Jeremy's Den: An Air Of Normality

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil. It can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Against stupidity, we are defenceless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears. Facts that contradict one's prejudgment simply need not be believed. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Back in the UK this time, with a soundtrack from King Crimson's live album USA, first released in 1975, and then upgraded in 2002, 2005 and 2013. The final version is the full concert played at the Casino Arena, Asbury Park, New Jersey on the 28th of August, 1974. In my opinion, that's the most sensational progressive rock live album ever released by any band, so listen and enjoy. Even the harder stuff is more than worth it.

As always, click on the images for bigger and clearer versions.

If anything, we are now suffering of a scarcity of polls. And that's also a King Crimson reference, if you know, you know. Just eight voting intentions polls since the general election, which is fewer in almost three months than we got in one week in June. That's clearly dereliction of duty by the pollstertariat, as enough has happened in these three months to let us guess that voting intentions have plausibly changed a lot. Eight polls are definitely not enough to see genuine patterns and trends emerge. But, contrary to common wisdom and scientific evidence, we can for once clearly see what is not happening. There is no honeymoon for Starmer, no grace-under-pressure period, no sense of 'first hundred days' expectancy. More than anything else, the dominant feeling is a clear sense of unpreparedness and improvisation, which is quite alarming for a party that had two full years, since Boris Johnson's resignation, to really get their act together. Besides, the "we didn't know it was so bad" excuse does not sound that credible when you consider that seventeen members of Starmer's Cabinet and fourteen of his Junior Ministers have been members of the Privy Council for years, and thusly granted access to more detailed and confidential information about the state of the State than anyone else.

There has not been much polling of Keir Starmer's popularity either. To be fair to him, he has never been really popular, no matter what the proverbial Other Lot were doing to boost his credentials-by-default. Most of the time, the public has been split three-ways between those who like him, those who don't, and those who don't give a frying duck. But it's getting worse since he has been anointed Big Dog, and the Great British Public are slowly awakening to the reality of a bloke who has more political blunders than Rishi Sunak and more PR disasters than Humza Yousaf to his credit, and probably more skeletons in the closet than Boris Johnson. After a brief period when people seemed ready to grant him the benefit of the doubt, his net ratings are now double-digit negatives for most pollsters. That's quite an achievement after barely three months in charge, and only Liz Truss's credibility eroded faster than that in recent times.

It's really unlikely that the Labour Conference will offer Starmer, Rayner and Reeves a breath of fresh air. Even with the best thought-policing of delegates by the Starmer Stasi, it's likely to be noisy and doused with infighting, as they all know they did not win the election on their own merits and many of their voters are already questioning the way they won it. Deception barely covers it. It surely doesn't help when Angela Rayner, supposedly on the left flank of Starmerism, has no better punchlines than 'it will get better later' because they are 'fixing the foundations' by 'being responsible'. Even The Hipstershire Gazette can't hide their scepticism over this sort of blandness, that would just as well fit in the mouth of a Conservative minister. The irony is that Conferences, besides the really important work done there (naw, just kidding, mates, there isn't any), are also an opportunity for donors to get their moment in the company of the high and mighty, and some photo ops for their Insta. Which is probably not what we can expect at this year's Labour Conference, after ClothesGate and stuff. Then there is still the prospect of another confrontation between Jess Philips and Owen Jones, for our entertainment.

I was dreading the Starmer regime, thinking it would be slow death by stupidity. But I’m quietly encouraged by the sheer kamikaze lunacy of it all. It’s like watching a masturbating chimpanzee host a dinner party. I don’t think they’ll make it past hors d'oeuvre.

(Dr Philip Kiszely, Twitter/X, 10 September 2024)

The fact is, a lot of politics is just shit, it’s choosing the least bad option. Life would be easier if colleagues paid their expenses on time, and didn’t snort coke and sodomise each other.

(David Cameron, some time in 2014)

Seat projections are always a risky business, even when you have a fuckload of polls to back them, but I will nevertheless venture one here and now. We have had two GB-wide voting intentions polls in September, for a super-sample of 3,659, as usual excluding Northern Ireland. On top of that we also have had two dedicated Scottish polls this month, which I will come back to later, for a Scottish super-subsample of 3,257. These polls are not a complete disaster for Labour, even if the party in government doesn't usually lose that many votes so quickly after a massive election victory. Even John Major did better in the first three months after the 1992 election and even longer, until the Sterling Meltdown doomed him. In 1997, Tony Blair even managed to almost treble Labour's lead in some polls, and double it in the very last polls of the year. Keir Starmer can obviously not expect anything of that sort this year, and all because of self-inflicted wounds when he is enjoying a very weak opposition, totally embroiled in their own self-destruction process.

