Jeremy's Den: In The Wake Of Lost Elections

The one thing that a Prime Minister has in his locker is that they get to choose the exact timing and the manner in which you call for an election. So you really get to nail the announcement. You can just sort of tell that, once the door shut behind him, all you could hear was, “AAAAGH!”.

(Ruth Davidson, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

The deluge launch drowned out by D:Ream. A brewery visit with a teetotal PM, so no chance of a piss-up. Now a site visit to something famous for sinking. Is there a double agent in CCHQ, and were they a headline writer in a previous life? Our candidates deserve better.

(Ruth Davidson on Twitter)

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Factum est! Alea iacta est! Early on that fateful day our lives changed forever, The Hipstershire Gazette again wanted you to believe that speculation about the general election's date was worth a headline, and worth your precious time reading their speculation about speculation. What the fuck? We always knew there was gonna be a fucking election this fucking year, everybody had been getting ready for it for months, so what was the point of further speculation? Because speculation only incites snarky insiders to play mind games with you, and make you believe things are really different this time. But the award for the most fucking hilarious headline once again went to The Scottish Pravda getting their wires crossed and headlining on a June election, just 30 minutes before Rishi Sunak took 10 minutes to tell us it would happen on the 4th of July. Now I hope he asked Joe Biden for permission to use that date, as it is abhorrent cultural appropriation of a Great American Tradition. For the record, and the benefit of future history books, here's what generic polls said on the day Rishi called the election, based on the weighted average of the six then most recent polls, conducted between the Saturday before and the day itself.

But how have the trends of voting intentions polls been affected by Rishi's announcement? Looks like the Great British Public were not overly impressed by Rishi Sunak promising bright days ahead on our way to the sunlit uplands while getting soaked by pouring rain. Cause nothing says "I am ready to govern for five more years" like "Shit, forgot to check BBC Weather this morning", does it? And Labour's 1997 theme song blaring from down the street and drowning out his rant was a nice touch too. The question on everybody's lips now is whether or not Rishi Sunak knew, when he made the announcement, that the last election held in July was 1945, on the 5th, and Labour ousted the Conservatives in a landslide of epic proportions. Their best result ever up to that year, actually. A feat that, quite fittingly, would not be repeated until the Blairslide of 1997. Has Rishi Sunak now offered Keir Starmer the opportunity for a hat trick?

I have now rescaled my comparison of the current voting intentions trends with those seen before the 1997 election. I designed it first with a November election in mind, and now Rishi has taken us four months ahead along the timeline. Which does not change the basic premises, just which week now you compare with which week then. The glove fits quite precisely, as John Major called the election on 17th of March 1997 for a vote on the 1st of May, and now Rishi Sunak has called the election on the 22nd of May for a vote on the 4th of July. Note that, contrary to what some have claimed, this year's election date does not come from Rishi Sunak wanting a six-week campaign, though he has got it. It comes from a legal requirement that there must be 25 working days between dissolution and Election Day. Because of dissolution happening only on the 24th after two days of wash-up that saw Anna Firth's Pet Abduction Act passed, and the Spring Bank Holiday on the 27th, an election date of 27 June would not have met the requirement, so the 4th of July was the earliest possible date.

Back in 1997, voting intentions for Labour fell by 13% between the day the election was called and Election Day. They actually started falling instantly and quite sharply just after John Major called the election. But Labour were so far ahead it did not really matter and they still won in a landslide. Rishi Sunak obviously gambled on Labour's lead instantly shrinking as soon as the election was called, as happened in 1997. The punditariat also wanted it to happen, because they had said it would happen, and they can't stand being wrong. But the Great British Public quite rightly don't give a frying duck about the pundits' hurt feelings, and seem to want as many Tory incumbents out as humanly possible. We now have ten busy days of intense polling since Rishi's announcement, and Labour are still doing really well. Their lead has actually increased, which is not what Rishi and the pundits expected, and remains in the low twenties. Which is more than enough for a better-than-Blair landslide.

He is so desperate to lose. He literally never wants to hear the word “sewage” again. He never wants to hear the word “Rwanda” again. He never wants to hear the word “Grant Shapps” again.

(Richard Osman, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

Keir Starmer is funnier than Rishi Sunak. He told me to fuck off the other day. I was showing a level of sympathy to Rishi Sunak. I was like, "I am starting to feel a bit sorry for him", and Keir was like, "Oh, fuck off, Jess".

(Jess Phillips, Have I Got News For You?, 17 May 2024)

Given the quasi-presidential turn that our elections have taken for the last couple of generations, pollsters have a very legitimate reason to poll the wannabe-PM's credibility, not just their parties'. And you can also add questions to any poll and charge more for it, which is surely a bonus. We Think totally got the point, and probed the Great British Public about Keir Starmer. About Rishi Sunak too, but we'll burn that bridge when we cross it. First, We Think's panel had to say if they think that Sly Keir would make a good or bad Prime Minister. And I genuinely did not expect the results they got, which reflect neither voting intentions, nor the bulk of 'Preferred Prime Minister' polls.

Of course, the soon-to-be opposition can only have a negative view of Starmer, but even Labour voters are not offering unquestioning support. This was fielded in the week before Rishi Sunak decided it was time for him to lose an election, and is not where you want to start a winning campaign from. Even before the official campaign started, Keir Starmer released his very own Six Pledges, which are pretty much all we got so far as a Labour Manifesto. And we will probably never get much more than that because, ye ken, mid-spring is not, by convention, Manifesto Season. Mid-autumn is, usually, but that can't work this year, can it? Anyway, Sly Keir is now committed to doing a number of very important things if he ever becomes Prime Minister. Nobody seemed to notice, as only More In Common stepped forward and polled the Great British Public about it, and they seemed to like it. Of course that was before the Great British Energy thing totally fell apart in front of a bemused Scottish audience, and was ripped to shreds by the BBC.

As we know too well, what the public think of any political pledge is not really the point. Especially when the sextet of pledges are an odd pick'n'mix of really left-wing stuff and really right-wing stuff. Pretty much reflecting what the Labour Party has become since Keir Starmer became leader. We can also venture that Keir will find it easier to keep his promises on the more right-wingish pledges, and you know why if you have followed the previous episodes. Because that's what Emmanuel Macron would do, or has already done. Like being "fiscally responsible", which is the perennial social-liberal code word for austerity. Or being tough on "antisocial behaviour" because it has a nice ring for all layers of your electoral coalition lasagna, and also because the people you are most likely to target with that are also among those least likely to vote. So, even if you fuck it up, it won't matter at the next election. The problem with pledges is that the people have heard too many of them already, and don't necessarily believe that what they support will actually happen. That's what More In Common found when they asked their panel if they thought it likely or unlikely that Labour in government will actually deliver on Starmer's pledges.

Of course, the Great British Public doubt that any of this will happen. Because they remember Rishi Sunak's Five Pledges of two years ago, that turned into Not-Really-Pledges over time, and what came out of them. Fuck all from five out of six and the only successful one, about slashing inflation, would have happened anyway whatever Rishi did. And that's not hindsight, because the public also remember that various experts told them just that at the very minute Rishi pledged it. More In Common were a bit unfair here, as they asked only one assessment for the whole batch of pledges. The public may have been more confident on some if they had been asked about the six of them separately. Particularly when the only stated commitment is just to set up the means to do something, and not an actual measure of what the real goal is. Launching a border security force and setting up an energy company are just that, as we don't know how many gangs that is supposed to stop, or by how much it would cut energy bills. Being precise on that would be dancing on very thin ice indeed. We know it, Keir knows it, and that's why he will remain as vague as possible. As Dante Alighieri said, "Don't get too high hopes, ye who vote for this". Or summat.

