Jeremy's Den: December 2025

When a sage governs a state, he does not wait for people to be good in deference to him. Instead, he creates a situation in which people find it impossible to do wrong. If you wait for people to be good in deference to you, you will find that there are no more than ten good people within the borders of your state. But if you create a situation in which people find it impossible to do wrong, the entire state can be brought into compliance.

(Han Fei, Han Feizi, 3rd century BC)

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886)

I am gonna take you to Germany this time, with a soundtrack by a band you may well never have heard of, Grobschnitt. With three albums from the 1970s that got them a reputation as "the German Pink Floyd". Ballermann, Jumbo and Rockpommel's Land. Some of their early stuff, especially live, does have an Ummagumma-ish flavour. But they sounded more like Genesis in their glory years, with bizarre story-telling lyrics, theatrics spicing up live performances, most of which would be banned today by Health & Safety, and a drummer just as good as Phil Collins. Sadly, their later career also strangely mimicked Genesis, with a Gefechtskehrtwende towards more mainstream AOR and pop in the 1980s, until they disbanded after core members of the original line-up had left and been replaced by less capable substitutes, and then reunited for some nostalgia-studded concerts in the 2000s. The closing video is a 55-minute rendition of their signature piece "Solar Music", filmed in 1978 for the legendary TV show Rockpalast. Spiel es laut und genieß.

The images are still fully yours to click on, for a better vision of what they want to tell you.

With that soundtrack, I will take the opportunity to tell you a bit about the next general election in Germany, which is not irrelevant to the UK. It actually matters to us too, not because the English in general have lots of Germanic blood and their royals are German migrants, but because the Bundestag's term is four years. So the German election has to be held in March 2029 at the latest, just a few months before ours. It is thusly safe to bet that anything that happens there, especially if it shows a surge for the neo-Nazis at AfD, will be dissected by the British mediatariat as evidence that their self-fulfilling prophecy is about to be self-fulfilled, and Benito Farage is certain to move to Number Ten. Of course, the AfD is openly supported by J.D. Vance, funded by the Russian Reich and promoted by Elon Muck on Twitter, like all fascist and Nazi thugs in Europe. It hasn't really worked as planned, though, as the AfD has not skyrocketed to unprecedented heights like Reform UK or the National Rally in France. Instead, the trends of voting intentions show them roughly tied with the current ruling party CDU-CSU.

There are two interesting patterns in these polls. One is already well known, the deep divide between West and East, far deeper than between the Red North and the Blue South in the British past. The Eastern Länder first indulged in Ostalgie, this longing for the good old days of Communism when the State provided everything to everybody for free, and then transitioned to Nazistalgia, this longing for a strong leader with an iron fist in an iron glove who will put foreigners in their rightful place, raus or in camps. The other pattern is quite different from what we have seen in the UK since our last general election. The voting intentions and seat projections both show that there is no shift from the left to the far-right since the 2025 election, as it admittedly happened before, again most noticeably in the East. Over the last few months, the polls show only movements within the two competing camps, from the CDU-CSU to the AfD and from the SPD to Die Linke.

As usual in Germany, the big challenge will be to form a workable government coalition after the 2029 election. Proportional representation is well-tempered, like Johann Sebastian Bach's Klavier, by the 5% threshold that would eliminate all the loopies and, among the main parties, the far-left anti-woke Russian agents at BSW and the classic neo-liberals at the FDP. Since the last electoral reform, the number of seats of the Bundestag is fixed at 630. so any coalition has to bag at least 316. In the current state of polls, only two coalitions would clear that hurdle. The CDU-CSU and AfD on 365 seats. The CDU-CSU, SPD and Grüne on 364 seats. The current Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ruled out the first option, which would be like a kiss of death for the CDU-CSU, but he has a quite opportunistic vision of the Brandmauer and has let his MPs vote with AfD on some select issues. Notwithstanding, the most likely option remains an expanded Große Koalition including the Greens. Fortunately for Germany, their Greens are quite unlike ours. They have no patience for the Zack Polanski brand of anti-NATO rhetoric and complacency towards Russia, and have indeed proved more pro-Ukraine and pro-military than the social-democrats when they were in government together between 2022 and 2025. So maybe the Schwarz-Rot-Grün alliance is just what Germany will need after that election.

