Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do. Take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, 1974
Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
(Brian Eno)
This time, let ne entertain you with the works of another of England's greatest musical geniuses, Brian Eno, also as good a provider of an allspice of quotes as Oscar Wilde, back to where it all started. Well, technically, it had started two years earlier with Roxy Music, but the sumptuous Here Come The Warm Jets is where it all started for him as a solo artist. It's obviously a pop-rock album, but some tracks bear signs of the minimalist style that would later become Eno's trademark. Appended are three non-album tracks from contemporary singles, Eno's two tracks from the collaborative live album June 1, 1974, and his two contributions to Phil Manzanera's first solo album Diamond Head. Just sit back and enjoy.
As usual. Images. Click. Bigger. You know the drill. And here is your starter for ten.
For more than a generation after Bruce Springsteen single-handedly tore down the Berlin Wall, the West, and most significantly Europe, has been anaesthetised by a hat trick of delusions. The end of history. The dividends of peace. The happy globalisation. It took twenty years of Putinism and the criminal invasion of Ukraine to shatter these delusions, and Europe has not completely recovered yet. The toxic combination of Russian influencers, planted among us since the days of the KGB, and local faux pacifists is still trying to drag us backwards, fortunately failing so far. In the mean while, NATO, that was called braindead by Emmanuel Macron six years ago, and turned into a shameless extortion racket by Donald Trump during last year's Presidential campaign, has regained consciousness and started to evolve, though not necessarily in the direction that is most beneficial for the interests of Europe generally, and the United Kingdom specifically. But where does the Great British Public stand? YouGov has been keeping track of our attitudes to NATO for several years, with their last omnibus poll conducted in June, surveying first how Brits assess the importance of NATO membership for the UK.
There has always been a conclusive majority agreeing on the importance of being a member of NATO. You can see a tipping point though, that we will see again in all of YouGov's trackers, and is easily dated without Carbon 14 or expert advice. The Russian Reich's aggression of Ukraine, which sent all alarms flashing, and all polls turning towards larger support for the Alliance. But being aware of the importance of being earnest means that you have to be earnest about it being important, that it can happen. For once, the Great British Public are consistent and support for the UK's membership remains at a very high level. It was already convincingly high before the Russian aggression of Ukraine, and has also been boosted by it.
YouGov's last snapshot of the British public's support for membership adds some interesting information through its crosstabs. What was once, during the Cold War and the Iraq War, a controversial and divisive issue has now become fairly consensual. Even Rebel Scotland is as supportive as England now. Long gone are the days when it caused a major rift and split within the SNP. It looks like it is increasingly difficult to oppose it, when even canonical neutrals like Sweden and Finland have joined because they know that even a flawed NATO is their best shield against the Russian Reich's increasingly aggressive and imperialist attitude. Which was already true when it was the Soviet Union during the Cold War, by the way, but the dominant rhetoric then was definitely not kind to NATO. Thank Dog public opinion has shifted since, and Vladmir Putin can only blame himself for providing the last and decisive nudge, with his ponderously ham-fisted imperialist rhetoric worthy of Mein Kampf.
This makes Kenny MacAskill's recent column in The Scottish Pravda all the more surprising. It is both out of touch with the Scottish public's views, who support both NATO membership and the planned increase in military spending, but also blissfully ignorant of the realities of today's world. It is a painful read because it is badly written, bundling unrelated issues in a bouquet garni of hodgepodgery that mixes a few genuine insights and loads of nonsensical gobbledygook. Its main flaw is obviously that it relies heavily on discredited far-left clichés. Like ranting about "US expansionism", which the Orange Baboon has taken two notches down after strong rebukes from Canada and Greenland, without once mentioning the Russian Reich, which is the genuine expansionist threat to Europe. Has the Alba Party now forever become the ideological hostage of vociferous Americanophobes and Russophiles? A very sad end for Big Eck's party.
Human development thus far has been fuelled and guided by the feeling that things could be, and are probably going to be, better.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
Regard your limitations as secret strengths. Or as constraints that you can make use of.
(Brian Eno)
A key component of NATO membership is our willingness to help other member countries if they are targeted by an aggression from outwith the Alliance. But I must first, again, dispel a myth massively peddled by the bribed far-left faux pacifists to support their Russian organ-grinder's fearmongering. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty never meant automatically going to war. Ironically, the Orange Baboon is the one interpreting it closest to its actual diplomatically crafted wording. If one of us is attacked, our obligation, as spelled out in the Treaty, is to... consider our options. And do what we "deem necessary". Which does include doing fuck all for fear of "escalation". The Munich Agreement would have been Treaty-compliant. Welcome to the real world, not Craig Murray's and Jeremy Corbyn's revisionist fantasy world. YouGov's trackers show that the British public massively agree that we should come to the rescue of a friendly nation attacked by a foreign enemy power. Again, support has visibly increased when Russia attacked Ukraine.
Of course we all know whom we may have to defend ourselves against. Vladmir Putin's New Model Soviet Union, remodelled by imperialist ethnic supremacists into a rogue fascist terrorist state. Unless it would be the New Model United States, remodelled by imperialist ethnic supremacists into a rogue fascist terrorist state, invading Canada and Greenland. That's an option we must keep in mind, even if it is far less likely than a Soviet invasion of the Baltic States, as the Orange Baboon has never formally taken it off the table. Obviously, basic pragmatism says that our main concern must be the Russian Reich, who has been in an aggressive posture against the Collective West ever since Vlad The Butcher came to power. He may have hidden his "whole true self" quite successfully for a while, but all our delusions about Russia being a peaceful partner should have been shaken off already in 2004, when Putin tried to rig the Ukrainian presidential election and failed. Or it should have been 2007 at the latest, when Putin's aggressive speech at the Munich Security Conference started the propagation of the fabricated myth of NATO aggression against poor wee Russia. YouGov revamped their line of questioning slightly in their latest poll, with a different wording, and still got a massive majority opining that our commitment to defending our allies is still necessary.
There is now quite a consensus over our commitment to support our allies against any aggression. Even Reform UK voters support it despite the clear Putinist leanings of their leader. The only amazing thing is that it took us so long, and so many warming signs, to get there. 2008, and the dismemberment of Georgia. 2013, when Barack Obama's betrayal of the Syrian opposition sent Russia a clear message that we were just bark and no bite. 2014, and the illegal annexation of Crimea, followed instantly by the Russian Army's invasion of Donbass in support of terrorist separatist militias. 2021, and the publication of Putin's manifesto for the rebirth of the Soviet Empire. It was there for everyone to see and we turned a blind eye. Ironically, given France's long history of Russophilia dating back to the Alliance of 1894, the only one who saw through Putin's game, and never trusted or appeased him, was French President François Hollande. Ukraine can really thank him retrospectively for the cancellation of the sale of two large amphibious ships to Russia, which would have given them a massive, and probably decisive, advantage in the "Special Military Operation". Back to the present, YouGov also found that our commitment to our allies is not without significant nuances, depending on whom is the victim of Russian aggression.