"The silver's there all right", he said, time and again, "it only wants finding", and he pushed ahead, here and there, wherever he thought the chances most favourable.

(John Oxenham, A Maid Of The Silver Sea, 1910)

He doesn’t want to do the job anymore. Well, I mean, it’s the first time he’s been in touch with the British public.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

Of course, I have a duty to be as fair and balanced as Laura Kuenssberg and Ian Hislop, so I have to share with you what the aforementioned We Think poll found about Rishi Sunak. The wording was of course adapted, asking the panel if they think he has been a good or bad Prime Minister. They may not have used the past tense deliberately, but it was entirely appropriate, as nobody seriously thinks Rishi still be Prime Minister after the election. Not even himself, as he clearly hopes he won't. You can only pretend to care about the common good for so long, when you are wealthier than the King, can't you? And Akshata wouldn't let that happen, would she? Anyway, the Great British Public totally agree with them, it's time to Free Rishi. Because he is a has been, and has been an awful Prime Minister.

We Think did not ask their panel to rate Rishi relative to past Prime Ministers, which could have been fun. Even without that, which could have been lethal, the Great British Public have a very low opinion of Rishi. Which is, when you think of it, quite natural. He's like the posh brat you love to hate, thinking that inheriting a seat in rural Yorkshire makes him Northern, but he can nevertheless look down on the working class because he is their better. Besides, Rishi Sunak is living proof that identity politics are a shitload of bollocks. He's not defined by his ethnicity or his religion, he's defined by his education and his social class, in good old Marxist terms. And also by his wealth, the one he made himself and the one he married into. All of that does not make him an Asian Conservative, but a Conservative who happens to be Asian, but would have been the same if he wasn't. Then, if we broaden the view, We Think also offers evidence that it's not just up close and personal with Rishi, but that the whole Conservative brand is as damaged goods as Eddie Izzard's street cred.

We Think poll their panel weekly about their opinion of the government's performance on key issues, and it's getting worse every week. You can really smell shit coming the fan's way when the incumbents of 14 years get shit marks even on issues that are traditional fortes of right-wing parties. And it inevitably gets much worse when the public are probed about topics that are generally considered more left-wing. The Great British Public may have doubts about Labour, and think that they don't have much credibility on some of their pledges, but the Conservatives have none left. The differential can thusly only favour Labour, even if the people are definitely unexpectant of any spectacular change.

It's definitely no fun being a Conservative MP when more that two thirds of the electorate think you are shit at your job, and just one in eight think you are good. The really odd thing now is that the Conservatives seemed determined to spend the whole campaign damaging themselves even more. It took only three days for James Cleverly, the definitive evidence against nominative determinism, to make a complete arse of himself claiming nobody would risk jail for not complying with something that does not exist and never will. And wasn't even on Rishi Sunak's bingo card when he called the election. It has gone even more downhill ever since, as the campaign is just the fucking shitshow everyone was expecting from the get go. Which only proves the real motive behind the Independence Day Election, making sure that they unequivocally lose it and can move on to other business. Looks like the Great British Public are totally ready to gift Rishi Sunak just that.

Once the door shut behind him, I bet he would have shook himself like a dog. His hair was standing up pretty good in that downpour. Whoever does his hair should be in charge of stopping the boats.

(Richard Osman, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

The purpose of our defence policy is to make people believe Britain is defended. Not the Russians, the British! The Russians know it’s not. It’s for all our simple, ignorant people shuffling in and out of houses, buses, factories and the Cabinet room

(Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Prime Minister, 1986)

I mentioned last time that the UK seemed to be heading towards a serious and adult debate on the future of our defence. Alas, poor Rishi, Grant Shapps felt he had to make a fucking pig's breakfast of it, as he always does with everything he touches. So we had a sensational announcement of new investment that had actually already been decided, and new projects that had already been in the making for years. For those not in the know, the Royal Marines' "new" specialist ship is called the Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance Ship. Various schemes have been on the drawing board since 2021, and the first one is already in active service as RFA Proteus, with a second scratch-built vessel already in the concept stage. Shapps gleefully gloating about 28 new warships is as insulting for the Royal Navy as Boris Johnson ranting about 40 new hospitals was for the NHS, when the reality is that they can't even man all those they have for lack of manpower. When they're not nearly losing one to the crass incompetence of an under-trained officer. Interestingly, a recent poll by Ipsos shows that the Great British Public are quite ambivalent about defence policies.

Brits do support an increase in defence spending, albeit not totally convincingly, but have doubts about what will actually come out of it. A significant part of the public are thankfully aware that these are dangerous times that call for exceptional measures. Another recent poll from More In Common says that 45% of Brits agree that "the next few years will be some of the most dangerous our country has ever known", while 35% think they will not. This is not overwhelming, but also influences the public's perception of the place issues of national defence will take in the incoming campaign. A majority think they will be more important than in 2019, but that does not mean the public are satisfied with what the two main parties have to offer. The same More In Common poll reveals that only 27% consider Rishi Sunak "a safe pair of hands" for the Defence Of The Realm and, perhaps more alarmingly, only 32% consider Keir Starmer would be.

This may partly be because experience has also taught us that increased military spending usually means mostly increased waste. And that inconsistent pledges can only lead to the infamous proverbial "tough choices". That's something the faux pacifist Woke Left will obviously use during the general election campaign. I can already hear similar talking points coming from George Galloway, the Greens and the loony wing of Labour. But also from Reform UK and Lozza Fox. Everybody will agree that we need to spend more at home, starting with the NHS and education. But the populist soundbites, that money spent on Ukraine would be better spent at home, are dangerous fallacies. They're in the same league as the earlier delusion about "dividends of peace", that have led Europe to a very unwise de facto unilateral disarmament, which was exactly what Russia was expecting and encouraging. What was that saying again, about "fool me once, fool me twice"? It's more than time to say that we won't fall into the same trap twice, no matter what the combined voices of the irresponsible radical left and the Putin-bribed far-right say.

The purpose of the defence policy is to make them feel secure. We have a magic wand, it is called Trident. Nobody understands anything about it, except that it will cost £15 billion, which means it must be wonderful, magical.

(Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Prime Minister, 1986)

Did you know angels are reputed to have no sexual organs? Totally smooth down there. Must solve a hell of a lot of problems.

(John Krajewski, House Of Cards, 1990)

Then we also had a very British controversy, that should have been contained to England, but spread to Scotland like Wi-Fi for reasons you will easily get. This time about a proposed reframing of RSE (Relationships and Sex Education), that thing that used to be called just plain "sex ed" in simpler and more innocent times, like the 1990s. The bone of contention between the UK government and various stakeholders is, as you might expect, if, when and how issues like all the fashionable bourgeois-friendly stuff housed under the "queer" umbrella should be divulged to pre-pubescent impressionable youngsters. Who probably know more about it than their parents would be comfortable with, but then we did need another "culture war" to spice up the election year. And that's surely more fun than ranting about that portrait of Charles that looks more like Michael Caine taking a tomato bath. Thank Dog, YouGov did not poll that one like they do all totally useless pieces of news, but they did probe the Great British Public about RSE. But we'll come to that later, as Opinium came first with a radically more synthetic approach to the issue. Getting directly to the one thing that seemed to cause problem, the age of exposure.

