Jeremy's Den: Direction Borne In Our Brains

Why are they so bad at it? This is all I’m saying here, one side is sending their guy to stand in the rain and at the Titanic, the other side can’t even decide who their MPs are, and these are all people who think they can run the health service. I mean, it’s pitiful. Pitiful.

(Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

I swear to you, from tomorrow everything will be different. We will be young and merry as we used to be.

(Henry VIII, The Tudors, 2008)

There is a lot to unpack from the wealth of polls that have been fielded since Rishi Sunak's wet suit appearance on Downing Street. The thrilling part, from an anorak's perspective, is that we now get king-size polls with samples in excess of 10,000. And also MRP polls with samples in the tens of thousands. The added bonus is that these polls add datapoints to the sequences of meaningful London, Scotland and Wales polling. With a GB-wide sample over 8,000, you get a London subsample that's as good as a Full Londoner poll. Past 12,000, you get an additional Full Scottish. Past 20,000, you get an additional Full Welsh. The less thrilling, and even outrageous part, is YouGov changing their methodology midstream, and then serenely admitting it cuts Labour's lead by 6%. Then More In Common did it too, without even gracing us with an explanation, and their changes shrink Labour's lead by 4%. The sweet smell of manipulation. But the changes of the trendlines don't come from two pollsters' shenanigans, but from real things happening in the real world. The Great British Public seem as determined as ever to end fourteen years of Tory kakistocracy. Though they're expressing it in the most contradictory ways, one of them being The Resistible Rise of Nigel Farage.

The most remarkable change from past polls is the Reform UK surge, since Nigel Farage demoted Richard Tice and took back control. Not that it was unexpected. It was in fact highly predictable, as several polls had already tested a hypothetical Farage come-back. Now that it has become real, we only see confirmation of the unbelievable. A Farage-led Reform is worth summat like 5% more than a Tice-led Reform, biting chunks off both Labour and the Conservatives. I have a hunch Rishi Sunak's abysmally dumb decision to leave the D-Day celebrations early, for an interview on ITV that not even Tory spads watched, can only convince some more voters to switch to Farage. The Conservative Party have really reached a terminal stage of decay, when they allow Labour to credibly reclaim patriotism and celebration of the Realm's proudest moments in history. The massive irony is naturally that it is likely to cost the Conservatives more in what appeared to be a strongly and stably core part of their electorate, the 65+ demographic. Being totally trounced because you disrespected veterans is definitely not something anyone had on their 2024 Election Bingo Card. In the meanwhile, the week-by-week comparison of trends between 1997 and 2024 remains in favour of 2024. Because Labour and the Conservatives have both lost votes and the gap has actually widened.

There is a twist to this anyway, and especially in the most recent polls that were fielded after Nigel Farage reclaimed his shares in Reform UK LLC. Farage may even have got some reward from the second debate, the Not-So-Magnificent Seven one, and probably Stephen Flynn too. But the full show was not really more enlightening than the streamlined one, not that I expected anything anyway, and more shouty. Inevitable, as a seven-way is a two-way to the power of three, well, almost. And the decibel level certainly felt like that especially, sorry ladies, between Rayner and Mordaunt. What we have seen after that debate is Reform UK biting off their pound of flesh from both sides of the political barycentre, just a bit more from the Conservatives. So Labour's lead remains the same, slightly above 20%, but we may end up with a very special situation, where Labour would bag a landslide on the same share of the vote that led them to a historic drubbing in 2019. But I guess the usual vociferous proponents of proportional representation would keep shtum this time, once they do the maths and realise PR would propel 120ish far-right MPs to Westminster.

This has been the worst start to a re-election campaign since John F. Kennedy said, “Let’s put the roof down”.

(Chris McCausland, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

Rishi Sunak went to the Titanic Quarter in Belfast. Obviously opening the door for a reporter to ask him, “Are you captaining a sinking ship going into this election?”

(Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

The massive influx of new polls, that started minutes after Rishi Sunak announced the election, has been going on for three weeks now. Which does not mean we actually get better quality data. They're as shit as they ever were, and we just get more of them. It's a wonder that we are still sheepishly tolerant of the pollsters' idiosyncrasies, and accepting of the punditariats' ways, always quick to draw definitive conclusions from just one poll that has already been contradicted by a newer one. In a probably futile effort to achieve more reliability, and a better representation of the Great British Public's current mood, today's Poll'O'Polls includes all those that were conducted during the whole last weekly polling cycle. You have the seventeen most recent polls in the broth this time, two and change every day for a whole week. They were conducted between the 7th and the 13th of June, by Lord Ashcroft, Redfield & Wilton (twice), Verian, Survation, Focaldata, YouGov (twice), Norstat, More In Common, People Polling, BMG, Whitestone Insight, We Think, Techne, Savanta and Opinium. The super-sample is 41,037, which is roughly the standard displacement in tons of a King George V-class battleship of the 1940s, with a 0.48% margin of error.

We have Labour now leading by 22% overall and 3% in Scotland, which is quite respectable after such a chaotic campaign. To be totally honest with you, Labour actually had moments of weakness in the days before that first debate, and surged back after it. So much for those who claimed Rishi Sunak won it, though there is probably some fallout from the Seven Dwarves' debate too. Or just more rewards for the Conservatives' titanic efforts to make themselves unelectable. The most important thing is that no event, no matter how it is spun, has proved to be the sort of turning point or game-changer the pundits love so much, just because it fits their pre-scripted narrative of the campaign. Though there are some items that the pundits will love. Reform UK outvoting the Conservatives in the North of England and breathing down their neck in the Midlands, or the unexpected surge of the Liberal Democrats in the South. Obviously, a lot of disgruntled Conservative voters, and probably a significant part of their membership too, love Farage more than Sunak. What it will translate into on Election Day is still anybody's guess, though.

You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.

(The Doctor, Doctor Who, 1977)

Democracy should not be about executing the will of the people. No, it should be the process whereby we secure the consent of the people to the policies of those qualified to decide on their behalf.

(Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Prime Minister, 2013)

There is no surprise in this week's seat projection. Since the polls do not look better for the Conservatives and the SNP, the make-up of the next Commons that we can infer from them obviously tells the same story as last week, last month, last year. New New Labour are still on their way to a landslide by default, that will lack the massive enthusiasm our fathers and forefathers must have felt in 1997 and 1945, but it will still carry a massive mandate. We may not have a clear idea what for, and Keir Starmer may not either, but it will still be there. Right now, polls say it would be a 327-seat majority for Labour. This is quite amazing, as the size of this majority is larger than the number of seats needed for a majority, which is still 322 as we assume that Sinn Féin will bag the same seven seats as last time. If the actual result of the election matches this, it will also be the largest number of seats ever won by any party, and with a few to spare. The current record is held by the Conservatives, who bagged 459 seats in 1931. Now Labour is predicted to beat that record, a truly historic achievement made even better by the Conservatives shrinking below 100 seats, to the worst performance of their whole history.

