What’s that theory? Everything that happens in the world is somehow connected to everything else? I read an article once, if a man breaks wind in Hounslow, it can affect a hurricane in Java. I think I know the man they mean, he travels on the Circle Line.
(Madeline Magellan, Jonathan Creek: Mother Redcap, 1998)
© John Foxx, 1980
I don´t believe in anticipating the results. Not before we know the results of the results, if you get what I mean.
(Walter Dinsford, The Avengers: The Murder Market, 1965)
There never was much stuff from the 1980s in my father's record collection, the foundations of my musical culture. So I had to fill the gaps during my twenties, trek into hitherto uncharted territory and find out that even the Thatcher Years spawned some fucking good stuff. Like Metamatic, John Foxx's first solo album after he left Ultravox. Which, ironically, is actually from the 1970s as it was recorded in 1979, but it does have the proverbial post-Bowie's Berlin Trilogy synth-pop sounds of the 1980s. Just to prove you I'm not forever stuck in the arty brainy stuff from the pre-Thatcherite Epochs. Bonuses, scattered down the line, are the non-album tracks from the Metamatic sessions that were released as singles.
Remember to click on the images for larger and easier to read versions.
In a perfect example of the proverbial Law Of Unintended Consequences, the return of Donald Trump has turbo-boosted the Liberal Party of Canada, who were heading to the worst electoral disaster of their history. A swing of around 25% in four months in voting intentions polls, from the Conservative Party to the Liberals, has totally reshuffled the race. Justin Trudeau resigning and Mark Carney succeeding him as Prime Minister has helped too, obviously. But the Canadian Liberals are not the only beneficiaries of the worldwide rejection of the Orange Baboon's shenanigans. Against all odds and expectations, including theirs, our very own Labour Party and Keir Starmer also are. It's not just about the feeling that Starmer has at last grown a spine and baws under pressure, as Emmanuel Macron still has bigger ones. But the Trump Surge is definitely here to stay for Mark Carney, while Keir Starmer seems to have already squandered it. We had a batch of polls showing Labour surging ahead of Reform UK, as the Great British Public saluted Keir Starmer's tougher stance on Ukraine. Then it started to die down, and probably will continue doing so if Rachel Reeves' Spring Statement is again more George Osborne than Gordon Brown.
Was this short reprieve too good to be true? It well may if the Labour government keeps insisting that the best policy is to impose more austerity than the Tories ever did. There is a long way from "We must improve the benefits system to save it" to this month's Musk-like wielding of the chainsaw. When experts warn you that it will hit more than one million people very badly, everybody's first thought is, "fuck, it could be me". Because, of course, it could, and it would take very little for that to happen. The public's grim mood is reflected in the current snapshot of the last six voting intentions polls. This covers the whole of last week, with a super-sample of 12,299 from six different pollsters. It is quite a disaster for Labour, even if first-past-the post summat dampens the effect of losing 30% of their general election vote. As usual, it covers only the 632 seats in Great Britain, as the entirely English pollstertariat still don't include Northern Ireland.
Thank Dog we don't have proportional representations, that would pretty much cut parliamentary representation four ways between Labour, Reform UK, the Conservatives and all others, and very probably make a Farage-led coalition government of the right and far-right unavoidable. With the real electoral system, that coalition would bag 275 seats on 47.4% of the popular vote. But the more credible Lab-Lib-Greens coalition would get 311 seats on 46.5% of the vote. Then comes the time of irony, as Labour would then have only one path to a majority. Including the SNP, and thusly rising to 342 seats on 49.1% of the vote. Fortunately for Keir Starmer, the SNP are far dumber and far less efficient at extortion than Vladimir Putin, so he could probably get their support with some vague promise of DevoMaxSquared in 2030. Of course, the next election is still four years and change away so long as polls don't give Starmer en incentive to call a snap one. So this scenario will probably never materialise, though it would have been quite entertaining to watch it unfold.
That’s the point of a promise, isn’t it? It wouldn’t have any value if you could see what it might cost you when you make it.
(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Wreckage, 2024)
© John Foxx, 1980
Do you think it’s something about the English? They cannot see a great man set up, but they have to pull him down.
(Stephen Gardiner, Wolf Hall: Three Card Trick, 2015)
If I was really cynical, and you know I'm not, I would say that Keir Starmer is an extremely lucky man indeed. Trump's Return and his own implication in the European Resistance are a combination of his Falklands Moment and his Covid Surge. Even if he is still doing his best to totally fuck it up, which seems to be his standard modus operandi ever since he became Prime Minister. There is an obvious risk now, if Trump somehow succeeds in bringing Putin to heel, and achieves his '24 Hour Peace' in Ukraine in less than a year. Then Starmer would have an incentive to stop being bold, perform another U-turn within a U-turn, and fall back on his natural instincts, keeping Europe at arm's length while hugging the corpse of the Special Relationship. To be honest, I don't really see the stars aligning that way. If they do, the UK will hopefully have travelled far down the road of European Reintegration, albeit in a half-baked way, to the point where there is no sense in turning back to wash the debris from the track. Interestingly, a recent poll fielded by More In Common probed the Great British Public about their confidence in Starmer's ability to defend The Realm against aggression from hostile foreign countries. And it's definitely not a convincing vote of confidence.
More In Common shame-named only Russia as a hostile state, and the next time they ask, they should add the United States to the wording of that question. Though it's unlikely to boost the public's confidence. Anyway, Starmer's Ukraine Moment may be as irrelevant to the next election as Johnson's Covid Moment was to the last one. His Cull Of The Quangos will surely have more impact, starting with the momentous decision to scrap NHS England. Not the infrastructure of the NHS in England, of course, but the overweight bureaucratic superstructure that was put on top of it by the Coalition Government. Surely all parties should clap for this move to take back control from unelected bureaucrats and put it back in the hands of the people's elected representatives, but will they? Or do the oppositions harbour double standards here too? This is likely to be irrelevant anyway as early as tomorrow, when Rachel Reeves delivers her Spring Statement. We will surely hear a lot more about tough choices, and one of the key issues will be the planned increase in defence spending. More In Common have found that a convincing majority support it, though they probably fished for bigger support by wording it as "more investment in the defence industry in order to generate economic growth".
Despite the biased wording, I trust these findings as other polls have shown that public opinion has indeed swung in favour of increased military spending, amidst very credible fears that the United States will desert us in time of need, just as they have deserted Ukraine. And I strongly believe too that it is a bonus for the economy. both by its direct impact and the ripple effect into different sectors. For some reason, The Hipstershire Gazette thought they had to pre-empt that debate with a very misinformed and biased column from a very ideologically-motivated think tank. The core premise that defence industry is 'low labour' is totally outdated, and this pretty much invalidates all the rest. The kind of defence industry we need to revive and boost, the mass production of modern hardware, is of a very traditional industrial kind and thusly labour-intensive, with all the related positive ripple effects on the economy. Other countries like Germany and France have fully acknowledged it, so it would be a pity for the UK to miss that train. The only question is the price we are willing to pay. Quite surprisingly, given the tone of recent debates, More In Common also found that the British public are willing to sacrifice benefits to secure more funding for defence.