So there is quite a consensus, across all politics and the Three Nations, that kids under 9 should not get sex education, and that the whole gender thing should not be mentioned until they are 13. Even the TikTok Generation agree, by 46-42 on the former and 53-34 on the latter. Women are less likely than men to support the age limit on sex education, 54% to 56%, but more likely to support that on the trans thingies, 63% to 60%. That's this limit that got all the pink-and-blue activists clutching their pearls and invoking the ghost of Section 28 Past, all the way up to Buchan where such guidelines would not apply as education is devolved. That is fucking nonsensical hyperbole, as Section 28 was all about "Don't say gay", while the current Tory proposal is like "You can say trans, just not to the younger and more influenceable ones". But hinting at an age limit seems to be a big issue for some, you just have to wonder why. YouGov probed the Great British Public deeper, and more subtly, on this. They listed topics found in RSE and asked their panel not if, but when, kids should hear of them. Their scale was by school year, which I grouped by age brackets for simplicity.

The answers here show that the public see the whole thing as more than a basic 'yes or no' question, but there are some obvious red lines and red flags. You can actually make the connection with the Opinium poll by looking at what the public think should be disclosed to kids younger than 9, which is very little. Unless we deal with issues that are directly linked to safeguarding. This is clearly a major, and very legitimate, concern, and one that could not be caught by the Opinium poll. It's also revealing that the public in general, and parents especially, are not against kids being made aware of grooming quite early. I guess it was not a mainstream concern a few years ago, at least it wasn't when I was 10, but it has become now and I can only let you guess why. At the other end of the columns, you see items that the general population think should be mentioned only with the older kids, or not at all. This also goes way beyond the 'gender identity' issues probed by the Opinium poll, and paints a different picture to the simplistic 'socially conservative' mantra, or worse, heard from the pink-and-blue quadrant.

The last three items mentioned by YouGov are quite enlightening in that respect. There is a massive acceptance of same-sex relationships, and even a majority to discuss it quite early. But there is much more reluctance towards the various shades of 'queer', which are actually very ill-defined concepts as having summat like 73 available 'genders' certainly does not make understanding easier. There is also probably a fallout here of widely publicised stories like the Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey in Redbridge, or overweight fiftyish drag queens reading 'Fifty Shades Of Gray' to 6yr-olds. It's not bigoted for parents to want their kids to stay away from such 'events', and if going all the way and rejecting any exposure to gender ideology is the only available shield, so be it. And you can't blame them for that, unless you go down the very slippery slope of encouraging kids to hide things from their folks, which is morally untenable, but clearly the strategy of the most extreme activists. They don't even hide it, and that comes full circle back to the parents' concern with grooming, doesn't it?

4% of the British population think they might be bisexual. Well, either you are or you aren’t, you can’t have it both ways.

(Jimmy Carr, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2011)

Ideologies don’t have human rights. You can criticise, oppose and even ridicule ideas without infringing on anyone’s rights.

(Ricky Gervais)

As if one more made-up culture was not enough for one month, we had another one, The Curious Incident Of The Lanyards In The Civil Service, triggered by Minister For Common Sense Esther McVey's attempt to ban wearing rainbow lanyards in the Public Service. Officially, Esther is a Minister of State Without Portfolio, with a mostly self-appointed mission to fight off wokeism. Which is in many ways welcome, but would probably be best served by something other than the revival of the Ministry Of Silly Walks. Never mind, the fun part was the instant orchestrated squealing from the perma-offended corner of the Political Compass, who claimed it was a genocidal suppression of their civil liberties, or summat. Which would have been more credible if it hadn't come from the same lot who welcome Hamas headbands in pro-Palestine protests, and clap Just Stop Oil when all they stop is ambulances with critical patients aboard. Of course, the Great British Public had to be polled about that, so We Think asked their panel if "civil servants should be allowed to wear rainbow lanyards symbolising alliance with the LGBTQ+ community?". Their words, not mine. And the results probably disappointed Owen Jones and Pink News.

A fifth of Brits can't be arsed to give a frying duck about the hurt feelz of professional virtue-signalers, which is not bad. Then there is no massive support for the exhibition of political beliefs in the workplace. Because that's exactly what it is, not the much-publicised sign of solidarity with the most over-hyped minority in the history of the British Isles. Interestingly Scots in general agree with the majority's half-baked support, and SNP voters are definitely not amused, which must have been quite a blow for John Swinney and Shirley-Anne Somerville. As you might expect, there is a lot of gratuitous posturing involved, from both the Loony Woke Left and the Loony Unwoke Right, and that totally fails to address the real issue, which is despairingly reminiscent of what happened in the debate about Palestine. Support for the legitimate rights of a historically oppressed group has been hijacked by an extremist fringe who pursue ulterior motives and instantly label reasoned dissent as summatphobic. Nobody will come out of this unscathed, least of all the Conservative Party, who got really bad marks when We Think asked their panel if they are "generally pro or anti the LGBTQ+ community?". Again, their wording, not mine.

The reality is that this is really a bullshit question. The most obvious evidence is that a majority of Brits again can't be arsed to have an opinion. And they can't be arsed to give a shit either when they're asked the same question about the Labour Party. Though, in their case, the pendulum swings quite conclusively towards "pro". This can't become an issue in the incoming campaign, mostly because the Great British Public have more serious concerns like the cost of living or the state of the NHS, and constantly rate anything like 'gender issues' or 'LGBT issues' at the bottom of the list of issues that matter to them and will determine their vote.

The problem here, which illustrates the total irrelevance of such questioning, is that there is no clear and consensual understanding of what "anti" and "pro" mean here. First of all because there is actually no such thing as a "LGBTQ+ community", as the lunatic fringe who have hijacked it keep driving wedges between groups who were once united by a common purpose. Which ceased to exist when same-sex marriage became legal, and Stonewall found out there was money to be made off the various shades of TQ+ victimisation scams. Secondly, and perhaps more prominently, because the extremist hyper-activists who claim to be the only true "pro" side, instantly label anyone else as a whatthefuckphobe far-right evangelist bigot, or summat. You don't even have to be openly "anti", just standing up for a different vision of "pro" is enough. Just ask the LGB Alliance. So we've truly gone through the looking class where words have no meaning because they have too many. And the neverending flow of fabricated jargon does not help. If there is indeed a "socially conservative" backlash, the vociferous extremists can only blame themselves for it, while the rest of us can only weep over spilled milk and wasted opportunities.

How arrogant are you to think that you deserved to go through life with no one ever saying anything that you don't agree with or like?

(Ricky Gervais)

Rishi Sunak has got to pretend he’s putting his all into it. He was behind that door going, “The second it starts raining, tell me, I’m going out. Umbrella? Oh, no!”.

(Richard Osman, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

For Rishi Sunak, these first ten days of campaign have been totally unlike A Tale Of Two Cities. For him, it was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Everything that could possibly go wrong did. Often by pure chance. The Post Office scandal was on everybody's mind on Dissolution Day, thanks to Paula Vennells' crocodiliany tearful performance. And instant snapshots of it collided with the DWP's carers scandal, that looks so awfully similar with its exposure of a merciless bureaucracy putting self-protection at the top of their concerns, and knowingly hurting the weakest the hardest. When Rishi thought it could not get worse, his National Service proposal was totally blown out of the water by both military experts and his own MPs, who had never heard of it until Rishi threw it into the broth. Rishi's feelings were hurt, because he had never intended some covert militarisation of British society, as the tofu-eating wokerati claimed. It was actually a very progressive idea, as he had nicked it from Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer's usual reservoir of fancy proposals, so it was very unfair to chastise him over it. Because, ye ken, it worked so fucking well in France. But the Great British Public are way past listening to Rishi, and the current snapshot of voting intentions spells it out.