Der Irrsinn ist bei Einzelnen etwas Seltenes, aber bei Gruppen, Parteien, Völkern, Zeiten die Regel.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886)

Putin is a 100%, more than 100% rational person. When he negotiates, when he starts explaining, when he makes an offer, saying "yes" or "no", he is super, super rational. As we say in Hungarian, "cold-blooded".

(Viktor Orbán, July 2024)

Another important election will happen further from home, but closer in time, in Hungary in April 2026. Which is like tomorrow in political time. It is also relevant to us as it will have major consequences for the European Union and their support for Ukraine, and also will be a test of how much effort the Russian Reich is ready to make to hijack a democratic election in Western Europe, to install or perpetuate a far-right authoritarian governement bought and sold for Russian blood money. Which is exactly what the current Fidesz-KDNP governement under Viktor Orbán is, sabotaging the European Union from the inside for the benefit of Russian interests. The Fidesz-KDNP alliance has been in power for fifteen years now, winning a super-majority at every election since 2006. They have been helped by the Hungarian electoral law, with 106 of 199 MPs elected by first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies, and 93 by proportional representation on a single national list, with a 5% threshold for individual parties, and 10% or 15% for coalitions. The trendlines of voting intentions polls since the last election in 2022 hint that it will be a closer call than ever before, and Orban might well be ousted, though this is not a done deal yet.

Four parties are represented in the current Országgyűlés, two of which are actually coalitions. The ruling Fidesz-KDNP, the now defunct United For Hungary coalition, which has exploded back into its five original constituent parties including the left-wing Democratic Coalition, the far-right Our Homeland Movement (MHM) and the German minority interests party MNOÖ, which is constitutionally guaranteed a seat regardless of its actual result. Also standing in 2022 was the satirical Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP), that failed to get any seat but still intends to compete in 2026. But Orbán's main adversary is the Respect And Freedom Party (Tisza), that was founded in 2020 but did not stand at the 2022 election. It has been revived in 2024 with the very specific goal to kick out Fidesz and mend fences with the European Union. The weighted average of the six most recent polls say they would narrowly defeat the incumbent Fidesz-KDNP. Note that Hungarian pollsters don't bother polling the two votes separately, as the results are very similar, so my seat projections are based on their single voting intentions question.

The situation is reminiscent of Poland in 2023, with the main opposition to a far-right authoritarian governement being broadly center-right, economically liberal and strongly Europhile. The difference is that Orbán has reframed himself as an active destabilising Russian asset within the EU, which no Polish party ever did. Tisza is the exact opposite, pro-EU and generally pro-Western, which has led Orbán to call them the European Commission's favourite puppet government for Hungary. It also opposes direct Hungarian aid to Ukraine, but is unlikely to be a thorn in the EU's arse and block EU aid as Orbán attempted, before backing down every time. Besides, Tisza's leader Peter Magyar advocates stronger ties with the EU and alignment on Western democratic values and practices, and has specifically targeted Orbán's close ties with Russia and Putin personally. Their victory, which is not yet a done deal, would thusly be excellent news for European democracy and Ukraine. We just don't know how much blood money and propaganda the Kremlin's Nosferatu is willing to pour into Hungary to make sure it does not happen. But we still can hope that the Russian Reich's economy collapses before they can do too much harm, which is probably closer than we think if we believe the real news, not the fake ones the FSB feeds their bribed influencers.

The Westerners have chosen to live in a post-national and post-Christian world, and we respect that. But they want even more. They want us to live that way too. They don’t want us to be free, they want us to be free only in the way they would like us to be.

(Viktor Orbán, Chronicles, 20 June 2021)

It is just as much work to end a government as to form one, without any of the fun.

