The poison they’re pushing. People soaking up their claptrap, drinking at their filthy well! The socialist well! The Marxist well! Godless queers running everything. That’s the world they want. Every man a pansy. Every woman a painted whore. They want to destroy the family, that’s the real plan.
(John Bingley, Endeavour: Exeunt, 2023)
(John Bingley, Endeavour: Exeunt, 2023)
© Graeme Edge, Peter Knight, 1967
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened.
(T.S. Eliot)
Remember to click on the images for bigger and better versions.
This is the dawn of a new era, innit? The piper leading his flock to the sunlit uplands of hope and glory, or summat. No compilation soundtrack this time, to celebrate this, but a full album. The Moody Blues' Days Of Future Passed, the true ancestor of progressive rock and concept albums, which also tells a story that starts at dawn. You'd think now is the right time for the pollstertariat to introspect and tell us how the fuck they fed us polls that were so fucking wrong until Election Eve, but none of them seems ready to do that. None bar two, that is, as BMG Research made a whole PowerPoint on how to improve polls, and Survation hinted they were working on some ex post facto explanation for the polling debacle. Not totally convincingly, though, as there was a strong subtext of 'the voters did it' in their arguments. Well, surely they did eventually, which should infuse some humility in the pollstertariat. You've been warned, tactical voting is a factor and voters do lie to pollsters. So what now, mates? Aye, probing us about the Keir's Speech, hoping we don't again lie to your face just to make you look fucking useless. Opinium started that, with a full array of stuff, some version of which may have been in the speech.
The Great British Public's spontaneous first impression looks pretty good, but just bear in mind this was polled the day after the still shamelessly medieval State Opening of Parliament, when nobody had the fuckiest scoobie what was brewing and would blow up in a matter of just days. And the public would obviously not reject what they had voted for barely two weeks before. This early polling even seemed to contradict the widespread conclusion that Labour had won a landslide by default, as the electorate's main motivation was to get rid of the Conservatives. Getting a majority of support on all items but one definitely looked like a mandate, with just the fuzzy concept of English Devolution leaving the public in doubt. The obvious follow-up was whether or not the public think that all this stuff is achievable, and Opinium found they did.
This second tier of assessment clearly shows widespread optimism. Even English Devolution is deemed achievable by more people than support it, which can only leave you questioning the rest of the results. The problem is that the King's Speech is barely more than a shopping list, and nobody really knows what lies ahead behind the doors, possibly not even Keir Starmer himself. He has had more than four years to prepare himself, and it's also a reasonable assumption that Labour should have got into full working mode as soon as Boris Johnson resigned. It was clear by then that the election could happen any day, and it was just Rishi Sunak's lousy scheming that made it happen so late. But, despite having had two years to get their act sorted, Labour nevertheless looked ill-prepared, and some of the campaigning was marred by uncertainty and improvisation. Just like they actually believed in this asinine superstition, that getting too visibly ready for government brings bad luck. Which it does not, if you always carry a rabbit's foot in the pocket of your campaign suit. A few days later, Survation asked their own panel if they think things will get better or worse over the next five years, and the results amount to non-committal caution.
The net ratings, discounting those who think nothing will change, show the Great British Public rather confident that the NHS, housing and education will get better. Or maybe we just want to believe it, as it's the least you can expect from a Labour government. But the public is more cautious about the rest, and even think that immigration and crime will get worse. And this was fielded before the Southport murders and the riots, so it's harder to blame exclusively racism and far-right propaganda for it. It is also misguided and misinformed to target the British model of multiculturalism, which has been embedded in the very fabric of the British way of life for decades. This model is not the problem, it's actually the exact opposite. The problem is fringe extremist groups who want to replace multiculturalism with some brand of monoculturalism of their own, like imposing Sharia Law in the United Kingdom. It's not 'islamophobic' to say that this is as dangerous and unacceptable as the far right's calls for mass deportation of immigrants and a British apartheid. The New Model Labour government should have the baws to acknowledge it and fight it, if they truly want to preserve all the many positive sides of multiculturalism.
Change is like death. You don’t know what it looks like until you’re standing at the gates.
(Ian Malcolm, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, 2018)
© Mike Pinder, 1967
You’re not making the same mistakes again. No. You’re making all new ones.
(Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, 1997)
It's an understatement to say that discontent is already hitting Keir Starmer, with the summer riots and all. Remember when I told you that Starmer is the British Macron? There is one difference though. Macron faced major social unrest and riots one year and change after taking office. It has taken Starmer barely one month. And it probably has the same roots, that the UK would have full knowledge of if we hadn't been busier taking the piss out of the French than trying to understand what caused it and how it could spread past the Border Force. The failure to do so, and instead resorting to hyperbolic rants about far-right thuggery and staunch denial of the reality of two-tier policing, explain why Keir Starmer's approval and popularity ratings since the election are far less stellar than you would expect during what should be summat of a soy-milk-and-honeymoon period. But we should also refrain from reading too much into these.
Keir Starmer's favourability has fallen quite visibly in all polls fielded after the riots started. But looking back at earlier polls shows how ill-advised it would be to bundle them together to prove that he is really experiencing a Summer Of Discontent. Some pollsters always find more unfavourables, while some others are more likely to find a lot of neutrals, so it's still pretty inconclusive as Starmer's popularity ratings have almost always been a mixed bag, depending on which pollster you chose. Then I have to contextualise the riots, just as the woke left always urges us to do about anything, if only to muddy the waters. There are not that many dedicated riots polls so far, as if the pollsterstariat considered it a minefield not to be touched even with a seven-cable bargepole. YouGov did it though, starting with whom the Great British Public see as the greatest threat, compared to what the same question delivered six months ago. Unsurprisingly Islamist extremism is massively considered a threat both times, and I certainly won't disagree with that. But far-right extremists, who were a distant second six months ago, now come within a hare's breadth of being rated the most threatening of all threats. Which is certainly the compound effect of them making complete fucking arses of themselves, and the metropolitan media hammering how much of complete fucking arses they are.
Though I'm not sure that a shirtless lad looting sausage rolls is the best example of a 'far-right threat', and he got 30 months for that, which is quite excessive by all standards. And would be even without the obvious comparison with a machete-wielding killer freed after 6 months to make room in an overcrowded prison. Such events of course fueled the controversy about the now legendary two-tier policing. The funny twist this time was that the institutional metropolitan left denied it ever existed because, ye ken, this time it was far-right activists complaining about it, despite having moaned about it for years when they could weaponise it as 'institutional racism' within the police forces. It's different today, as there is clearly an ideological approach to public order, deeply rooted in the intersectionalist performative wokeism that has infected the forces in recent years. Which of course the woke metropolitan left will dismiss as a far-right myth, but we should never forget that the descent down that slippery slope occurred under a Conservative government, and with a majority of Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners having authority over the police forces. Of course, YouGov made it their duty to probe this, asking their panel if the police are more lenient or strict towards this or that category.
The Great British Public are leaning towards the rozzers being fair, balanced and neutral, though perhaps not in all cases. These results are not the kind you can easily shoehorn into one given narrative, whatever you're aiming at proving. Though you could argue that it's better to be a middle-class lefty climate activist than a young right-winger, or at least the general population see it that way. Just Stop Oil vs the Shirtless Sausage Roll Thief. Sadly, YouGov stayed cautiously away from the situations that first proved the reality of two-tier policing by ideologically captured police forces. That would have been measured by adding two more categories, 'trans rights' activists vs women's rights activists. It would have been relevant even if they had used the fashionable jargon and called the latter 'gender critical', a label that would probably have to be explained to most Brits. But even YouGov seems to think that they have to maintain the omerta about that specific situation, probably feart that they would be called 'far-right' just for asking. But the issue will have to be addressed soon, especially if more and more victims of two-tier policing sue the forces over the ideologically-motivated combination of false arrests, illegal searches, illegal seizures of property and harassment that made the process itself the punishment, as there was never any legal basis for it.
The Doomsday Clock might be about out of time but, as they say, it’s always darkest just before eternal nothingness.
(Ian Malcolm, Jurassic World: Dominion, 2022)
© Ray Thomas, 1967
What’s next? Historically, uh, darkness, blood, rain of fire. I think frogs. We’re not gonna be around for much longer anyway.
(Jeremy Bernier, Jurassic World: Dominion, 2022)
You can't deny that Riot Season was an interesting experience. There was hyperbole on the left, hyperbole on the right, and the whole thing didn't make a pretty sight. Some were ranting about a massive far-right threat that never materialised and may just have been judiciously leaked bait, and then bragging about how the war was won against the fash, while some replied with jibes at Soviet Britain and Keir Stalin. Which were actually deserved, as we saw Keir Starmer showing the authoritarian side of social liberalism much quicker than Tony Blair, and making himself look worse than the previous management. Exhibit A: the concerted talking points about the Online Safety Act being inadequate and not fit for purpose, when it's not even fully enforced. Coming after the programmed repeal of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, this can only mean that the plan is to reinstate provisions that had been scrapped by the Conservatives because they were seen as potential threats to freedom of speech, and support it with increased pressure on social media companies. Sadly, Keir Starmer is playing it safe here, as the Great British Public are quick to blame social media more than anything and anyone else. We saw it first in a More In Common poll, asking their panel to rate who was most responsible for the whole fucking chaos.