For greater accuracy and reliability, this week's Poll'O'Polls, from which I get the weighted rolling average displayed above, includes all of the massive polling spree we have witnessed over the last ten days. That's an incredible twenty in all, two fucking polls every fucking day, conducted by More In Common (twice), Techne (twice), We Think (twice), YouGov (thrice), Opinium (twice), Deltapoll, J.L. Partners, Savanta, Find Out Now, Survation, Redfield & Wilton, Lord Ashcroft, BMG and Whitestone Insight from the 22nd to the 31st of May. It's the tail end of an uninterrupted sequence of 986 polls over 907 days, that showed Labour in the lead. The super-sample is an unprecedented 58,627, with a theoretical margin of error of 0.4%. It says that Labour is now leading by 22.7% overall, including by 4.7% in Scotland, pretty much in the continuity of what we have seen over many months now. Rishi Sunak obviously just forgot one thing. The campaign was already underway long before he called the election, and all of Labour's dirty linen had already been hanged out to shine. The Conservative thusly never had the kind of leverage that could have changed the course of the election, and some of them certainly knew it, even if Rishi did not. Some pollsters have also started to poll George Galloway's Workers Party, and the good news is that it barely registers on the radars and the chart, on 0.2% GB-wide and at most 0.7% in the North East of England.

He’s so desperate to lose. You can see it. He wants to move to L.A., doesn’t he? The school year presumably starts in September. So he’s thinking, “I’m not gonna have an election in November”.

(Richard Osman, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

(Baruch Spinoza)

The seat projection that my model deduces from this massive sample of polls totally reflects what you can expect, another mahoosive Labour landslide, larger than anything Attlee and Blair ever achieved. That's a 299-seat majority for Labour, or 303 seats when you factor in the SDLP pretty much taking the Labour whip on all meaningful votes. 102 Conservative seats would also be their worst performance ever, since Robert Peel adopted that name in 1834. Interestingly their worst performance before this was neither 1945 nor 1997. It was the Liberal Landslide of 1906, that reduced the Parliamentary Conservative Party to 131 seats, and saw their leader Arthur Balfour lose his own seat in Manchester to the Liberal Party. I guess there are lots of people anticipating the same happening to Rishi Sunak this year, as Yorkshire has turned Tory-unfriendly even in its Northern rural areas.

In the immediate aftermath of Rishi Sunak delivering the wettest suicide note in British political history, Deltapoll couldn't help it, and once again polled an alternative timeline, this time with Boris Johnson still being the leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. And what they found is definitely not what the Boris Fan Club, aka Nadine Dorries and her cat, expected.

As usual with this kind of hypothetical, I limited the seat projection to the 632 seats of This Big Isle, as Deltapoll did not survey Northern Ireland. Their alternative voting intentions and the resulting seat projections are quite interesting. Boris would not gain votes from Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but from Reform UK. There are two interesting subplots here. First, Boris would nevertheless allow the Conservatives to gain votes from Labour in the South of England, and their losses of gains between the two scenarios would happen there. But Boris being in charge would have the most unexpected fallout in Scotland and Wales, as it would not boost the Conservative vote there, but shift some from the SNP and Plaid Cymru to Labour. A typical case of the law of unintended consequences. But the most remarkable thing here is that Boris leading in 2024 would still grant Labour more seats than the Conservatives got in 2019, when Boris was leading the charge. Can't get better than that, can it?

Honesty always gives you the advantage of surprise in the House of Commons.

(Jim Hacker, Yes, Prime Minister, 1988)

Ireland has one of world’s heaviest rainfalls. If you see an Irishman with a tan, it’s rust.

(Dave Allen)

We finally got another poll of voting intentions in Northern Ireland, which has actually nothing to do with the election being at last called, as it was fielded before that. That's only the fourth such poll since the 2019 election, and the second one this year. And they show that we may have an interesting situation developing there. Remember that the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland worked under strict and narrow guidelines to recarve all constituencies as little as possible, and do nothing that could disrupt the status quo that emerged from the 2019 election. But politics are a wee smitch like physics or chemistry. The best laid plans work only with all things being equal, or identical states of temperature and pressure. And that's not what's happening right now in Northern Ireland. The electorate there are moving in upsetting and contradictory directions, with unexpected consequences.

At first, Sinn Féin were on a roll and increased their support significantly, just as at local elections and in Eire. Then it went back down again, in the backlash against absolutist wokeism, of which Sinn Féin were the most conspicuous supporters in all parts of Ireland. Now they are predicted to just hold their current seats, and are much less of a challenge to the SDLP in the few constituencies where the competition is between Republican parties only. So the most visible changes are now happening on the Unionist side. Back in 2019, nobody expected the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice to break with tradition, and suddenly decide to field candidates in all constituencies at the incoming general election. Since TUV was founded, they stood in ten out of eighteen seats in 2010, seven in 2015, one in 2017 and none in 2019. The interesting part is that their candidacies this year are part of a formal alliance with Reform UK. TUV are very unlikely to bag a seat, but that's certainly not the goal. Weakening the DUP, just as Reform UK aim at weakening the Conservatives in England, is quite enough to make them happy bunnies. And it works, as the last poll predicts the DUP losing two seats. South Antrim to the UUP, and Belfast East to the Alliance Party. The latter is the most symbolically significant, as it means the DUP would no longer have any MP from the capital, something that has never happened before.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

(Douglas Adams)

I went to the Queen's Butcher in Ballater, next to Balmoral, on a campaign visit and had to have a go with their sausage-making machine. And it turns out that, inexplicably, I'm shit at it. Errr, so... not a big fan of having sausages in my hands.

(Ruth Davidson, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

YouGov must have been really miffed when they shot too quick last month and fielded a Full Scottish just hours before Humza Yousaf resigned. To heal their hurt pride, they have fielded another one just two weeks later, after they made sure that John Swinney was indeed First Minister and hadn't resigned yet. Since then, we've also had a Full Scottish from Survation, which even The Scottish Pravda did not try to hide from their residual readership. Then we had the added treats of More In Common fielding their first ever Scottish poll, and Redfield & Wilton extending their GB-wide sample to 12,000, which meant that their Scottish subsample rose to 1,080 and thusly fully qualifies for inclusion in my sequence of Full Scottish polls. Of course, the latter two cover only Westminster voting intentions and we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. Let's see first how much the SNP's and Greens' latest shenanigans have hurt the Independence cause. Because they have, make no mistake, and the trendlines for the not-incoming Indyref say just that.

You can see clearly now that the Yes vote has taken a nosedive in the most recent polls or, to put it more bluntly, since John Swinney became First Minister. It's safe to assume that the dark clouds are not gone, and it's gonna be a long long time before we see another bright, bright sun shiny day. It becomes even more painfully obvious if we focus the spotlight on the last five polls in that sequence, those fielded wholly after the Scottish Greens ended Humza Yousaf's career. The weighted average says that we are now facing a 47% Yes to 53% No defeat, if an actual referendum was to be held next week. Which is irrelevant anyway as Scots just don't want one happening within the next year, and are split on having one in the next five years.