Clearly, our commitment to defending allies in time of need is quite biased, for whatever reason. It is quite odd to see that Ukraine ranks rather low here, when the focus of the questioning shifts to actual involvement on the ground, rather than military help without involvement, which is still massively supported by the British public. You can also interpret that as a pragmatic assessment of the risk involved in a direct confrontation with the Russian Reich, a factor that loses relevance if the target of the Russian aggression is far closer to home like France or Germany, or evidence of the Russian will to wage a large-scale war of conquest, as would be the case with an invasion of Poland or Finland. Then we are far less motivated to come to the United States' rescue, and they can blame the Orange Baboon's asinine policies for that. Tit for tat, dudes. You fuck with us, we fuck with you.
Lincoln’s axe: "This is Lincoln’s original axe. The head has been replaced three times and the handle twice".
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
If we are ever going to achieve a rational approach to organizing our affairs, we have to dignify the process of admitting to being wrong.
(Brian Eno)
Our willingness to help others means little if it is not reciprocated, or if we do not have much confidence in our allies. YouGov have also polled this over the years, and it not as conclusively convincing as the other parts of their trackers. Before the Russian aggression of Ukraine, we did not really trust our NATO allies to intervene if we were under military attack by a foreign enemy. It rose after the invasion, but some distrust remains. Probably because YouGov explicitly refers to NATO countries, and the British public have finally realised that Article 5 does not mean instant mutual protection. Mentioning NATO also obviously conjures the image that it would actually be the United States, and another item in YouGov's polling shows that we are reluctant to trust them, certainly with good reason.
YouGov have measured our level of confidence in the USA twice this year, in three different situations. The results are really awful when the named target of Russian aggression is the Baltic States or Poland. But not great either when the designated victim is the United Kingdom. Confidence in the United States has oddly improved when YouGov fielded that poll in early June, when absolutely fuck all in the Orange Baboon's words or actions justified it. Nothing happened either at the annual NATO Panto at The Hague that supports such a shift. Ranting in a press release about "ironclad commitment to Article 5" means jack shit when the dominant partner in the Alliance is determined to hold on to the most literal and restrictive reading of it, basically subtexting that no action should be expected from them if it risks jeopardising higher priorities, i.e. juicy business deals for the Trumpian plutocratic oligarchy. But that we are expected to submit and suck the Godfather's dick anyway, which Keir Starmer still does superbly.
Why would anyone trust the USA now, after their abject betrayal of Ukraine? Or their latest stunt against Switzerland, demanding extravagant price hikes for F-35 aircraft, in what appears as just another extortion scam by the Trump administration. It does feel like a 21st century sequel to Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which explores an alternative timeline where Nazi sympathiser Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the 1940 presidential election, and then signs non-intervention treaties with Germany and Japan in the name of "America First". You could also say that the second Trump presidency bears some similarities to Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, about the rise to power of an openly fascist President planning an invasion of Mexico as a distraction from domestic unrest. Just never say again that it couldn't be predicted. Then the last verse of this chapter goes to BMG Research and Opinium, who have both polled how we feel about that new commitment of spending 5% of GDP on defence in 2035, and of course we approve. Perhaps not with the massive enthusiasm Keir Starmer expected, but what the fuck?
Other crosstabs show that even the once military-reluctant Scotland supports it, which is logical as there is activity and jobs at stake in it for us. Thousands of jobs on the Clyde. But remember always that this infamous "5% of GDP in 2035", which Opinium used in the wording of their question, is plain fat bullshit. It is actually 3.5%, which BMG Research correctly referred to, with an extra 1.5% of already existing spending on non-descript "resilience and security", added on top to appease the Orange Baboon. It's the accounting equivalent of putting lipstick on a hyaena and pretending it makes it look like a pig. I can't wait to see the look on teacher's pet Rutte's face when the accountants do the math and find out that half of NATO are already above 5% because they counted the local MI5 and MI6, the Fire Service and Police forces as "resilience and security". Then I guess the Orange Baboon won't complain, as all he wants are the numbers, so he can brag he is the most successful POTUS in world history and deserves a third term to finish the job and get a second Nobel Piss Prize.
It doesn't help matters at all if the media, or your friends, accuse you of "flip-flopping" when you change your mind. Changing our minds is our hope for the future.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, 1974
When people speak passionately, they speak in melodies.
(Brian Eno)
Last but not least, YouGov probed their panel about NATO membership for Ukraine. That game-changing move that would have made the Russian aggression impossible, and that Germany and France opposed when it was first proposed because Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to stay on Vladimir Putin's good side. That game-changing move that the Orange Baboon would veto because he values business deals with Russia for the MAGAligarchs more then the freedom of Ukraine. That game-changing move that triggers Vladimir Putin so much that he instantly unleashes his vodka-soaked sock muppet Dmitri Medvedev to threaten us with nuclear annihilation if we mention it. Because Vlad The Butcher is scared of us, and wants to scare us into submission like Adolf Hitler did for a wee while. And you know what? The Great British Public are not impressed, and strongly support Ukraine joining NATO, in the same proportion, give or take random sampling variations, as when they were last asked in February.
I obviously do not expect such polling to influence Keir Starmer and David Lammy in any way. But it should, when two thirds of Labour voters support it, and even half of Reform UK voters also do. Neither has the baws, which is Cockney rhyming slang for baws, to admit that our best course of action is to shake off the last vestigial remnants of delusion about the Special Relationship, just as Nigel Farage can't shake off delusions of Imperial grandeur. Clearly, our stance on Ukraine's NATO membership should be revisited to put pressure on what passes for a government in Trumpistan, the Orange Baboon's inner circle of real estate developers. June also brought us a new poll of Ukrainian voting intentions from local pollster SOCIS, covering both presidential and parliamentary elections. The sequence of presidential polls fielded in 2025 hints that Volodymyr Zelenskyy's position has improved.
Ukrainian polls are definitely to be handled with care, as they vary quite wildly, and often beyond what can be accepted as random variations. But we now have two polls from the same pollster bookending that sequence, so it certainly makes sense to draw some cautious conclusions from the visible differences between the two. Zelenskyy's main and most credible challenger remains Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine now serving as Ambassador to the United Kingdom. There has been a 9,5% swing from Zaluzhnyi to Zelenskyy since SOCIS last polled voting intentions in February, and Zelenskyy is now topping the first round. But that does not change the expected result of the second round. Zaluzhnyi was predicted to win 75-25 in the February poll, and this has only moved to 61-39 in the June poll. Zelenskyy may still be considered a national hero and enjoy massive support, but there is definitely appetite for change, and voting intentions for a future parliamentary election confirm it.