Does this actually reflect the state of public opinion? I honestly have some doubts about that, but we will know more when the public are asked to react to the Spring Statement, which is hugely likely to include that kind of 'tough choice'. A trade-off between two equally necessary areas of spending, because Starmer and Reeves have deliberately tied their own hands by excluding any option that would deliver revenues to match the much-needed levels of spending. I still think that Keir has again failed to read the whole of the room, and reached the point where his Falklands Moment turns into a Scapa Flow Moment. You can only blame this on him having his head buried deep down in the sand and deep up his own arse simultaneously, something considered an anatomical impossibility until the last election. Of course, there is still plenty of time to refloat the ship before the next election, but Labour will still be haunted by having done something the people think will ultimately hit and hurt them, even if it actually doesn't now and only might some day.
A strong man acts within that which constrains him.
(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Three Card Trick, 2015)
© John Foxx, 1980
Here’s freedom to them that wad read, here’s freedom to them that wad write!
There’s nane ever feart that the truth should be heard, but they whom the truth would indite.
(Robert Burns)
There is a lot of very interesting stuff in the current seat projection, when you look at it step by step in the three nations and the nine regions of England. Some of what we have here is quite predictable and some of it is more upsetting, and we have examples of both in Scotland and the North of England. Reform UK becoming the first party from Berwick to Harrogate is definitely not a surprise. Only those who haven't paid attention to political events in continental Europe over the last thirty years have missed that. I don't even have to massage data here as the most striking similarity comes from the country of my birth, and the irresistible rise of the National Front, and then the rebranded National Rally, in the post-industrial wastelands of Northern France and Lorraine. It is only much faster in the UK than it was in France, because of New Model Labour's inane policies that combine everything that alienates the working class, from performative wokeism to dismantling the welfare state.
There is something even more intriguing happening in Scotland. The SNP have not genuinely recovered from the Sturgeon-induced disaster of 2024, and are still stuck slightly below a third of the electorate, far from what they need to credibly claim any sort of mandate on anything. All their gesticulation, and Labour's too to be fair, have been unable to stop the rise of Reform UK. It's even worse in Scotland than in the North of England, as Reform UK have almost trebled their vote here when they not even doubled it there. The SNP have totally failed to learn from what happened elsewhere. You don't fight off the far-right by ignoring them, or by mounting your high horse of sanctimonious moral superiority. Dismissing the legitimate concerns of the people as 'non valid' is also the perfect recipe for disaster when only the radical right are willing to lend an ear. Doubling down on it and labelling these concerns as 'far right' and 'bigoted' only makes it worse. But the usual oddities of first-past-the-post mean that the SNP will not feel the consequences of their stupidity in terms of seats, when the opposition is more fragmented than ever.
Quite symbolically, the SNP are predicted to concede a first beachhead to Reform UK in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, the only Brexit-supporting area in Scotland. Which could be just the start of something bigger. But, seen from the SW1 bubble, what matters more is the sight of Labour being routed by Reform UK in the North West and Yorkshire, and to a lesser extent in the North East. This would indeed be a massive cull of Labour MPs. Among the fatalities, Kim Leadbeater, Yvette Cooper and Defence Secretary John Healey would lose their seats to Reform UK in Yorkshire. So would Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds in Greater Manchester, and Bridget Phillipson in Sunderland. It's worse than just a cull of the Parliamentary Party, it's a wide-ranging Cabinet Cull that could be worse than what the Conservatives had to endure last year. Will Labour have the energy and the resources to repeals the boarders? Not entirely sure.
If you put just half as much effort insulting the Tories as you do your own comrades and the working class…
(Nicky Hutchinson, Our Friends In The North: 1974, 1996)
© John Foxx, 1980
We deal with what is. Leave what might have been to eyes that can see it plain.
(Brother Cadfael, Cadfael: One Corpse Too Many, 1994)
It doesn't get better for Labour if we glide South to Wales and the Midlands. If anything, it gets worse, actually. Here too, there is a strong swing towards Reform UK, but of vastly varying magnitude. That's the kind of specifics that you won't catch if you rely on algorithms close to uniform national swing, but do if you feed your model regional crosstabs of the polls, as I do. It is not necessarily 100% conclusive from just one poll, but it becomes when you have a whole batch of polls showing the exact same singular point that totally deviates from uniform swing. And that's what we have in the current batch, for the East Midlands, an abnormally high swing towards Reform UK. And I say 'abnormal' here in the kindest of ways, just as 'strongly different from the average'. Not judgemental at all, even if coastal Lincolnshire is a worse shithole than Falkirk. There is also an interesting pattern in both Midlands regions, with a significant increase of the Green vote. Which is like the refuge vote for disgruntled Labour voters who think they have to punish them for not being woke enough, and thusly let Reform UK sneak in through the cat flap in the name of ideological purity. Fucking cretins.
Labour are much luckier in Wales than in Scotland, despite the predictably strong Reform UK vote in a Brexit-voting nation. But their massive majorities of 2024 protect them better in Wales than in the North of England. Plaid Cymru continue to progress, even credited with more than 20% of the popular vote in some polls, but still not enough to bag more than their current four seats. We also lack a recent Full Welsh for a more reliable assessment. The last one we have is four months old and, while the current numbers are credible, we still need a larger Welsh sample for confirmation. There is quite an alignment of Death Stars in Birmingham, where Liam Byrne, Shabana Mahmood and Jess Philips are predicted to lose their seats to independents, read 'Gaza candidates' here. Of course it's hugely unlikely that we will have the same brand of 'Gaza candidates' in 2029 as in 2024, as Israel's criminal Putin-like war against the Palestinian civilian population will certainly have ended one way or the other. But the Protest Left will surely find another hugely motivational pretext to go after Labour celebrities, so I'm not ready yet to put any of them outwith the danger zone.
Then there is this interesting pattern in the East Midlands, where Reform UK clearly feeds off the Conservative vote, not the Labour vote, while Labour lose big chunks to the Liberal Democrats and Greens, In the end, the Conservatives are hurt more than Labour in terms of seats, holding just a quarter of their 2024 intake while Labour hold a third. But there are still areas of darkness there for Labour like Derbyshire, where Reform UK would prevail in eight out of eleven constituencies, including Dennis Skinner's old seat in Bolsover. Reform UK is also predicted to disembowel the Conservatives in Lincolnshire, one of the few counties where they remained dominant in 2024 with eight seats out of twelve. Now it's predicted to be eleven out of twelve for Reform UK, including an outright majority of the popular vote in Boston and Skegness, the home of Tommy's Holiday Camp, or summat. Remember what I said about shitholes? Leicestershire and Northamptonshire would be the same kind of disaster areas for Labour, holding only one seat in each. Only Nottinghamshire would offer them some solace, with five of the ten remaining Labour seats in the East Midlands located in and around the City Of Caves.