(Benjamin Disraeli)

Then I would be in dereliction of duty if I didn't take you on another detour through the country of my birth, before turning back to current British affairs. France has been in political turmoil since the legislative election of 2022 delivered a hung National Assembly, and in total fucking chaos since the very ill advised snap election of 2024 delivered a split between three main blocs. The most farcical evidence of this Macron-created chaos has been the vote on the national budget for 2026, which the National Assembly voted down 404 to 1, with 84 abstentions and another 86 MPs not even showing up for the vote. This after weeks of backroom deals, 125 hours of public debate, grandstanding and posturing for the benefit of TV crews, name-calling between former partners and unholy alliances between the far-left and the far-right to support what was mostly seen as totally extravagant fiscal measures. But it's not over, as the draft budget first goes to the Senate, and then back to the National Assembly for a final deciding vote. Odds are that the whole farce will not end with the government being brought down by a vote of no confidence, again, as it would inevitably trigger a snap legislative election that is in nobody's interest. So the Next Big Thing is still the Presidential election of 2027, which has been polled thrice recently, with quite destabilising results.

There is actually no shocker content in the first round voting intentions from these three polls, as they just test an array of familiar scenarios painting a familiar picture. The xenophobic Putin-appeasing National Rally is predicted to top the polls with more than a third of the popular vote. Macronism is out of road and running on fumes, so their only option is to confirm their swing to the right and endorse former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe as their flag-bearer. Hamas-apologist and Putin-enabler Jean-Luc Mélenchon is clearly demonetised, hopefully lethally. And the rest of the Left are cretinous enough to march to the fight divided, when they could really turn the tables by endorsing soft-left social-liberal Raphaël Glucksmann, who would gain in credibility if he hadn't trapped himself in his own ego trip. Nothing new here, and nothing that's not quintessentially Gallic. But the real shock came from the second round voting intentions, that were surveyed by just one pollster, and again with more or less credible alternative scenarios.

The first obvious shock is that perennial far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has been erased from this poll, as if they took for granted that she will lose her appeal against her conviction for embezzlement of European Parliament funds and thusly be banned from standing at any election for the next five years. Le Pan herself has validated the fallback option, her hare-brained stunt-double Jordan Bardella standing for President. Bardella will be 31 when the election is held, and has prior experience as a Councillor and an MEP, never as a deputy, which you surely remember is French for MP. Le Pen originally dismissed him as a credible candidate but, because of events, dear boy, events, he has been carefully chaperoned and groomed for several months as the replacement bus service after Le Pen's predicted judicial trainwreck. And all this led to these shocking poll results, that Bardella would defeat any other candidate and become President, thusly proving that the far-right vote is no longer a vote for the personality, but for the brand. Ironically, these results also totally demolish Mélenchon's and La France Insoumise's strategy, to ensure that only a field of ruins remains between them and the National Rally, thusly reframing themselves as the sole true defenders of democracy against fascism. The very strategy that is parroted by Zack Polanski in the UK, with his fixation on replacing Labour as the party of the Left. But, if it fails on the Far Side of the Channel, what are the chances it would succeed here?

You’re playing you hand badly. See, in politics, like business or warfare, the optimal strategy is not to have one. Or, rather, not to show it. You wear yours like a bad dye job.

(Dominic LaSalle, Cold Case: The Plan, 2004)

So, I just wanna say H2O is essentially water. I’ve been seeing that term, H2O, and I just wanna say, that essentially means water.

(Donald Trump, 22 September 2025)

I also have to mention the next elections in the formerly-United States of America. Let's have a look first at the Mother Of All Elections, the presidential election of 2028, which is bound to be a Clash Of Titans between Democrats still not sure if they should distance themselves from extremist wokeism, and Russia-funded Republicans still living in the Orange Baboon's shadow. The most tested, and so far most successful, Democratic candidate is still the Governor of California Gavin Newsom. The one the loopy woke won't vote for because he is a transphobe. And a centrist, which is even worse for their tiny brains because they have forgotten that Barack Obama was a dyed-in-the-wool centrist, so they would rather have a full blown Christo-fascist like J.D. Vance as President. Right now, polls show that it is still an uphill battle for Newsom, and indeed any Democrat. Newsom would defeat Trump, if he hypothetically stood again, and Marco Rubio. But he would struggle against J.D. Vance, as both have roughly even odds of winning per the current state of polls. The greatest challenge may actually come from within the Democratic Party, if Kamala Harris decides to go for it again, or if the "progressive" darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also stands. We will probably not know for sure for at least another year, and the whole deck will surely be reshuffled by the 2026 midterms anyway.