So here we have 55% of Brits blaming social media one way or the other, against 53% blaming the various shades of the far-right and 42% blaming immigration from various angles. YouGov probed their own panel about the same issue, but in a more subtle way, asking them to rate various actors according to their level of responsibility in the English Civil War 2.0, from 'a great deal' to 'not at all'. To nobody's surprise, they found the same patterns. Interestingly, YouGov's Great British Public think that the Conservative governments over the last 14 years are more responsible for the mess than the Labour government over the last 56 days. This is obviously fair and balanced, no matter how much you dislike Keir Starmer, as nobody can seriously expect him to mend all of the Realm's wounds in such a short time. More shockingly, we again see social media, and news media too by association, getting more blame than the far-right. This 'shoot the messenger' attitude is the easy lazy road to take, and this has sadly been encouraged by Starmer himself and most of the metropolitan media bubble.
I'm not Elon Musk's Number One Fan, and he obviously has asked for some of the flak he's taking. But the UK government can't hope to escape criticism by channelling a widespread distrust of all social media first into Twitter-bashing, and then into very personal Musk-bashing. European Commissioner Thierry Breton is a typical example of that, threatening Twitter with unleashing the Hellhounds against them, and Musk was quite right in telling him to go fuck himself. Especially as the European Commission then officially distanced itself from Breton, and basically disavowed his anti-Musk offensive. Though they stopped short of openly saying they wouldn't try and censor Twitter and other non-compliant platforms. Which also seems to be the UK government's position these days. Fortunately all major social media companies are foreign, and can thusly tell Keir Jong Un to fuck off as he can do jack shit about anything outwith UK jurisdiction. He can just try and ban Twitter in the UK, which would be a massive farce and only boost the sales of VPNs.
Governments don’t want an intelligent population because people who can think critically can’t be ruled. They want a public just smart enough to pay taxes and dumb enough to keep voting for them.
(Kevin Sorbo)
© John Lodge, 1967
You put two apex predators in one valley, pretty soon there’s gonna be one.
(Kayla Watts, Jurassic World: Dominion, 2022)
Now what is the real big story in Scotland? Probably not three far-right activists showing up in Glasgow and six in Paisley, which didn't really improve the far-left's credibility after they had squealed for days about the incoming Fash Apocalypse. Then we had Humza Yousaf picking a fight with Elon Musk, which is something no really clever person would do, after threatening to leave the UK, which most people would not give a frying duck about. Thank Dog we have a whole flock of pollsters regularly tracking the popularity of all sorts of people, and they have recently added Elon Musk to their list. I couldn't resist comparing Musk's ratings with Yousaf's, as measured by Savanta polls. But Yousaf's last ratings are quite old, as pollsters lost all interest in him after he resigned, so I have added the most recent ratings for Temp First Minister John Swinney, just for fun. Unsurprisingly, Musk has better ratings UK-wide than either Yousaf or Swinney, but has a quite negative image with Scots generally and even more with SNP voters. Which can't hide the fact that both Swinney and Yousaf have net negative ratings with the Great Scottish Public at large, who are definitely less and less enamoured with the SNP.
We have another invaluable source of information with, you guessed it, YouGov. Who, believe it or not, have their own dedicated trackers of the public's mood about both Elon Musk and Twitter/X/Whatever. Their numbers are a bit different from Savanta's, but not by much. Brits don't like Musk much, hardly a surprise after the continuous Musk-bashing and the farcical self-inflicted wounds we have seen recently. They also don't like Twitter. Which is a bit rich from a country that has the largest number of Twitter accounts in Europe, an estimated 26 million, summat like two thirds of the adult population of The Realm. France and Germany both have 17 million, on roughly the same population in France, and a much larger one in Germany. Scots like Elon and Twitter even less that the average Brit, and their positives have fallen sharply after the riots. Which is again a bit rich from a nation where no riots happened at all, despite The Scottish Pravda's best efforts to fabricate stories about a far-right threat that never came. Then I have a hunch Elon Musk doesn't give a flying fuck, does he?