The Labour vote has decreased quite visibly, but the Conservative vote has too, so we have just a very tiny swing of 1.3% from Labour to the Conservatives. What is more significant is that the Liberal Democrats are holding their ground and then some, and that Reform UK is on the rise again after a rather lacklustre performance at the general election. There is another worrying factor for Labour in there. The Independent Left vote, namely the 'Gaza candidates' and Jeremy Corbyn, may not be massive at first glance, but they don't need a strong evenly spread vote to be a real pain in the arse. All they need is holding their ground where they came first or second on Election Day, and they're doing just that and even better in London. They may even surpass this if Jeremy Corbyn's plan for a new radical left party comes to fruition, and manages to coalesce the dissident voices to the left of Labour, that have also been tempted by a Green vote at the last election. That would undoubtedly be an odd patchwork of wokeism, political Islamism, student politics, populism and Putinism, but Labour should never underestimate the strength of deliberately simplistic sloganeering from the Loony Left.

Labour would hold a strong majority on these numbers, but there are numerous warning signs all over the map. Reform UK may even be the least of their worries, despite quadrupling their number of seats, including an unlikely one in Wales. Nigel Farage has high hopes for Reform UK and their electoral prospects, but we're definitely not quite there yet. Especially as his own constituents in Clacton are not conclusively happy with him. Capitalising on the Vote Of Discontent all the way down the East Coast, from Fraserburgh to Thurrock, does not a majority make. Ed Davey probably has more reasons to be cheerful, though he shouldn't entertain too great expectations about being propelled to Downing Street any time soon, other than as a guest. Mister Ed should realise that the Liberal Democrat vote is quite fragile in some parts of England, with evidence in the seat projection. They would hold all their seats in regions where the Conservative vote is going down again, but they are predicted to lose one in London, where the Conservatives are quite unexpectedly improving their position. London, quite ironically, is also where these polls predict Labour would suffer their most symbolic and embarrassing defeat, with Wes Streeting losing his Ilford North seat to one of Corbyn's associates.

What we ended up with, over the last fourteen years, was the worst Prime Ministers in the wrong order.

(Graham Brady, The Telegraph, 13 September 2024)

Magpies. You want to sum up how broken the whole thing is, you can do it in one word. Magpies.

(Paul Peveril, Nightsleeper, 2024)

It looks like the Labour government's most damaging own goal, so far, was their decision to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners on pension credit. It passed, but with a significant level of dissent among Labour MPs. There were in fact two votes. In the first, and most significant, vote, 348 MPs voted to enforce the cut. In the second vote, which was more of a Conservative rear-guard action, 335 MPs voted for the cut. To their credit, the SNP MPs were all present for both votes and all voted against the cut. The way the government defended it, including Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds pretty much feeding us Margaret Thatcher's 'there is no alternative' catchphrase, is evidence that they were fully aware of the discontent, and possibly felt quite uneasy about it. Pensioners are obviously and justifiably outraged, but they're not the only ones. More In Common fielded an instant poll just after the vote, which shows less that a third of Brits approving the cuts.

Opposition to the cut is quite widespread across the generations and political persuasions. Only the 25-34 age bracket and Labour voters are split, and opposition neatly outweighs support in all other demographics. The wording of the options offered by the poll may look biased, but the government themselves opened that door. It's quite appalling that this supposedly smart lot did not see that they offered the right a golden opportunity to pit the train driver on £70k, who will get a 9% rise, against your granny on a £10k pension, who will either have to eat her kitten or freeze to death. That was so fucking predictable, on top of the classic rhetoric about Labour being the hostage of the public sector's unions. The discontent is also widely shared among all Three Nations that were polled, Northern Ireland being again ignored. Even Labour MPs from Scotland have to reluctantly acknowledge it, while still promising to double down on it when the opportunity arises. From Keir Starmer's perspective, the most damaging part is that opposition to the cuts is dominant in all regions of England, whether they voted Labour or not. Only London is an odd one out, kind of. Look no further to find the explanation of Labour's slump, and Reform UK's localised surge, in voting intentions.