Parliamentary polls are few and very far between in Ukraine, so I have kept the whole sequence starting before the Russian invasion. So much time has elapsed since the previous SOCIS poll that it would be really risky to try and draw definitive conclusions from the differences between the two. But we can certainly try and risk it between the SMC poll from November 2024 and the most recent SOCIS poll, that show quite similar patterns. There is very little change between the two. Servant Of The People, which looks like the refuge of the really unconditional supporters of Zelenskyy, would be cruelly defeated and the hypothetical Party of Zaluzhnyi top the vote. But 30% of the popular vote wouldn't mean a majority, as the Ukrainian electoral law has been changed to full proportional representation for the next election, which can constitutionally be held only after the end of the war. Some sort of liberal-progressive coalition would plausibly emerge to form a government, but the last poll also shows growing support for far-right parties, now bagging an aggregate 14%. This is significant as the various hues of far-right bagged only 4% at the previous election in 2019. The most worrying sign is that a hypothetical party of the Azov Battalion veterans would get 5%. It does not exist and is very unlikely to exist in the near future but, if it did, it would be the closest Ukraine would have to actual neo-Nazis. Pollsters use a very vague tentative definition of it as a trial balloon to try and estimate what its influence would be, and the result is not reassuring.
The only value of ideology is to stop things becoming showbiz.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
Once you've grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you've inherited, you don't even notice it any longer.
(Brian Eno)
June was also the Ninth Anniversary of Brexit, just as January had been the Fifth Anniversary of Brexit. Which is not the revelation that we have been shifting between alternative timelines like the cast of Fringe, but just the odd fact that both are simultaneously true because it allows pollsters to ask the same questions twice five months apart, and charge twice for it while we pretend we didn't notice. To be fair and balanced, our men at YouGov haven't polled Brexit twice, they have polled it 286 times over the last six years. No shit, mates, they sensed their was a serial in the making here when it led to Theresa May's downfall and haven't let go öf it since. Thank Dog for that, as we thusly have trackers on key issues at the core of the Brexit debate. Starting with the pivotal issue around which all others revolve, was Brexit right or wrong?
Of course, it was fucking wrong, the Great British Public never thought it was right, even when Boris Johnson peddled the delusion that something not crassly awful might some day emerge from the pus-soaked rubble. Only fuckwits and Russian agents could claim with a straight face that it was right. No shit, Sherlock. When in doubt, always blame Russia. And then David Cameron. With the combination of these two, you never miss. Another part of the desperate narrative peddled by the Sore Leavers is that we have been experiencing a googolplex of Brexit benefits. Like the exponential growth of red tape, losing business opportunities on the continent and GDP dropping by 4%, I guess. The latest instalment of the fairytale was that suffering lower tariffs at the hand of the Orange Baboon is a fucking Brexit benefit. As if. But the Great British Public won't let themselves be gaslighted again, and massively opine that Brexit was a fucking failure.
Even Reform UK Voters, the direct heirs of UKIP and the Brexit Party, now admit it was a failure. That leaves only a rump of the rump Conservatives still sunbathing in the delusion that it worked. And this lot are just like the transcultist mob. When you ask them to name specific Brexit benefits, they huff and puff and waffle. If you insist, they shout you down and shut you off. Just like the other lot when you ask them to name one of the imaginary "trans rights". Because that's what cults living outwith reality do. Now that we have stipulated that Brexit was a failure, we have a duty to identify who is to blame for that. Or perhaps to congratulate, I keep an open mind about this. YouGov submitted an extended line-up of suspects to their panel, but I have a hunch the replies are the same they would have chosen spontaneously.
Of course, the Conservative Party is responsible for that abject failure. They started it, for fuck's sake, when nobody was asking for it, just to solve a domestic dispute that had been brewing for 40 years. I guess David Cameron escaped being named and shamed here only because he craftily exited, pursued by a bear, long before the whole extent of the devastation become obvious. Which does not mean he should be fully exonerated. Of course, Baron Call Me Dave has a short attention span and gets easily mixed up, like when he forgot his daughter in a pub, but that is not a valid excuse for having deliberately led us into that shit with the delectation of a freshly-groomed golden retriever rushing into a puddle of mud. The odd part is that a quarter of Brits blame Keir Starmer for the failure of Brexit, though that may well be Brexiteer zealots blaming him for the failure to take us down to the bottom of the abyss, when he struck a deal with the EU overturning tiny bits of Boris Johnson's absurdist Withdrawal Agreement. A move that can only be chastised by those who want to rebuild the Berlin Wall across the Pas de Calais. Aye, that's the proper name for the Strait of Dover. Suck it up, Farage.
I want to rethink 'surrender' as an active verb.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
Democracy is a daring concept, a hope that we'll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government.
(Brian Eno)
The YouGov poll includes again a survey of the sextet of options that look like the most reasonably plausible right now. They have polled these same options before, and there is no significant change from their previous poll. These options are also the only ones on the table, so Keir Starmer and the Labour Party should pay more attention to such results. The Great British Public clearly disapprove of perpetuating the status quo, as we have more than enough evidence of the damage done by Brexit, and there is no valid reason to allow it to get even worse. Estranging ourselves even more from the European Union is also clearly not an option, and Thank Dog Starmer has got the memo already and is not considering it. Only the Reform loonies and the most extremists in the Rump Conservative Party still take that as a serious policy. The question now is how much of his vestigial political capital Starmer is willing to expand in the pursuit of one of the four other options.
A closer relationship with the EU is the obvious default position, and also the one that involves only a miniscule amount of risk taking, so obviously Starmer is already going down that road, which doesn't involve taking a stand on the bolder options. This pretty much encapsulates the true essence of Starmerism, never straying outwith his comfort zone or doing anything that would require true political nous instead of managerial competence. The British public really expect, and deserve, summat better. Rejoining the Single Market or the Customs Union are both supported by almost a majority and, if you consider the net ratings, are actually more popular than rejoining the EU. This leads directly to a seventh option that is never polled, joining EFTA and the European Economic Area. This would grant access to the Single Market, which would remove barriers to trade and red tape, but not the Customs Union, so it would preserve our ability to negotiate free trade deals of our choosing. This looks like a best-of-both-worlds option, that Labour should definitely embrace. But the most supported option of course remains the simpler one, rejoining the EU.