Recent polls support the conclusion that the motivations of the Great British Public are not without ambiguity and contradictions, which may become a ticking time-bomb for the New New Labour government. An early Winter Of Discontent can't be ruled out when a third of your potential voters are driven by rejection of your opponent. Of course, these very same voters are also probably not expecting much from Labour, and will thusly not feel any disappointment if the Starmer government don't deliver what the other two thirds of Labour voters support and expect. These two opposing trends are likely to synchronise at some point and spare Keir Starmer the inconvenience of social unrest during the first couple of years of his term. Besides, the seat-by-seat results of the current projection show that the Labour landslide is resting on solid rock. There may be dozens of marginal seats predicted to remain after the election, but the extreme scenarios you get when factoring them in are hugely favourable to Labour.

Even in their worst case scenario, the present snapshot of polls still predicts that Labour would do better than in 1997. And their best case scenario includes something that is probably just a very remote possibility, the Conservative falling so far down that the Liberal Democrats become the third party and officially His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Even the Conservatives' best case scenario would be an utter disaster, close to their 1906 defeat when they bagged only 131 seats in their worst electoral performance ever. What is worth bearing in mind is that we are three weeks after dissolution, and the plausible outcome of the election has not changed. If anything, the situation looks even better for Labour. Who can reasonably expect that the remaining three weeks will change anything to this, let alone turn the tide? Rishi Sunak's only way out of the path to the woodchipper was to impress the Great British Public and score big in the opening stages of the campaign. He failed. He will not recover, and neither will the Conservative brand.

David KC on Twitter said, “Sunak associating himself with the Titanic, so two Prime Ministers in a row now beaten by an iceberg”.

(Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

The way Rish Sunak talks as well, he sounds like an early version of a deepfake of himself, doesn’t he?

(Chris McCausland, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

I loved it when a whole herd of sanctimonious do-gooders feigned outrage when ITV restricted the guest list of their first debate to just Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak. Which did not make them look any better anyway, as both seemed more interested in staging a reboot of PMQs rather than actually debating their manifestos. At least, that spared them the embarrassment of mentioning something they hadn't briefed their spads on, or that they would have to backpedal on the next day because it did not make any fucking sense. I guess nobody was genuinely expecting anything from it, so nobody was disappointed as it delivered jack shit, not even memorable soundbites. Even the trap about using private healthcare, in the first debate, sounded fucking dull. Actually, the only good part in this whole circus is Rishi turning all Baldrick, repeating every five minutes that he has a plan, but it doesn't even sound like a cunning one. Nobody knows who won the first debate, and I suspect nobody gives a shit. And nothing that happened, or didn't, altered the trends of the perennial 'preferred Prime Minister' polling.

This line of polling is evidence enough why it's perfectly reasonable to have the big debates just between Rishi and Keir. Nobody is testing Ed Davey's primeministerability, and he's the likely third in that race. Nobody even cares what ratings Nigel Farage would get, let alone Carla Denyer. That's called a reality check, and the reason why the other party leaders can have their kids' table debate if they want to, but the serious stuff has to be left to the two big boys. The only two who have a non-zero probability of becoming the next Prime Minister, and thusly make the real decisions in the real world. Of course, defining Rishi Sunak's chances of carrying on as non-zero is overly optimistic, as we all know they are actually a big fat zero, and there is nothing he can do about it. Even it he wanted to, and he obviously doesn't. It's not all personal, it has a lot to do with the whole storyline of the last fourteen years. Which YouGov dutifully probed, asking their panel if they thought things are better or worse than they were in 2010. On a list of 22 topics, one-and-a-half per year, and it's not a pretty sight.

When the umbrella question reveals that 8 out of 10 cats; oops..., Brits think the general situation of the Realm is worse that it was when you took power, you readily know it's a miracle you get even a double digit share of voting intentions. And the item-by-item scrutiny doesn't make it better. Admittedly the Conservatives get some greener ratings for their action on climate change, but that was an acquired taste for most of them, and they did their best to shake it off during the last term. The second half of the list is hardly better for the Conservatives, at least regarding the issues that will actually be at the heart of the campaign. YouGov added a couple that won't, because the public genuinely don't give a frying duck, possibly as a distraction. Or to prove a point in the ongoing culture wars.

Interestingly, YouGov polled T rights and LGB rights separately, not stuffing all of it together under some LGBTQWERTYXL++ umbrella. I take that as an admission that T rights are a thing of their own, with no connection to the historic LGB rights. Definitely something that all media and pollsters should acknowledge too, as it looks like a self-evident truth from where I'm sat. It's really amusing to see the Conservatives get considerably better marks here than on all items that really define their policies. It's also quite a rebuke to the permaoffended professional whiners, who can't stop squealing about the massive whatthefuckphobias of the Conservative Party. The general public just don't agree, and we have to assume they know best. Because, ye ken, this is a democracy and not The Resistible Rise Of The Nutters. Then, on all real concerns of real people, the Conservatives fail overwhelmingly. And that's why they won't recover, no matter how often Labour fuck up in the last three weeks of the campaign.

Has no one ever heckled Starmer when he says his dad was a toolmaker? Said, "Well, he made you, didn't he?"

(Jack Dee, Have I Got News For You?, 7 June 2024)

What business do you have to think? If I were you, I would not think, if thinking makes me come to the wrong conclusion.

(Henry VIII, The Tudors, 2010)

When they first polled a massive super-sample of 10,000 some weeks ago, Redfield & Wilton also released a more detailed cross-section of the demographics and politics behind each party. Part of it is quite standard, and already included in generic polls with smaller samples. But having a ten times bigger than usual sample makes the findings more reliable, even if nothing spectacularly new appears in them. That's of course the part that crosstabs voting intentions with sex and age. But there is nevertheless a novelty item even there, as Redfield & Wilton now poll the Workers Party of Britain, George Galloway's latest front, separately from the other Others. So we get to know who the fuck is gullible enough to fall for Catman's stunts, or embrace them because it looked like a fashionable idea at the time.