Now, the most alarming part of this fiasco is that it is obviously just the first of many 'tough choices' that Keir Starmer will blame on the previous Conservative government. This argument will soon become inaudible, not because it is wrong, but because it reflects the government's total lack of imagination in seeking proper solutions to the budget's black hole. Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed it when she doubled down on it, with a statement announcing more austerity, proving that she treats the budget as a zero-sum game, where spending in one area has to be balanced by cuts in another. This bold statement will obviously make her even more unpopular than she already is, as a YouGov poll showed that a majority of Brits think that 'sorting out public finances' should not be Labour's priority. It comes third, with less than one-in-seven supporting it, while the people's first and foremost priority is cutting NHS waiting times. Which, I feel compelled to remind you, would apply only to NHS England, as Whitehall and Westminster have no authority over the three devolved NHSs. I see another problem ahead, as Keir Starmer's 'reform or die' approach, to fix the 'critical condition' NHS England is reportedly in, is unlikely to meet popular assent. I also have a hunch that his 'controversial major surgery' will not include sacking the massive number of useless 'DEI managers', who get paid more than a Band 8a 'advanced clinical practitioner' and contribute fuck all to public health. Just saying.

As apart from any reality that you've ever seen and known, guessing problems only to deceive the mention

Passing paths that climb halfway into the void as we cross from side to side, we hear the total mass retain

(Jon Anderson, Close To The Edge, 1972)

I believe the SNP an irrelevance to the real needs of the people of Scotland, which is to remove the Conservatives from Downing Street. A party with three MPs is never going to rid Scotland of the Conservatives.

(Douglas Alexander, Perth and Kinross by-election campaign, May 1995)

We may lack generic voting intentions polls, but we have been gifted a quartet of Scottish polls, not all of them Full Scottish, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the first Independence referendum. More In Common polled just the independence referendum and directly related topics. Survation did too, in a poll commissioned by Scotland In Union, which also included Holyrood polling. As always, I have chosen to ignore their independence part, because it used the biased manipulative Leave/Remain wording imposed by Scotland In Union on their pollsters. Then Opinium and Survation again, this time on behalf of Progress Scotland, probed the whole trifecta of IndyRef, Westminster and Holyrood. What the various pollsters found about the not-incoming Independence referendum is not encouraging, as we now have a 54-46 split, worse than what we had in the spring. The weighted average of the last six polls, covering half of the summer, says so. Not one poll in the last three months has found Yes ahead, and just one predicted a tie. The More In Common poll also showed a more worrying side of the situation, with an extra question that nobody had asked before. Less than a third of the Scottish public think that Independence will be achieved during their lifetime. And the current incarnation of the SNP are doing jack shit that could restore faith and hope.

I also feel much less buoyant than The Scottish Pravda in their selective headline about the results of the Opinium poll. Of course, when you boil it down to a very binary spin, not The National's preferred approach usually, a clear majority of Scots want a second referendum some time in the future. But the full spectrum of options shows that the Scottish public are not really in a hurry to see it happen. Only a quarter want it during the current Holyrood term, fewer than those who prefer having it later. The Great Scottish Public agree that we should be able to have that referendum without asking permission from the colonial government of the UK with our cap doffed, but are definitely not optimistic about the prospects of an Independent Scotland. Opinium polled it and found that the net ratings are negatives on everything except the environment and, very narrowly, the NHS. This bleak vision clearly says that a lot of work still has to be done to counter the Unionist narrative embedded in GERS and most of 'Scottish' Labour's talking points. Sadly, what we have seen over the last ten years proves that we can no longer rely on the SNP to do that, least of all on John Swinney.

There have been three polls of Scottish Westminster voting intentions since the general election. First came Norstat on behalf of the Sunday Times, showing very little movement that could significantly impact the allocation of seats. Then we had an Opinium poll and a Survation poll, that contradict each other, but paint situations that could very plausibly happen at a general election. Namely a reversal of fortunes putting the SNP back in the lead, for Opinium, who fielded their poll right in the aftermath of the massive outrage over cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance. Or, per Survation, Labour and the SNP tied in the popular vote, not because the SNP is massively gaining back voters, but because Labour is losing quite a lot. Before the 4th of July election, a tie usually delivered a narrow plurality of seats for Labour. These new simulations show that the new voting patterns inherited from this election have massively changed what you can expect from a tied vote.