Under the certainty of Heaven, all that we can be sure of is tomorrow. When yesterday is already ours, what more can we ask?
(Brother Cadfael, Cadfael: Monk’s Hood, 1994)
© John Foxx, 1980
Even the homeless dogs are lucky in Brighton, because everybody feeds them.
(Claire Sherwood, Posh Dogs, 2016)
You might have thought that the South of England and London would be kinder to Labour, after the surprisingly massive way they swung towards them at the general. But the erstwhile-Europhile South is now just as willing to give Farage a chance as the Eurosceptic North. Interestingly, Reform UK's new stronghold is predicted to be in Kent, with 12 seats out of their predicted 31 outwith London. Essex and Hampshire would come joint second, with four Faragist MPs each. Interestingly, Reform UK's new Southern voters seem to come mostly from the Labour electorate of 2024. Except in the South East, where they harvest from both sides. Which is probably why half their prospective Southern seats are predicted to come from that one region.
At face value, the South outwith London doesn't look bad for the Conservatives, but it's a zero-sum game of musical chairs. They are predicted to lose 14 of their 64 Southern seats of 2024 to Reform UK and one to the LibDems. In the opposite column, they would gain two from the LibDems and 13 from Labour. For the record, my model also says that the brave and stunning Rosie Duffield would hold her seat in Canterbury as an Independent, even in the presence of a New Model Labour establishment candidate sent to derail her. But the real winners here are the Liberal Democrats. They are predicted to lose only two seats overall, which is quite a feat against the massive Reform UK tsunami. The inclusion of regional crosstabs say they would lose three in Wessex, two to the Conservatives and one to Reform UK. But they are also predicted to at last unseat Jeremy Hunt in Leafy Surrey, the bloke who is now shedding crocodile tears about the safety of NHS patients. You only wish he had cared as much when he was Health Secretary, overseeing the infancy of the biggest quango in the known universe, that only inserted a layer of unelected bureaucrats in an already ailing system and has since been nuked by Wes Streeting.
The Liberal Democrats' resilience is in marked contrast with Labour's predicted results, a loss of 31 seats. But it's paradoxically not as bad as it looks, as Labour would still have the largest number of seats for any party in the South even if you don't include London. The Imperial Capital is predicted to no longer be the unchallenged domain Labour think it is. But the main threat here is not Reform UK, whose sole gain would be a Conservative seat of 2024, Hornchurch and Upminster. The biggest blow for Keir Starmer would be Wes Streeting losing his seat in Ilford North to an Independent, again one of the infamous 'Gaza candidate'. Of course, all the caveats I raised about the Birmingham seats also apply here, but with probably less force. If there was only just one left that the Loony Corbynist Left would want to unseat, it would obviously be the unrepentant Blairite 'transphobic' Health Secretary. The Loony Left know how to hold a grudge and make it last for generations. They still have dartboards with Hugh Gaitskell's face on them, no shit. So the 'renegade' former Stonewall staffer would surely still have a huge target on his back, even when every rational-ish reason to challenge Labour grandees is long gone. Mark my words.
You could knock the city walls of London down with a dirty look.
(Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall: Defiance, 2024)
© John Foxx, 1980
If you want a kingdom, write a poem. Pick some flowers. Put your bonnet on and go wooing.
(Thomas Wolsey’s ghost, Wolf Hall: Wreckage, 2024)
I usually don't spend too much time on by-elections, as they are rarely more significant than ripples off a duck's back on an ocean of ships that pass in the night. But we may have an exception now with the incoming one in Runcorn and Helsby, a date for which has not yet been set. Well, that's what the London media establishment and the Westminster bubble have told us, and they are certainly right, as they already have two polls to prove it, one from Lord Ashcroft and one from Find Out Now. Of course, current wisdom says that this is exactly the kind of seat that is the most vulnerable to a surge of Reform UK in erstwhile Labour heartlands. The constituency itself has no electoral history as it was first contested in 2024, and never existed in a really similar shape at any point in the past. But the four predecessor seats from which it was frankensteined all had strong Labour leanings and only interludes of Conservative representation. With all the necessary caveats about small samples and the special features of by-elections, the headline results of both polls are fucking awful for Labour.
There is a lot to unpack here. The above chart shows voting intentions with the standard weighting including the likelihood to vote. But the resulting number of people calculated as expressing a preference is the equivalent of a 61% turnout in the Ashcroft poll, which is not the most likely outcome in a constituency where only 58.7% showed up at the general election. Find Out Now has a more reasonably plausible predicted turnout of just 40%. But Lord Ashcroft also played a bit more, first testing voting intentions from only those who claim they are certain to vote, resulting to a more credible turnout of 44%, and an even worse result for Labour. Then he also asked the panel who they think will win, to predict the result, and this time Labour emerges clearly on top. Interestingly, Electoral Calculus' current prediction agrees with the people's prediction, and not with their two sets of voting intentions. The New Statesman also published the results of a ward-by-ward simulation from Britain Elects, which broadly agrees with Electoral Calculus. And so does my model.
Lord Ashcroft's three-way approach is not new. The fun part is that, when it was tried before, the people's prediction of who would win proved more reliable than their voting intentions, so there might still be some hope for Labour here. Now we have The Hipstershire Gazette peddling the cretinous apocalyptic hyperbole that this by-election will change the course of history or summat. I have a hunch they missed an important feature in both polls. Common wisdom, also supported by what we see in GB-wide polls, says that Reform UK is mostly benefiting from disgruntled Labour voters switching directly to them. But this is not what we see here. Both polls say that the largest contingent of new Reform UK voters would come from the Conservatives, not from Labour. It will be interesting to decode which scenario is validated by the actual result. The Ashcroft poll also dug deeper into the motivations of the Runcorn electorate, which Find Out Now did not. One reason for the vote swing may be that the voters don't think that the Labour government really know what they're doing.
I don't know what is the worst option here, having a wrong plan that can only fail or not having a plan at all. It's quite revealing that current Labour voters are more likely than their 2004 voters to credit them with having the right plan. But the proportions have not varied much among the other political tribes. The not-so-believers have left and the true believers remain on Labour's side, sort of, and the non-believers of last summer still don't believe. It's exactly the kind of pattern you would see if Labour had won the general election by default, with the help of people who didn't care much for them, but just wanted to kick the Tories out. Err... wait... checks notes... that's exactly what I told you last year before the election, innit? Better than John Curtice, aren't I? Anyway, there's still a wildcard in that game, George Galloway's Workers Party of Britain. They have found another former Ambassador, not Hamas-hugger Craig Murray this time, but Assad-apologist Peter Ford, who is willing to lose his deposit to make sure Reform UK nick the seat from Labour. So, we definitely need one more poll explicitly featuring him to have a clearer view of the situation. Which might turn out to be really risky for the Establishment Labour candidate.