Due to rounding, the Workers Party seems to attract 1% of the electorate, but it's actually just 0.57%. Just a bat's whisper above the threshold for not being rounded squarely to zero. And it's genuinely gender-neutral, as women are just as likely as men to fall for it. Then there is an interesting twist in the proverbial generational divide. Of course, you become more right-wing with age even if Owen Jones says his generation don't, with the exception of the TikTok Generation. Their closest match, statistically speaking, is the 45-54 bracket, the generation if their parents. Of course they are differences, like the kids voting more for Galloway and the Greens and less for the Conservatives. But the Reform UK and Labour votes are strikingly similar. What kind of attraction does Nigel Farage have for them, you may wonder. My best answer is that I don't have the fuckiest scoobie, unless it's family contagion. There are also familiar patterns and a few surprises in the crosstabs of current voting intentions with past votes.

The Conservatives have an abysmally low rate of return voters and Labour an exceptionally high one, but we already knew that, didn't we? The SNP and Liberal Democrats also have fairly low return rates, obviously motivated by utilitarian tactical voting for Labour, though recent Full Scottish polls say that it may not be as simple and clearcut as that. But we will deal with that in due course. Then you can see where the very tiny vote share for the Workers Party comes from. Their largest support, albeit still a very tiny one, comes from Green voters of 2019. Which will surprise only those who haven't spotted the very patriarchal faux progressive nature of both parties. Finally, there is more information to be gleaned from the final array of differentiating variables chosen by Redfield & Wilton, that are not necessarily the most obvious ones.

I guess it's fairly standard common wisdom that renters are more likely to be left-wingers than home owners. But I would never have guessed that home owners would also vote differently depending on their mortgage situation, though it does make sense when you think of it. If you never had a mortgage, it says you were loaded to start with. If it's paid off, you're probably past standard mating age. Both of which naturally make you more right-wing, as Margaret Thatcher felt when she promoted a nation of homeowners. Then the funniest part is the breakdown by social class, based on what the respondents self-identify as. Those who perceive themselves as upper class, whatever that means today, also provide the biggest contingents of Green and Workers Party voters. I'm not saying that these are the perfect matching pair of luxury beliefs for entitled posh toffs, but there is something to it, innit? Preaching the revolution from a Park Lane balcony overlooking Just Stop Oil fucking with the oiks at peak hour, or summat. Just what you'd expect from Crispin and Dorothea during the spring break from East Sussex University, wouldn't you?

You’d think they would have learned by now, wouldn’t you, that somewhere between Parliament and God are the real keepers of the keys.

(Ralph Merridew, Kavanagh QC: Diplomatic Baggage, 1997)

People shouldn’t be arrested just if they smell, but of course we’ll be considering any legislation.

(Gillian Keegan)

There us widespread common wisdom in all parts of the UK, that rural communities are forgotten and neglected by the political establishment, who are considered too metropolitan and London-centric. More In Common wanted to know about that and polled a wide sample of 2,000 from all nations of the Realm and all regions of England. Except, you probably guessed it already, from Greater London. No matter from which angle you look at it, it's hard to describe Kew Gardens and Hampstead Heath as "rural", so the exclusion makes sense, as it indeed does in many other contexts. But that's another story for another day. More In Common used a decidedly old fashioned notion here, "respect". The meaning of which seems to have been lost in translation since Woke NewSpeak became the lingua franca of the American-speaking world. In English it actually meant, well, respect, not "submit to my fantasies or else...". But Rural Britain stick to the old ways, and surely can actually define the word without resorting to seven-syllable jargon. And they don't find much of it in the political bubble.

It's quite revealing to see that rurals feel more respect coming their way from Labour than from the Conservatives. And also from Keir Starmer than from Rishi Sunak. The posh-boy-turned-Downton-Abbey act works just for so long, doesn't it? Rural Britain have surely also realised that have been led up and down the garden path too many times, and that they have lost more than they gained with Brexit. This can also explain why they have a soft spot for the Liberal Democrats, who have the best net rating of all three English parties. When it comes to ostensibly non-political bodies, some of which do have a political agenda, then the rurals love everybody in every body. Which is a bit confusing as some of these bodies have conflicting views on what's best for Rural Britain, but never mind. But also fun, in its way, when you see that Countryside Alliance have the lowest rating of all. Despite their stance as the ruralest of all, and possibly a sign that ripping off innocent foxes in the name of tradition has also lost its glamour with rural communities. More In Common also asked their rural panel how they would vote at the general election, and this disproves a number of rural clichés.

The rural vote is leaning towards Labour, admittedly far less spectacularly than the general population, but still a major change from 2019. It is also less supportive of Reform UK than the general population, surely a sign that nobody on the countryside has any doubt about Brexit benefits. There are none, so let's move on from that shit. Interestingly, the results of the useless European Parliament election of 2019 already showed that Rural England was not as massively Brexit-friendly as they were made out to be by the metropolitan punditariat. There were large areas supporting the Liberal Democrats in the South of England then, and this poll finds them too. Then we can translate these voting intentions into a hypothetical seat projection for the next Commons. Which requires of course some suspension of disbelief, like stipulating that the whole electorate would vote like More In Common's rural sample. Which is of course a wee bit far-fetched, but you surely get the gist, and there are nevertheless interesting results here.

By the way, the definition of "rural Britain" for electoral purposes still rests on the distinction between Borough Constituencies and County Constituencies, urban and rural more or less. This classification dates back to ancient times, as old as Parliament itself, but was overhauled and cleansed by the Great Reform Act of 1832. Since then, it essentially means you are allowed higher campaign expenses in CCs than in BCs. After the last Boundary Review, there are 307 BCs and 343 CCs. If you count only those covered by the poll, excluding Northern Ireland and Greater London, that's 228 BCs to 329 CCs, so a lot more "rural" than the full House. The projection reveals a spectacular shift of the tectonic plates all across Rural Britain. The notional results of 2019 election in these constituencies were 354 seats for the Conservatives, 146 for Labour, 48 for the SNP and 5 for the Liberal Democrats. Rural Britain is still more to the right than the average Brit, so they would not grant Labour an outright majority, though making them the first party in that hypothetical House of Commons. But the rurals would give a 21-seat majority to a Lab-Lib coalition, something both Keir Starmer and Ed Davey could surely live with.

I was formed from the soil. I got dirt inside of me. But I was born to be royal. I was made for glory.

(David Crowder, Back To The Garden, 2016)

A bunch of people just think we knit jumpers up here.