My model and Electoral Calculus agree on the Norstat poll, which is not surprising when you have a poll that says nothing would change. They also agree on the impact of a major change in the popular vote, as predicted by Opinium, and don't differ too much when we have a tie, as seen by Survation. But the overall picture is the same in all three cases. Labour got a full slate of the marginal seats at the last election, and with such a swing from the SNP that most have now become solidly Labour. Only one Labour seat, Stirling and Strathallan, was won by less than 5%. But 30 out of 37 were won by more than 10%. This means that the era of small swings delivering big gains is over, at least for the SNP. The 4th of July results say that the SNP would need an average swing of 8% from Labour to gain back a majority of Scottish seats. And this trio of polls confirm that. A 2.5% swing from Labour to the SNP, resulting in a tie, would still grant Labour a clear majority of Scottish seats. A 6% swing, putting the SNP almost 7% ahead in the national popular vote, would still leave Labour narrowly with the most seats. No matter how unpopular the Labour government has become in Scotland, and is not likely to see that improve any time soon, I don't see a reverse landslide coming. Yet.

I think loyalty is, it's not everything but it's almost everything. Comradeship, solidarity. Although loyalty isn't everything because talent, ability, performance matter a great deal, but it's almost everything.

(Alex Salmond, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, 2024)

Loyalty is the characteristic without which the SNP will never achieve its objectives. The only way an organisation can upset the applecart of the British State is if it is together and cohesive.

(Alex Salmond, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, 2024)

For the tenth anniversary of the referendum, the English pollsters have walked the extra mile, and asked many follow-up questions that are like a treasure trove if you want to better understand what could motivate the Scottish public for or against independence. Opinium even devoted a whole pamphlet to it, while The Hipstershire Gazette solicited enlightened point of views from various players who may have had a part in the 2014 campaign. Then watching a full hour of full-blown inspired satire is surely a better use of your time than reading the sanctimonious ramblings of political grifters who sacrificed Independence to pursue extremist woke student politics that a majority of Scots reject. Now, even the SNP's Depute Leader has conceded that we will never get a Section 30 Order ever again, but the people still have an opinion about when the second referendum should be held. YouGov and Opinium have both polled it, with different options and quite similar results.

You can clearly see here that there is no apparent sense of urgency among the Scottish public, which a bit surprising, and might be due to either deep disenchantment or just brutal pragmatism. No pollster has ever tried a radical option like a popular insurrection or a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI), though it would surely be interesting to know how Scots feel about both. Even if they avoided these extreme options, YouGov, always eager to please and answer questions nobody asked, probed the Great Scottish Public about a rather wide array of constitutional arrangements for the future of Scotland. Some of these options may very well be on the table at some point during the next five years, even if a couple never will and were probably thrown in just to test the most extreme options at the opposite end of UDI.

The level of support shown here for independence is quite close to what the average of polls predict, on 53% No to 47% Yes with undecideds removed. So the other findings definitely have some credibility. It is quite clear that the Labour government will neither abolish devolution, nor reduce the powers of the Scottish Parliament and Government. This is neither in their manifesto nor in their best interests, if their plan is to win the next Holyrood election. This is fortunate, as these are the two least popular options. What remains then is quite surprising. The status quo is more popular than either independence or the 'all powers' option that is, for all intents and porpoises, federalism, even if YouGov avoided the proper descriptor. So the most popular option, and the only one supported by a majority, is the proverbial and elusive DevoMax. Which will obviously please Keir Starmer, as we have massive hints already that it is just what he intends to do, so that Scotland does not feel left behind by his 'English Devolution' project. Finally, to take us full circle to the Independence debate, YouGov also tested support for it with various strings attached, not all of them negative.

Unsurprisingly, independence is far less popular if you link it to a rising cost of living, border checks or an exodus of businesses. All of which were perfect talking points already for Better Together ten years ago, and could easily be recycled in a future campaign. Then we have the two most tricky issues, which are just the kind of 'gotcha questions' that could be weaponised against both the SNP and Independence, and deliver totally contradictory replies. Joining the EU boosts Independence, but leaving the pound hurts it. Problem is that, in the real world, the two don't and can't fit together. Here we need to go back in time. A few years ago, saying that joining the EU would coerce Scotland to join the Euro was a blatant lie under then-existing EU rules. But the rules have changed, and now joining the EU does imply joining the Euro. Unless the Independent Scottish Government deliberately gambled on never meeting the Eurozone's convergence criteria, which would be risky, disingenuous and plain stupid. In the short term, the SNP's obsession with linking Independence and re-joining the EU could very easily blow up to their face if the Unionists use it to trigger summat like a currency scare. Even Alex Salmond stumbled on the currency issue, and I don't think anyone has found a way to avoid that trap. Yet.

It's one thing to not think you can achieve the referendum which had been promised in successive polls. It's another thing to keep announcing you're going to do it and then not doing it, and that has a demoralising effect.