I have not included the crosstabs with the 2016 referendum vote, which YouGov did provide, as they are becoming less relevant by the day, just like crosstabs with the 2014 vote in Scottish independence polling. The only reason Starmer has for not putting rejoining the EU on the table is that Reform UK and what remains of the Conservatives would weaponise it to turn a culture war into a civil war. Starmer cannot allow that, especially as it would also trigger a debate within Labour, and he has had more than enough of that already this year, even from the 2024 intake who were recruited to be more docile. YouGov then asked the obvious follow-up question, about when we want a referendum on rejoining the EU to be held. Which is actually not an obvious follow-up, as I will explain below the fold.
There is absolutely no requirement anywhere to hold a referendum. First, referenda are by law non-binding, so it's only a political choice to abide by their results as Call Me Dave did in 2016. Second, rejoining the EU would technically be an international treaty, and the only requirement is to have it approved by both Houses of Parliament. This is exactly what happened with the Treaty of Accession of 1972. Contrary to persistent mythology, the British electorate were not consulted about it, only MPs and ermines were. The misremembered referendum was an ex post facto confirmation, held two-and-a-half years later, and was actually a dick move from Harold Wilson to appease the Eurosceptic faction within Labour, the same pattern as David Cameron's choice to appease the Eurosceptic Conservatives 40 years later. Wilson was just fortunate that it did not backfire, as a third of the electorate were already lending an ear to Europhobic propaganda from the right. Amusingly, Scotland offered only weak support back then, with the Outer Hebrides, as they were still called, even voting against EU membership. Oddly, we get a majority in favour of holding a referendum only 25 years in the future, provided we haven't become oblasts of the Russian Reich in the meantime. But, as I pointed out, the is definitely a mute point from a constitutional perspective, so what the fuck?
I've noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it's far enough in the future.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, 1974
When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
(Brian Eno)
The latest, but surely not last, episode of the repudiation of Brexit, is Emmanuel Macron's recent state visit, the first granted to a European head of state since the Borisxit of 2020. There is an obvious message in Macron being invited to Windsor Castle months ahead of the Orange Baboon, even if the visit fell short of The Islington Gazette's grandiose view of a Big Reset of the Entente Cordiale, which Manny and Charles have rebranded an entente amicale in their dinner speeches at Windsor. It wasn't a romantic vision of Manny and Keir trying to build the bridges that we walk upon together to the sunlit uplands of the Post-Brexit Golden Age, it was more like a quest for pragmatism in solving issues that agitate the populist far-right on both sides of the Tunnel, and also helping Ukraine without raising taxes, making Germany feel neglected and unappeasing the Orange Baboon. Quite a daunting circling of the square for a bloke who has lameducked himself through nobody's fault but his, and another whose only tough choices are about how many days he will obfuscate before capitulating to his own MPs to avoid the next backbench rebellion. But the whole show surely pleased the Great British Public, who have made it clear a long while ago already that their solution to Brexshit is to unexit.
Tracking of a hypothetical Rejoin Referendum starts only in early 2020, when Boris Johnson signed up for the worst possible Withdrawal Agreement, so I can't tell you how soon buyer's remorse set in. The trendlines nevertheless do show that it has been the British public's preferred option for years. It is even more obvious when you remove the undecideds. The average of all polls conducted in 2025 is 48.5% to rejoin vs 34.3% to stay out, which translates into 58.6% vs 41.4% without undecideds, as it would be in a real referendum. There is no compelling reason why Keir Starmer should remain sitting on the fence, pun fully intended, about it. This is even clearer when you consider the breakdowns by nation and region, for which YouGov has published data thrice already this year.
Even the regions of England that voted Leave in 2016, and where Reform UK now outnumbers Labour in voting intentions, are willing to reconsider and support rejoining the EU. The usual excuse for pusillanimity, having to appease vestigial Brexiteers so Labour MPs in Leave constituencies are protected from backlash, is no longer credible, if it ever was. There are no fully reliable statistics on how individual constituencies voted in 2016, and there have been significant boundary changes since. Nevertheless, post-mortems of the referendum estimated that around 400-410 constituencies had voted Leave, and a UK-wide 10% swing towards rejoining the EU implies that only around 180-200 would now vote to stay out. Admittedly, that's still almost a third of Commons seats, but it does sound like a manageable risk, as a bold move to openly support rejoining is likely to boost the Labour vote. Disgruntled voters, who are considering switching to the Liberal Democrats or the Greens, could plausibly be convinced to stay with an openly Europhile Labour. MPs in threatened constituencies could also choose to appease the local Brexiteers by distancing themselves from the party's official position and dodging questions. Labour thusly have all the incentives they need to stop equivocating, and treat this as a matter of principle, rather than electoral expediency.
The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Paul Thompson, Michael Jones, Nick Judd, 1974
Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.
(Brian Eno)
But now we must descend, for there is another side to this vision. You certainly didn't expect me to close the Brexit chapter, for now, on this idyllic prospect seen through rose-tinted glasses, did you? It's time to face reality, things aren't what they used to be. What many of the Europhiles have conveniently blanked out is that the United Kingdom confirmed its commitment to the European Union, towards the end of the last millennium, only because the EU appeased us with opt-outs. In plain English, the right to be exempted from rules everybody else followed. In plainer English, privileges. We had two major opt-outs accommodating British exceptionalism, out of the Euro and out of the Schengen Area. Before you protest, let's be clear, neither was a prerequisite for EU membership initially, both are now. YouGov has, quite conveniently, surveyed this in its latest Eurotrack poll of the UK and a select sample of EU member countries. And the verdict from abroad is clear.
Everybody is in favour of the UK rejoining the EU, in principle. But that changes radically when you make it conditional on the UK keeping its opt-outs on the Euro and Schengen. No fucking way, say four out of five Europeans, no more fucking privileges for the fucking Brits. If you wonder why Danes are the only ones willing to accept us with the opt-outs, it's not because they love us, it's self-protection. Denmark has been granted an opt-out from the Euro and a partial opt-out from the Schengen Area, for Greenland and the wildlife-mass-murdering Faroe Islands. Anyone with a brain understands that renouncing the opt-outs, and becoming just par inter pares, would be a non-negotiable condition for the UK to rejoin the EU, and quite rightly so. But we already knew from earlier polls that it doesn't go down well with the Great British Public, and YouGov confirmed it. A massive wish to rejoin the EU transmogrified into a massive wish to not rejoin, if the spoilt Brits couldn't have it their way.