I'm old enough to remember, and you surely are too, when Scots were split on a referendum within the year, and massively wanted one within the next five years. That was barely six months ago, when the predicted vote was 50-50. Now, the SNP is to the Independence Movement like a cluster of barnacles to a ship. Parasitic and slowing its progress. They clearly have no strategy at all to achieve independence at any time within the next generation, and don't even pretend to have one anymore. The UK are indeed lucky to be led by donkeys, because Scotland is led by headless chicken. Nothing says it louder than John Swinney's first priority, kowtowing to a malevolent group of vicious fringe extremists because he is living under the psychotic delusion that the metropolitan middle-class woke student vote will save his arse. Spoiler alert, mate, it won't.

You ought to know by now that the law has rather less relation to the truth, whatever that may be, than politics have to democracy and, well, whatever that is.

(Sir Geoffrey Dillon, Upstairs, Downstairs: A Cry For Help, 1971)

Around the time the new First Minister was standing up, launching the SNP’s campaign, the police in Scotland put out a notice saying they’d just informed prosecutors and passed their report into the embezzlement of SNP party funds. So I was thinking, you know, maybe Rishi didn’t have the only terrible launch…

(Ruth Davidson, Have I Got News For You?, 24 May 2024)

The SNP's prospects at the next Holyrood election have not been improved by John Swinney. We have already had two polls predicting Labour ahead in the constituency vote, and four predicting Labour ahead in the list vote, since Humza Yousaf was so unceremoniously dismissed by Patrick Harvie. And the aggregate of both sets of votes has Labour as the first party in three out of these four. They are ahead only by a wee margin, around 3%, but we already know from various sources that the geography of the votes favours Labour. Even just a tie would deliver a plurality of Labour seats, and that works for both Westminster and Holyrood. The trendlines don't reflect this fully yet, because of the embedded inertia in six-point moving averages, but we're getting close.

The SNP's position will certainly be damaged further by the current scandal engulfing the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Center, and the man chosen as its CEO enforcing a reign of terror against dissenters, all of which has Nicola Sturgeon written all over it. Compared to that, John Swinney disavowing the Scottish Parliament's Standards Committee over Michael Matheson's richly deserved suspension looks almost like business as usual. Or what would pass as business as usual in a banana republic sponsored by Vladimir Putin. Surely John Swinney does not remember the absolute meltdown when Boris Johnson tried the same stunt to save Owen Paterson. That one went down really well, didn't it? Now, the Matheson business only makes the case for recall petitions being allowed in Holyrood too. In the meanwhile, YouGov's belated post-Humza Full Scottish and Survation's new one are far worse for the SNP than their previous ones, but a wee smitch less damning that the Redfield & Wilton I mentioned last time.

Again, the Traffic Lights Coalition looks like the best option for First Minister Anas Sarwar, bagging 66 or 70 seats. The only problem with that is that the Greens may end up the second largest party in that coalition, and the Liberal Democrats only third. Obviously, Anas Sarwar would want it the other way round, as the Survation poll predicts, or even better bagging a majority with only Labour and the LibDems. If anything, the Greenies have proved to be worse than loose cannons, totally unpredictable, unmanageable and feral. A bit like a they/them in the workplace. It's quite unlikely Sarwar would be able to tame them, now that the SNP has accustomed them to behaving like spoilt brats without facing any repercussion. Which is what happens when entitled fringe extremists become kingmakers thanks to proportional representation. Don't say you haven't been warned. The situation would of course be vastly different if Holyrood polls duplicated Westminster polls. Labour leading by 10% in both Holyrood votes, as they do in the last Westminster poll, would solve their Green problem, as it would take a Lab-Lib coalition to 67 seats, a six-seat majority. We would thusly go back full circle to the first years of devolution, probably not for the best, but just for a wee smitch better. But always thank Dog for small mercies, and even more for the big one that would be kicking Paddy, Beaker, Unicorna and Mad Mags out of the corridors of power forever.

It’s my experience that most of the harm in this world is done by people trying quite gratuitously to do more good than they can possibly achieve. Give me an honest villain any day.

(Sir Geoffrey Dillon, Upstairs, Downstairs: A Cry For Help,1971)

Perthshire in October is no place for a girl with a social conscience.

(Elizabeth Bellamy, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Swedish Tiger,1972)

When Rishi Sunak announced the Fourth Of July Election, the instant knee-jerk reactions from Scotland ranged from the fucking hilarious to the fucking appalling. We had, "Look, he's having the election on Independence Day", as if that Independence Day meant anything for us. We also had, "Oi! He's trying to suppress Scotland, we will be on school holidays then!". Aye, six fucking days into the holidays. And it's not as if the whole of Scotland went to Mars the very second schools close, or postal vote did not exist. It's just, barely just, possible that some Councils won't have the usual full staff available for the counts. No big deal, mates, the counts will just take longer. And I honestly can't be arsed to give a frying duck about that, and the SNP shouldn't either. If you're going to lose your fucking seat anyway, what fucking difference does it make if the declaration is at 6am instead of the usual 3am? Because that's what is going to happen, if you look at the trends of Full Scottish polls.

So it's official now, Labour are Scotland's first party again and widening the gap with the SNP. Before you object, remember that the last time the SNP took a kick in the arse, that was 2017, polls overestimated the SNP vote and underestimated the Labour vote until the last day. Because nobody could believe it would end up that badly, and pollsters just gave too much weight to the remembered 2015 vote in their recipe to deliver the final headline voting intentions. If we are witnessing the same phenomenon here, there is a distinct possibility, Labour could be leading by 2% to 3% more than the polls say. And Election Night won't be a pretty sight, seen from Bute House. The voting intentions from the last four Full Scottish, all those fielded after John Swinney became the new Lider Maximo, and the seat projections therefrom, graphically show the extent of the incoming disaster. Including the very real possibility that the Conservatives could gain a couple from the SNP, while being woodchipped in England and Wales. That's basic maths. If the Conservatives lose fewer votes than the SNP overall, it's actually a swing to the Tories in SNP-Con marginals, and Pete's no longer your MP.

I have added seat projections from the Electoral Calculus projection engine, on top of those from my model, as it seems to be the punditariat's favourite to get numbers to rant about on the BBC. So you might have heard these numbers from the BBC's and The Scottish Pravda's perennial punditificator John Curtice. Interestingly, their projections are not too far from mine when the gap between Labour and the SNP is not too massive, but they diverge when that gap becomes really big. Which is the case with the last YouGov poll, that has Labour leading by 10%, an unprecedented occurrence since the 2019 election. And here we have another time-bomb that started ticking the very second Rishi Sunak called the election. It is public knowledge that the SNP are skint and can't afford a serious general election campaign. Unless they crowdfund, which would probably be borderline illegal, or borrow, which would make them even worse off for the Holyrood campaign of 2026. Which would lead to an even more explosive crash-landing than current polls predict, and that would be something, wouldn't it?

At a Scottish house party, consciences are deposited in the kirk. They are visited of a Sunday, dusted off and tucked back out of sight again. I prefer to carry mine on my own shoulders, where I can see it.

(Elizabeth Bellamy, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Swedish Tiger,1972)

Every passing day we are taking one step close to a dictatorship, and we don’t even know who the real dictators are.