(Alex Salmond, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, 2024)

You LizTrussed your way into that position, ignoring every warning, and now you've just got to accept the consequences.

(Paul Peveril, Nightsleeper, 2024)

Two weeks ago, the Scottish Government suffered two symbolic defeats in Parliament. They are symbolic because the opposition motions on free school meals and peak rail fares are non-binding. They are nevertheless politically significant because the Greens voted for both motions and celebrated the SNP's defeats with glee. They are also a bad omen of dark skies to come, as the two issues will unavoidably resurface when Parliament will debate the budget. If the Government fails to get a budget passed by the usual deadline, which would be 28 February 2025, odds are it would lead to a vote of dissolution, which requires a two-thirds majority, and an early election. If this happens, it would be an awkward situation for everyone involved, as Section 3 of the Scotland Act 1998 stipulates that a Parliament elected at an early election can only serve for the remainder of the term, unless it happens less than six months before the ordinary election. So, a major political crisis leading to an early election in March or April 2025 would still have the scheduled election happening on 7 May 2026 anyway. Besides, the current trends of Holyrood polling show that nobody should be wishing for an early election.

There is a reason why the French call a hot-and-cold shower douche écossaise. That's a tribute to the Scottish people's uncanny ability to say two totally contradictory, and mutually exclusive, things in quick succession. The French know best, they have had since the days of the Auld Alliance to learn that lesson. We have had three polls of voting intentions for the next Scottish Parliament election since my last Scottish article, over just two weeks, that prove just that. Survation went first, in the field between the 27th and the 29th of August, and it already hinted that something was not quite right. They found Reform UK suddenly jumping to almost 10%, within shooting range of the Conservatives, and a tie between the SNP and Labour. Then we had Opinium, in the field between the 5th and the 11th of September on behalf of The Times, who credited the SNP with a significant lead. To their credit, they also identified a surge of the Reform UK vote on the regional lists. Thirdly, Survation were at it again, between the 10th and the 13th of September, having changed sponsor from Scotland In Union to Progress Scotland. And they again found a tie between the two Big Dogs, plus a substantial slice of the vote for Reform UK.

I don't know which of these pollsters we should believe, as neither has a brilliant record at predicting past elections, whether Scottish Westminster or Holyrood. But the seat projections from their findings make for interesting reading, confirming Ian Murray's educated hunch that Labour still have a steep hill to climb before they become the next Scottish Government. As usual, a tie delivers a plurality of seats for Labour, but even a 7% lead does not protect the SNP from heavy losses, including the near certainty of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf losing their seats in Glasgow. We now have two polls out of three putting Labour at the top, who would then be faced with a tough choice. On paper, both the Unionist Great Coalition and the 'progressive' Traffic Lights Coalition would get a majority from these two polls. But both would be doomed from the onset by the presence of mavericks in their ranks, Reform UK on one side and the Greens on the other side. If Labour have learnt just one thing from the SNP's recent shenanigans, it's that you never put your fate in the hands of fucking extremist lunatics, and that alone would rule out both of these coalitions. So, in a not-quite-so Sherlockian way, all that remains after you have eliminated the impossible is the implausible. Once again, a Labour-SNP coalition, that would also conveniently be the one with the largest number of seats, whichever projection you pick.

Now, you can also legitimately ask what the point of a nominally 'pro-independence' majority would be, when the pretendy 'pro-independence parties' joined forces with the Unionists to defeat a motion that affirmed and validated one of the SNP's own talking points for the next Scottish Parliament election. One they even once promoted as their sole strategy for that election. Just because it came from Ash Regan, the Alba Party's sole MSP, and the SNP are using the same stunt they so vociferously whined about when Labour used it. The Bain Principle has become the Swinney Principle. But is there more than meets they eye here, and should we look at it more cynically? Could this be the first step the SNP leadership has chosen to take to normalise the unthinkable, the unholy alliance with Labour after the next Scottish Parliament election, thusly ditching any vestigial pretence they are still the Party Of Independence and not closet devolutionists? After all, Stewart McDonald, the former SNP MP for MI5 who was quite rightly dubbed Little Shit by the Great Dennis Skinner, has just had a column published by The Spectator and relayed by The Scottish Pravda, advocating just that. Did John Swinney and the SNP's Ninth Circle give the imprimatur to this? Or are they keeping their powder dry for now, thinking, "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it"?

I know the feeling and it was never in response to anything like this actually happening. It was just the fear of it by people thinking, as people always do, something never having happened, or just never happened to them, means that it never will.