(Jimmy Perez, Shetland, 2018)

Has John Swinney finally taken a reality check? Or just half of one? Saying that the SNP face a challenge suggests that, or an unexpectedly uncanny sense of understatement. Maybe he has found some new buoyancy in Savanta's last Scottish Political Tracker on behalf of The Scotsman, which has surprisingly found the SNP gaining back some ground from Labour. I must admit this one took me by surprise, as Savanta had already polled Scotland three weeks before, and there usually is a much longer gap between two of their polls, generally at least three months. Sadly for Johnny, we then had a new Full Scottish from Redfield & Wilton, again an early reboot as it came just three weeks after their previous one, that has the SNP in real deep shit on the Westminster front. Then we had two totally unexpected ones from Ipsos on behalf of STV and Opinium for their own enlightenment, pollsters you only rarely see North of Vallum Aelium. There is certainly a sense of urgency in polling now that the election has been called or, for those who do sell their polls, a sense of opportunity to milk more dosh off the usual clients. On top of that, we have the massive Scottish subsamples of the two most recent MRP Polls, both bigger than any standard Full Scottish. There is now an interesting shift in the updated trendlines, brought by the Ipsos and Opinium polls.

Quite unsurprisingly, the Scottish Conservatives were more than happy to come up with a fuck-up of their very own, on top of Rishi Sunak's. First they unselected David Duguid from Aberdeenshire North and Moray East in the most indefensible way. Must be true, the SNP said so, and it would never have happened in England anyway. Doon there, DWP would have found him fit for work. Then they parachuted Oor Doogie Ross, despite his multiple pledges to stand down and focus on his other two jobs. This might prove to be the one race too many for Doogie, as the most recent polls say that he won't bag that seat and the Scottish Conservatives will take a drubbing despite the SNP's dismal performance. It is even possible that they could face a 1997ish Extinction Event, if the SNP actually bounce back above a third of the popular vote.

These projections say a lot about the Great Scottish Public's state of mind. Has the predicted inevitability of a massive Labour landslide now backfired in Scotland? The last two Full Scottish, from Ipsos and Opinium, definitely offer evidence of this. To sum it up, Scotland was prepared to vote with its brain instead of its heart, pinch its nose and vote Labour because the priority of the day was to make sure the Conservatives were routed out of power. Now that it appears more and more self-evident that this goal will be achieved even without the Scottish seats, thousands have though twice about it and decided to vote according to their heart, which was probably always with the SNP anyway despite their countless failings. The last two polls also add a nuance to my usual stance on a tie between Labour and the SNP in the popular vote. It does indeed deliver a plurality of Labour seats so long as the Conservatives show some resilience. If the Conservatives fall behind the threshold of viability, then the seat projection translates a tie in votes into a tie in seats, because the SNP's best hopes are in fact in the Con-SNP marginals, and the plausibility of them falling. These last two polls, and the unexpected twists they imply, have certainly made this campaign a wee smitch more interesting.

Burns is the perfect poet and Jaws is the perfect movie.

(Jimmy Perez, Shetland, 2021)

Rebellion is a heinous sin which cries out to God for punishment. It is the sin of sin, for where there is no right order, there is only carnal liberty, sin and Babylonian disorder.

(Henry VIII, The Tudors, 2009)

Of course, we also have new datapoints in the sequence of IndyRef polling. The most recent polls have not improved the situation. It has even become a wee smitch worse, as not one poll has shown Yes in the lead since John Swinney took over. At least we had a few under Humza Yousaf, but even that is gone too now. More evidence that diving deeper down the rabbit hole of performative student politics hurts the Independence cause, if we still needed any. . It's unlikely to change much in the coming months as it is clearly not the SNP's priority. I can only imagine they're having smoke-filled-room sessions with focus groups now, to come up with something they can extort from the incoming Labour government. Which, in the real world, is jack shit because Keir Starmer will not need the SNP's votes to pass any legislation. Even if, by some implausible twist of fate, Labour did not get a majority, Starmer would turn to the LibDems rather than even be in the same room as the SNP. So that's the voice of Scotland silenced again, for five more years and most probably even ten more. Suck it up.

Polling has been stuck on a new plateau since John Swinney has become First Minister, a slightly lower one than when Humza Yousaf was in charge. Now w're facing a 53% No to 47% Yes average since the beginning of May. It doesn't matter anyway, no more than it would matter if it was the other way round, as a second referendum is not even a distant prospect. Not just because the SNP are dragging their feet and would accept DevoMax as manna from Starmer, but also because they have fragmented the Yes camp to the point of complete disintegration, and are quite happy bunnies with that. That's what happens when authoritarian sectarian woke politics take precedence over a really progressive project for change. And it will remain so as long as SNP careerists still allow the Green Tail to wag the Yellow Dog, and make it their main concern to have the Section 35 Order against the atrocious GRR Bill repealed. Honestly, between you and me, eye to eye, who would want independence if it means having this lot in charge of the nation?

For now, I am trusting you to ensure that the Scots cease their impertinence.

(Henry VIII, The Tudors, 2010)

You think everything has to be perfect. But nothing is ever going to live up to that.

(Duncan Hunter, Shetland, 2018)

Interestingly, recent Holyrood polling also shows a slight improvement for the SNP and some disappointing results for Labour. Only Savanta and Redfield & Wilton have surveyed this recently, as Ipsos and Opinium focused only on the Westminster vote. Both show the SNP slightly ahead of Labour on the average of the constituency and list votes, while their previous polls showed Labour ahead, just three weeks before. In the meanwhile, YouGov and Survation had also found Labour ahead, so there must indeed be a change in the Great Scottish Public's mood here, just as with their intended Westminster vote. This does of course not mean that bad hair days are gone and dusted for John Swinney, as the overall trends still point to a weakened SNP. The Conservatives are weaker too than in 2021, but still able to get decent representation under the Additional Members System. The ones to watch are certainly the Greens, as polls tend to say they are losing ground, which would definitely be good news, but not unanimously. Yet.

There is a distinct possibility that the next Holyrood election will be summat of a fucking mess. Not just because the campaign will be toxic, closer to Saturday night at Wetherspoons than the St Andrews Debating Society. But also because the result will be a mess and open the door to all sorts of backroom negotiations and shady deals. Both polls show a slight advantage for the SNP in the number of seats, but we already know this could easily be overturned by only very small shifts in the battleground areas across the Central Belt. But there is also no self-evident oven-ready majority from either side of the constitutional divide.