Well, gentlemen, the news is poor hearing. I would incline to mercy if this brawl were to end now.
(Henry VIII, Wolf Hall: Defiance, 2024)
© John Foxx, 1980
Listen to me. I have seen the signs in the sky. The balance of nature is disturbed. Doom is in the air.
(Jonah Barnard, The Avengers: A Surfeit Of H2O, 1965)
Just as we have have this potentially risky by-election looming on the event horizon, Survation have polled members of the Labour Party GB-wide, on behalf of LabourList. 71% think Reform UK is currently the biggest electoral threat to Labour, against only 16% for the Conservatives. Even Scottish Labourers see Reform UK as the biggest threat, on 55% against 25% for the Conservatives and a tiny 14% for the SNP. But the main lesson is that even Labour members are not filled with enthusiasm about the current government. Keir Starmer is not really popular. Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall are unpopular, just like with the general population. Surprisingly, Angele Rayner and Ed Miliband are hugely popular, though I would be unable to name just one thing they have done to deserve it. But the absolute winner is Andy Burnham, even if I could think of three dozen reasons why Mancunians would disagree with that. But Keir Starmer is fortunate indeed that Andy Burnham is in no position to stand for leader of the party. For now.
Survation also asked their Labour panel to rate the party's seven leaders over the last 35 years. Out of curiosity, I looked up the leaders of the Conservative Party and they have had only ten over the same period. You would be forgiven if you thought there were more, as they have had four in the last five years, when Labour have only had Keir Starmer. The surprising part in the Survation poll is that Ed Miliband gets really harsh marks as party leader, worse than even Jeremy Corbyn, while he is really popular in his current job. But it's definitely bad for Keir Starmer, who comes out of it as the worst of the last three Labour Prime Ministers, and with even worse ratings than John Smith, the proverbial 'best Prime Minister we never had'. Survation did not go further back in time, presumably because they wanted to test leaders that the people actually remember, and have not just read about. But I still would love to see Starmer assessed against Callaghan, Wilson and Attlee. I'm quite sure there would be many surprises in that poll.
But comparing Starmer with the party's past glories only takes you so far, when there are more pressing issues to deal with. The Great British Public are very critical of Starmer and his whole government, and deserting the party in voting intentions. And here we have evidence, directly from them, that party members also have strong reservations, both about Starmer's job performance and the party's electoral strategy. As you might expect, Scottish members are the only ones with a negative verdict on Starmer, but surprisingly are just split on the party's electoral strategy, even when its most recent achievement is the loss of two seats at Glasgow City Council, which should have been shoe-ins given the SNP's dismal mismanagement of the city. But the real oddity is that Welsh Labourers are happier bunnies than even the Londoners, while polls say the are potentially the most exposed to a Reform UK onslaught.
All of this, however alarming it sounds, is representative only of Labour's membership. But we will soon have a wider sample of the whole electorate, with the English locals held on The Glorious First Of May. Or, rather, what remains of them after Angela Rayner made a fucking pig's breakfast of the reform of local government in England. There were many ways to do this right, the most obvious one being to align England on Scotland and Wales. A single uniform status of Unitary Authority for all Councils, the abolition of staggered terms and a standard fixed term of five years, local elections on a five-year cycle all across England in the middle year of the parliamentary term. Instead she chose an unnecessary complicated roadmap that makes everybody unhappy and doesn't solve any problem. There has been no standard poll so far about these elections, which is fine by me as local elections polling is notoriously unreliable. But Electoral Calculus has devoted a whole MRP simulation to them, which shows Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats as the predicted winners. It also shows the Conservatives losing a lot more votes and seats than Labour, hinting again that Labour may not be the main casualty of Reform UK's rise after all. If this is confirmed, it may well reframe the way we look at general election predictions.
Expectations lead to disappointment. Have hope, my mother used to say, not expectations. You might just be surprised, but not disappointed.
(Detective Clausen, Dark: Beginnings And Endings, 2019)
© John Foxx, 1980
My husband says he’s depressed about the state of the country, but that doesn’t stop him watching RuPaul’s Drag Race in his study till all hours of the morning.
(Penny, Inside No. 9: Last Night Of The Proms, 2021)
But there is life North of Cheshire too, as Survation reminded us with a brand new Holyrood poll. For some unfathomable reason, they did not offer the usual Full Scottish, but what we have here has enough juicy bits to be savoured as it deserves. Not least... SPOLIER ALERT... that Reform UK emerges as the third party in Scotland, luring 40% of erstwhile Conservative voters to their side with promises that are as credible as Vladimir Putin's about peace, love and understanding. Or Torsten Bell's about never hurting children of lower income families. Fortunately, the bloke who couldn't possibly live on £10 a day, as lots of his constituents will have to, is not our problem as he is Welsh. But rants like his have gifted John Swinney a flame-thrower on a silver platter, to mow down poor Anas Sarwar before he even had a chance to ask Keir Starmer what he should say. This last poll confirms what we have already seen for months. The trends of voting intentions are devastatingly disastrous for Labour, but not all is lost, as the Survation poll puts them higher than their 2021 result on both votes, most noticeably and significantly on the list vote.
The seat projections, both from my model and on uniform national swing, are bad but not disastrous for the SNP. Nevertheless, I have to disagree with The Scottish Pravda here. There will be no pro-independence majority on these numbers, because there will be no majority. Even if the SNP were stupid enough to seek a new coalition with the Scottish Greens, who would undoubtedly have a full laundry basket of extortionate conditions, worthy of Putin's discussions with Trump, they would fall several seats short. A backroom combinazione with the Liberal Democrats, which could be tempting for some in the SNP, also fails. So we're back to where we were last month, and the month before that, and actually for most of the last year. The only way to reach a foolproof majority is an alliance between the SNP and Labour. The only unknown is what amount of centrifugal forces would emerge within such a coalition. Smooth sailing would require a lot of bad blood under the bridge, which would be a hard pill to swallow for some of the individuals involved. But is there an alternative, with Reform UK circling over the compound like vultures?
Of course, there are still many imponderables that no poll can properly assess, yet. Like then impact of 38% of SNP incumbents, so far and counting, standing down to be replaced by defeated MPs, sitting MPs who anticipate being defeated at the next general, and an assorted batch of well-groomed underage woke grifters. Then there still is The Ghost Of Sturgeon Past. She is retiring, notionally, but has hinted we aren't done with her yet. Since the plum jobs at the EU or the UN are now beyond the horizon, this can only mean one thing. Puppet-mastering the new intake, like Putin does with Trump, to make sure her legacy lives on, as safe as a man in a women's prison. Then we will have to deal with the Second Periodic Review of Scottish Parliament boundaries, which could deliver some upsets once everybody agrees with its most important aspect, the new names of the constituencies. We should have the final draft in two months, and it's bound to be quite a thorn in the arse to reconfigure my model.