(Paul Peveril, Nightsleeper, 2024)

Some railway stations have clocks that have three hands. You see, time didn't really exist before the railways, you know? Like it is now. People went by the sun. Their own time. Then London stepped in, as London does, you know?

(Fraser Warren, Nightsleeper, 2024)

There are more bad news for the Labour Party coming from Wales, of all places. They were already not doing well in Senedd voting intentions before the general election, and it has not improved since. There is no doubt that Welsh Labour have been deeply hurt by Vaughan Gething's shenanigans and all the hoopla surrounding his reluctant resignation. Their collective image has surely not improved either by the way they avoided a full-blown War Of Succession. Which was basically strongarming all alternative candidates at the previous leadership contest to sit that one out, so the party establishment could shoehorn Eluned Morgan into the First Minister's chair. It is quite telling that Morgan's first two significant moves were to reshuffle her Cabinet after barely six weeks, and then ditch plans for 'gender equality' in the Senedd, that had been denounced as bringing back gender self-identification through the back door, after the Welsh Government was warned it would be illegal under reserved UK legislation and likely to be denied Royal Assent if passed. The trends of Senedd polling show that the good people of Wales are not amused, let alone convinced, by this new variant of a Labour Government.

You have to wonder now if Welsh Labour still think it was a brave, stunning and clever move to change the electoral law to full proportional representation, instead of the previous mixed system. They gave away their built-in advantage embedded in the first-past-the-post component, just when they would need it the most. Now we have four parties nationally clearing the D'Hondt quota hurdle of one-seventh of the popular vote, which is the implicit threshold for guaranteed representation in six-member constituencies, even if the exact breakdown of the vote can get you a seat on a lower share. The more votes the smaller parties bag, the lower the hurdle gets, possibly as low as 11%. The latest Senedd poll, from Welsh Election Study on behalf of Cardiff University, is the worst for Labour since the last election. Not only does it show Plaid Cymru breathing down their neck, but it also confirms Reform UK as a growing force in Brexit-friendly Wales. We still don't have, and probably never will have, a breakdown of votes in the sixteen new constituencies, but we can still approximate it using known trends in the former five electoral regions.

The only flaw in Meddwl Cymru's seat projection is that it fits what you could infer if there was just one massive 96-seat constituency, or national lists for short. But access to representation will be more difficult in the real six-member constituencies. I'm cautiously confident that my own projection, even if it has its own embedded flaws, is closer to what the next Senedd is likely to look like. We nevertheless agree on one conclusion, it would be a very close shave for Labour, with Plaid Cymru finishing just one seat behind. This opens the way to some sort of 'progressive' government alliance between the two parties, summat like a Great Welsh Coalition mimicking German practice. It's hugely unlikely Plaid Cymru would turn down such an opportunity, even if they vociferously walked out of an earlier deal with Labour, and they would surely be less lunatic and embarrassing partners than the Greens were in Scotland. Especially as the constitutional debate, Independence in plain English, is much less prominent in Welsh politics. Quite opportunistically, YouGov probed their Welsh panel about the same set of constitutional arrangements as their Scottish panel, with some intriguing results.

The most interesting result, though it is not surprising if you are familiar with Welsh politics, is that abolishing devolution is more popular than independence, and almost as popular as Labour's implied policy of federalism. Just like in Scotland, DevoMax is the preferred option. But you can genuinely call it 'most popular' in Scotland, and just 'least unpopular' in Wales, as it does not have the support of a majority and only a very tiny net positive. No Welsh party, and Plaid Cymru even less than anyone else, has a vested interest in making independence a core issue in future campaigns, as it would conclusively fail if a referendum was held. Plaid Cymru's best strategy is obviously to highlight the Welsh government's multiple failures, from the demise of Part Talbot to skyrocketing NHS waiting times, and the widening rift between Welsh Labour's 'progressive' politicking and New Model Labour's 'Tory-lite' approach in Whitehall. Only this sort of aggressive campaigning would save them the bother to fully disclose their own solutions, which might not be that different from Labour's anyway. So we can probably expect the next Senedd election to be quite a shitshow in its own right, surpassing the next Holyrood election in that respect.

People didn't like it, but they had to tolerate it, you know, if they wanted to catch a bloody train. But they had no intention of giving anything up. So they kept their own time as well. And stuck a third hand on the clock.

(Fraser Warren, Nightsleeper, 2024)

Jeremy's Den

23/09/2024

An Air Of Normality

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