Jeremy's Den: July 2024

The good ended happily and the bad, unhappily. That's what fiction means. When the overture begins, you don't know what the opera might be. Or where the story might take you. Whether it will be comedy... or tragedy. This... is a story about love.

(Endeavour Morse, Endeavour: Oracle, 2020)

You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of the story, you have to go back to the beginning.
(Henry VIII, The Tudors, 2007)

Obviously, I had to keep a Rick Wakeman soundtrack up my sleeve until this post-mortem of the most game-changing election since the Second World War. Because the BBC use this reworked version of his 'King Arthur' from 1975 as the opening theme tune for Election Night since 1997. And have never paid Rick one penny in royalties for 27 years. He confirmed it himself, on Twitter, when I asked him directly just after the 2022 local elections, and that is a fucking shame. Now the game is over, the page has been turned and the book closed, so the story can be told. It has been a long strange trip indeed for the Labour Party, and ended in a most disconcerting way. Not least because eyebrows were raised all across These Isles when the BBC finally mentioned the vote shares late on Election Night, and we all realised that the fucking polls had been fucking wrong up to the last day, as the actual numbers show in relation to the trendlines. And so were all the scenarios we could deduce from them, as I will show you in a wee while.

The final numbers are Great Britain only, as this is the area covered by generic election polls, and not the whole UK. It does not get better if we again make the oft-quoted comparison with 1997, which has become even more obviously relevant the second we saw BBC One's exit poll. Labour's lead was cut by about half after Dissolution Day in 1997, and so was it this year. But that's where our problems start. The 1997 polls were quite accurate, even without such massive technological advances like MRP, as they had Labour on 45% and the Conservatives on 32% on Election Eve. To cut a long story short, they were off by less than the standard margin of error. It's quite a different story this year, as Election Eve polls told us to expect Labour on 40% and the Conservatives on 21%. Massively and ridiculously off, and by a huge margin. So it turns out I now have to eat the first of many hats, or whatever, as the pollsters I mocked because they tweaked their methodology, and thusly found smaller Labour leads, were right. If anything, they did not tweak the algorithms enough.

Nevertheless, I was right on one important issue, and I was wrong on so many others that I will definitely gloat until the next election about this one. The punditariat's 'common wisdom', peddled to the bitter end, that Labour needed a 10% lead over the Conservatives for just a one-seat majority, has been proved to be total bollocks. They bagged a 10% lead and a 175-seat majority. I told you very early on, the 10%-hurdle narrative was bullshit because it ignored two major factors. Labour's rebirth in Scotland and the Liberal Democrats' surge in the South of England. Both materialised with even bigger effects than I expected, and then the electorate added a third one, the surge of Reform UK. I thusly stand by my earlier point, that Labour would have won a majority even on just a 4% lead over the Conservatives across England, so about 5% GB-wide if you stipulate Scotland and Wales staying the same.

Let’s arrange a postmortem. Probably more fun than Shakespeare.

(Mike Shepherd, The Brokenwood Mysteries, 2015)

Multiple catastrophic injuries consistent with a high fall onto an unyielding surface.

(Max DeBryn, Endeavour: Oracle, 2020)

This blunt medical examiner's verdict sums up quite fittingly what happened to the Conservative Party at this election. Never mind the faulty polling, Team Blue still lost half their votes of 2019, plummeting from nearly 14 million votes to barely 7 million. The massive irony is of course that Keir Starmer led Labour to a landslide on fewer votes than when Jeremy Corbyn led them to a historic debacle, 9.7 million versus 10.3 million. But never mind, we don't look a gift horse in the arse, do we? Or else he might kick us in the baws. The pollsters, now indulging in introspection for some excuses for their mistakes, are nevertheless right on one count. There were multiple factors at play here, contradictory yet complementary, and ironically unleashed by the pollsters themselves. Since Labour had it in the bag, thousands of voters, who were ready to vote tactically for Labour, thought there was no harm in voting for their preferred candidate instead. While thousands, who had Labour as their preferred candidate, thought that, since Labour had it in the bag, it was smarter to vote tactically for another one best placed locally to unseat an unloved Tory MP. And that's how we got where we were on Election Night.

What you have probably guessed already is that both factors boosted the Liberal Democrats, the latter probably more powerfully than the former. While the former boosted the Greens to an unprecedented performance, and quite possibly also the Left Independent insurgents I dub the 'Gaza candidates'. And both affirmed, validated and amplified the ruthless logic of first-past-the-post. It's not about hoarding votes all over the place, it's about getting the right votes in the right places. Something the Liberal Democrats proved unexpectedly and, to be honest, exceptionally good at, and both the Conservatives and the SNP miserably failed. While Labour compensated for their rather mediocre final performance with some sort of tanker inertia that propelled them well past the last hurdle, plus a wee pinch of serendipity here and there. Since Rishi Sunak was kind enough to call the election exactly six weeks before Election Day, it was tempting and easy to track voting intentions week by week. Each bar represents the weighted average of all polls published during a given week, which does not mean they were fielded totally within that week. And then I dug a special hole for the polls released on Election Eve, the 3rd of July. All nine of them. Nine fucking polls in just one fucking day.

It only shows that the very British obsession with massive polling does not translate into better quality polling. Even the pollsters I unfairly stigmatised for altering their methodology, and thusly making their results less Labour-friendly, totally missed it. Opinium, the earliest of the historic tweakers, credited Labour with an 18% lead on Election Eve. YouGov's last poll found Labour 17% ahead, More In Common went for 18% in their last generic poll and 16% in their last MRP poll. J.L. Partners were closest on Election Eve, but still had Labour leading by 15%. Etc... etc... etc... They all fucking missed it, even if it was with smaller gaps than those who never altered their recipe. The signal may have been lost in all the noise, but it was a very weak signal to start with. I have also scrutinised the raw data, when they were published, i.e. the spontaneous answers before any sort of weighting is applied, and they're not better. There is only one obvious conclusion here, that voters lie to pollsters, just like patients lie to their GP, as Gregory House told you years ago, and witnesses lie to the rozzers. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, and all the weighting in the world won't make a fucking difference.

Why are you sitting there looking at me like dogs being shown a card trick?

(Jean Innocent, Lewis: The Invisible Stain, 2012)

I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, smile and grin at the change all around

Pick up my guitar and play just like yesterday, then I'll get on my knees and pray we don't get fooled again

(Pete Townshend, Won't Get Fooled Again, 1971)

Does just a casual look at the map say it all? Well, the changed colours say a lot, but not the whole story. What they say is that it was the worst result for the Conservatives since Robert Peel's Tamworth Manifesto, and they even lost that very seat. If you go further back in time to the Tories of yore, a crash landing of similar magnitude and pattern actually hadn't happened since March 1679. The wide swathes of orangey shade in the English South also say that it was the best result ever for the Liberal Democrats, and the best result for a Liberal-themed party since 1923. But the massive spread of red across England just hides an inconvenient truth. Everybody, probably including Keir Starmer himself, expected Labour's most massive success in recorded history, and it didn't really happen, did it?