With undecideds removed, that would be 55.6% to stay out if we had to give up on the opt-outs. Scotland would still want to rejoin, Wales would be split, and England would drag us into staying out. I surely don't want to piss on the party here, but it is quite obvious that we would enter any negotiations to rejoin the EU in a position of weakness. It would be on their terms, not ours, and they would have no problem rubbing our nose in it as often as necessary, or just for fun. So we probably have to get used to the idea that we will probably never be accepted back into the EU, unless the Englanders swallow their pride and stop demanding privileges that we do not deserve. So be it. Before we move off the Brexit pastures, there was another fun moment during Emmanuel Macron's visit, when he took off the gloves and plainly said to Starmer's face that Brexit was a bag of lies and is the root cause of the small boats crisis. And now we have the "One In, One Out" deal, which YouGov have of course speed-polled, and found that the British public approve it.
There were some faint voices on the far-left denouncing the deal, because they chose to see only the "one out" part. But it is quite obvious that those who will be sent back to France under the new deal would have been sent back anyway without it, and probably to their home country and not France, so there is no change here. The Conservatives and Reform UK, and their voters too in the poll, saw the reality of the deal and oppose it because they clearly know what the "one in" part implies. It is, for the first time in an international treaty signed by the UK, a safe path to legal immigration. Even The Islington Gazette acknowledges it, albeit in a reluctantly 'progressive' way. It is also an implicit acceptance of EU rules, which apply in France and determine where their immigration policy goes. So it has all the ingredients to make the right-wing and Brexiteers see red, and that should be reason enough to welcome it as a tiny step in the right direction.
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about.
(Brian Eno)
Ipsos have fielded a new Full Scottish, covering all the usual issues. It was actually conducted in late June, but they oddly kept it in the freezer for two weeks before the reveal, which looks like a violation of British Polling Council rules on disclosure. For some reason, they chose to headline their summary of it with Keir Starmer's falling popularity in Scotland, which is neither news nor a surprise. From where I'm sat, the main point is actually that Labour has regained some ground, and Reform UK lost some, compared to what Norstat found three weeks earlier. I can't compare with an earlier Ipsos poll, which would be more relevant, as they have not polled Scotland since the 2024 election. Their last incursion North of the Eyemouth layby actually dates back to the second week of June 2024, much too far back in time for any valid comparison. The trends since the last general do show the SNP "on top", as Ipsos says, but I dare say in a very mediocre way.
There is a familiar pattern still visible here, that the SNP struggle to regain the voters they lost between 2019 and 2024, and remain stuck on less than a third of predicted votes. This is probably all you can expect when the party's leadership has trekked from performative omnishambles to abysmal disaster to plain mediocrity. And I'm not describing the last three Conservative Prime Ministers here, even if the same pattern applies, and led to equally disastrous results at the last general. So now we are witnessing an SNP non-recovery in the popular vote translating into a massive recovery in the number of seats, because the opposition is fragmented and that's how first-past-the-post works. Suck it up, mates.
Labour nevertheless benefit from their small surge, while the Conservatives continue to freefall to the bottom of the loch. The Liberal Democrats are the ones living their best life here, though they may be slightly less happy bunnies after Christine Jardine's unexpected brutal demotion. The Scottish Pravda are overplaying it, as I can't really imagine LibDem HQ and Mister Ed being in genuine disarray after this rather minor incident, though Alex Cole-Hamilton is probably still shaking and whimpering in rage and frustration. All those who have followed Jardine's career know she was a freak accident waiting to happen, and defying Mister Ed is certainly the least of her sins. But Jardine probably does not have much more to worry about, as her seat in Edinburgh West is the second safest LibDem seat in Scotland, after Orkney and Shetland. She has managed to get the highest vote share for any LibDem ever in that seat last year, and their only outright majority, so it has probably become impregnable, especially as the SNP seem to have given up on it and can't be arsed to field a properly credible candidate any more. Their bad.
And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
Honour your mistake as a hidden intention.
(Brian Eno)
The Holyrood part of the Ipsos poll gave me the opportunity to at last factor in all the changes in the constituencies and regions resulting from the Second Periodic Review of Scottish Parliament Boundaries. At the end of the day, Glasgow loses one seat and South Scotland gains one. Not quite the end, though, as there are also quite massive movements of tectonic plates between Central Scotland, now Central and Lothians West, Lothian, now Edinburgh and Lothians East, and South Scotland. South has actually not moved, just absorbed territory to its North. But Central has definitely moved both to the North and East, and Edinburgh to the East. Check the official data and maps for all the gory details. Anyway, boundary changes do not change the trends of voting intentions, and the Ipsos poll confirms that all is not lost for Labour, with a visible improvement now on both votes.
One interesting part of this poll is that the regional crosstabs predict that Labour and the Greens would do exceptionally well, and the SNP exceptionally badly, in Glasgow. Which we have seen already in a few polls, so that is not really a massive upset. What is new is the impact once you have injected the notional 2021 votes on the 2026 boundaries into the model. It's not just that Humza Yousaf's constituency Pollok has been vaporised to reduce the overall number, so he definitely showed some prescience in standing down. The adjustments to the other seats also involve significant swaps of territory, making them all less SNP-friendly. So my model predicts the SNP would hold only Southside, the Greens would snatch the recarved Kelvin and Maryhill for Padded Harvie, and Labour would get all the rest. Add an exceptionally high, and very unevenly distributed, vote share for the Greens, and the SNP are in deep shit. Even if you rely on the less radically disturbing seat projection on uniform national swing. Whichever, once again the single path to a functioning government majority with the least amount of performative kindergarten gesticulation would be an SNP-Labour coalition. The second week of May 2026 will be fun.
Last but not least, Ipsos have also polled voting intentions for the incoming second Independence referendum. Incoming in the sense that we have never been closer to it, just as we have been closer to the Sun turning supernova or Lewis Capaldi performing a listenable song, and I won't even bet on which will happen first. The Ipsos poll says 46.4% Yes to 43.5% No, or the time-honoured 52-48 if you remove the undecideds and abstainers. And this changes the trendlines to the point where they say it's a tie, better than anything we've had for two-and-a-half years. Don't get a hardon just yet though, boys. Just look at the chart again and count how many times we've been there already, and better. Then remember how someone, each and every time without exception, managed to totally and grandiosely fuck it up. Not naming names, you know, don't you? And the point is extra-super-moot anyway as the referendum wouldn't have happened even if Yes had reached 80% in the polls. Especially not if Yes had reached 80% in the polls, No regrets, then.