The only sure conclusion is that there is not a pro-Independence majority in either poll, and this is a significant turn away from the direction taken at the two previous elections. But we should not jump to the pre-scripted conclusion that it has given way to a Unionist majority. Because there isn't any, and the very concept is fatally flawed. There are two major stumbling blocks across that road. The first is Reform UK bagging their first MSPs outwith defections, which only Redfield & Wilton spotted, because they were more thorough than Savanta and polled them separately. The second one is that there is no way Labour HQ under Prime Minister Keir Starmer would even consider allowing First Minister Anas Sarwar to tie the knot with the Scottish Conservatives under whatever leader. Losing treble-jobbing Douglas Ross to a self-inflicted retirement would not make that easier, as the plausible successors are even worse. The three-way Traffic Lights Coalition is bound to fail too as it would not bag a majority, and would be more unstable than nitroglycerin anyway. So that leaves us with the unthinkable, the Reverse Sherlock Holmes scenario. Once you have eliminated all plausible solutions, all that remains is the most extravagant one. The SNP-Labour coalition backed by 90ish MSPs. Just never say never.

You can’t get put off too easily. You’ve got to walk over the pebbles to get to the sea.

(Duncan Hunter, Shetland, 2018)

Rishi Sunak went to Wales, didn’t he? And he asked them if they were looking forward to the Euros, and they’re not even in it.

(Chris McCausland, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

The main event in Wales is obviously First Minister Vaughan Gething losing a confidence vote 29-27, only 78 days after succeeding Mark Drakeford. This vote is non-binding, just as in Scotland, but politically meaningful and disastrous. Gething was prompt to chastise the Conservatives for not respecting the infamous pairing convention. But if they had, it would still have been a tie, and probably just as politically damaging. As you might expect, The Islington Gazette got all hyperbolic on this, as if Gething's hypothetical resignation would mean the end of Civilisation As Wales Knows It. But the Great Welsh Public definitely draw a line in the sand between their opinion of the First Minister and their wishes for the next government of the United Kingdom. The trends of Full Welsh polls of Westminster intentions clearly show that Labour are still hugely dominant, and even tend to slightly improve their position.

Welsh polls also show that Reform UK are the clearest and presentest danger for the Conservatives, just as in the neighbouring English North and Midlands. Reform UK have zero chance of getting a Welsh MP this year, as buyer's remorse over Brexit has also reached rural Wales. But they will help Labour in key marginals, which looked like serendipity some months ago but is obviously part of Nigel Farage's cunning plan now. It is nevertheless highly unlikely that Welsh Conservatives will face a complete wipe-out, as they still have significant support in rural Wales, and none of the most recent polls predict a total elimination, as was the case in 1997 and 2001.

The Conservatives are now likely to hold their seats in Montgomeryshire and Pembrokesire, and successfully defend the marginal Brecom, Radnor and Cwm Tawe against weakened Liberal Democrats. Monmouthshire is still close to a tie and could go either way by just a handful of votes. Plaid Cymru are predicted to hold their current two notional seats and gain Caerfyrddin, Carmarthen in old money, from the Conservatives. Ynys Môn remains a three-way marginal, that a constituency-level poll allocates to Plaid Cymru, but generic national polls mostly see it going to Labour. Oddly, this week's snapshot of generic polls is slightly less favourable to Labour than the recent Full Welsh, with the two residual battle grounds escaping them. But it nevertheless remain a massive Labour landslide in Wales, which is just as politically meaningful as their successes in Scotland, even if it is less talked about in the media.

But he did say immediately this was pointed out, he said, “What I meant was, you’re looking forward to the increased trade in pubs with people watching the Euros, who may watch whatever team it is”. Which I think is a brilliant excuse.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

What starts with blood usually ends in it. There’s always some has got and some other bugger’s not. Nobody wins in the end.

(Fred Thursday, Endeavour: Muse, 2018)

Now the question on everyone's lips, possibly not everyone's but at least Mark Drakeford's, is whether or not Vaughan Gething will be Wales' Liz Truss, as Humza Yousaf was Scotland's. Redfield & Wilton smelled blood here, and dutifully included questions about it in their last Full Welsh. Technically, Gething has already outlasted Truss by quite a wide margin, more than a whole month, but politically it's pretty much the same sort of embarrassing situation. Gething is obviously fair game as he has sown some bad blood during the leadership campaign, and some more after becoming First Minister. He has quite clearly lost all political capital he may have had, if any, and the Great Welsh Public agree that it's time for him to go.

Even Labour voters are now disavowing Gething, which is definitely not a good sign when you are leading a general election campaign in your nation. It may not have a massive impact of the general election results, as Labour HQ still have the option to send Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner campaigning in Wales to plug the leaks. But it is already changing the trends of voting intentions for the next Senedd election. Of course, the scheduled date is two years away and nobody has any reason to call an early election. But can Welsh Labour really contemplate going into that election, that will be only theirs to win or lose, under a leader that was damaged goods already on day one of his tenure? Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives certainly have aces up their sleeves to play later in that game, if only to confirm and consolidate the shift away from Labour.

Right now, the Conservatives are the real beneficiaries, as Plaid Cymru have surprisingly lost ground in the last Full Welsh, despite distancing themselves from the Labour government. But Conservative hopes are still heavily threatened by Reform UK's increased weight, in Wales just like everywhere else. There is a glimmer of hope for Labour, in this new electoral law they managed to pass despite opposition from all the oppositions. Their most potent magic wand is still the very high de facto threshold for representation that is implied by the new law and the new design of the constituencies.

My very imperfect projection of likely seats in the next Senedd is still based on voting patterns in the now defunct five electoral regions. Quite remarkably, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives would just clear the implied representation threshold by a hair in South Central, Plaid Cymru would be eliminated in South East and Reform UK would qualify only is South West. But the shift in voting intentions from Labour to the Conservatives would deny Labour a majority this time, despite the strong effect of the tweaks against pure proportionality that were deliberately embedded in the choice of six-member constituencies. It could even get worse for Labour if Plaid Cymru surged back to their 2021 vote share, 20.5% on average of the constituencies and regional lists. This would bring Plaid Cymru back to the table in South East and cost Labour at least four seats, and plausibly up to six overall. Could that be the kind of very utilitarian consideration that would convince Labour to bench Vaughan Gething, in the uncertain hope it would boost their vote?

We have a little unusual view on value. It’s more of an energy, like a heart scented feeling.

(Lori Collins, Four In A Bed, 2024)

I saw all the dead bodies of the wicked lying in the streets of the great city, for there was no one left to bury them. And I saw that this great city was York, and all those dead bodies were of pagan Northmen.