The actual results of the election are of course a massive and historic success for the Labour Party and Keir Starmer, but we don't always look at the bright side of life, do we? Even if the dark side is just a construct of our own minds, seeing clearly now that Labour are building high hopes and great expectations on very thin ice. You obviously don't see that when looking at the election's results. What you see is a restored Labour supremacy in Wales and the English North, a conclusive return in Scotland and the Midlands, and a crushing Conservative defeat in the English South. This is certainly the rosy side of the story, than both Labour and the suddenly-turned-red punditariat will regale you with for months. I'm not against the view that Labour now deserve that we cut them some slack and give them some space, but even acknowledgment of their massive victory should not quash any critical assessment. But let them just revel in it starry-eyed and grinning for now.

You will not be surprised that the most irrelevant, and probably the most stupidest, of all rambling pieces about the election was written by Owen Jones for the benefit of The Islington North Gazette's vestigial readership. I know I have often drawn your attention to the disturbing similarities between Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, but Wee Owen trying to shoehorn the same asinine narrative onto two different elections, in two countries that have very little in common, is frankly fucking ridiculous. And it might be why his column was kept off the front page by the editorial staff. Now let's not forget the less rosy side of the story, though. How vastly mistaken polls led to vastly mistaken seat projections from all prognosticators until the very last day. Of course, we psephologists were just the messengers here, and should not take all the blame for these shit predictions. Prognostication is pretty much like Kobe Beef, it's only as good as what it's been fed, As a veggie, I can't really affirm that, but a corpse-eating pal told me. And here, the pollsters fed us bucketloads of bollocks day after day. And more often than not twice or thrice a day, especially in the last mile.

Quite ironically, even the two augurs who issued a last day prediction, slightly correcting their last-but-one day prediction, Survation and Electoral Calculus, were still as wildly off as those who did not try any correction. If a medal has to be awarded for the least shitty performance, it would go to YouGov. Of course, their very last MRP projection, released on Election Eve, missed Labour and the Conservatives by 20 seats each, and did not see the SNP's debacle coming. But they were the only ones who got the Liberal Democrats' headcount spot on, and this alone deserves praise. The map displayed in their article shows that they even got the seats right, give or take a couple, especially the ones that mattered most, the massive orange blob in the English South West. I will not comment on my own performance. You have the numbers and my past ramblings, so you can make your own informed opinion. And now I will just do what all others in this trade will, suck it up and carry on.

There's nothing in the street looks any different to me, and the slogans are effaced, by-the-bye

And the parting on the left is now the parting on the right and the beards have all grown longer overnight

(Pete Townshend, Won't Get Fooled Again, 1971)

All fantasy is infantile until it turns sinister, which it does if you don’t grow out of it. Arrested adolescence is a dangerous thing. Nasty and dangerous.

(Selina Rutherford, Lewis: Allegory Of Love, 2009)

A few days after the Starmerslide The Islington North Gazette, always eager to demonstrate how totally out of touch with reality the metropolitan mediatariat are, first published a column by resident wokester Zoe Williams, and then another by newbie MP Ellie Chowns to make the case for proportional representation. You can feel instantly, through the headlines and some painfully convoluted arguments, that both columnists, and the editorial staff too, felt it was a very awkward point to make when the obvious main beneficiary would be Reform UK. This is made clear by Chowns quickly brooming this exact point under the rug, as just some sort of necessary evil to help secure the greater good, which is bringing more Greenie Loonies into Commons. And also by Williams explicitly advocating more proportionality, not full proportionality, without spelling out what it would mean in practical terms, like a workable electoral law. It's fairly easy to simulate what full proportionality would deliver, with or without a legal threshold for representation, as the formula for the allocation of seats under the highest averages method is basic maths.

I simulated the theoretical results on the basis of separate national lists, and separate regional lists within England. Having no threshold for representation, or stipulating the commonly used 5% threshold, makes little difference, as almost all parties would clear that hurdle in almost all regions. As you might expect, both simulations deliver a hung Parliament, where the only feasible majority would be the Traffic Lights Coalition of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens. That's surely an outcome the Greens and the woke absolutist faction within Labour would welcome, but also a recipe for short-term disaster. The usual argument that a coalition would have to be based on consensus is fucking bullshit. It might work in Germany, but it's totally incompatible with the British political culture, which is and has always been confrontational. And we already know, from hard experience in Scotland, that such a coalition would only be an incentive for the minority of kingmakers to push extremist measures of their own, simply because they can. It's the proverbial 'why do dogs like their balls?' rule applied to coalition politics. But I also thought it could be fun to test some other alternative scenarios, all keeping the first-past-the-post system. These projections are obviously hypothetical, as they assume all votes would be added without any loss, which would probably not happen in the real world.

Anyway, if there had not been any 'Gaza candidates', Workers Party or Labour dissidents, the result would have been only slightly better for Labour. Again proving that this alleged 'revolutionary protest' actually had little traction with the electorate. It's more interesting to test a Blue Pact of Tories and Reform, a Progressive Traffic Light Alliance, or the combination of both. The Blue Pact simulation illustrates the weaknesses of the Starmerslide, as well as the strength of the right-wing vote, as it would deliver a hung Parliament with the Conservatives as the first party. Of course, that would be chaos as no majority would be mathematically feasible, with Lab-Lib and Con-Ref bagging the same 309 seats. This is actually more than a mere hypothetical, as a majority of Conservative voters support even more radical action, a merger of the Conservative Party and Reform UK. Which would obviously propel Nigel Farage to the leadership of the British right, and the only way to fulfill his dream, taking down Labour after fatally wounding the Conservatives. Unsurprisingly, a hypothetical Progressive Alliance, of the kind that was mentioned in the summer and autumn of 2019, would massively boost Labour. And the combination of the two would guarantee strong and stable government anyway, as Labour would still bag a bigger outright majority than Boris Johnson, and an overwhelming one if Labour chose to bring the whole Traffic Lights Alliance into government with them.

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I said.

(Alan Greenspan)

Come now, and let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

(Isaiah 1:18)

I think it has been demonstrated quite conclusively that the British pollstertariat were fucking shite at predicting this election, which retrospectively makes the punditariat's peremptorily self-assured analyses of these polls the most fucking hilarious in living memory. Of course, the pundits will still pay the pollsters fuckloads of dosh to tell them which way the wind blows, when all they have to do to really know is go out on the balcony. Never mind, the pollsters will now allow themselves to postmortem our brains and tell us why we voted like we did. And that will be as solid a verdict as when they told us how we would vote on Election Day. Savanta did not even wait until the ink had dried on the official returns, and were at it again before Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire had declared. Of course, they had to probe deep inside our motivations, and Labour HQ will not be thrilled by what they found.