Progress has been made, even if you can legitimately wonder how, as nobody in the Yes establishment can be arsed to actually campaign for it. Bear in mind, though, that pro-Independence parties still bag a minority of the popular vote. The Ipsos poll says 42.3% of the Westminster vote. 42.9% of the Holyrood constituency vote and 43.2% of the Holyrood list vote. We have seen worse recently, but it means that the Yes Movement should be more open minded than it usually is, and accept that people can both vote for Unionist parties and for Independence. Which is probably a fucking big ask, as lots are still engaging in civil war within the movement, always in the name of that fucking ideological purity that will doom us all. Or we can be more cynically down to Earth, and acknowledge that the real reason for the whole fucking mess is that some in the allegedly Yes camp do not want Independence because they are feart of the responsibilities it would imply, and the perpetuation of devolution is their comfort zone within their safe house. Not naming names, mates, just guess.
It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
Craft is what enables you to be successful when you're not inspired.
(Brian Eno)
More In Common has also delivered a brand new Senedd poll earlier this month, not a Full Welsh as they skipped the part about Westminster voting intentions, which they probably thought futile as so many other sources converge on predicting summat like a Charge Of The Last Brigade for Welsh Labour. Their Senedd poll goes totally in the same direction, confirming what earlier polls had found. The two parties traditionally fighting for Welsh votes, Labour and the Conservatives, are both in freefall, Labour definitely faster. The next election thusly looks more and more destined to end up as a one-on-one between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. The only question is which one would come first, and pollsters obviously have a different answer with each poll.
The More In Common poll says that Reform UK would end up first, but not by a massive margin. The downfall of the Welsh Conservatives also means that the combined right-wing vote would reach only 38%, while the two main left-wing parties would bag almost 49%, and 53% if you add the Greens. Obviously, this won't deter some on the left from fearmongering about a fascist threat, but the reality is that it would be a massive overstatement. Bear in mind that, historically, fascism rose to power through a democratic process only with the complicity of the traditional right. Today's Welsh reality is that they just don't have the numbers, even if they were contemplating doing it. The Welsh Left's problem is how to deal with a far-right that is neither a clear and present danger nor a fringe groupuscule. The best way, in Wales just like in Scotland and England, is certainly to return to traditional left-wing values, and drop the whole baggage of fashionable neo-liberal luxury beliefs imported from American universities.
On such numbers, would we hear Reform UK squeal that, as the first party, they should have dibs on forming a government? Probably not, as even them can do an addition and see there is no way they could assemble a majority. Though I wouldn't put it past them to try a performative stunt, just to prove they exist and can be a massive carbuncle on democracy's arse. But nobody can escape the inevitability of numbers, so what we can expect is definitely a Plaid Cymru-Labour coalition, and Rhun ap Iorwerth duly anointed as Prif Weinidog Cymru for the duration of the next term. That's one of the upsides of proportional representation for the winning coalition. You can't lose your majority at by-elections, as none will ever happen. So the only ways to oust you are en masse defections, which are not the most likely occurrence, or a palace coup, which can definitely happen and indeed has, more than once. Just ask Vaughan Gething. But surely Labour would do that only against one of their own, not against a trusted ally who beat them in the ballot box.
The first is a freak with a masochistic streak, and the second is a kitten up a tree.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, 1973
I believe that people have many modes in which they can be. When we live in cities, the one we are in most of the time is the alert mode. There's nothing wrong with it. It's all part of what we are.
(Brian Eno)
We have also had a Full Londoner from Savanta, surveying various stuff including the Mayor and Assembly elections that will be held in 2028. Oddly, Savanta fielded that poll in May, but released the results only in the last week of June, for no obvious reason. They avoid being in breach of British Polling Council rules only by exploiting a loophole, as the countdown for the "48 hours for full disclosure" rule starts only when a headline result from the poll is published. So, you just keep shtum for as long as you want about what the poll found, and you game the rule. Which is fairly easy when your client is not a newspaper or a TV channel who would want a headline quick, but a university who can easily find all sorts of pretexts for not going public as soon as they get the results. This is the third Mayoral poll since the last election, and none is good news for the Labour Party.
Savanta did not poll the next Assembly election, which will be held on the same day as the Mayoral election, so all we have for now is the Find Out Now poll fielded some weeks earlier. Not that it really matters anyway, as the London Assembly can stand in the way of the Mayor's decisions only with a two-thirds majority and is otherwise pretty purposeless. The mediocre results of the Mayoral polls wouldn't really be a worry for Labour if first-past-the-post, which was force-fed to Parliament by Boris Johnson in 2022 in the vain hope it would help the Conservatives gain back the mayoralty, still applied in 2028. But now they have had that bizarre impulse to go back to the supplementary vote, the basic form of Instant Runoff, that was used at earlier elections. It is transparently designed to make life harder for Reform UK, but could also hurt Labour in London if their starting point is just one third of the vote. Especially as Londoners are not happy bunnies with the achievements of Sadiq Khan.
Londoners are not satisfied with Khan's performance and think he's doing a bad job delivering on his campaign promises. Which is always the hardest part for any politician, as they obviously have a very short memory span, or else they would remember that you just can't promise the people panem et circenses ad infinitum, and not feel their wrath at some point. There is an obvious correlation between peoples' opinion of Khan and the way they voted at the last Mayoral election, but it is far from being a direct causality. Not all Labour voters are happy with Khan, and there are also some nuances in the way other voters assess him. But Khan has obviously seeded the sows of discontent with his divisive shenanigans, and more of it could definitely turn the next election into an uphill battle for Labour. Definitely not what Keir Starmer needs in his own back garden a year before the next general. Of course, London Labour could spare themselves a lot of trouble and infighting, and just choose James Corden as their candidate right now. No shit, Smithy.
The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when. And he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.
(Brian Eno)
© Solomon Linda, George David Weiss, 1961
It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.
(Brian Eno)
Our dear friends at YouGov seem to have made it their life's mission to entertain us, the Robbie Williamses of the English pollstertariat. They delivered without fail again this month, with a very elaborate and obviously lengthily thought-out poll about an issue nobody gave a flying fuck about. And nobody ever thought was an issue, to be honest, until YouGov polled it. But became all of a sudden very interesting once you saw the results. Probably because it was commissioned by the University College London, regulars on University Challenge, whose finest minds devised questions so intricate they had to include a foreword longer than the poll itself. You will never guess, so I'll tell you. The future of the House of Lords, that so Very British Anomaly that will soon overtake the National People's Congress of China as the most populous useless chamber in the Alpha Quadrant. YouGov first probed a handful of binary alternatives, with a significant innovation in there. The usual "don't know" gave way to "don't know or can't decide", which is repetitively redundant but surely more lordyish.