(Bishop Heahmund, Vikings: The Plan, 2017)

Not all news are good news for Keir Starmer these days. But We Think definitely delivered him manna from Heaven when they decided to poll Hartlepool. This was Peter Mandelson's home away from home once, and could have changed the face of Civilisation As We Know It three years ago. In that short moment along the time-space continuum, when Keir Starmer considered resigning after a disastrous by-election on Andy Capp's home turf. But these days are gone and things have changed, quite sensationally if you trust the We Think poll. I have added the results of the Council elections of six weeks ago, as they seem relevant, though not predictive. Reform UK stood in all wards in Hartlepool, which happened quite rarely in other Councils, as they probably saw this as a warm up, and a way to get contacts among the voters in anticipation of the general election that was just months away anyway, even before Rishi Sunak decided to switch to Full Andreas Lubitz mode. Which makes sense considering the seat's electoral history and the plausibility of a gain under the proper circumstances. Which seem unlikely to pop up now.

The surprise here is not that Labour would gain back the seat, but the really massive way in which they would. It's quite a picture of doom for the Conservatives, compared to their historic performance at the by-election that nearly deprived us of Keir Starmer. There is a much bigger swing to Labour here, and also a much bigger number of defectors to Reform UK, than generic polls imply across the North of England. Even the Council elections, that saw Labour take hack control with a two-thirds majority, did not prepare them for the magnitude of such predicted losses. But this poll is just one drop in the ocean of a complete Conservative rout in the North of England, as the aggregate of this week's polls show the exact same patterns emerging across the three regions.

Labour are not back to their 1997 performance, they're actually closer to the 2019 results, but it will nevertheless spawn a massive victory because Reform UK is eating the Conservatives away from the inside. They are massively ahead in the North East, and this tells us that the Hartlepool poll is not just a random phenomenon of local weather. They are also conclusively ahead in Yorkshire and just one step behind in the North West. All of this reduces the Conservative Party to a ridiculously low share of the popular vote. It would be their worst performance in any of the three regions since 1945, and by quite wide a margin. We thusly have all the ingredients poured into the broth for a massive Labour comeback, the seat projections tell us just that. And the Hartlepool Humiliation of 2021 is erased.

What we have here is a chemically pure textbook case of how first-past-the-post actually works. Factoring in the boundary reviews and the slightly lower number of seats, Labour are back to their 1997 result on a significantly lower share of the popular vote. It just offers evidence of a very basic principle, that's just elementary maths. What matters most is not how many votes you get, but how many votes behind the runner-up is. Now Reform UK is most efficiently splitting the right-wing vote, plausibly handing Labour dozens of seats on a silver platter, and it is a genuinely once-in-a-generation opportunity for New New Labour. Just look at UKIP's electoral history for a precedent. First twenty years in the wilderness of insignificance, a massive spike, then return to insignificance within two years and complete evaporation within four. There is no reason to believe that Reform UK is made of more resilient or more sustainable material than UKIP. From where I'm sat, their future is not in carrying on as their true self, but in taking over the ruins of the Conservative Party after this election. I'm ready to bet that many Tory MPs would be up for sale at bargain prices.

I've got a battle bus. Yes. I have got an Angie Rayner battle bus. You're going to love it. It's got a fridge.

(Angela Rayner on Sky News)

Surely, you are astute enough to realise that, if a wolf is roaming your halls and warming itself by your fires, it must be considering you his dinner.

(Aelfgifu of Northampton, Valhalla: Choices, 2022)

Now Middle Earth, err... the Midlands... is, well, like Malcolm... In The Middle. Well, of course I know they are, but that's not what I meant here. While Labour are predicted to get a lower vote share than in 1997 in the North, a higher one in the South, this week's polls say that they would get the same in the Midlands. And not just on average across the meta-region, but also individually in both constituent regions. Which is quite an alignment of the stars, innit? What are the chances of that actually happening almost to the decimal place? It is indeed quite a change from the patterns seen since 2010, when Labour lost its former hold on most of the Midlands. And also from 2019, when even the historically Red metropolitan areas chose to give Boris Johnson a chance. Now even the West Midlands choose to put Reform UK ahead of the Conservatives, and they are not far behind in the more ruralish East Midlands.

Of course, the effects of such unbalanced votes are devastating for the Conservatives and great news for Labour. Even serial turncoat Lee Anderson would lose his seat to Labour in Ashfield, coming third as even the LibDem-compliant Ashfield Independents would beat him by a huge margin. Overall, the current polls deliver an unprecedented high for Labour and an unprecedented low for the Conservatives, just like the rest of the Realm. It's even better than Labour's previous best in both regions, either 1997 or 2001. Not one Tory MP would be left in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and just one would survive to tell the tale of doom in most counties. The only significantly blue county left would be Lincolnshire, especially its coastal resorts still hell-bent on repealing the waves of foreign invaders that will never come, because they came twelve centuries ago already to these shores.

Even more than the North, the Midlands are a perfect example of how first-past-the-post works, is designed to work, and should work. Get as many votes as 27 years ago, while your opponents are hopelessly splitting the vote, and you get a fuckload more seats than you did 27 years ago. It's totally logical and expected and, to be honest, totally fair. Think of it without preconceptions. If some parties are too dumb or too purist to realise that the very logic of the electoral system is to seek alliances to maximise your chances, do they really deserve to be represented? If one party is explicitly standing to destroy another party's chances, who are we to whine when it actually works? Quite simply, if you have one priority, don't be coy about the means it takes to achieve it, even if they are summat unfair. And always remember that first-past-the-post is the one system that best achieves the core principle embedded in the concept of representative parliamentary democracy, to spawn a workable majority that will lead to the strongest and stablest government possible. It says so on the tin, doesn't it?

If you’re doing a poo on someone else’s poo, you’ve made a wrong decision. Particularly if you’re listening to Lionel Richie at the same time.

(Joe Lycett, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)

In his resignation letter, Michael Gove put, “I’ve been in the Cabinet for years. I’ve stabbed everyone else in the back, and now I’m stabbing myself”.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

The Green Party of England and Wales are now facing an existential question. Do they really want Owen Jones to campaign for them in The Islington Gazette, using Bristol Central as a vehicle for his personal vendetta against Keir Starmer? I'm not that sure, when he is painting them as supporters of Tesco-hating metropolitan nimbyism, which is kind of fucking hilarious for a party so proud of its credentials in diversity and inclusion. But only the 'right' kind, or so it seems. But the biggest shocker in the Leafy South did not come from Bristol, it came from Clacton, where Nigel Farage in now standing at the general election. Nigel Farage probably realised there is far less dosh to be made off gullible Americans, now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon. So he flew back at flank speed, unceremoniously evicted Richard Tice from the Reform UK leadership with one hour's notice, and crowned himself the new Oswald Mosley and next MP for the shittiest beach resort in Essex. Besides that, which is honestly only a very minor blip in the news cycle, there have been some quite interesting movements in the predicted Southern vote shares recently.