I'm certainly not surprised by that result, and you certainly aren't either if you followed the story so far. I told you often enough that it would be a Labour landslide by default to avoid faux amazement at a poll telling us that it actually was. Even Labour voters says so, and they're the ones who know best, aren't they? Of course, how people feel about future prospects, now that the ones they wanted out are out and the ones they didn't really wanted in are in, is more important. And Keir Starmer will surely scratch his head in disbelief at what Savanta found here. There's a slight change of mood here as Labour voters are ecstatic, most of them, and Conservative voters are gutted, those who are not actually relieved that it ended the way it did. But the average Brit is neither really happy nor really optimistic about the prospects offered by the new Labour government.

I was already here in 1997, but I'm not quite old enough to actually remember what happened then, and how people felt. I have it from reliable sources, though, that there was genuine joy over Blair's victory. Perhaps not actually dancing in the streets, but it may have been close. The key here might be that Blair did promise sunlit uplands on the other side of the rainbow, though we never quite reached them, but Starmer has just promised more of the same. And his first steps in government have already brought two major disappointments in as many days. Appointing two Ministers for Women and Equalities, neither of which will say what a woman is, in case some men get hurty feelz. Continuing the badger cull in England, after openly pledging they would end it, because they need the National Farmers Union's votes in rural England. But it was the Tories who issued the mass murder licences, so let's blame them again, shall we? Sure, but which one? Savanta also asked that, and their panel is not really sure who has the biggest responsibility in the Tories' historic debacle.

There are amusing patterns here. The younger you are, the more likely you are to lay that smoking turd on Rishi Sunak's doormat. That might be because daily wanking on TikTok shortens your attention span, and most of this lot don't even remember Liz Truss, let alone Boris Johnson. Even the breakdowns by political persuasion are confusing, but we might be tempted to agree with the Conservative voters, who select Liz Truss as the one most to blame. That's where even wrong polls can actually be right, when you look at past trends. The real turning point was Liz Truss' Interlude Premiership, when she brought to government everything that does not work in libertarian conservatism and voodoo economics, and Rishi Sunak just did not find a way to recovery. We will never know if Boris Johnson would have, but my tenner says it was possible. If we go back in time, Labour's lead over the Conservatives was 8% in the week before Boris' resignation. Knowing what we know now, about how pollsters hugely overestimated that lead, it's not totally batshit crazy to think that Boris could have saved the brand. Probably not with an outright majority, but plausibly as the first party by a narrow margin in a hung Parliament. Just imagine the headlines after that.

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge, "The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world".

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Morte d'Arthur, 1859)

Arrangements by Kevin Peek, Rick Wakeman, 1984

Thy return Posterity shall witness. Years must roll away, but then at length the splendid sight again shall greet our distant children’s eyes.

(Jeremian Horrocks, Venus In Sole Visa, 1640)

Now there is one very pressing and existential question on everybody's lips. Or not. Who will lead the Conservative Party to a second historic defeat five years from now? Because that is what will happen, innit? There is no example in British political history over the last 80 years, of an election that totally overturned the results of the previous one, when that previous one had totally overturned the results of its previous one. You can see it clearly, can't you? To put it more succinctly, he who wins once always wins twice. Because the losers always take a fucking long time to regroup, and always make themselves fucking unelectable before making themselves electable again. Both main parties have form here. The Conservatives chewed and spat out three leaders before finding one who would take them back to power in 2010. Labour did only marginally better after that election, with two leaders who lost before they found the one who won. Now Keir Starmer is surely hoping that the Tories will go through another Hague-IDS-Howard phase before finding the New Cameron, or maybe the New Johnson. What may happen at a hypothetical Conservative leadership election has been probed by More In Common, with some interesting results.

More In Common actually polled the Great British Public at large, Conservative voters of 2019 and Conservative voters of 2024. I have kept only the replies of that third group, as they're probably the most relevant. The Conservative vote has shrunk so much that the opinions of their voter base are plausibly very similar to and very representative of the opinions of their grassroots membership, who will be the ones selecting the new leader. Unless the 1922 Committee moves the goalposts again to avoid another embarrassing episode like the Truss Interlude, and let MPs have the final say. More in Common also included Penny Mordaunt, who is now out of the race, but I still kept her name up against the four remaining possibles, as it tells quite something too. I also kept Nigel Farage, as you can't say he will not be eligible to stand when the time comes. James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch both seem to have some credibility with the voter base, as rivals from the not-quite-batshit-crazy-but-close wing of the party. Cleverly even seems to be considered the more reasonable of the two, crushing Farage more conclusively and being defeated by Mordaunt less crushingly.

Now that Penelope is gone, poor Tom Tugendhat could try his luck again as the candidate of the reasonably-not-batshit-crazy-centrist wing of the Batshit Crazy Party. Major Tom, as this is his real rank in the real Army, would defeat both Patel and Farage, admittedly the wildest in the list. But what becomes of Tommy also depends on whom else decides to stand at the last moment, and whether or not they would be competing for the same slice of the party membership, those who think they don't have to sink to the bottom of the cesspit before kicking back up to the open air. Finally, More In Common tested Priti Patel and Nigel Farage, both of whom would probably be credible contenders only if the Conservatives were mad enough to merge with Reform UK, and thusly opened the door to a fight between the poundshop Enoch Powell and the poundshop Nigel Farage. Interestingly, Nigel would prevail in that clash, which shows how toxic Priti has become. But it's likely it won't happen this year, so we are invited to consider that James Cleverly is now the most likely next Lider Minimo, for worse or for worser. The only problem here being that Jimmy hasn't said anything about his intentions. Yet.

We plan the revolution on the first Friday of every month, but nobody ever shows up.

(Ava Taylor, Lewis: Your Sudden Death Question, 2010)

Let us not waste our energies brooding over the more we might have got. Let us look upon what it is we have got.

(Michael Collins)

The good people of Northern Ireland are not against curveballing us on Election Day, with some unexpected surprises. In 2017 they went to a Two-Party Nation, except for one tiny Independent splotch in North Down. In 2019, dissatisfaction at the absence of a Republican voice in the Brexit debates led to the return of the SDLP. This year, nothing upsetting happened in the Republican camp and the drama was elsewhere. Not that the polls were right about that, even if they were conducted by a very local Belfast-based pollster. They lead us to believe that the balance of power in the Republican camp would be about the same as last time aboot. When there actually was a visible swing from the SDLP to Sinn Féin, that nevertheless let their headcounts and the total Republican vote unchanged. Everybody was also expecting the DUP to lose big, and let Sinn Féin emerge as the first party unchallenged, but it went even beyond. The first surprise was a weird game of musical chairs that cost both the DUP and the Alliance Party a seat, with North Down electing and independent again as before 2019, and the definitely non-marginal Lagan Valley kicking out the DUP in the wake of the Jeffrey Donaldson sex-crimes scandal.