(Allen Shapiro, Torchwood: Miracle Day, 2011)

Last month, Redfield & Wilton went to Wales again, and released a new instalment of their Full Welsh polling. There's not genuine surprise in it, as it mostly confirmed what we already knew of Labour's domination of Welsh politics. This has been a consistent trend after they recovered from the drubbing they took there in 2019, just like everywhere else. It is also quite consistent with what we see in England. The Conservatives are leaking votes from both sides, to Labour and to Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats are doing poorly despite a background that should benefit them, but does not because of "better safe than sorry" tactical voting. Even Plaid Cymru, who seemed to transiently benefit from Labour's earlier poor performance, have now lost a lot of their attraction.

It is thusly no surprise that all recent Full Welsh predict massive gains for Labour, and even coming intriguingly close to a full slate. The last four Full Welsh show a pretty consistent picture. Labour gain back all of their 2019 losses and then make massive inroads in traditionally Conservative territory. The Conservatives face the very real prospect of a total wipe-out and could even see one of their seats fall to the right to Reform UK. The Liberal Democrats are generally doing rather poorly while Plaid Cymru oscillate between bad luck and serendipity, not doing really well against Labour but potentially benefiting from the Conservative meltdown.

But Labour may soon find an unexpected spanner in the cogs across their path to a Welsh landslide. After just two months in charge, their new leader Vaughan Gething is both embroiled in controversy and unpopular. He is the least popular of the main three Welsh party leaders, trailing Plaid Cymru's Rhun ap Iorwerth by 7% and Conservative Andrew R.T. Davies by 4% in favourable opinions. He also has more unfavourables than both, so that's a pretty bleak picture overall. He even has less favourables than Rishi Sunak in Redfield & Wilton's last Full Welsh, which is quite a feat in Labour heartlands. You just have to wonder what was the biggest contributing factor here. Could have been the fallout of Gething's funding by a shady businessman. Or of Plaid Cymru's decision to end their deal with Labour prematurely. Whatever, it's not looking good for a just-anointed leader and First Minister, and will certainly deliver less rosy results for Labour at this election or the next.

It’s not just about us. Not anymore. This is about doing the right thing, for the state and the people.

(Rex Matheson, Torchwood: Miracle Day, 2011)

The twenty-first century is when it all changes, and you’ve got to be ready.

(Jack Harkness, Torchwood: Everything Changes, 2006)

As usual, Redfield & Wilton also surveyed voting intentions for the next Senedd election. They adapted it to the new Welsh electoral law, now that it has passed, and asked for just one voting intention instead of the earlier separate constituency and list votes. It is easy to reconstitute the trend of previous voting intentions polls. As an acceptable approximation, I just took the average of constituency and list voting intentions in the past, and did the same for notional results of the 2021 election. It is certainly not perfect to the last decimal place of Pi, but that's all we have and I doubt anyone can come up with anything better. Besides, there is a nice and logical continuity between these recalculated trends and the findings of the last poll. Before looking at the chart, remember that the new electoral law is full proportional representation in six-member constituencies, without a legal threshold for representation. But everybody can do the math and find out that it de facto enforces a threshold of 14.3% of the popular vote, which I have added to help you figure out the consequences.

Now the other challenge is finding a way to project the plausible results of the next election, and there is obviously no perfect way to do this either. We do have actual results and polling crosstabs for the five now defunct electoral regions used under the previous Additional Members Systems, from which a regional breakdown of new voting intentions can be deduced. I then hypothesised that each of the old regions would host three of the new constituencies and 18 seats, except the South Central region I credited with four constituencies and 24 seats. I also had to assume that the vote would be evenly spread across all constituencies in the same region, which is of course a very crude approach, but is the best approximation I could think of. And the projection from the last poll is quite enlightening, especially about the impact of the implicit threshold. Labour would get a 2-seat majority on 37% of the vote, because the implied threshold turns that into 48% of the votes for the parties who would be eligible to take part in the allocation of seats, and the largest averages method favours the largest party..

On these numbers, Plaid Cymru would be excluded from the allocation of seats in the South East, literally by a bat's whisker of less than 0.1%. And the Conservatives would be perilously close to that in South Central, clearing the hurdle by just 0.5%. That's the trap Mark Drakeford quietly laid with that reform of the electoral law, in practice ensuring that representation would be limited to the three largest parties. On current voting intentions, it is highly unlikely that the Liberal Democrats would clear the threshold in any constituency, and there's only a remote possibility that Reform UK would, even if they bagged more than 10% of the national vote. It was obvious it would happen that way, and of course the supporters of proportional representation totally changed their stance. Before they squealed like, "FPTP is undemocratic, so we need PR". And now it has been reframed like, "Full PR is undemocratic, we need Single Transferable Vote". Because they know that STV allows the worst of FPTP, massive tactical voting on second preferences and above, and so would enable fringe minorities to sneak in. Too bad, mates, you can't have it both ways, and all the opportunistic soundbites in the world won't make a fucking difference.

If the Devil himself walked this Earth, he’d surely be working in PR.

(Oswald Danes, Torchwood: Miracle Day, 2011)

I read the news today, oh boy, four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire

And though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all

Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

(John Lennon, A Day In The Life, 1967)

Redfield & Wilton have updated their now perennial polling of the proverbial Red Wall. What we get from their findings does not always match voting intentions and trends from generic voting intentions polls to the furthest decimal place, but nevertheless provides quite interesting information. For example, they unveiled the significant switch to Reform UK before it was really conspicuous in generic polls. Because their choice of constituencies is core Red Wall, and thusly representative of the socially conservative pro-Brexit working class electorate who switched from Labour to the Conservatives in 2019, and are not totally convinced that New New Labour's ultra-big tent is for them. So there is some logic in their latest findings, where the Conservatives are losing 25% on their 2019 result, while Labour and Reform UK both gain 10%.

It is also intriguing that Labour are far more successful with women than with men in this select sample. It is not what you would expect from a generally more socially conservative part of the electorate, where Labour's stance on women's rights and identity politics could be assumed to have more negative weight. Then you have to conclude that the overwhelming desire to get rid of the Conservatives trumps all other concerns, which it also probably does on a wider scale all across England. But it could also backfire quite soon after the election, if Labour's ambiguity leads them to concessions to the 'gender identity' faction in their ranks, like enabling gender self-identification through the back door under cover of 'modernisation' of the Gender Reform Act 2004. The updated crosstabs of current voting intentions with the remembered 2019 votes are also quite enlightening, now that we have reached the final lap before decision time.

Conservative voters of 2019 are no longer massively undecided, as they were in earlier polls. Now, the largest proportion of undecideds and potential abstainers is among those who did not vote in 2019. Who might be serial abstainers as well as new voters. When pushed, these are also more likely to vote Labour than Conservative. The decrease in the number of Conservative undecideds strengthens another point made by Redfield & Wilton, that the gap is unlikely to narrow between Labour and the Conservatives. The general trends of polls confirm that, as the first ten days of campaign have not moved the goalposts. This is exactly what Labour HQ want to hear, and they probably don't even mind that it's happening mostly thanks to a steadily high vote for Reform UK. You just have to wonder, nevertheless, if Labour HQ considers that losing a couple of their own seats to Reform UK would be an acceptable price to pay for a conclusive Conservative rout. It could happen in the Red Wall, as Hartlepool and the two seats in Barnsley remain the most likely to fall if Reform UK still get votes in the double digits on Election Day.