We can’t all be free spirits floating around the world in search of enlightenment.
(Luke Dunlow, Midsomer Murders: For Death Prepare, 2023)
© John Foxx, 1980
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949)
It all started with an Employment Tribunal case, yet another, where NHS Fife sided with a 28yr-old junior doctor against an experienced nurse who had been part of their staff since before the doctor was born. The Scottish Pravda devoted only very biased coverage to it, until they and their SNP handlers realised it was making Health Secretary Neil Gray look like a fucking idiot, and might also be a day of reckoning for John Swinney in the same way the 'rapist in female prison' was for Nicola Sturgeon. The Hipstershire Gazette choose to ignore it for weeks until they couldn't any more, probably because they saw that all of Dr Theodore Upton's case was being demolished by Sandie Peggie's counsel. Then, quite out of character, they opened their Opinions page to a column also demolishing all of Dr Theodore Upton's case, and him personally for good measure. Quite conveniently, YouGov has tracked an adjacent issue, not changing rooms but loos, and their findings can easily be extrapolated to changing rooms too.
So we have clear evidence that only a tiny minority of Brits ever supported 'Ally McBeal loos', going back six years, before the whole fracas over gender ideology became a matter of national concern. It's fair to conclude that the Great British Public never went beyond just tolerating unisex loos imposed on them by blue haired self-righteous fanatics, because they often had no choice, and never actually endorsed them. YouGov nicely drove the point home, with another tracker, of peoples' feelings about using unisex loos. The only time a majority felt comfortable with that was six years ago, before the massive fad for coerced unisex. Then, the more people had to use them, the less comfortable they felt, so we now have a clear majority saying they fucking hate them.
Now you have to wonder why so many businesses, public services, schools and local authorities have kowtowed to the bourgeois luxury beliefs of a miniscule fringe of activists, and gone so deep down into that hugely unpopular rabbit hole that they got stuck in it. There is a twofold answer to that, cowardice and incompetence. The fear of being accused of some fabricated phobia by vociferous extremists, coupled with deliberate ignorance of what the Equality Act 2010 actually says. The gender fanatics have been lying for years about its true meaning, arguing that it only mentions 'exceptions', not 'obligations', so nobody has a legal duty to provide single-sex spaces of any kind. QED. But actually QE not fucking D. Of course, the Act's wording is awkwardly ambiguous in many cases, but what is said in Schedule 3, Part 7, Section 27, Sub-section (6)(b) is not. Translated from legalese to plain practical English, it means that you have an obligation to provide single-sex spaces as soon as one person asks for them. Which is plain common sense, and the only surprise is that so few service providers have been taken to court for disregarding this obligation and falling for the deliberate misrepresentation, which is the kind wording for fucking lies, propagated by radicals like Stonewall UK and the likes of Mad Mags Chapman.
This is nonsense. 99.9% of the world knows it's nonsense. The emperor is naked. He might be wearing lipstick, but his balls are swinging in plain sight.
(J.K. Rowling)
© John Foxx, 1980
We don't really do empathy, do we? And given you've rather made a living out of that, it's a bit rich expecting it yourself.
(Hilary Ricci, Unforgotten, 2025)
YouGov also offered us a panoramic view of the British public's stand on transgender rights, Their wording, not mine, obviously. It is actually an update of a poll they conducted in 2022, so we have a pretty clear picture of how the Great British Public has evolved on these contentious issues, where common sense collides with extremist views, and I'm not referring to J,K, Rowling here, obviously. The backstory here, and the reason why the 'transgender rights' wording is knowingly deceptive, is that transpeople enjoy the exact same rights as anyone else in the UK. Transactivists always play the 'no debate' card because they know they have no case, as it is pretty much a non-existent issue. Transactivists also know that the debate has been reframed in the last few years by their intolerant and increasingly aggressive attitude towards anyone challenging their views. You don't openly insult and smear people from every platform you have without expecting some backlash. And this is definitely what the YouGov poll shows, exasperation at extremist performative activism, not a surge of bigotry.
Even on issues where public opinion was split three years ago, there has been quite a shift since. Yes, uncontrolled access to women's single-sex spaces is harmful. It doesn't have to be a potential physical risk, harming the wellbeing of women is enough. Yes, there is conflict between undefined 'trans rights' and very well defined women's rights. No, official documents should not be falsified to reflect things that are only 'perceived'. No, legal documents should not be altered to omit a defining characteristic because half a dozen snowflakes feel offended by it. Clearly, the British public reject the narratives that are peddled endlessly by transactivists and propagated by most of the 'progressive' establishment media. The numbers are merciless as they show you can't reduce this to some sort of right-wing conspiracy, as the most fanatical transactivists are always quick to do. It's simply the realisation that you don't have to 'be kind'™ to people who have made it their trademark to be abusive and coercive. You also see this in the poll's findings about various issues more or less directly linked to gender self-identification.
It's difficult to argue that Great Britain has become a hub of transphobia when you still have almost a majority opining that people can identify as whatever they want. 'Social transition', for want of a better label, is not the issue. Legal recognition of it is, and that's where the Great British Public draw their red line in the sand. This is a variant of the 'live and let live' attitude that prevails in modern British society, but with the caveat that it works both ways. Live your best life but don't try to impose your ideology to the whole of society by engineering legislation that does not reflect the views of the people. Of course there are examples in the past of legislation being a step ahead of society and helping change the people's minds for the better, but all available evidence say this is not the case here. You don't need to be a radical feminist to see that a lot of rules and guidelines inspired by gender ideology are highly regressive, not progressive. The more people see it, the less likely they are to support gender ideology becoming mainstream. Allowing gender self-identification is a textbook case, and the British public are more likely to oppose it now than three years ago, as shown by their views on the increasingly controversial Gender Recognition Certificate.
Now even Anas Sarwar has seen the light and had an epiphany, publicly saying Labour MSPs should never have voted for the SNP's awfully drafted Gender Recognition Reform Bill, a spectacular reverse ferret that of course infuriated the woke mob at The Scottish Pravda. It's a welcome move though I fail to see what "what we know now" has to do with anything, as everybody with a functioning brain always knew that the GRR Bill was fucking bullshit that was fortunately blocked by the UK Government, as the sponsors of the bill were incompetent enough to not realise they were infringing on reserved matters. Of course, the main criticism was again that Sarwar was submitting to pressure from Reform UK. I don't think he actually give a fuck, or he would have changed his stance much earlier under pressure from Kemi Badenoch. But the most unhinged gender ideology zealots still think it's a smart move to call everybody who disagrees with them a Nazi bigot, when the most prominent 'gender critical' figure in the Labour Party, Rosie Duffield MP, has proven through her resignation letter that she is more to the left than all of Keir Starmer's Cabinet, and was even reluctantly praised by Owen 'Talcum X' Jones for it.