But the best part of Belfast's Election Night was obviously the radicalised Traditional Unionist Voice, in cahoots with Reform UK, gaining North Antrim not so much from the DUP as from the Paisley Dynasty. In its own special way, that's as momentous as Hyman Roth taking over from Michael Corleone. That seat had been kind of a family heirloom for 54 years, and the deposed MP Ian Paisley Jr was only three when his controversial and deliberately offensive father won the seat on behalf of the Protestant Unionist Party, later rebranded as the DUP. Ian Paisley actually founded and led both parties, on the heels of his active involvement with a couple of 'paramilitary' groups, the usual codename for obsessively anti-Catholic terrorists aided and abetted by the British State. There is an obvious irony in the way history has repeated itself in North Antrim. Ian Paisley gained it in 1970 from the UUP, which he chastised as 'too soft' on Catholics, and made it the safest of all of the DUP's Crown Jewels. Now Ian Paisley Jr has been kicked out by the TUV's leader Jim Allister, himself a breakaway from the DUP and advocate of creationism, who chastised the DUP for being 'too soft' in the resolution of the Brexit imbroglio. So we have one shade of ideological purity replacing another, and that certainly won't bring peace, love and understanding to Northern Ireland.

There is a simple test. Those who are left in possession of the battlefield have won.

(Michael Collins)

All is but toys, renown and grace is dead. The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of.

(Macbeth, Macbeth, Act II, Scene III)

Nothing tells the story of this election in Scotland better than putting two maps side by side, 2010 and 2024. Labour Red covers a very similar area, with a restored massive dominance all across the Central Belt, where the only other blobs are LibDem orange. And the SNP has shrunk back to its historic heartlands in the rural North East, with an extension now in Argyll and Bute. Parts of rural Scotland have switched from Orange to Blue in the meanwhile, as the LibDems have recovered less from their post-Coalition crash-landing in Scotland than in England, but that does not alter the main and more important conclusion. This election has opened a new chapter in Scottish political history, best exemplified by the SNP being totally wiped out in Glasgow and Edinburgh. What will be written on the new page is anybody's guess, as it will tell the story of the Holyrood election of 2026. Unless we have a snap one earlier. But John Swinney should look at France first, for a textbook case of what can happen when you hastily call an election just after one you just lost big time. Fortunately, we got a moment of comic relief from The Scottish Pravda, who seriously printed that the SNP's debacle could be a new start for Independence because, ye ken, Reform UK. Guess that's what PTSD does to snowflakes.

Interestingly, polls were much more successful in Scotland than in England. Not totally spot on, but close enough when you consider the standard margin of error. The irony is that my final super-sample included almost only Scottish sub-samples of GB-wide polls, with just one Full Scottish thrown in the cauldron. The very last one from Savanta that gave SNP loyalists and The Scottish Pravda a hard-on because it found the SNP three points ahead of Labour. Alas, poor Swinney, it was totally off and you ended up five points behind. My last seat projection was nevertheless oddly off, even with regional data injected to catch the details of the geography of the vote. But even the most accurate polls and the most refined algorithms can't catch the minute last-second changes of mind, that moved a few dozen votes in ultra-marginal constituencies and delivered a disproportionate butterfly effect on the final headcount. Of seven seats I had as 'marginal SNP', five actually went to Labour and one to the Conservatives. Another two I had as 'lean SNP', that is with a slightly more comfortable margin, also went to Labour. Even one I had as 'strong SNP', Alyn Smith's Stirling and Strathallan, turned to 'marginal Labour'. Which is probably more of a verdict on an awful candidate than on polls and projections..

The results were hilariously karmatic in some constituencies. Some SNP incumbents had seen the Conservatives come second in their constituencies in 2019, then failed to do the maths or buried their heads in the sand of denial. They kept campaigning on 'vote SNP to get the Tories out' while Labour was coming back at flank speed with a vengeance, and kicked out more of them than anyone expected just the day before. Aye, that's you Nicolson, Smith and also Giugliano, who wasn't an incumbent but stood in a safe SNP constituency and still managed to lose for the fourth time out of four candidacies in four different constituencies. But the best one was obviously Oor Doogie Ross losing in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, thusly offering the SNP their only gain of the night. There had to be a reward for backstabbing David Duguid, the legitimate Tory candidate, on his hospital bed. And it was made even more fucking hilarious when Doogie was taken down by Reform UK bagging 15% in that constituency. Their best result ever at any election in Scotland and obviously the way outraged Tory voters chose to exact instant revenge on Doogie. But the key lesson is elsewhere. Before the election, the SNP feared that their voice would not be heard in Westminster under a Labour government. Now we know for sure that it won't, simply because Keir Starmer has jack shit incentive to even pretend he gives a flying fuck. Suck it up, mates, you brought this on yourselves.

To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

(Endeavour Morse, Inspector Morse, 1998)

Dark is a way and light is a place. Heaven that never was, nor will be ever, is always true.

(Dylan Thomas)

I didn't have it on my July Bingo Card, yet it has happened. Labour's undeniable electoral success in Wales is now relegated to 'also happened' by the resignation of First Minister Vaughan Gething. It kind of sets summat of a precedent, the shockwave of which must have been heard at Bute House. No matter how deep you bury your head in the quicksand of denial, you still got reality shoved up your arse. In terms that even SNP spads will get, a vote of no confidence, no matter how long and loudly you argue that it's not legally binding, is your political death sentence. Especially when you own team tell you to fuck off, and you take The Hipstershire Gazette on the wrong foot by complying so quick that they still ran three competing headlines on their frontpage an hour later. Gething's problems were out in the open during the campaign, and I can't help thinking they explain why Labour got a smaller share of the vote than polls predicted, and Plaid Cymru a bigger one. That, and a fair amount of tactical voting too, probably.

Tactical voting is the only rationally plausible explanation of the total Conservative debacle in Wales. The polls missed their vote share by only a small margin, and that certainly does not fully account for their number of seats plummeting from a predicted four to an actual zero. The results show that Reform UK doomed the Conservatives and helped the Liberal Democrats in Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, which still remains an ultra-marginal seat. The other three potentially Conservative seats, according to the last week's polls, are not as clearcut, as the Conservatives pretty much bagged the expected vote shares. But Labour got more than the polls predicted in all three, an indication that some sort of improvised alliance of the electorates happened, as the parties never openly discussed it. Which does not mean that they did not subterraneanly encourage it. Two Welsh constituencies were polled before the general election. One went the expected way, the other half did and half didn't.

Survation and I agreed on Caerfyrddin, switching from notionally Conservative to really Plaid Cymru. It is quite typical of the Wild Welsh West, where Plaid Cymru has roots as deep as the SNP's in the rural Scottish North East. The only surprise was Labour doing as well as in 2019, as I fully expected them to lose a lot of tactical votes to Plaid Cymru, and it only partially happened. Then I disagreed with Survation about Ynys Môn. Labour had held it for a very long time in the previous millennium, when it was called Anglesey, and then again in this millennium until the Johnson Election of 2019. So I totally expected Labour to emerge first from a marginal three-way competition. And the actual result was fully counter-intuitive. Tactical voting for the best placed to defeat a Tory incumbent should have favoured Labour but it did the opposite and took Plaid Cymru to a very close gain. The Conservative incumbent Victoria Crosbie also lost far fewer votes than either Survation or I expected, and also far fewer than the Tory brand nationally. But some sort of discontent against Labour certainly also played a part here, and propelled Plaid Cymru past the hurdle.