The water’s so dirty, you can’t even dip your cox in it any more.

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

The Northern Lights were visible in the UK as far South as the Isle of Wight, where locals quickly set up a sacrificial altar to appease the gods.

(Jason Manford, Have I Got News For You?, 17 May 2024)

Redfield & Wilton have also updated their polling of select Blue Wall constituencies, where Ed Davey still hopes the Liberal Democrats will make gains because they made some at local elections. What they found is just as satisfying for Labour as the Red Wall poll, and better for the Liberal Democrats than the general trends of polling say. It also shows Reform UK doing quite well in the Leafy South, which is something you could not deduce from the 2019 vote. The Brexit Party, as they were known then, stood in only a small number of Southern seats because of their policy of not standing in the way of Conservative incumbents. But earlier elections prove that the Euroceptic right has always been a presence Doon Sooth. Their ancestor UKIP bagged 1.5 million votes and 15% of all votes cast at the 2015 general election. Then the Brexit Party bagged 2 million votes and 37% of all votes cast at the unnecessary 2019 election for the European Parliament. And now they are unsurprisingly back to a double-digit vote share, that might even be underestimated.

There's something else in these results, that's definitely not a Southern Oddity. A significant obstacle for Labour may be the Green vote, which is hugely popular in some areas down there. Redfield & Wilton did not offer regional crosstabs in this poll, so it's impossible to pinpoint the threatened seats more precisely, but we know where the Greens' greatest expectations are. They have already made it clear that they want to oust Labour in Bristol Central, and may even have an eye on Brighton Kemptown now that Labour have sacked the atrocious Lloyd Russell-Moyle and the woke absolutist vote may be up for grabs. Redfield & Wilton also found the same phenomenon in the South as in the North, that the number of Conservative undecideds has significantly gone down.

This is good news for the pollsters and pundits, as it enhances the plausible accuracy of polls. But also for Labour, as it has not hurt their voting intentions. Contrary to what some pollsters had incorporated in their methodology, and I'm targeting Opinium specifically here, Conservative undecideds do not tend to go back to their old ways when they make up their minds. They actually are quite similar to those Conservative voters of 2019 who had already made up their mind, and chosen to desert their old party. It may even be a key to the election, if the Conservatives manage to hold just half of their 2019 voters in the South. If the trend holds until Election Day, then Labour will really bag a huge number of improbable gains there. Nobody would have waged even a fiver on that just three years ago, and now it definitely looks like Starmer's Road To Number Ten goes through Essex and Somerset. It would be quite an upset, compared to generations of elections, but it may well be just what will happen on this Election Day.

I quite like the idea of a crab on anti-depressants. “I finally realised I could have been walking forward all this time”.

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

I chose this path because I adore raw power and I crave dank lodgings in Central London.

(Nicol Trowbridge, The Diplomat, 2023)

Make no mistake, the main event of the last month, the one poised to deliver an earth-shattering tsunami across the political spectrum, is not Rishi Sunak's decision to call an Independence Day Election. It is Jeremy Corbyn's decision to get expelled from the Labour Party, with his surprise candidacy as an Independent in Islington North. Naw, just kidding, this one is more of the "fuck around and find out" variety, even if Jezza's campaign HQ is just a macchiato's throw away from Owen Jones' house. Obviously, The Hipstershire Gazette is still rooting for Jezza, even quoting Genesis to support it, probably inadvertently. Their support is only natural, as the last remnants of their readership are in his constituency, though it will probably not last longer than the declaration in the wee hours of the 5th of July. No matter what happens to Jezza, it will then be time to turn the page and tell the world what a great Prime Minister Keir Starmer will be. Because the trends of London Polling still show Labour in a dominant position, though there are some cracks since Rishi Sunak called the election.

Then Keir Starmer, in a typical Starmer move, threw another spanner in the cogs right across his path to victory. That was The Curious Incident Of Diane In Hackney North, of course. Labour HQ totally muddied the waters here, offering more contradictory versions of events than there were candidates standing for selection in the constituency. But Diane Abbott herself was not averse to stoking the fire, which might have been a not-too-subtle way of applying pressure on Sly Keir. The most exquisitely ridiculous part of that chain of events was Rishi Sunak jumping at the deep end of the pool on behalf of a Corbyn ally who is now also supported by George Galloway, while The Telegraph were only too happy to grant her total access to their readership. Strange bedfellows and all. And all that was before London Labour scored a hat-trick of own goals with the deselection of Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green, Iain Duncan Smith's seat and one of the most promising prospects of a Labour gain, which Shaheen herself missed by just 1,262 votes in 2019. And also before Angela Rayner chose to publicly support Abbott in a genuine gesture of solidarity, but whom with? Look no further if you want to know why recent polls are far less brilliant for London Labour.

But Shaheen, Corbyn and Abbott may well be the least of Starmer's worries pretty soon. George Galloway's Wankers Party are on a crusade to embarrass New New Labour in the Imperial Capital, and are perfectly happy with the idea that it actually helps the Conservatives. It would be massively ironic if Labour scored an unprecedented victory on Election Night, while losing a couple of seats right down the street from Starmer's own backyard. What about Wes Streeting in Ilford, who has already been identified as Galloway's prime target? Then there's still a cloud of uncertainty looming above the two constituencies in Tower Hamlets. The Wankers have their own candidate in Poplar and Limehouse and are supporting an independent in Bethnal Green and Stepney, where Catman himself was an MP for just one term. It's not clear yet what the links are between the Gallowayian candidates and the locally-powerful Aspire Party, but there are most certainly some and the two seats may well be major accidents waiting to happen for Labour. Which would actually be a funny oddity, in a most peculiar way.

I suppose all politicians in the end are like kind of crazed wasps in a jam jar, each individually convinced that they’re gonna make it. You’ve been more or less programmed that way.

(Boris Johnson)

I’m all in favour of elections, provided the right people do the voting.

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

The European Union will be voting next week, from Thursday and forever until Sunday, and we will probably have the final vote count a few days after that, but will have to wait a wee while for the headcounts of political groups in the new European Parliament. There has already been a salient feature in this year's campaign, which the Conservatives had oddly not claimed as a Brexit benefit, though it's the only one in sight right now. No major party in any country has campaigned on leaving the EU, as they are smarter than Brits and fully appreciate what a fucking disaster Brexit is. So now is the last opportunity to have a look at the aggregate of voting intentions polling across the EU, and the seat projection that goes with it, as usual taken from the Europe Elects site.

The voting intentions say that there is no far-right tsunami happening, contrary to common wisdom propagated by the mainstream media. Total votes for the far-right, as measured by combination of the I&D group and the Unaffiliated, is just slightly up from 2019 on 18.5% vs 18.0%. It increases, from 26.2% to 30.8%, only if you also add the national-conservatives from the ECR group, who have always done their best to keep the radical far-right at arm's length. The dominant coalition of the SD, Renew and PPE groups has lost quite a number of votes on 49.1% vs 52.5% in 2019, which might offer other parties an opportunity to question their legitimacy and seek alternative alliances. The aggregate forces of the left-wing parties are also going down markedly, from 36.7% in 2019 to 30.7% now. The seat projection from this polling just confirms that the tectonic plates have barely moved. The Centre Bloc of social-democrats, liberals and moderate conservatives is still predicted to hold a solid majority with 56% of the seats, so the far-right is expected to gain some more posturing power, but no real influence over the Parliament's decisions.