The loopy woke have now found a new idol, the "socialist" Mayor-elect of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. But is Mamdani's star shining as brightly as Owen Jones wants us to believe? The truth is that Mamdani's performance was mediocre in comparison to his two Democratic predecessors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams. His vote share was not even massively better than what Democrats bagged at the three successive elections against Republican-then-Independent Michael Bloomberg. Former Democrat Andrew Cuomo, standing as an independent and endorsed by Donald Trump, snatched votes equally from the right and left, weakening Mamdani significantly, Besides, Democrats bagged 79% of the popular vote at the New York City Council elections held on the same day as the Mayoral election, 29% higher than Mamdani. These elections were almost exclusively Democrat-vs-Republican contests, without any third parties or independents involved. So this result is surely more representative of the Democratic Party's true strength in New York City, and painfully highlights how many Democratic voters chose Cuomo over Mamdani, a weakness that will someday come back to bite him in the arse. That and his total lack of experience at the national level.

Mamdani has also promised numerous measures that he cannot actually enforce, because they are not within the powers of the Mayor of New York City, but reserved to the New York State Legislature or the Governor of New York State. For example, the Mayor has no power over corporate taxes, and powers over income tax are shared with the State Legislature. Mamdani cannot, as he has promised, unilaterally raise income tax rates without approval from the State Legislature. He also does not have the power to deliver free buses, as transport prices are totally within the remit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, an independent body controlled by the State. Moreover, in a textbook case of the American system of checks and balances, decisions on devolved matters are mostly within the powers of the New York City Council, not the Mayor, as the Council has statutory powers and the Mayor only regulatory powers. There is no doubt that Mamdani making promises he can't possibly keep would be widely used by his opponents, including those within the Democratic Party, if he ever had the crazy idea to run, which you surely remember is American for "stand", for higher office.

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.

(Frank Zappa)

This redistricting war is the opening salvo of a battle that must be won. We must have these victories. If Trump doesn’t hold the House, they will impeach him. It will be a nightmare and a blood bath.

(Steve Bannon, The New York Times, 3 November 2025)

The real Big Thing of the Multi-Election Day on the 4th of November was not Zohran Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York, but California voters approving Proposition 50, Gavin Newsom's retaliation to the gerrymandering of Texas' congressional districts ordered directly by Donald Trump. The two gerrymanderings annul each other, but the big picture is not totally back to where it started from. Other gerrymanderings have already been approved in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, estimated to toggle four seats to the Republicans. This is not even the end of it, as gerrymandering proposals are on the table in eight other States for now, potentially even twelve, and would benefit the Republicans at the end of the day, simply because they control more state legislatures than the Democrats. The New York Times has calculated that all proposals going through would mean a net gain of two to six seats for the Republicans. But it may not be enough to steal the election, as the trends of generic polls remain extremely favourable to the Democrats.

These trends are interesting as they show the limitations of the Orange Baboon's aggressive ramblings against the Democrats. First he tried to weaponise the government shutdown that lasted from 1 October to 12 November, blaming it on the Democrats, and it didn't work. The public didn't even hold it against the Democrats that they had negotiated a deal to end the shutdown that was closer to Trump's original positions than their own. Then Trump had a deranged hissy fit against six Democrats who had reminded the military of their obligation to refuse illegal orders, and that too didn't turn the tide of voting intentions. The latest batch of polls predicts a 3,8% swing from the Republicans to the Democrats, delivering a 27-seat majority for the Democrats with the effects of gerrymandering factored in. And it may well not end there, as it is too early to measure the impact of all the revelations about Trump's close advisers negotiating backroom deals with Russia, for massive business joint ventures in return for the betrayal of Ukraine. Could Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner be the Republican Party's Nemesis at the midterms and the artisans of MAGA's downfall? That would make sense, be a very welcome development and such fucking deserved karma.