Quite remarkably, the UCL brains did not include an "abolish the fucking thing" option, that would have made the rest of the questioning irrelevant. So, short of this, we agree that the House of Lords should not be allowed to grow uncontrolled, and that the Prime Minister should no longer have the right to appoint fuckwits and crooks, which would be an undeniable improvement. Then there is a very cretinous option in there too, that appointments should mimic the results of general elections. What the fuck, mates? The whole point is that the fucking ermines do not represent the oiks, and are where they are only because the PM of the day had to repay some debt of honour. Or dishonour, more likely. Then we had the crux of the poll, a four-way option that is actually just the combination of two already explored options, to make the whole thing look more inventive. Since they used long-winded wordings, I also took the liberty to augment their revamped "don't know" option to make it closer to its real meaning.
What emerges from that poll is mild enough, and inconsequential enough, that even Keir Starmer could agree with it and strongly commit to making it the Law Of The Land. As Starmer's real role model, Emmanuel Macron, loves to point out, the status quo is not an option. But neither is anything that would risk disrupting The Natural Order Of Things™. It's always been that way, oiks, and has been reliably proven to not work or serve any purpose, so suck it the fuck up. Abandon all hope of ever having an elected Second Chamber that would represent whatever the Greens and Liberal Democrats want it to represent in return for their votes, and focus instead on what really matters. How much closer or further you are to making the New Model British Union of Fascists the dominant faction in the next House of Commons. Well, a wee smitch further, or so it seems. But your job here is not done yet.
Of course, Reform UK failing to keep surging has little to do with Starmer's unique innate talents. We have even reached the point where we should rename Murphy's Law Starmer's Law, so everybody would get it quicker, and it's all self-inflicted. When shit hits the fan, Starmer hits "repeat". Keir's biggest recent mistake wasn't even the omnishambles over disability benefits. Liz Kendall is here to take the blame for that one, it's even her sole vestigial purpose now. No, it was apologising for his "rivers of blood" reboot. First, a really sly politician never apologises for anything, it's a sign of weakness. Unless you have inadvertently and accidentally toppled the urn of one of the late Queen's late corgis, and even that shouldn't elicit more than a subdued "Oops!". Second, when summat is more than three news cycles old, as this one was, it is fucking forgotten, so you just don't fucking revive it. Third, once you've apologised, you're gonna be asked to apologise again, and that fucking thing you should never have apologised for in the first place will come back to haunt you in the arse at the next general. Fucking hat trick of fucking rookie mistakes, Keir.
When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn't about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
The reason conservatives cohere and radicals fight: everyone agrees about fears, no one about visions.
(Brian Eno)
Of course, Labour turning themselves into a headless wild goose chasing its own tail offered Jeremy Corbyn the perfect opportunity to address the Islington Putin Fan Club with "hints" that he is seriously thinking launching a new party challenging Labour "from the True Left". For the third time already, or was it the fourth? Jezza's intent is in plain sight with his insistence on a foreign policy "that’s based on peace rather than war". Everybody who has studied British politics in the era when Jezza was still a young, fresh and principled MP knows where that comes from. It's a reboot of the "better red than dead" mantra of the 1980s, which effectively means "better fascist than dead" now, as it did in the 1930s. Because that's where riding your moral high horse will take you today, in a British replay of the Trump-Harris match. The pro-Hamas, pro-Putin, pro-Stephen Ireland sanctimonious loony left would love nothing more than aiding and abetting the New Model British Union of Fascists win the next general, so they can pose as the true Defenders Of The Faith against fascism. Cretinous wankers. And today's snapshot of voting intentions and seat projection, based on the last six polls fielded between Independence Day and Bastille Day with a super-sample of 11,952, still says we can't rule that out, even if Reform UK's position has again eroded a wee smitch.
That's where you are faced with the true "tough choice". I've said it before last year's American Presidential election, if I had been American just for that day. I would have pinched my nose, crossed my fingers behind my back, and cast a vote for Harris despite her massive flaws and baggage. Because the alternative was so obviously more horrendous by several orders of magnitude, even before we saw it in action. Blocking Clacton's Poundshop Trump from ever setting foot at Number Ten should become the priority, not passing judgment on the failed New Model Labour, no matter how much they deserve it. With the added fun that it would totally piss off the Poundshop Che Guevaras talking out of their arse from their safe place at Islington Green. Unless they end up like a North Korean destroyer, wrecked even before it touched the water. Which is a plausible option now that, in true far-left tradition, they have already managed to get factions and disagreements on strategy within a party of six. Generic polls don't test them yet, but will surely do as soon as we have a clearer picture of what the fuck it is about, so they are still counted as 'others' in the current crosstabs of voting intentions by nation and region.
The big picture if that Reform UK are no longer gaining ground, as they did in all the fracas following the English locals. and the GB-wide headcount has them down on predicted seats for the third time in a row. Of course, it does not mean that the threat has been entirely flushed down to the rat-infested sewers where it belongs, but it is still encouraging. Surely the British public are starting to see Reform for the over-inflated hot air balloon it is, and realise they actually have nothing to offer bar a bottomless pit of deficit and debt to fund extravagant tax cuts for those who deserve them least. Reform still have strongholds in some regions of England, but it looks like Scotland has started to purge the con artists out of its system, and Labour is gaining back sone colours here and there, which could possibly turn into everywhere if they learn from the mistakes, sack Morgan McSweeney, and rediscover the legacy of Attlee, Bevan and Wilson. I could even vote for them if they did all that, no shit.
Amidst all the gloom, I am sure that Keir Starmer enjoyed a short moment of glee when Commons voted to ban Palestine Action using anti-terrorism legislation. Not so much because of the ban itself, which will be challenged in court and very likely overturned. But because he managed to bait 26 MPs from "the right side of history"™ to vote against banning two neo-Nazi groups. The ultimate gotcha stunt, so obvious that even the SNP saw through it, but chose to abstain to avoid the disastrous optics, which left them incandescent with rage. Not Keir's finest moment, to be honest, but it was fun to watch.
People who don't seem to care whether or not they're liked are nearly always in some way likeable.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, 1974
The English don't like concepts, really. Part of the class game is that you shouldn't rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts is getting a bit uppity, isn't it?
(Brian Eno)
Now the real moment of reckoning for New Model Labour would be the emergence of the Corbyn Party, or more accurately the Jeremy Corbyn-Zarah Sultana-Owen Jones Party, as Shitweasel will undoubtedly jump on that new bandwagon as soon as he feels there is some ego-cuddling personal gain to be made off it, even if he is not invited. But would it really? Of course, The Islington Gazette have wasted no time doing their bidding for them, as you might expect from the blokes who wasted no time turning on Corbyn and endorsing the LibDems in 2019, when the Corbyn brand started to smell funny. But this time the fashionable chosen target is Starmer, and the CSJ Party may well replace Reform UK as the metropolitan media darlings. Of course, the New Sensation had to be polled, and More In Common did it. Which allows a comparison between their real poll fielded at the same time, aka The Baseline, and the one offering the as-yet-still-fictional Corbyn Party as an option.