A truly comic, invented world must live at the same time as the world we live in.

(Dylan Thomas)

additional music by Rick Wakeman, 1997

Change the world this time, will you? It fucking well needs it.

(Geordie Peacock, Our Friends In The North: 1979, 1996)

Soon after the election, Labour MP Rupa Huq published a column in The Guardian about what she went through during the campaign. She's a London MP, but her testimony is also relevant in the North, where George Galloway's Workers Party and ex-Labour independents fielded the most candidates. Nobody will be surprised that Catman's lot and the 'one-issue activists', Hamas apologists in plain English, resorted to harassment, intimidation and falsification. This is standard practice for the Antifa mob who supports this kind of student politics, and most commonly used against women's rights meetings. Targeting Huq this way was particularly offensive and misguided, as she is one of the 56 Labour MPs who had the guts to defy the whip and vote for the SNP's motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Fortunately, the Workers Party's revenge campaign against Labour failed miserably as they did not gain much traction even in the more diverse constituencies of the Red North.

Most polls did not really catch the Workers Party's real influence, as only a few pollsters tested them specifically in their prompts of voting intentions. So I had to extrapolate their plausible vote share, and wasn't far off the mark overall. Catching the Labour Insurgents, or Gaza candidates, was impossible as they were part of the nondescript Others, and I did not even try. The main lesson is that the Workers Party's all-out offensive was an abject and deserved failure. Not one of their candidates was elected, George Galloway lost his temporary seat in Rochdale, the vast majority lost their deposits. At the end of the day, Labour lost only three incumbent MPs outwith London, just one in the North (Kate Hollern in Blackburn, Lancashire, by a bat's whisper). and she was unseated by a Labour insurgent, not by the Workers Party. There was also a special case where insurgency caused Labour to fail. Dewsbury and Batley in West Yorkshire, also won by an independent, but it is a newly carved seat with no notional incumbent. The overall results in the North were actually an outstanding success for Labour.

All the Red Wall losses from 2019 were erased. Labour did better than my last poll-based prediction and the 1997 election in the North East and North West, and almost as well as both in Yorkshire and The Humber. Interestingly, Reform UK did not live up to the polls, who predicted they would outvote the Conservatives all across the Global North. It is odd as some of their most obvious targets were there, like Hartlepool in the North East, or the Barnsley seats in Yorkshire. They failed quite conspicuously, even losing votes in Hartlepool and Barnsley North. Reform UK also did not even compete against Ed Miliband in Doncaster North, though they had put him in the danger zone in 2019 by snatching 20% of the popular vote off Labour. This is probably just another symptom of something we have already seen, Reform UK's inability to find appropriate candidates in even the most promising constituencies. Another example is Rotherham in South Yorkshire, where the Conservatives quite unintentionally did not stand, and Reform UK totally failed to capitalise on the 2019 aggregate right-wing vote, which outnumbered Labour by 3,000 votes. Thank Dog for small mercies and big missed opportunities.

There’s no such thing as a lie, there’s only expedient exaggeration, you should know that.

(Ernest Lehman, North By Northwest, 1959)

Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.

(Captain Albert Wiles, The Trouble With Harry, 1955)

Of course, there is a flip side to Labour doing better than expected in Scotland, Wales and the English North, and that's them doing unexpectedly poorly in the Midlands. There had been signs, very early in the previous term, that the Midlands might be a tough battleground with uncertain outcomes in many seats. But these were later superseded by much more favourable polling, and the cumulative of regional crosstabs that showed Labour doing really well in both regions of the Midlands. The actual results proved that the polls were wildly of, as Labour bagged the same share of the popular vote as in 2019 in the West Midlands, and ended up just 3% up in the East Midlands. The only mitigating factor was that Reform UK did really well, better even than the polls predicted, thusly depriving the Conservatives of many holds and even plausible gains in a couple of marginal seats.

The Midlands also have the dubious honour of being the home turf of the other two defeated Labour incumbents (Khalid Mahmood in Birmingham Perry Barr, Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South). Just like in the North, neither was unseated by the Wankers Party. Galloway's mob did not even stand in either constituency, local Labour insurgents did it. Just down the road from Jonathan Ashworth's former seat, Leicester East is unique in being the only seat lost by Labour to the Conservatives. The incumbent MP Claudia Webbe had been expelled and deselected by Labour long before the election, so you could say that, technically, it was a Conservative gain from Independent. Labour lost the seat thanks to the unholy combination of Webbe, standing as an independent, and another disgraced Labour reject, former MP and rentboys-addict Keith Vaz. Labour nevertheless did pretty well in term of seats, even if it must have felt like a letdown if they believed polls that predicted a really massive reversal of fortunes.

Despite disappointing vote shares, Labour still managed to bag almost as many seats as in 1997. It's actually pretty much a return to 2005, Tony Blair's last election, that was still pretty good for Midlands Labour before they lost big in 2010. In fact, it's a bit hyperbolic to call such results 'disappointing', as they are in fact really good, and an important brick in the wall of Labour's triumphant return. They feel disappointing only in comparison to what the last week's polls translated into. Then the one big upset was of course the Greens scoring an unlikely gain in North Herefordshire. This was predicted by one poll shortly before Election Day, but it looked totally unbelievable as nothing in the electoral history of the seat supported it. Not even the results of the most recent Council elections, which have served as a warning of a Green surge in other parts of England. Even its predecessor seat, Leominster, had been safely blue for generations, so that looked like a weak Conservative hold thanks to the opposition vote being scattered to the four winds. I guess these winds shifted and started blowing in the same direction when the River Wye became an open-air chemical waste dump. And Ellie's your MP, the first ever Green gain from the Conservatives. Which does not make it less of a statistical anomaly.

When your worldview is challenged, you'd be surprised how quickly you can find a way to dismiss reality.

(Jess Phillips)

You must know the golden rule of whoring. Give good value and insist on the going rate.

(Caroline Morton, Lewis: Old School Ties, 2007)

We call it the South, cause time is so long here that life sure will take us more than a million years, and we like to stay here. And that's where all of Ed Davey's dreams came true and beyond. It wasn't an upset as such, as we had seen it brewing in the polls step by step for a long time. But then there was the fucking magnitude of it, the LibDems bagging five times as many seats in those three regions as they had in the whole of the UK four-and-a-half years before. Even seven times as many if you factor in the notional seats after the Boundary Review rather than the real ones at the election. What we see now totally vindicates what Mister Ed had been saying all along, that the LibDems would do sensationally well in the South, and that the South West was the key. Of course we all had a hard time taking him really seriously, as he was bringing a clown dimension to the campaign. From the multiple fantasy Blue Walls first revealed after the Chesham and Amersham by-election ages ago, to the failed canoeing and the shitty paddle-boarding on a shit-infused lake. We couldn't take that bloke seriously, could we? But clearly the voters did, and it showed in the election results for the English South.