The headcounts for the far-right Identity and Democracy group and the Unaffiliated factor in the most recent development that may embarrass the far-right and jeopardise their strategy. There has been summat of a lovers' tiff between the French Rassemblement National and the German Alternative für Deutschland, who are now counted as Unaffiliated and no longer I&D. The French are desperately seeking respectability and votes, votes mostly, actually. While their German counterparts thought that an election campaign was the best moment to seek excuses for the SS, all of whom are already dead anyway, so it really was a fucking dick move. Just when Marine Le Pen thought that a Gathering Of The Tribes would pave the way to a big success. But the far-right are just like the woke mob. No matter how hard it tries, the leotard can't change its spots, can it? If the election results confirm this last-day projection, the most important and vital issue will still be handled properly. This is the EU's aid to Ukraine, obviously. The ECR group, of which the British Conservatives were members before Brexit, is mostly supportive of Ukraine, so a continuous stream of aid packages is still the most likely option for the future.

It’s not all Queensberry rules in Europe. Occasionally one needs a little bit of pepper on the glove.

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

This week, 81-year-old President Biden and 77-year-old Donald Trump agreed to a televised head-to-head debate. Yes, just two men, two microphones, one defibrillator.

(Jason Manford, Have I Got News For You?, 17 May 2024)

Will Donald Trump being found guilty in the Stormy Daniels trial be a game-changer and a turning point in the American presidential election? I honestly do not think so, because the absolutist MAGA voter base will always remain faithful to The Donald, as they genuinely believe this is part of a massive conspiracy against their hero, their liberty, and Civilisation As Vladimir Putin Knows It. This is where our expectations collide with the United States' very peculiar rules. How many votes you get is irrelevant, what matters is how many states you get. The key to the election is thusly to target the most promising swing states and flood them with your campaign ads, as you can afford to lose some votes in heartland states that you will win by a massive margin anyway. Redfield & Wilton are aware of that, and have regularly polled a selection of six swing states, who could also hold the keys to this year's election. Two of these states (Florida, North Carolina) voted for Trump twice in 2016 and 2020. The other four (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania) voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. The most recent poll is quite disheartening for the Biden camp, though there are some massive caveats attached.

The poll assumes that Robert Kennedy Jr., the maverick loose cannon who may be standing as an Independent, would also be on the ballot in all six states. But that's not how it works in the United States. There is no such thing as a 'national candidate' as candidacies have to be approved state by state, according to their own criteria. Even Donald Trump was threatened with a ban in a few states, before the Supreme Court overturned their decisions. A candidate can also choose to not apply in some states, mostly because the campaign expenses involved appear excessive for just a few expected votes. So far, among Redfield & Wilton's six states, Kennedy is on the ballot only in Michigan, and validated as a write-in in Pennsylvania. He has also filed for ballot access in Florida. This means that the poll's findings in Arizona and Georgia are just hypotheticals, and standard generic polling says that both states are on a knife-edge between Trump and Biden, as they were in 2020. The bottom half of the poll is more worrying for Joe Biden.

Both states that have Kennedy on the ballot are the reason why Biden should be alarmed. They show that Trump does not need to gain votes to gain states, he could even lose some and still come out first. All he has to do is sit back and watch Kennedy snatch mouthfuls of votes off Biden. The Trump camp are obviously relishing in the precedent of 1992, when Ross Perot cost George Bush the presidency and got Bill Clinton elected on just 43% of the popular vote. There are two major differences, though. Perot got almost three times as many votes as Kennedy is credited with in current polls. And, more importantly perhaps, Bush was not a convicted felon on Election Day. The MAGA core vote may hold on average nationally, but will it in every single state? If it does not, and falls only by a few points in swing states, it kind of invalidates the poll's findings, at least in Pennsylvania, that weighs 19 votes in the Electoral College. So the only certainty is that we do need another of these polls, now that the Stormy Daniels trial is over and Trump found guilty on all 34 counts. Which is, in theory, worth 136 years in jail, that he will of course not get.

Silence Of The Lamb. Has anyone ever seen The Silence Of The Lamb? The late great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man, he oftentimes would have a friend for dinner.

(Donald Trump at a campaign rally in New Jersey, 11 May 2024)

Evil people always support each other. That is their chief strength.

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

Since the Russian aggression two years and four months ago, which Solzhenitsyn would have supported as he was an ultra-nationalist Russian supremacist, eight million Ukrainians have gone into exile. Some of them to escape mobilisation and being sent to the frontline. But most of them to escape Russian war crimes. This has considerably weakened Ukraine, and is a plight similar to the Palestinians', hounded off the land of their birthright by a brutal colonialist invader. But Ukraine is not as popular with the historically and politically illiterate students at Columbia University, who love ranting about white privilege and gloat about part-time hunger strikes, but wouldn't recognise real fascists if they shot them in the arse. And you obviously look better in the mirror, at Mom and Dad's mansion in The Hamptons, with a designer keffiyeh on than wearing Zelenskyy's trademark olive drab T-shirt. Fashionable selective indignation only highlights the Woke Left's utter moral bankruptcy, while another YouGov poll shows that the American public remain ambiguous about their country's support for Ukraine.

The proportion of Americans who want military aid to Ukraine decreased has even increased since the last time YouGov polled it. But this is less alarming than it looks, because the level of aid we're talking about has also spectacularly increased in the meanwhile. The benchmark now is the $61bn package approved on the 24th of April, not the few hundred millions allocated piecemeal for several months before that. It's not extravagant that this massive package reinforces the feeling that the United States have done enough now. It also strengthens another message, that was kept subliminal for roughly the first two years of the Russian aggression, and is now totally in the open. That it's time for Europe to up their game and do more, because it's their fucking business after all. Of course, the proverbially geographically-challenged Americans have only a very fuzzy notion of what "Europe" means here, but never mind. It's the thought that counts. And it is quite widely shared by the Great American Public, when they're asked about the level of support Europe is giving to Ukraine.

It's quite interesting that there is the same pattern of generational divide here as about American military aid to Ukraine, but far fewer visible political differences. America really wants to put the burden of solidarity on Europe. For better or for worse, as support to Ukraine has reached an unprecedented level of urgency. Not because of Russian strength, but of our weaknesses. Joe Biden was warned, but he wouldn't listen. Olaf Scholz was warned, but he chose to do nothing. Procrastination and fabricated red lines cost Ukrainian lives, and Biden and Scholz have enabled Putin's offensive on Kharkiv, his last chance to score gains before the new deliveries of military supplies arrive. And all the Americans did at first was jargoning about the "changing trajectory" of the war. Their belated decision, to allow Ukraine to strike on Russian soil with Western weapons, is still half-hearted with a lot of cable-sized strings attached. Now I hope Ukraine will be a key issue in our general election campaign and won't be pushed to the background by irrelevant stories about fucking lanyards. The future of Europe is at stake there. Sunak knows it. Starmer knows it. At least I hope they do, and won't obfuscate because it's not the most popular issue. So let them both channel their inner Boris Johnson and prove they are fit for power, by providing unwavering and unlimited support to Ukraine's fight for democracy and freedom.

Hamlet is very Russian. He worries too much, complains about everything, takes too long to make up his mind, and when he finally does, it all ends badly anyway. Such is life.

(Gina Kadinsky, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2015)

Jeremy's Den

02/06/2024

In The Wake Of Lost Elections

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