I'm not Elon Musk's Number One Fan, or a supporter of the libertarian version of free speech that is reflected in the proverbial First Amendment. It's definitely a cultural thing, shared by a vast majority of Europeans, as the continent's history has taught us that some political discourses deserve censoring. But Elon has one redeeming action to his credit, having cleansed Twitter of the Woke Gestapo that had been given a free rein by the previous management, to conduct a reign of terror against anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. Elon is rightly criticised for having unleashed a swarm of far-right white supremacist propagandists on Twitter, but wouldn't they have found other ways to infect society anyway? Enoch Powell and Oswald Mosley were not on Twitter, were they? Another poll by We Think revealed another awkward and inconvenient truth, when they polled their panel about the 'legitimacy' of violent acts against refugees. Not even the usual scapegoat of the far-right, migrants in general, but specifically refugees. What they found is quite appalling, and Scotland does not look better here than the rest of the UK.
A third of Brits openly say that racist violence against refugees is justified, no matter from which angle you're looking at it. The proportion is about the same in Scotland, and it's actually worse, as the proportion of people who strongly agree is double the GB-wide average. It's not even mitigated by the proportion of people who strongly disagree being also significantly larger. This clearly shows the limitations of all the messaging about inclusion and diversity, that falls on as many deaf ears in Scotland as anywhere else. This is also a massive failure for a past leader who put his religion on show as a political stunt, when the true nature of Scottish civic nationalism is secular. There is a lesson in there, to be learnt by both Labour and the SNP, but they probably won't listen. They keep whining about the rise of racism and far-right politics, failing to see their own attitude is not the solution, but part of the problem. Because that's how people react when they feel ignored by the political establishment, and see them throwing around accusations of fabricated summatphobias. The institutional left should know better than constantly pandering to the whims of professionally permaoffended fringe activists, and start listening to the real people, now matter how disturbing and offensive what they have to say is.
Nobody has the right to live their lives being protected from offence or from insult or from hurt feelings. It is an occupational hazard of living in society. If you really can't take it, become a hermit.
(Ann Widdecombe)
© Justin Hayward, John Lodge, 1967
In three words, I can sum everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.
(Robert Frost)
Thank Dog we now have a much more important issue to turn our attention to, than the rise of racism, the cost of living or Vladimir Putin threatening to shove nukes up our arses. No shit, mates. I give you the Tory leadership race of 2024. Or should I say the first Tory leadership race of 2024, as they are just as likely to dump their leader after 44 days as Lily Allen to dump her adopted dog for eating a few bits of paper? Sadly, the Great British Public are carefully hiding their interest in this momentous event, as the huge number of polls dedicated to it, all five of them, show that two thirds of the general population can't be arsed to give a fucking shit. Notwithstanding, the pollstertariat are not deterred from doing what they do best, because that's the only thing they do, polling. To give you the best information you will never need, Savanta thusly extended their ancestral 'preferred Prime Minister' polling to people who are actually not Prime Minister, never were and probably never will be. So I give you Keir Starmer And The Seven Dwarves, as seen by the Great British Public at large.
Obviously, I use 'dwarves' here in the kindest possible way, and not as a racist dogwhistle, especially as Rishi Sunak still gets the best rating from the general population. Which really makes the six contenders look like political dwarves, compared to Keir Starmer. Before you ask, this was polled after the end of the riots, thusly proving that Keir Starmer's status was not dented that much and the Conservative brand remains toxic and discredited. There is an interesting subplot in Savanta's subsample of 2024 Conservative voters. They still prefer Rishi Sunak, even after he led them to the slaughterhouse, and would oddly pick Tom Tugendhat as the second best, and the only one with a majority supporting him.
But Captain Tom is definitely not the favourite in the race, because it's not a democratic vote. Tom's fate, and the others' too, is in the hands of the rump Conservative Parliamentary Party, who will shrink the field to a shortlist of two, before handing the final choice to the party members. Those who chose Liz Truss, proving themselves enough of an embarrassment that their MPS then chose to kick them out of the process so they could anoint Rishi Sunak. What will come out of the heats is still shrouded in mystery, as only 40 MPs so far have endorsed a candidate, and most of the remaining Big Names are still silent. As of date of writing, Robert Jenrick has 11 sponsors, Kemi Badenoch has 8, Mel Stride 7, Tom Tugendhat 6, James Cleverly and Priti Patel 4 each. Conservative Party members have of course been polled, even if it's quite a niche interest these days, six times overall and four times since nominations closed. And there seems to be a pattern emerging from that.