Obviously we totally missed what was going on, and Mister Ed is a fucking genius. You really need that to end up doing better across the whole South than even the best polls predicted, and even push Labour into third place in the South West. He made himself look ridiculous and uncredible, and then achieved the incredible. Hitting right where it hurt the most, at the heart of impregnable Tory heartlands, while we watched in disbelief as orangey splotches obliterated the blue ones on the map. And now you can go down the A232, the A23 and the A27 all the way from Kew Gardens to Eastbourne solely on orange ground. Now the Liberal Democrats have more than doubled their number of Southern seats compared to their peak, that was not 1997 but 2005, on 25 seats. While Labour have not even reached 50% more than their peak, which was 1997 in their case. Of course, it's the same situation here as in the Midlands. The final headcount is far less flamboyant than the last batch of polls led everyone to expect, but it's still a massive improvement on 2019, and a key to Labour's victory. The real challenge now will be to hold these seats next time, something Labour HQ seem to have understood, as they are reportedly already preparing for the next election.

Labour may have won the South in terms of who got the most seats this time, but the Liberal Democrats have really shown them how the South was won. By concentrating resources on a small number of target seats, even more ruthlessly than Labour HQ did in the last two weeks. And by hammering home a few key messages, like the one on sewage in the rivers, that resonated extremely well with the voters. Unless they mentioned that they also support pumping healthy kids full of worse chemicals than those in the rivers, that is. Now's the time to look you in the eyes and confess I was totally wrong about the two seats gained by the co-leaders of the Boy-Blue-And-Girl-Pink Party of England and Wales in opposite corners of the Leafy South. Carla Denyer in Bristol Central, Adrian Ramsay in Waveney Valley. In layman's terms, I was wrong and the polls were right, they even underestimated the magnitude of the swing towards the Greens. There is also a unique alignment of stars in both seats, as the results of the most recent Council elections in the constituent wards of the constituencies were excellent predictors of the general election results, something that definitely never happens. Frighteningly almost perfect in Bristol Central, less so on the Norfolk-Suffolk Border as the right-wing vote was not split at the Council elections. But the major trends were there.

So now the Greenies have their Gang Of Four in Commons. The orders for mashed avocado on a bed of organic watercress have quadrupled at the Strangers' Bar and Owen Jones is right chuffed. But they kind of instantly fucked it up by endorsing pumping healthy teenagers full of chemicals, just like the LibDems, and relying for that on fake statistics fabricated on the roof and off the muff by Fox Killer at the Awful Law Project. There were also two other crucial seats to watch Doon Sooth. The first is Portsmouth North, where Penny Mordaunt lost her seat on a knife-edge, despite one poll saying she would hold it on a knife-edge. I won't tell you that I told you so, but I did tell you so, didn't I? The poll was fucking wrong and I was fucking right, so what? The other one is of course Canterbury, where Rosie Duffield won her third term with an increased majority of 8,653. Before you object that she benefited hugely from the right-wing vote being split, just sit back and do the maths. If, very hypothetically, the Conservatives and Reform UK had agreed to field a joint candidate, Rosie would still have won. And, quite fittingly, still with a larger majority than in 2019. All this despite having a Green candidate thrown across her path, with full support from the Loony Woke faction of the local Labour Party. Well done, Rosie.

So these are the spires where he does his dreaming. Not much else he can do with them, really.

(Robert Lewis, Lewis: Old School Ties, 2007)

Bought a souvenir in London, got to hide it from my mom. Can't declare it at the Customs, I'll have to take it home

Tried to keep it confidential but the news is leaking out. Got a souvenir in London, there's a lot of it about

(Keith Reid, A Souvenir Of London, 1973)

London was also a hotspot on Election Night, as befits the Imperial Capital. Labour bagged a landslide there, as expected, but the picture was quite muddied. Just like everywhere else, Labour bagged more seats on fewer votes than in 2019, and also a lot fewer than in 2017, which is meaningful in Keir Starmer's and Jeremy Corbyn's back garden. The polls got the vote shares about right from Reform UK to the Liberal Democrats, but failed to catch what was happening on the Left. George Galloway's Workers Party was not a credible threat to Labour's hegemony, the independent 'Gaza candidates' were, and also an opportunistic protest vote for the Greens. The Gaza candidates bagged over 25% of the popular vote in four constituencies. They enabled Iain Duncan Smith to hold his seat in Chingford and Woodford Green by sheer serendipity, and came within a hare's breadth of unseating Rushanara Ali in Bethnal Green and Stepney, and Wes Streeting in Ilford North. The latter would have been a bigger embarrassment and humiliation for Keir Starmer than Jeremy Corbyn holding Islington North in his newfound persona as the ultimate anti-establishment Warrior Of The People.

Labour's headcount was nevertheless not far from what the polls predicted, but the now proverbial tactical voting allowed the Liberal Democrats to skyrocket from three notional seats to six real ones. Two London seats were polled by Survation, Keir Starmer's Holborn and St Pancras, and Jeremy Corbyn's Islington North. There are some intriguing differences with the poll and my own prediction in the actual results for both, while Survation and I both bagged one hit and one miss here. Survation and I agreed on Holborn and St Pancras, and we were both right inasmuch as Keir Starmer held his seat, which was never in doubt. But we both wildly underestimated Andrew Feinstein's potential as an independent Gaza candidate. Obviously, Feinstein did not fit the usual profile of the Gaza candidates, or the Workers Party's for that matter, among which ethnic minority Muslims were over-represented. Feinstein must have benefited from not being a one-issue candidate, but also involved in activism on global issues such as arms trade. His opposition to Keir Starmer was also not spontaneously born on the 8th of October, but dated back to Starmer's election as Leader of the Labour Party, which surely made him more credible and a better catch-all anti-establishment candidate.

Down the road, literally, Jeremy Corbyn cruised to a landslide win in his historic seat. Survation and I disagreed as they saw Jezza losing by a massive margin, and I saw this one more like 'too close to call' but narrowly held by Official Labour. I used the actual 2019 result here, and not a notional, as Islington North was left totally untouched by the 2023 Periodic Review, that had to shoehorn two additional constituencies in an already crowded Greater London. It was already the Realm's smallest constituency by area and slightly below the legally prescribed average electorate, so there was no point in recarving it. Which left Jeremy Corbyn on totally familiar ground when he decided to try his luck as an independent. Which worked beyond everybody's expectations. Interestingly, the Labour-themed vote jumped by 6,400 votes and 20% between 2019 and 2024, while the turnout went down by 4,800 votes and 5%. Which begs the obvious question, did some Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters switch to Jezza just for the fun of kicking Starmer's arse? I definitely think we can't rule that out. And there's nothing wrong with that if it is true, innit?

Yes, I found a bit of London and I'd like to lose it quick. Got to show it to my doctor cause it isn't going to shrink

Want to keep it confidential but the truth is leaking out. Got a souvenir in London, there's a lot of it about

(Keith Reid, A Souvenir Of London, 1973)

Nothing in the world is single, all things by a law divine in one spirit meet and mingle, why not I with thine?