Being a woman is not a certificate course. Any man with a certificate that declares himself a woman is declaring himself a liar and society insane.
© John Foxx, 1980
You've tied your hands yourself by just taking that shit for too long. I'm doing you a favour. I'm saying "Enough". You should be grateful.
(Juliet Cooper, Unforgotten, 2025)
Another issue, often raised by transactivists, is that of 'trans healthcare'. As usual with ideological constructs, it is never clearly and fully defined, so you just have to guess what it actually implies. The most obvious component is access to body-altering chemicals like puberty blockers or synthetic hormones, that also carry a degree of potential mental health hazard. Then there is the so-called 'gender-affirming surgery', or the removal of healthy body parts and their partial replacement by non-functioning imitations of organs of the other sex. This is a parallel reality, where intrusive medicalisation is called 'therapy' when there is actually no disease to heal. Which totally fits the tone of the times, that was set almost ten years ago by Donald Trump, when he endorsed the concept of 'alternative truth', which was then merrily appropriated by the woke, like other stuff coming straight from the right's ideological arsenal. There is an added level of subtlety in the YouGov poll, as they didn't ask their panel if these various forms of 'therapy' should be available in principle, but if they should be available through the NHS. And the answer is a resounding 'No' on all counts.
Reframing the issue this way makes all the difference. What the Great British Public is saying is, "you can have all this stuff if you want, but not for free". If you want it, pay for it, you are not entitled to have all this funded by the taxpayers. This is not a human right, this is not a benefit. Your body, your dosh. All reasonable people will consider this an entirely acceptable compromise, especially when you consider that at most 5% of 'trans women' go all the way and have their fruit-and-veg chopped off. But it won't work for the radicalised transactivists, who are as flexible as Vladimir Putin, and will accept nothing short of complete capitulation. And there is another implicit red line here, about 'therapy' for minors. Here it is safe to assume that opposition goes one step further, not just to having it available through the NHS, but to having it available at all. Finally, YouGov took us full circle where it all began, access to women's single-sex spaces for 'trans women'. And the tide has definitely turned here too, even where there was some semblance of accommodation three years ago.
On this issue, there was some irony in seeing the Scottish Government claiming they were fully committed to the preservation of single-sex spaces, which is definitely not what they said a couple of years ago. But this takes us in through the out door, where there's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure cause you know sometimes words have two meanings. Which is the case with ideologues who are adamant that 'woman' means 'man', so the single-sex sign on the door loses all meaning. When asked about the mirror image of that situation, the British public are more open to 'trans men' using men-only spaces, but not by much, and the tide has turned here too. But this is probably a moot point, as we never hear 'trans men' getting as hysterical as 'trans women' get testerical about their 'rights'. Bless their cotton socks.
Judging from the current mood in Great Britain, this increased rejection of gender mythology is just the tip of the iceberg. It can only gain momentum after the release of the Sullivan Review, which is so damning in its precision that even the woke-infested Guardian had to acknowledge its findings. Fortunately, it now has got Wes Streeting's attention if not Keir Starmer's. Now we have to make sure that the sane part of the left does not concede that fight to the loony far-right or even to Kemi Badenoch. Then the piper will lead us to reason. Social-democrats who never endorsed wokeism must reclaim progressive politics and the right to free speech, just not Elon Musk's hyper-libertarian variant of it, that is an American ideological construct. There is a secular universalist conception of free speech out there, that knows what actual hate speech is, and that is not the over-reaching definition supported by the perma-offended snowflakes of the loony woke left. We can't submit any longer to the whims of these censorious witch-hunters, who are no better than Oliver Cromwell's lot and have infected British politics with their regressive obscurantist views. Looks like an appropriate time to cleanse the student unions of the fanatics who want to reinstate blasphemy laws, and the trade unions of the promoters of coerced NewSpeak and sanitised uniform thought. That's the will of the people, mates.
I’m not sure if this is a micro-aggression or a macro one, but the union can shove its smug idiotic purity bannering up its great big fat arse. They don't understand real life.
(Juliet Cooper, Unforgotten, 2025)
© John Foxx, 1980
There´s a saying in the village. No point going up top farm to get to midsummer meadow.
(Clare Prendergast, The Avengers: Silent Dust, 1965)
I mentioned some bits and bobs from the recent Redfield & Wilton poll about Ukraine, and there is still a lot to unpack from it. Mostly because it is not solely focused on Ukraine, but also directly addresses major issues about our defence policy. It is also useful because it was fielded after this year's version of Days That Shook The World, from the USA backstabbing Ukraine to the UK-EU Alliance showing signs of wanting to fight it. In the UK, this has resulted in a debate about increasing our defence spending back to pre-Putin levels, and the way and means to achieve it. This is the part that makes for easy posturing from all corners of the spectrum and oven-ready clickbait headlines. But this is void of sense if we do not deal first with the basic questions about where we start from. This is an array of questions that neither Labour nor the Conservatives welcome, as the current state of our armed forces in the aggregate result of their faulty policies over the last 30 years. But the Redfield & Wilton poll shows that the British public have precious few illusions about where this has led us.
Of course the Great British Public are right. We can't face a challenge and we can't wage a war. End of. British defence is wholly inadequate because defence procurement is the aggregate of faulty reasoning and massive wastage. We don't even need a hit-piece in The Hipstershire Gazette to know that, though it feels good to see it laid out in full sight. But focusing on the negatives does not tell us which ends we should seek to achieve, which means that the whole debate is now focused on the means. This is a question that has been covered multiple times by polls in the last three months, but it is also an ever evolving matter. The Redfield & Wilton poll again shows it, with a record proportion of the British public now thinking that our defence spending in the face of the Russian aggression of Ukraine was too low, and that the ancestral 2% of GDP for defence is not enough. There is even quite a similarity between the crosstabs of the two questions, with the obvious surprise that Reform UK voters are the most likely to think we don't do enough on either count when the line of questioning openly refers to the Russian threat.
The Great British Public are consistent, for once, as they strongly agree we are not doing enough for our defence after strongly agreeing that our defence is shite. The interesting part is that we agree even more when the Russian War Scare is dangled under our noses. But this is radically different from the evening of 23 February 2022, when it was still easy to dismiss the Russian War Scare as just a PR stunt from a beleaguered Boris Johnson. I know, I was there and I did just that, Bugger. Now we know it's real, and actually always was, because Vladimir Putin has told us himself. This makes the replies to the next two questions quite obvious. Aye, we want defence spending to rise to 3% of GDP in 2032, and we would even support going faster if we were asked. I think we have never seen anything like that since the "We want eight and we won't wait" frenzy of 1909, long before the public mood was polluted by the various shades of faux pacifism. It's so consensual that we even have a majority supporting slashing foreign aid to fund the New Model Dreadnoughts, not something I would have risked a tenner on just a month ago. Thank Dog nobody is asking for eight of these. Yet.