YouGov and Conservative Home, who are probably the best pulse-feelers of their own grassroots, agree that Kemi Badenoch is the front runner, though the name of the runner-up is still uncertain. Then we have the odd one out, a Techne poll commissioned and paid for by James Cleverly, that has Jimmy emerging first. That's fucking odd, as the other polls find him finishing third at best, and quite plausibly fourth. The suspense is now unbearable as the heats will be split into two rounds, eliminating two contenders before the party's conference, and a further two after. The winner will then be revealed on All Soul's Day, that is also El Dia De Los Muertos, after a full three weeks of online voting for the party's grassroots and FSB-funded hackers. Now I have a hunch that the incoming ferrets-at-Wetherspoons thingy for leadership of the "Scottish" Conservatives will be much more fun to watch. It hasn't formally started yet and it's already a fucking trainwreck. I expect nothing but the best from that lot. No shit.
You do know this is where the doggies do their wee-wees, do you?
(Catherine Cawood, Happy Valley, 2016)
© Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas, 1967
Some poor, phoneless fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere, totally unaware of how angry and scared he’s supposed to be.
(Duncan Trussell)
Finally, there's the Little Matter of the next general election, which must be held no later than 15 August 2029 under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022. Which leaves the Labour Party more than enough time to make sure they lose it and Nigel Farage becomes the next Prime Minister. Naw, just kidding. Or not. The pollstertariat is not really interested in it yet, and we have just one pollster responsible for three out of five generic polls conducted since the 4th of July. The background of these is the level of popularity of the parties and leaders, last measured comprehensively by Ipsos a fortnight ago. A majority of Brits think The Realm is heading in the wrong direction, but we have been thinking that too under the Conservatives for best part of the last five years, so it's probably less significant and relevant than you would think. It only denotes the total lack of a Labour Honeymoon Period, which was quite predictable, all things considered. The individual assessment of the main actors is certainly more meaningful for now.
Interestingly, the Labour Party collectively is more popular than any of its leading figures. While the Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak on one hand, Reform UK and Nigel Farage on the other hand, are equally and significantly unpopular. Conservative pollspotters will surely notice that Reform UK is slightly less unpopular than themselves, which could provide an oven-ready excuse to drive the Conservative Party even more to the right after the conclusion of their beauty pageant. In the meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats and Greens continue to elicit more indifference than either likes or dislikes, which is probably a good thing for both. We don't have enough polls yet to evaluate actual trends, and the overall conclusion is that there is no really significant movement. Except in We Think's last poll, which is clearly not enough to draw definitive conclusions. Which the punditariat have cautiously avoided, remembering how wrong they were interpreting polls that delivered wrong numbers.
The seat projections here cover only the 632 seats of England, Scotland and Wales, as these pollsters still don't include Northern Ireland in their generic polls. Obviously, they are just tentative and should be taken with a whole bag of salt. Especially as the pollstertariat have hit 'pause' again, and the most recent poll is three weeks old. So we have no way to assess the impact of Keir Starmer's latest shenanigans. I would be surprised if there wasn't any, as he has quite quickly reneged on more pledges in the two months since the election than in the two years before. Don't forget also the backlash on measures that were not in the Labour Manifesto, and have come out of nowhere just for the sake of looking busy, like the intended selective ban on outdoors smoking. You definitely have to wonder what inspired that one, other than an early death wish, as it was quite predictable it would be unpopular, and that the official rationale behind it would sound like fucking bollocks. Of course, there is still more than enough time for Keir Starmer to U-turn on that, like he has just done on the plan to cull badgers to extinction in England. Unless the lack of massive backlash in the polls makes him feel buoyant enough to do more really stupid things.
We Think's early August poll is definitely the odd one out here, as it sees both Reform UK outvoting the Conservatives and making big gains in England, and the SNP rising from the dead. Nobody else see either, and we even have a recent Full Scottish from Norstat that totally invalidates We Think. I tend to trust Norstat because their last Full Scottish before the general election was the closest to the actual result. What they have found this month is that all four parties who got MPs elected in Scotland have lost some ground, while Reform UK and the Greens have gained some. But these two have fuck all chance of getting an MP in Scotland, and this poll would deliver the exact same result as the last election. The main point here is that Scottish voters do have some buyer's remorse about Labour, but are not ready yet to put the SNP back in the saddle. A lot will now depend, in Scotland just like in England and Wales, on what Keir Starmer allows Rachel Reeves to include in the Autumn Statement. Which will definitely not be working-class-friendly. We can also expect Starmer to follow Ofgem's 'advice' on the energy price cap, while the government can veto any price hike, which the Conservatives did in the autumn of 2022 with the Energy Price Guarantee. Will Keir Starmer risk being depicted as less caring for the poor than Liz Truss? I fucking bet he will.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
(Oscar Wilde)
© Justin Hayward, Graeme Edge, Peter Knight, 1967
You’ve got to reach for the stars, and you might just touch up a cloud.