The Conservatives still won't find comfort in the southern votes and predicted seats, though, as they are pretty much as unfavourable for them as the earlier estimates were. But it is definitely a multi-player game Doon Sooth, that might have some surprises in store. Reform UK are starting to make their presence felt in these regions that sent Josh Widdicombe and Nigel himself to the European Parliament he despised so much, except when he made it a convenient cash cow. The Conservatives probably did not expect this, as the Brexit Party did not stand against them in 2019, so they couldn't know what Reform UK's influence was until the polls told them. Then the most visible change is that the Liberal Democrats have come back to life in multiple places. It was fun to take the piss out of Ed Davey when he bragged about his party's Southern ambitions, but this week's projection says that they would clear the 40-seat hurdle from the South alone. And then cruise UK-wide to the same number of seats they bagged in the olden days, before Nick Clegg seppukued rather than let Gordon Brown enjoy his well-earned pre-retirement years at Number Ten.

Despite tougher competition, Labour are still expected to score massive gains in these historic Conservative heartlands. Competition within the opposition even appears mutually beneficial this time as both Labour and the Liberal Democrats are predicted to bag twice the number of Southern seats they won in 1997. It would even be the best result for both since 1945 in the nether regions of the Realm, which is probably the only truly game-changing part of this whole electoral circus. There is every reason to believe the political change is a consequence of demographic change. This has been slowly building up for some time, but was brutally cut down by the irresistible Johnson Wave in 2019. It's coming back now, plausibly amplified by the post-Covid exodus of younger Londoners also fleeing the extortionate cost of living and housing prices in the Imperial Capital. The flip side of it is that it may increase the influence of woke absolutist TikTok politics in areas that were immune to them so far. Labour may have got rid of the atrocious Lloyd Russell-Moyle in Brighton, but the way some of their own activists are aiding and abetting threatening actions against Rosie Duffield in Canterbury is beyond the pale. Someday there will be a price to pay for this.

What Michael Gove actually said was, “There comes a moment when you know that it’s time to leave”. Yes, it’s when you read the polls.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

There’s a feeling that Diane Abbott has been well and truly shafted by the Labour leader, something that hadn’t happened since that lost weekend in East Berlin with Jeremy Corbyn.

(Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Have I Got News For You?, 31 May 2024)

Labour HQ have finally resolved their spat with Diane Abbott, allowing her to stand again as the official Labour candidate in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, though not in a fully convincing and enthusiastic way. It definitely looks like the National Executive Committee got standing orders from Keir Starmer to avoid stoking the fire in Hackney, while the party had walked into another controversy in Barking, and was still under heavy criticism over their handling of Faiza Shaheen's candidacy in Chingford and Woodford Green. I guess Labour feel safe in Keir Starmer's and Wes Streeting's backyards as polls show that Reform UK has now guzzled a third of the London Conservatives' vote, while leaving Labour unscathed. There hasn't been a standalone Full Londoner since YouGov's on the eve of the Mayoral election, but the London part of MRP polls and super-sampled mega-polls offers very convenient updates. Remember that Redfield & Wilton's weekly polls of 10,000 include 1,400 from the Imperial Capital, so we have a credible weekly equivalent of a Full Londoner.

The lesson here is the same as in the North. The key factor is not how many votes you get, but by how many you lead. So Labour would increase their number of seats in London on roughly the same vote share as in 2019, and almost 7% down on 2017. The Tory slump also helps the Liberal Democrats, holding all their seats, and possibly even gaining one or two, despite losing a significant share of their vote. Bear in mind, though, that the left side of London is summat like the Witches' Cauldron in Macbeth. You know what gets in, more or less, but you can never guess what will come out. Even the very low vote share for George Galloway's Workers Party, that only Redfield & Wilton is trying to catch thus far, may be deceptively reassuring for Labour. Catman surely has a few trumps to play, and making sure Jeremy Corbyn defeats Official Labour in Islington North is just the tip of the iceberg. We totally don't know the exact expanse of the anti-Starmer protest vote in London, but it obviously exists, and is Galloway's biggest asset. Mobilising it fully, while Labour will be campaigning on 'every vote counts to defeat the Tories', may nevertheless be harder than George thinks. It's a general election now, not a chaotic by-election that did not affect the balance of power in Commons, so the old cat may have to learn new tricks.

I hope this time you can keep the fucking secret, because normally you are about as secure as a hymen in a South London comprehensive.

(Jamie McDonald, The Thick Of It: Spinners And Losers, 2007)

Trust in those who offer you service, and in the end you will find yourself in the ranks of those who have been deceived.

(Anne Boleyn, The Tudors, 2008)

Europe has spoken. Europe has voted. Judging from the reactions of some British politicians, you would think Brexit never happened and we are still part of it. Of course, some are just weaponising the European Parliament votes to warn us against a 'Farage threat' at our own general election, that actually does not exist. There is massive irony, and even some odd sort of comic relief, in the fact that these voices of doom are mostly proponents of proportional representation against the 'undemocratic' first-past-the-post. But, in the real world, it's FPTP that is protecting us from the Farage threat, while PR would hand him like 100 MPs in a hung Parliament. And it's PR, imposed by a previous European Parliament on all member states, that propelled the various shades of far-right to an unprecedented number of MEPs. Some people will never learn, will they? The final results were quite expected, as the aggregate pan-European polling provided by Europe Elects was quite accurate and very close to the final official results. The only difficulty arose form the various tiffs and spats within the far right, which blurred the acquired notions about which votes should be assigned to which group.

Some days from now, we will know the exact make-up of the next European Parliament, once the patchwork of parties represented in it have agreed on the composition of the political groups. That's the part that may deliver some upsets, as old alliances dissolve and new alliances are forged. This is most likely to happen on the right side of the spectrum, as the boundaries may shift between the European Conservatives and Reformists group and the Identity and Democracy group, and they also decide who is definitely too much of a nutcase to be accepted by either. The last day projection of the 720 seats was not bad, as it showed the resilience of the incumbent dominant coalition of social-democrats, liberals and moderate conservatives. And also that it would not be the massive far-right tsunami that the media loved to headline with. There is still some confusion left, even in the official results, about who's who in the far-right corner. A lot of new MEPs are still filed under 'others' or 'minor parties' for lack of better self-identification. Clarity will come once the final make-up of all groups is known, and we know the final balance between the various shades of radical nationalism.