All's well that ends well, in a way, but Starmer getting away with that one doesn't mean he doesn't have a ticking time bomb in his lap. Some oppose plundering foreign aid as a natter of principle, more don't give a shit because it does not hit or hurt them personally. But the next hurdle won't be so easy to clear. Keir Starmer will have to jump off the cliff he doesn't even want to admit is here. Because he has no choice. Tax hikes that don't affect lower and middle earners, that is only on the upper band of income tax, the capital gains tax and the corporation tax, have been independently valued at £20bn. A wealth tax similar to the one recently passed in France would yield £25bn. A windfall tax on banks' profits could bring £15bn on top of that. How can a responsible Prime Minister turn his back on £60bn a year that wouldn't require any cut to anything the public values, and thusly help stopping the haemorrhaging of disgruntled voters towards the New Model British Union of Fascists? That's 120 times the expected gain from NHS England's execution, and 12 times Liz Kendall' estimate of the Benefits Cull. Why is Labour so determined to do it the wrong way? Cutting social spending is not what you do when you represent the party of Attlee and Bevan. They need the people to remind them of that.
You see, the way I look at it, there are two types of men in this world. Them that’s got it and them that don’t. Know what I mean?
(Joey Lisk, Endeavour: Sway, 2014)
© John Foxx, 1980
History tells us that freedom is not free. The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave.
(Joe Biden)
Keir Starmer now has another problem to deal with, on top of a possible backbench revolt over benefit cuts or NHS England's 'restructuration', and a risky by-election in Runcorn and Helsby. Emmanuel Macron has definitely stolen his thunder, and established himself as the new Leader Of The Free World™ with the first summit of New Model NATO, convened in Paris on the 11th of March. That was an almost-NATO, with the United States conspicuously not invited, but Australia invited after they showed willingness to be part of the future peacekeeping force in Ukraine. You could almost feel sorry for Oor Keir missing his opportunity of a lifetime, but that's the price to pay for seeking an impossible balance between leading the European Resistance supporting Ukraine and clinging to the decomposing remains of the Special Relationship. This is a very embarrassing faux pas that could have been avoided if Keir had listened to the voice of the people, who kept urging him to be more resolute in his opposition to the American betrayal of Ukraine. The Redfield & Wilton poll hammered it home again, from another angle, with two thirds of their panel opining that the defence of Ukraine is vital to the United Kingdom's national interest. Their exact wording.
Remarkably, there are almost no pockets of resistance to what now looks like the consensual mainstream position of the British public. Scotland and Wales are all for it, even more than England. Even Reform UK voters reluctantly go with the flow. I guess there is clearly a recognition that supporting Ukraine against genocidal imperialist Russian fascism puts us squarely On The Right Side Of History™, and that it is an opportunity not to be missed when we are subjected to a two-pronged assault, from the loony faux-pacifist far-left who want us to doubt ourselves, and the loony Putinist far-right who want us to lay down our arms and submit. The Great British Public are totally consistent, for once, when asked how they feel about our level of aid to Ukraine so far, and where it should go in the future. The proportion of people who think we haven't done enough keeps increasing, and so does the proportion of people who think we should do more in the future, even among Reform UK voters.
I am quite sure that the people of Ukraine will be thrilled and love us even more when we tell them we will always be there for them. The problem is that our own resolve takes us directly back full circle to the beginning, the massive issues of domestic policy that are so easily manipulated by both the left wing of Labour, all seven left of them, and mostly Reform UK. Both are in a better place to criticise than the Conservatives, because both were always conspicuously Ukrosceptic and singing the hymn of money better spent at home. Sadly, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have pretty much validated this line of attack with their determination to consider the budget as a zero-sum game where every penny of extra spending must be compensated by an equal amount of cuts elsewhere. Even The Hipstershire Gazette is now arguing that this is an untenable position, and that Starmer should take his cues from Friedrich Merz rather than George Osborne. We must keep the pressure on as long as necessary for him to admit that some variant of tax hikes is mot just necessary, but unavoidable.
Now is also the time to keep the debate alive about the frozen Russia assets. Redfield & Wilton polled this in a quite ambiguous way, probably deliberately. 'Money raised from' can be understood as using the interests from these assets, just as easily as using proceeds from their seizure and sale. We already know that the interests alone fall far short of what is already needed to help Ukraine, and that only a full seizure of the assets can provide the funding needed for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, Russia must be made to pay for it, not us, not Ukraine through shady extortionist deals with the USA. Interestingly, those who oppose the seizure of frozen Russian assets have switched their arguments from "it would violate international law" to "it would undermine our credibility on the financial markets", as if it's time to care about that. Besides, it is a completely irrelevant argument, as nobody can credibly paint it as setting a precedent. It doesn't as it is only a variant of exceptional measures for exceptional times. The markets won't care if you send the clear message that this is reserved for rogue terrorist states. To cut a long story short, you fuck around, you find out. Only those who could be tempted to act like Russia in the future have anything to fear. This makes the case only stronger for setting an example, not a precedent.
During lockdown, defence intelligence said Putin had written an essay, and so we read it. It was like reading Mein Kompf.
(Ben Wallace, The Zelensky Story, 2024)
© John Foxx, 1980
The title of Vladimir Putin’s essay was "On The Historical Unity Of Russians And Ukrainians". It sounds like the kind of thing you would glance at and toss aside but, actually, it’s a manifesto for war.
(Luke Harding, The Zelensky Story, 2024)
Now we have yet to see what will happen in the wake of the deal signed between Ukraine and the United States, for a 30-day ceasefire. Probably not what the Orange Baboon expects, as he must look less formidable in Putin's eyes after Mexico and Canada have both told him to fuck off. Remarkably, it took Marco Rubio eight hours to get the Ukrainians to agree to something they had already agreed to two weeks before. But Wee Marco is not the sharpest bulb of the litter, is he? So it's probably better for him if Russia pretends nothing happened. Imagine if they agreed to open real negotiations and Marco had to face Sergei Lavrov. He would be played like a fiddle and eaten alive. I'm not even sure Marco would be fit to negotiate a settlement for the Birmingham bin strike, let alone a real war. In the end, Wee Marco needn't have worried, as Donald Trump chose to send his estate developer buddy Steve Witkoff to Moscow instead. Which was useless anyway as we already knew Russia would reject the deal even before Vladimir Putin formally rejected it, without saying too plainly he rejected it, so Trump wouldn't be too pissed off by him squarely rejecting it. This totally validated and vindicated the Great British Public's feelings, as found in two different polls just days before.
More In Common polled their panel before the deal was announced, on the likelihood of both parties abiding by it. YouGov polled their panel after the announcement, on how much they trust both parties to abide by it. The results are similar and merciless. We trust Ukraine. We don't trust Russia. We all know what 'ceasefire' would actually mean, don't we? Ukraine ceases and Russia fires. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's reaction was undoubtedly right. Putin was manipulative, playing for time and making reasonable solutions impossible. Before some sort of revamped deal again ended up on the table, Redfield & Wilton also probed their British panel about an array of statements, some of them directly connected to the war in Ukraine, while others are mere consequentials of the war emerging in our domestic policy debates.