The credibility of the polls has already been validated and affirmed by the special election, which you surely remember is American for by-election. in Tennessee's 7th District, which Republicans held despite a 6% swing to Democrats, more than generic polls predict nationally. Another test will come soon in Georgia's 14th District. Its Representative, ultra-MAGA fanatic Marjorie Taylor Greene, has vociferously resigned after falling out with the Orange Baboon over the Epstein Files. The special election must, under Georgia state law, be held no further than 40 days after Greene's resignation takes effect, so on the 14th of February at the latest. Democrats need a 15% swing towards them to snatch the seat, which is statistically rare but not unheard of, so a lot of attention will be focused on that one lone seat. Even if the Democrats don't gain it, which is the most likely outcome in this ultra-safe Republican district, the turnout and vote shares will be scrutinised. A low turnout would be a strong hint of discontent among Republican voters, which could easily be exploited by the Democrats. A swing of 5% or more would also be extremely welcome by the Democrats, as they need far less than that nationally to take back control of the House. Besides, anything resembling a success would also be an incentive for the Democrats to tone down their current internecine feuds, which could be the major problem damaging their image and prospects in the run-up to the midterms.

If tyranny is law, revolution is order.

(Pedro Albizu Campos)

We've got a lot of stupid people in this country running things.

(Donald Trump, 22 September 2025)

There will also be elections for the United States Senate next year, for a third of its seats. The seats up in 2026 were up last in 2020, coinciding with Joe Biden's election to the Presidency, and these elections were quite favourable to the Democrats, who gained four seats and lost only one. But they achieved just a tie the Senate back then, so the Republicans will be in a potentially more hazardous position next year, with 22 seats up, while the Democrats will be defending only 13. The 33 Class 2 seats will be up, with two special elections, or by-elections in real English, on top to fill the seats previously held by J.D. Vance in Ohio and Marco Rubio in Florida. Both seats are currently held temporarily by gubernatorial appointees and the by-elections will elect new Senators only for the remainder of Vance's and Rubio's terms, that end both in 2028. Let's start with how these seats look now, on the usual Safed-to-Safer scale according to the results of the previous election.

There is no national generic polling for the Senate, as these are highly personalised elections that often go against the trends seen at the House of Representatives elections, or the state's profile at the latest presidential election. Democrats hold two seats in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024, Georgia and Michigan, while Republicans hold one seat in a state that has voted for all Democratic presidential candidates since Bill Clinton in 1992, Maine. So these three will get extra scrutiny, especially Maine where 72yr-old five-termer Susan Collins may be fighting one election too many. Her "moderate Republican" persona, that has attracted even some Democratic voters for 30 years, has been damaged since the beginning of Trump's second term, as she has become less critical and more supportive of his policies in her votes. So her seat is predicted to toggle to the Democrats, as well as the open seat in North Carolina, where Republican incumbent Thom Tillis is retiring after Trump threatened him with a primary challenge because he is not batshit-crazy-MAGA enough.

These predictions are only a starting point as there have been relatively few polls until now in any state. But we may have a situation developing in Ohio, where J.D. Vance won in 2022 by 6%. Former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who lost the state's other Senate seat by 3.5% in 2024, is attempting a comeback. Brown is 73, which could be a major liability, but is counting on his reputation as a liberal class-conscious working class Democrat to overcome the odds and turn the tables. This one will also be under close scrutiny, as gaining the Vice-President's old seat would be quite a trophy for the Democrats. If Brown succeeds, on top of gains in Maine and North Carolina, that would deliver a 50-50 tie in the next Senate, which could prove highly damaging for the Orange Baboon's last two years in office, as he would be vulnerable to just one defection on a key vote. But the Democrats need four gains to be safe and actually take back control of the Senate. Their most logical target to achieve this is Alaska, where they would have pretty good odds if former Representative Mary Peltola can be convinced to stand. But, for now and until further massive trainwrecks at the White House, the likely outcome still is Republicans remaining in control of the Senate.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

(Isaac Asimov)

There will always be someone in the West ready to yield. All we have to do is wait.