Then there's always one, and it had to be France. The country of my birth gave a third of their votes to the far-right National Rally and all fucking hell broke loose. Emmanuel Macron, never short of a bad idea, dissolved the National Assembly and called a general election to be held on 30 June and 7 July. Two-round majority system there, remember. Some say Macron took a gamble here. From where I'm sat, given the current state of French politics, it's more like tossing a live grenade into a septic tank. The magnitude of the risk is shown by the result of the European election in France., with the Global Far Right around 40%, the Left on 33% and the Macronist coalition shrunk to barely 15% Emmanuel Macron was fully aware of what would happen, even before he received the first estimated results in the afternoon of the 9th, as French pollsters were quite good and the last day projections were as close as can be to the actual result.

It will obviously be a very messy campaign,and a very shouty one too, as France is even more divided than the UK, and the various ideological tribes hate each other just as much. The most radicalised extremist factions, from far right and far left alike, will obviously do what they have been doing in the UK for months now, stoking the fires because they hope division will grant them some gains. Then I fully expect the main campaign themes to be the same as in the UK, with the cost of living and immigration topping the list, but the trans things left out as it's not a prominent concern in France. And my psephologyfying starts with almost no backlog, as the French are far less addicted to voting intentions polls than Brits. Before Macron's announcement, there had been only six such polls in two years since the last election, the last one six moths ago. We get more than twice that in one week in the UK now. But I fully expect the French pollstertariat to get into full gear now, and deliver at least one poll a day for the next three weeks. That's gonna be fun.

We can do most good for Europe by being resolutely British, by showing Europe the way to go, rather than trotting at Europe’s heels. Europe has a great deal more to learn from the cradle of democracy than it has to teach us.

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: The Final Cut, 1995)

I don’t mind the French. It’s just that they’re always so very… French.

(Thomas More, The Tudors, 2007)

As one having dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and France, I always keep an eye on what's happening in the country of my birth and my mother. It's quite easy with everything readily available online, including French news channels, and so I was watching French TV on the night of the 9th when Emmanuel Macron announced he was calling a snap legislative election. The initial reaction was summat of a mix between "What the fuck?" and "Fucking hell, has he gone mad?". Comments in French media the next day were of the same vein, albeit in French and with fewer expletives. But the general feeling is quite conclusively that he has either totally lost his marbles, or has a plan. I do believe he has one. I'm just not sure yet whether it's a baldricky cunning plan, or seven-dimensional chess with checkmate in eleventy-three. I won't bore you with lengthy explanations about what the various French political parties are, come from and stand for, as it is also readily available on Wokopedia, and The Islington Gazette also gave their version of what is at stake here. I have just summed up what their closest British equivalents are, and how they fared at the two most recent national elections, the legislative elections of 2017 and 2022, the two held so far during Macron's presidency, and the fateful European Parliament election of 2024.

The quite dramatic shifts in votes were obviously part of Macron's decision making, and also highlight how much of a gamble this snap election is. The Macronist umbrella party Ensemble lost ground at the 2022 election that delivered a hung Parliament, and fell to a massive trend of protest vote at the 2024 European election. The left-wing parties have been quick to admit that unity is more inclusive than diversity, and put the band back together under a new name. The convolutedly-named New Ecological and Social People's Union of 2022 has given way to the New Popular Front. This is a very meaningful and deliberate dogwhistle, as all French people who paid attention at school instantly identify it as a direct reference to the Popular Front of 1936, which was founded to fight off the rise of fascism. But is it still a dogwhistle when the intent is that obvious? They also have to avoid complete cacophony between the Ukraine-and-Israel-friendly social-democrats, the woke-compliant Greens and the Hamas-and-Putin-cuddling radical left. So far, most polls don't really credit this rebooted union with a sporting chance, while the National Rally is still riding high, but it's been only a week, so who can tell what will happen next? I have added the results of the European election for information, as they are obviously the benchmark to which the media will compare the current polls. The vote share for the New Popular Front is the sum of the four separate lists who competed at the European election, as matching it will be their untold, but quite transparently obvious, goal.

There is actually a precedent to this kind of polling, but in the UK, not in France. It was that brief period, that you could have missed if you just blinked, when the Brexit Party topped the voting intentions polls in the wake of their success at our toxic and unnecessary European election of 2019. It took about a month to die down, and France have only two weeks left now before the first round that will set the tone and freeze the narrative for the second round a week later. And I'm probably clutching at the last straw of wishful thinking anyway, as the Brexit Party never had the kind of standing and appeal that the National Rally has acquired in France since Marine Le Pen took it over from her unsavoury father, and "undemonised" it in the eyes of the Great French Public. Seat projections from the available polls show that it may be working, though not in an as conclusively one-sided landslidish way as the Labour Party on the far side of the White Cliffs Of Calais. In fact, only the very hypothetical projection from the European election predicts a majority for the National Rally. While the most recently published projection shows it can plausibly be quite tight, with the Macronist coalition squeezed into irrelevance and the classic right Republicans reduced to a rump after they imploded into civil war about alliances.

Bear in mind that the French National Assembly has 577 seats, so you need 289 for a majority. I did not make the projections, the French pollsters did. They actually publish ranges of seats for each party and I took the average of these, with the wee fine tuning needed to reach the required total of 577. Oddly, Macron's best asset now may well be Le Pen herself, and her decision to not seek the position of Prime Minister if the National Rally win the election. Instead, she intends to propel her sidekick and protégé Jordan Bardella, the Hathaway to her Lewis, to the Hôtel Matignon, and this might prove a fatal error. Bardella is good at post-rally selfies and TikTok, in a heavily pampered perfect-son-in-law sort of way, but he has also earned a reputation as an absentee and inept MEP and has been minced to a pulp by the almost-as-young incumbent Prime Minister Gabriel Attal the only time they were pitted against each other in a televised debate. On top of that, the National Rally's manifesto is an odd mix of classic far-right anti-immigration rhetoric and Soviet-like state-managed economy with an incongruous pinch of neo-liberal taxphobia on top. Surely the Macronists will have a field day ripping that apart as the massive fucking bullshit it is, but will that even matter in the toxic atmosphere that has engulfed France over the last two years?

If we are to stand any chance of survival in France, we shall have to dress as the smelliest lowlife imaginable.

(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder The Third, 1987)

Jeremy's Den

16/06/2024

Direction Borne In Our Brains

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