(Jon Richardson, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, 2015)
Quite unexpectedly, we have been gifted a new Full Scottish a few days ago, from Norstat on behalf of The Sunday Times. I have already mentioned their tentative findings for the next Commons election, that are pretty much 'nothing to see here', but they also probed all other aspects of Scottish politics. Spoiler alert: none of their findings will give anyone real reasons to celebrate. Their Independence referendum polling says 52% No to 48% Yes, which is pretty much where the trendlines of all polling have taken us. That's not a surprise when the SNP have conceded there is no plan for any referendum until the second year of Keir Starmer's second term at best. And have also pretty much endorsed the Unionist narrative that we can't have a referendum until polls show a steady 60% for Yes. When the Party Of Independence puts independence on the back burner, because their priority is to cuddle a tiny fringe of student politics extremists, why would the people still support it?
The Scottish Parliament voting intentions in the Norstat poll are also quite problematic for both the SNP and Labour. I said earlier that I tend to trust Norstat because they were the closest to the actual result for the 2024 general election. I checked and the were also the closest, under their earlier incarnation as Panelbase, at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. Interestingly Savanta, who also have a long track record of polling Scotland, were the worst at both the 2024 and 2021 elections. Anyway, Norstat's findings this month slightly buck the trend of Holyrood polling, as they find the SNP ahead of Labour by almost 2% on the aggregate of the constituency vote and the list vote. Which does not change the unavoidable outcome, that such voting patterns, exacerbated by the unrepresentative nature of the list vote, would deliver the chaos of a hung Parliament, and could make Scotland ungovernable unless someone pull a magic rabbit out of their sporran. Which will happen, mark my words.
The Scottish Government are deeply unlucky that this poll surfaced just as the Scottish Fiscal Commission was torpedoing their whine-and-blame narrative about public spending cuts. While their obvious priority should have been capping the outrageous hotel room prices in Edinburgh on the nights of the Oasis gigs. But it also granted us the very unwanted opportunity to read the ever sanctimonious Robin McAlpine labouriously mansplaining us in The Scottish Pravda where this would lead us. Starting from the wrong premises and omitting whole chunks of his reasoning, either because there were none or he knew they were just more bollocky word salad, he failed to reach even the semblance of a readable conclusion. The obvious one that I have been mentioning for months now, and Our Man In Bath Stu Campbell also reached a year ago, that the only strong and stable majority in the next Scottish Parliament will be the unholy alliance of the SNP and Labour. Leaving the voters only to choose who would be the senior partner in this coalition. The Norstat poll says it would be the SNP by the weeest of margins. But it has not always been so, and it will surely change again in the future. So don't rule out First Minister Anas Sarwar just yet, from just one poll.
The Hipstershire Gazette, never short of an appallingly asinine column, thought it a good idea to solicit the opinion of a few Scottish politicians after that poll was published. Including some former MPs because, ye ken, nobody is better placed to tell you how to win an election than someone who has just been brutally sent home by voters in the SNP's worst walloping since 1979. Before you object, not in terms of the number of seats held, but based o the proportion of seats lost. 82% then, 81% now, give or take a few decimal places. Thusly erasing fifty years of the SNP's history and patient progress towards making Independence the most viable and attractive alternative to an Union Of Unequals. This becomes painfully obvious when you reach the absolutely deranged conclusion, that the best strategy is to keep indulging in the sort of student politics that has doomed the party under Sturgeon and Yousaf. If the SNP truly has nothing better to offer than more woke groupthink, then they fully deserve what's coming for them, and more. To conclude this episode on a less doom-and-gloomy note, I give you a bonus track. 'Cities', a non-album track that was released as the B-side of the single version of 'Nights In White Satin', the one that instantly became a perennial dancefloor favourite. Sit back and enjoy.
The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
(Robert Conquest)
© Justin Hayward, 1967
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