There is a lot to unpack here, starting with the most obvious fact, that the Corbynistas would bag only 16 seats, when the baseline says they would already get 9 anyway. Electoral Calculus, fed with the same numbers, says even fewer, just 7. The Revolution starts not with a bang, but with a whimper that smells a lot like too much ado about nothing. Quite remarkably, and also quite expectedly, the only ones losing seats because of the stunt are the other left-wing parties, all of them. At the end of the day, the whole British Left ends up represented by 32 fewer MPs. A massive own goal in the name of fanatical ideological purity, which is definitely the actual plan if you were paying attention to the long line of Owen Jones' asinine rants. To add insult to injury, the ones who benefit most, and are laughing from the sidelines, are the Rump Tory Party. This happens because the poll predicts the Corbyn Party to nick more votes in the regions of England where the Labour gains of 2024 were knife-edge, and also quite a lot from the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
So the loony far-left, if it transitions into a real political party, would absolutely not stop fascism. Reform UK would even bag a few more votes and a few more seats. The growing Conservative faction who want nothing more than alliance with Farage, to get some crumbs from the table and their ministerial cars back, would also be strengthened. All for just 5 more seats than regular polls already predict. This clearly shows the inbuilt limitations of a performative stunt combining student politics, fashion politics and ego trips, devoid of any proposal to make peoples' lives genuinely better. They can do that because they know they have fuck all chance of ever becoming the government, so permanent protest is their best way to get attention. Hopefully the whole combinazione will discredit itself through infighting, which has already begun between the ambitious Sultana and the psychorigid Corbyn, and dissolve again into nothingness. Summat akin to a Deep Left equivalent of Change UK.
The massive irony is that the Corbyn Party would reach its goals and weaken Labour everywhere, except in London. Aye, fucking London. A comparison of the data from More In Common's real poll, my baseline, and their hypothetical shows the Corbynistas nicking votes off the Greens and Others, but the main result is a 2% swing from the Conservatives to Labour. Thusly gifting Labour two more seats with no benefit to themselves. Fucking hilarious. But, at then end of the day, what would matter most would be the big picture, and the Corbyn Party's failure to turn the tables, or even leave a meaningful mark. Even in the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands, which are supposed to be their most favourable breeding grounds, nothing really earthquaking would be achieved. Except perhaps granting the Liberal Democrats totally unexpected gains from Labour in the Metropolitan North West, which is surely not something Owen Jones had on his bingo card. What if the whole thing, even before it has really begun, is doomed to be nothing more than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty, all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, 1975
You have sixty-two people worth the amount the bottom three and a half billion people are worth. Sixty-two people! You could put them all in one bloody bus… then crash it!
(Brian Eno)
Now, if Corbyn's Intersectional Brigades wanted to make themselves useful, instead of a laughing stock waiting to happen, they would forget their competing egos and shift their focus to a really meaningful issue that has come into the spotlight after Rachel Reeves' Spring Whatever. All those with a functioning brain have now understood that there is only one possible outcome to Rachel's futile attempts at squaring the circle of self-imposed "fiscal responsibility". Raising the fucking taxes, and we all know that's what we will get in the Autumn Statement. First Rachel will maintain the Tories' freeze of income tax thresholds, which is a tax hike, and the worst of all as it drags low-income people into the lower band, when they didn't pay any tax last year. Then she will struggle to find other patches, but just so long as she keeps dodging the diplodocus in the room, establishing a wealth tax. Which the Great British Public massively approve, per Opinium in their most recent poll.
Even Conservative and Reform voters have come to terms with a wealth tax, as it is the only way to avoid other tax hikes that would disproportionately hit the working class and the middle class. It would indeed be the perfect way to sing to the tune of that ancestral Whitehall ditty, "Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree". Before a wealth tax can be enforced, various technicalities would have to be dealt with, preferably without too much interference from the risk-averse Applebys at the Treasury. Opinium polled one the variables, the threshold beyond which you would be eligible for the wealth tax. And the Great British Public opine that £1m would be adequate. When France, the only OECD country who had a significant wealth tax for any length of time, last revised it, they set the threshold at €800k. That was in 2013 so, if you factor in inflation and conversion rates, we're close to the £1m Opinium found.
Opinium didn't ask about the rate, which is also a key variable. In France, where a progressive rate from 0.5% to 1.5% was used, the revenue was about €5bn. Which was eight years ago. So factor in inflation and conversion rates again, and I feel pretty confident saying that similar thresholds and rates would collect roughly £5bn in today's UK. There is an alternative, known as the Zucman Tax, with a 2% flat rate above £1m, which is estimated to collect £20-25bn a year. This could be the miracle solution for Reeves, a temporary flat tax to plug the remaining black hole, just for the remainder of the current term. That would be a very welcome £80-100bn overall to fund whatever is the priority of the day. Let's say the NHS and the Royal Navy for now. Opinium also probed which types of assets should be taxed. The British public unsurprisingly rule out pension pots, first homes, ISAs and the Crown Jewels. Which leaves us with second homes, speculative real estate and business assets. I totally expect the latter to be controversial, which is why Reeves should include them, so she has some margin for concessions later in the debate. That would leave us with a tax on real estate, which is better than nothing. given the huge amount of overpriced speculative real estate that exists throughout the Realm from London to Edinburgh. Taxing real estate is also the only part Emmanuel Macron kept alive when he watered down the French wealth tax eight years ago. Surely that precedent from their trans-Channel role model would make that an acceptable option for New Model Labour.
There is already a supposedly smart narrative creeping out of the woodwork in the right-wing media, that enforcing a wealth tax would trigger a massive brain drain, and drive thousands into exile. The only problem is that it is a complete fabrication, unsupported by any facts. The only noticeable outflux of privileged tax exiles away from the UK had nothing to do with a wealth tax, since we never had one, but with the extreme rates of income tax enforced under James Callaghan. Even the most biased sources can't find more than two dozen, most of them rock stars who could have afforded the tax bill if they hadn't spent so much on miscellaneous Class-A chemicals. But we also have official data from France, where the plausibility of a massive stream of tax exiles was closely monitored for the whole period the wealth tax existed there. The page is in French, but your browser surely knows how to translate it. The result is clear. Over the most recent period where statistics of tax exiles were collected, an average 0.18% of those eligible to the wealth tax actually chose to leave France because of it. A negligible fraction, compared to the returns, so why procrastinate any longer? Just do it, Rachel.
Ideas reflect the moment, and so you have to use them. If you store ideas, they wither.
(Brian Eno)
© Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, 1975
Слава Україні! Героям слава!
No comments:
Post a Comment