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Love's Philosophy)

Now the United Kingdom has entered a new Age Of Enlightenment after Keir Starmer's Government Of All Talents signaled the end of the War Of The Roses. You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment, but I might have a good laugh. France is descending into chaos, and we'll deal with that interesting story too, after Rick's next tune. In the meanwhile, it's business as usual at the European Parliament, a month and change after elections that did not trigger an earthquake, despite the punditariat's great expectations and the continued narrative that they did. We now know that for sure, as the final make-up of the Parliament's political groups has been officially announced. The looniest of the far-right, like the Nazi-huggers in the German AfD, have regrouped in a new small group called Europe of Sovereign Nations. A more meaningful change is that the main far-right Identity and Democracy group has vanished, and given way to a new one called Patriots for Europe. Which is a bit rich when you factor in that they are supporters of Vladimir Putin and lobbyists for Russian interests in Europe. Not really the definition of patriotism, unless you consider that Quisling and Pétain were patriots in the days of yore.

The French National Front were instrumental in setting up and shaping that new far-right group, and Marine Le Pen's sidekick Jordan Bardella has been elected as its first President. This is definitely a consolation prize for not becoming France's Prime Minister, as he obviously planned and Le Pan wanted. The new Patriots for Europe group actually has just a few members more than its predecessor Identity and Democracy had after Brexit, before infighting and excommunications reduced their numbers. They may have reached third-party status after nicking a handful of MEPs from the nationalist conservative ECR group, but it has not shattered the balance of power. Most of the increased membership comes from the ranks of the Non Inscrits, a conglomerate of far-right MEPs other groups wouldn't touch with a one-mile bargepole, and newly elected MEPs from minor fringe parties who all have the defence of Russia against imaginary Western aggression at heart. This new configuration will not jeopardise the European Union's support for Ukraine, as the de facto majority of conservatives, liberals and social-democrats will stand firm. When push comes to shove, they will also get support from part of the Green group, plausibly those from Germany and France. So all's well that ends well, and last winter's tales of an incoming far-right tempest were just much ado about nothing.

The sunlight clasps the Earth and the moonbeams kiss the sea. What is all this sweet work worth if thou kiss not me?

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, Love's Philosophy)

additional music by Rick Wakeman, 1992

We need to develop a kind of political heroism. I don't mean that I want to play the hero. But we need to be amenable once again to creating grand narratives.

(Emmanuel Macron)

Whatever the grand narrative Emmanuel Macron intended to unleash on an unsuspecting France, they pretty much told him to fuck off. Not without a warning, as the polls were quite accurate and provided a correct picture of the first round of the snap legislative election as soon as it was called. The numbers fluctuated a bit, but the main trends were always there and firmly set, so everybody within and outwith the political bubble had three weeks to brace themselves for impact. Unlike British pollsters, who struggled to predict wrong results, French pollsters got that election right, even when fielding far fewer polls than their British counterparts. Or maybe they got it right because they fielded far fewer polls, and were thusly able to pay more attention to detail. Anyway, nobody was taken by surprise by the actual vote shares on Election Day, as they just fit with an already firmly-established narrative.

There was also summat of a climate created by the seat projections pollsters deduced from their findings. Something akin to a Nuclear War Scare emerged on French social media, both from the left and the Macronist 'central bloc'. They all just forgot that seat projections are a high-risk sport with a two-round majority system, especially when you do them before the first round, not knowing who will actually be still standing at the second round. So everybody took them at face value, going into meltdown as poll after poll predicted a massive plurality for the National Rally, only mediocre results for the left-wing New Popular Front, and the complete demise of the Macronist Ensemble. Then the first round only exacerbated all fears, as the National Rally and their allies came first in 299 out of 577 constituencies. They would have bagged an outright majority and become the government if France used first-past-the-post and the game had ended there and then.

Half of France may have howled in despair at the results of the first round, but the short campaign had not been totally in vain. All parties had been forced to clarify what they actually stood for, and which measures they would prioritise if they got a majority in the next Parliament. It exposed quite brutally that nobody was really ready for such an early election, and that everybody had committed themselves to pledges that did not stand to even the most superficial scrutiny. Some chose to wiggle their way out of their inconsistencies through obfuscation, the National Rally chose to fall head on into all traps laid across their path, ending up contradicting each other almost every day on even basic measures. The media has also done quite a job revealing the National Rally's dirty secrets, their total lack of professionalism and the massive flaws of their vetting process that led them to field a large number of totally repulsive and unelectable candidates, even including one who was legally ineligible. This might had looked futile while the French electorate were recovering from their initial PTSD, but was soon to spawn huge dividends. And we'll cross that bridge below the fold.

As my old Mum used to say, "Why get upset about things you can't change?"

(Alex Bailey, Inspector Morse, 1992)

France, of course, doesn't need anyone. I don't believe in saviors. But the way in which our country is governed needs to change radically.

(Emmanuel Macron)

Emmanuel Macron's wise words of 2017, when he was still just one candidate among others, are coming back to haunt him after the results of the second round of the French legislative election. But a very different story could have unfolded. On the day after the first round, after all the counts were in, the French political bubble could see that the National Rally and its allies topped the vote in 299 constituencies. If France voted on FPTP, they would have bagged a 21-seat majority. So the politicariat went into panic mode and revived this uniquely French invention, the Front Républicain. It can't happen in the UK, not because we are not a Republic, but it works only in a real two-round system with enough time for reflection and action between the two rounds. French electoral law does not restrict the second round to the top two candidates emerging from the first round, but allows anyone who got more than 12.5% of registered voters to stand again. The raw results of the first round thusly opened the door to 306 three-way contests, and the whole game was to convince the thirds in every seat to stand down and lend their votes to the remaining 'republican' candidate. It was a quick process, as candidacies had to be filed before the end of business hours two days after the first round, and its effects showed instantly in updated seat projections that showed the National Rally going down and downer.

Only 88 three-way contests remained at the second round, and even there, voters mostly adopted that quintessentially British tactical voting, deserting the third candidate to boost support for the best placed to defeat the National Rally. The hurried coalescence, rather than coalition, of warring political tribes, who could not find harsh enough words to sling at each other just the day before, may have looked like the hotchpotch anti-France Coalitions of the Napoleonic Wars, but it worked and voters followed. The exit polls from TF1-LCI and France Televisions, the two main French TV channels, revealed the new reality, fresh out of the Matrix. The New Popular Front came first and the National Rally slipped to third place, while the Macronists managed to save two thirds of their incumbents in a major reversal of fortunes. Later updates, getting closer and closer to the actual results as more and more constituencies declared, only confirmed that the outcome nobody had predicted had actually come true and that all pre-scripted post-election plans had been blown up to smithereens. The official count on the day after only confirmed that a new game had started, the rules had changed, and the players had to adjust. Which they all seemed reluctant to do, stuck as they are in attitudes shaped by the seven years of Macronist power.

