of the horsetrading is going on among the nationalist conservatives and far-tight parties. If Marine Le Pen's National Rally win the French election, or come close, this will seriously strengthen their position among the European far-right. It would be enough of a seismic event to make their Identity and Democracy group more attractive for newly elected MEPs from minor parties who have not got a group affiliation yet. Or even convince some MEPs who already have one, plausibly with the European Conservatives and Reformists group or among the Non Inscrits, to switch allegiance. There are potentially around 50 to 60 seats in the balance, and in which group they end up will be politically meaningful.

The European Parliament's official site are just as expectant as the rest of us, and have done just some minor technical adjustments to their initial tally of seats on Election Night. Some countries were late in delivering complete official results, but this has moved only a handful of seats from the early headcount based on provisional results. These updates do not contradict my initial assessments of the results. The Euro-punditariat were wrong to pontificate about an unavoidable far-right tsunami. The polls were right to predict it was not happening. The previous de facto alliance between social-democrats, liberals and moderate conservatives still hold a majority and will set the tone in the next Parliament. The far-right has progressed from 24% of seats on dissolution to only 26% on the current official headcount, in the broad definition that also includes the nationalist conservatives of the ECR group. The final appraisal will depend on the 42 MEPs who still don't fit any of the pre-scripted patterns of group membership, and where they finally end up. But a lot of them are definitely not far-right, so we will certainly need just a minor adjustment to the conclusions, not a thorough overhaul.

Let time slow down so that one breathes freedom and peace, making one forget the world and its sad turmoil.

(Queen Victoria)

Am I jumping the gun, or are the words, “I have a cunning plan”, marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation? Pardon me if I don’t jump and down with glee. Your record in this department is not exactly 100%. So what’s the plan?

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

Much to my chagrin, the tide has not turned against the National Rally in French voting intentions polls. Yet. The mood seems to be an explosive mix of 'anything but Macron' and 'try what has never been tried before'. It's true that the far-right has never been at the helm in France, though some perfidious voices would opine that they actually already have. Between 1940 and 1944, but that was summat of an acquired taste, wasn't it? Today's sad truth is that the far-right is more popular in France today than either mainstream centrists or the various shades of the left. Marine Le Pen and her boyish sidekick Jordan Bardella are both more popular than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which is indeed not surprising. Bardella is doing his best to appear smooth and reasonable, primeministerial even, as this is the part he has been cast in by Le Pen herself. It doesn't even matter that he is openly contradicting most of what Le Pen campaigned on just two years ago, as she has already won her most important gamble. She has detoxified the National Rally brand, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon has toxified La France Insoumise. And it definitely shows in voting intentions, on top of the demise of both the Macronist Ensemble and the conservative Republicans.

The mandatory stage of 'costing the manifestos', also familiar to British voters, has not brought any more clarity. There was some comic relief though from various wings of the New Popular Front disagreeing on the cost of their own manifesto. Then settling on a median value that was probably not more bullshitty than the other parties' back-of-the-envelope numbers, they just made it look so The obvious conclusion you draw from this omnishambolic campaign is utter confusion in every corner. Which will not surprise you if you have read Julius Caesar's Commentarii De Bello Gallico without the subtitles. One of Caesar's most oft-quoted comments, that "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres", rings especially true when you take a look at the current polls, bearing in mind that Jools never said that the three parts were equal. And they are indeed not today, if you believe the pollsters' homemade seat projections. The major caveat is that these same pollsters got their seat projections wrong in the run-up to the previous legislative election in 2022. They underestimated the National Rally and overestimated Ensemble, thusly making the actual results quite an upset when Ensemble lost their majority.

One of the keys to this weird election will be the voters' choice in constituencies where La France Insoumise and the National Rally will face each other in the second round, which could be about a quarter of all seats. For many voters, it is an impossible choice between a pro-Hamas pro-Putin party on the left, and a pro-Netanyahu pro-Putin party on the right. Similar cases at the 2022 election say that the National Rally is likely to win at least two thirds of such duels, which would be a major factor in the final headcount. Adding to the confusion, Ensemble has also endorsed some candidates from other parties, inasmuch as they are part of the Macron-invented 'Republican Arc'. Which is summat of a twilight zone, as its outer limits have never been precisely defined and have varied in time, just like the Roman Empire's limes, making this knee-jerk election even more of a creepshow. There are just two days left now until the first round, after which the French punditariat will pontificate about all the bad things they saw coming, even when they never did. And pollsters will charge more for seat projections that will all be off, because delivering upsets is encoded at the core of a two-round majority system, hand in hand with the mysterious ways of vote transfers.

There’s the stink of Hell in here, even the dogs know it.

(Father Pujardov, Horror Express, 1972)

Jeremy's Den

28/06/2024

Us, We Disconnect From Them

She Was Moving Like A Dragon Princess