It's good to see that the British public don't fall for Trump's most obvious bullshit. Some day, we will have to go to the bottom of the matter. Does he make it up as he goes? Or does he get a daily grocery list of bullshit to insert in interviews from Moscow? Quite reassuringly, what happened since the ceasefire deal has driven Keir Starmer to continue distancing himself from the USA's positions and advocating a more hawkish stance towards the Russian Reich. It's ironic to see David Lammy still trying to cuddle Trump, just a bit, but his message is actually just the same as Starmer's. They both know that nobody can trust Vlad The Butcher. He is dragging his feet on the ceasefire because he doesn't want the war to end, and is taking advantage of the temporary successes granted him by Trump suspending the delivery of crucial intelligence to Ukraine. But is Starmer ready to kill the Special Relationship once and for all, and go for it even if the United States withdraw from any initiative that could hurt Putin's feelings? The Great British Public clearly is, massively saying they would support the UK, other European countries and other allies continuing to support Ukraine even if the USA ceases its support to Ukraine.
That's Trump telt, then. As Winston Churchill, who was a connoisseur in all things American, once said, you can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else. And Trump hasn't run out of 'else' so far. All things considered, the United States planting more and more not too subtle hints that they are distancing themselves from the everyday business of NATO, as if the endgame was to leave it altogether, is in fact good news. Secretary General Mark Rutte's rant about post-war options, dictated by the Kremlin via the White House, makes it even clearer that NATO delenda est. And the sooner the better. It's the last nudge the other members need to at last get their fingers out and move their arses towards a new security architecture more suited to their needs, our needs, keeping off both American and Russian interference. They will just need to change the name of the New Alliance, as you cant count on Elon Muck to charge them royalties if they continue using the original name. Coalition Of The Willing is a bit passé and doesn't convey the right vibes, so maybe they should ask George Lucas for permission to use Rebel Alliance instead.
Reality cannot be ignored, except at a price. And the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
(Aldous Huxley)
© John Foxx, 1980
It looks very strange. If Putin does not intend to continue fighting against Ukraine and wants peace, then why is he demanding that we weaken our army?
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 19 March 2025)
Last but not least, we now have a comprehensive poll of Ukraine, conducted by Ipsos between 5 and 10 March. There is a lot to unpack here, as you might expect. I will start with how Ukrainians assess Zelenskyy's way of doing his job as President, and how they feel about his legitimacy to conduct possible negotiations with the Russian Reich. And the results are a massive "fuck off" to Donald Trump and all his courtiers. In separate questions, 80% of Ukrainians agree that Zelenskyy still has full democratic legitimacy despite the absence of elections, more than approve his action, and only 14% want elections to be held without delay. Of course the key points are that Ukrainians massively approve of the way Zelenskyy is doing his job, even more now than at any moment this year, and even more agree he is the right person to negotiate with Russia. Ze Is Da Man, in a strong rebuttal of Putin repeating Trump's obvious bullshit. In a rational world, this should be a self-evident open and shut case, and Zelenskyy should be offered a seat at the table tomorrow. But we're not living in a rational world, are we? The most obvious point of agreement between Trump and Putin is that both hate Zelenskyy and want him gone, so he will need all the combined weight of all his real allies, from Canada to Australia, to get what he is entitled to.
In unrelated news, the Orange Baboon has just reached an 'all-time high' of 47%, per an NBC-commissioned poll. It may be his personal best, but it also happens to be the worst rating ever recorded for any President two months into his second term. Don't laugh at the back, please. Trump doesn't even have the full support of his November voters, as many are already feeling a strong buyer's remorse as they have realised that Trump is really determined to massively slash social security and benefits. Familiar tune, innit? The massive support Zelenskyy receives from the people of Ukraine must encourage European leaders to stand by his side without hesitation, and more broadly leaders of the whole Coalition Of The Willing from Canada to New Zealand. Ukraine will need this kind of support as the farce of Trump's phone conversation with Putin once again proves that the United States will not back down from their betrayal of Ukraine, and are ready to concede everything to the Russian Reich if it personally benefits the Orange Baboon and his donor Elon Muck. This has become far worse than all the concessions made to Hitler in 1938, and Russia's continued attacks on Ukraine's civilian population prove again that Vlad The Butcher doesn't give a flying fuck about peace or about Trump, as long as he can play him like a poodle.
Of course you have to admire the Ukrainian people's determination. But their true friends should also warn them that there is a very thin line between determination and inflexibility, and that some of the options they support are unrealistic and unachievable. I honestly can't see Ukraine winning on the battlefield, unless summat totally unexpected happens, like Germany delivering Taurus missiles next month. But would Donald Trump allow Ukraine to defeat his new BFF Vladimir Putin? Surely not. Likewise, continuing the fight without military support from the USA makes sense only if Europe can compensate for the whole amount, and tells the USA to fuck off when they try to block it. Which may actually happen, if Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz do it their way. The Ukrainian public look much more pragmatic on a couple of issues, though not necessarily the right ones. Renouncing NATO and the EU would do nothing to end the war, and that would be giving up their best protections against Russian aggression. Then Ukraine's true allies will have to rely on Volodymyr Zelenskyy's resolve, which can only be strengthened by Ipsos' findings about a hypothetical future presidential election.
This is the second poll in a row predicting Zelenskyy topping the vote at the first round of the election, which would obviously deliver a win at the second round, which wasn't polled. This is a significant change from earlier polls that put Valerii Zaluzhnyi in the lead, but we probably need another poll of Ukrainian origin to confirm the trend now. Interestingly, the regional crosstabs of the Ipsos poll show that Zaluzhnyi has more support in Western and Northern Ukraine, the regions furthest from the frontline, but far less in Eastern Ukraine, the actual war zone. He is also at his weakest with the younger generations, the 18 to 34 years old, probably because of his past support for mass mobilisation, as this would have necessitated widening the scope of conscription, which Ukrainians massively oppose. Interestingly, Zelenskyy has just tasked Zaluzhnyi with a new mission, representing Ukraine at the International Maritime Organisation. Which is the elegant way to keep him away from domestic politics, by giving him more weight and visibility on the international scene. Zaluzhnyi won't even have to commute as the IMO is based in London, and this definitely makes sense if the goal is to raise awareness of Russia endangering maritime safety in the Black Sea. An issue Trump conspicuously failed to raise in his conversation with Putin.
We are not salads. We are not compote for this man, despite his appetite. We see what he is like, and that's it. With all due respect, again, and I don't want to offend anyone, but I don’t want us to be on Putin’s menu. You understand, right?
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 19 March 2025)
© John Foxx, 1980
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