The official returns are based on the labels assigned to candidates by the French Ministry of the Interior, the Home Office in British lingo. They don't always reflect how the candidates self-identify and bundle all parties of any electoral alliance under the same label. The breakdown by party, based on the candidates' actual affiliation, offers a more interesting picture. I have also added the summaries published by TF1-LCI and Le Monde simply because they are the most-watched TV channel and the most-read newspaper in France, so how they depict the situation shapes the narrative. The massive differences between the actual results of the second round, and what seemed to be in the making on the evening of the first round, are quite stunning. Then, just as in Scotland, a comparison of maps shows the astonishing part of the results better than a thousand words and charts.

The map on the left shows which party came out first at the first round in every constituency, and the one on the right shows which party won the seat at the second round. The most obvious result here is the huge swath of rural France that switched from the birdshit-maroony shade of the National Rally to the orangey shade of Ensemble, and to a lesser extent to the purplish shade assigned to the New Popular Front or the blue shade of The Republicans. What the map does not reveal, because they are small geographical areas, is how many seats also turned towards the New Popular Front in metropolitan areas. Around Lyon and Marseille, and mostly in the Ile-de-France region around Paris. And there were a lot too in these parts of the country. Not enough, though, to grant any electoral alliance a majority. The gates are thusly wide open to weeks and weeks of bickering and testing alternative combinations of parties, before Emmanuel Macron can appoint a new Prime Minister who would stand a sporting chance of not being instantly overthrown by a rebellious Parliament. Macron's younger self of 2017 was right, France does need some fundamental renewal. But Macron has lost his grip, and he won't be the face of renewal this time.

That starts with the politicians and goes right up to our electoral system and beyond. What we need is a fundamental renewal.

(Emmanuel Macron)

The French are deceitful in everything. Can anyone here tell me that the French are anything but liars and hypocrites? Do they ever tell the truth? How many treaties do they honour? How many promises do they keep?

(Anne Boleyn, The Tudors, 2008)

Emmanuel Macron will go down in French history as the bloke who thought we was cleverly dealing with a crisis and avoiding chaos, only to trigger a much worse crisis and unleash unprecedented chaos. He bragged about throwing a live grenade at his opponents, but they kicked it back his way. Rather, the people did with an complete upset at the second round. But Macron has now avoided the real prospect of being the first President driven to resign by a hostile Parliament since Patrice de MacMahon in 1879. A confrontation at the top of the French State that was described by left-wing republican leader Léon Gambetta as the choice between "se soumettre ou se démettre", submit or quit. MacMahon actually did both, submitting first and then quitting when he lost his last residual parliamentary support. There is massive karmatic irony in Macron's story. Like Francis Fukuyama before him, he predicted the end of history, and in strikingly similar terms. The demise of ideologically-heavy opposing blocks in favour of a liberally-minded 'central bloc' that would deliver a free ride to the sunlit uplands. Like Francis Fukuyama before him, he was quickly proved abysmally wrong on all counts, when history came back to bite him in the arse with a vengeance, and the resurrected blocs from the Old World crushed the liberal dream of a Brave New World into irrelevance. That's where France stands after his very ill-advised gamble on a snap election.

There is an even better precedent to what Macron narrowly avoided, just 100 years ago, with a hat trick of similarities. In 1924, Paris hosted the Olympic Games just weeks after a legislative election that resulted in a change of parliamentary majority in a landslide, from right to left back then. The new left-wing parliamentary majority then forced President Alexandre Millerand, who had actively campaigned for the defeated right-wing coalition, to resign. Emmanuel Macron has also inadvertently achieved what all the opponents to the French Fifth Republic's Constitution aimed for and could never do. He has blown up the predominantly presidential nature of the regime, and presided over a return to the parliamentary combinaziones of the Third and Fourth Republics. Definitely not what his naturally Olympian, as in Olympus and not Olympics, nature predisposed him for. Rishi Sunak may have delivered the wettest suicide note in British political history, but Emmanuel Macron certainly delivered the most arrogant and hubris-soaked one in French political history, and he definitely got what had been coming at him for the last two years. Getting his nuts squeezed between two radical and incompatible blocs, with no path left to a safe house.

Which brings us to Emmanuel Macron's cunning plan, that was indeed quite transparent, a mix of Vulcan chess and the Japanese Navy's plan for the battle of Midway, which was itself summat of Vulcan chess and too clever by half for their own good. It basically hypothesised a reboot of what happened between 1986 and 1988, when the Left lost the legislative election and a right-wing majority took over. Socialist President François Mitterrand had to endure two years of cohabitation with Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, and never missed an opportunity to make him look impulsive, uncontrollable and performative, as nobody said at the time. It worked. Mitterrand won the presidential election of 1988 in a landslide against Chirac, and the Socialist Party won the legislative election that followed. Macron's baldricky gamble was to make the National Rally's prospective Prime Minister Jordan Bardella look wet behind the ears, unfocused and incompetent, a pretty TikTok face sockpuppeted by Marine Le Pen. Then lay enough traps across his path, as Mitterrand did to Chirac, to make him fail and shatter Le Pen's chances of becoming President in 2027. But, ye ken, the best laid plans... It totally backfired, as the snap election put the left-wing New Popular Front on first place and the National Rally on third place against all odds, and Macron had to improvise. And we know how shit he is at that, as he descended into procrastination and obfuscation, while the Left was restarting its tribal wars and reveling in self-inflicted chaos like a dog rolling in cow shit. It showed in the closing tableaux of the farce, the make-up of the parliamentary groups and the election of the Speaker of the House.

French parliamentary logic is different to the UK's. There is nothing like a pre-scripted notion of parliamentary party in France, as the only requirement to form a parliamentary group is to assemble at least 15 MPs. They may come from different parties, united either by ideological proximity, or by very down-to-earth considerations like benefiting from the perks that unaffiliated MPs are not eligible to. That's how you get a Green group including 10 MPs who aren't Greens, or the LIOT group coalescing various shades of independents. Likewise, the election of the Speaker is not a pre-arranged panto as in Commons. It is highly politicised, as the French Speaker is fully expected to take sides, and always does. This year, it also served as some weird dress rehearsal for the appointment of the Prime Minister. A majority is required in the first two rounds. The third and always final round is first-past-the-post. At the end of the day, quite literally as it was officially announced at 20:43 Paris time, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the incumbent Speaker and candidate of the Macronist Ensemble party, won in a way that triggered lots of angry comments in the French media. A very public Coalition Of The Losers with the center-right Republicans, encouraged by Macron himself and widely seen as the blueprint for an incoming government coalition. Which is only bound to fail as it would fall 70 seats short of a majority and invite repeated votes of no confidence until it falls. Thusly opening a period of instability that France will have to endure for a year, as another snap election can constitutionally happen no earlier than 18 July 2025. Good luck with that, mates.

If you pooch a civilian it's a major event down in France

I say the food ain't too shabby and they piss in the street down in France

(Frank Zappa, In France, 1984)

Jeremy's Den

20/07/2024

He Dreamed Of Being King

She Was Moving Like A Dragon Princess