(Andrei Gromyko)

Contrary to what the Orange Baboon's Press Bot Karoline Dimwitt bragged about, Ukraine never agreed to Russia's 28-point capitulation plan, they actually outright rejected it. What they agreed to is a massively amended 19-point version conceived with a little help from their European friends. But the Orange Baboon needed to save face and pretend it was his success. Heavy-handed damage control became even more necessary when unquestionable evidence was leaked to the world's media, that The Donald's real estate buddy Steve Witkoff had been working for the Russian Reich all along. Of course, we knew that already, but having a tape of it all over the news was really embarrassing for the White House, to put it mildly. How long can the Orange Baboon keep Witkoff on board, when he is obviously in cahoots with Russian oligarchs for juicy business deals once he delivers Ukraine to Nosferatu? The British public is painfully aware of this, as evidenced by a recent poll from More In Common. We do see Trump as an obstacle to peace, and even a third of Reform voters think so.

What will happen next, and what will eventually be included in an incoming "peace plan", is still a matter of conjecture wrapped in mystery as neither the United States nor Russia are acting in good faith and transparency. Trump wants a quick deal, as his MAGAligarchs are more than eager to restart business with Russia, but Putin does not. He is playing for time and leaving Witkoff in a limbo of uncertainty, hoping that the ever-evolving situation on the battlefield will convince Zelenskyy to concede defeat. But the Kremlin's Nosferatu is also acutely aware that Europe sees through his endless posturing and the true nature of his imperialistic plans, and this is why he is threatening us with the familiar kind of DARVO rhetoric that his appeasers and paid agents so love to regurgitate verbatim. The whole point is to weaken the resolve of Western political opinions, and the More In Common poll also shows that the British public are not immune. We do consider that the concessions Russia is demanding from Ukraine are unacceptable, but not always with a majority, and the proverbial "Ukraine fatigue" is evidenced by the rather significant proportion of us who consider even the most insane concessions acceptable.

There is no doubt that the duration of the war and the constant hammering of Russian propaganda do create a revival of the Munich Spirit, that awkward feeling of a job well done when you have chosen dishonour to avoid war, but will get war anyway because your predator won't be content with the lesser prey you have just thrown under the bus. It is quite interesting that, after the Munich Agreement of September 1938 was signed, the French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier felt a strong sense of guilt, but our Neville Chamberlain did not and looked quite happy with himself. But, when someone writes the Guilty Men of our days, the main character will not be any Prime Minister, but the New Model Lord Haw-Haw, Nigel Farage. Thank Dog, the Great British Public have no illusion about Farage and what he stands for here, and we have a YouGov poll to prove it.

YouGov did not specifically target Benito Farage, but asked whether or not we think our main political parties are pro-Russia or anti-Russia. The reals surprise is the vast number of people who claim they don't know, when public statements and acts have been a-plenty over the last three years. It is good to see that a majority of those who have an opinion correctly describe Reform UK as pro-Russia. Which is a mild way to put it, of course, as they would be more aptly described as Russian agents planted at the heart of the British political system, propelled by American dark money and Russian blood money. And that is a major reason why the Labour government should push a serious reform of political funding through Parliament quickly. It is quite simple, they just have to make all contributions from foreign donors illegal, as well as those from companies, businesses and corporations, foreign or national. Make that a blanket ban for both parties and campaigns, and we make a significant progress towards nullifying foreign interference in our politics and elections, with common sense measures that apply in almost all European nations. Only Trump, Putin, Musk and Farage could find fault with that, couldn't they?

The world may end up under a Sword of Damocles on a tightrope over the abyss.

(Andrei Gromyko)

Some people demand to keep on fighting until the last Ukrainian dies, Russia is ready for that.

(Vladimir Putin, 27 November 2025)

This week I have a new add-on to the Ukraine polling, a source I have never used before. The French magazine-cum-thinktank Le Grand Continent, who have just released a poll they commissioned from the French pollster Cluster 17 about European attitudes in general, and more specifically towards the USA, Russia and Ukraine. It was conducted in late November in nine European Union nations whose governments and public opinions differ vastly in their approach to these issues. It came out at the right moment, just a few days before Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner came back from Moscow with a "new" 27-point "peace plan". Which sounds a lot like just a rehash of the earlier 28-point capitulation plan negotiated between Russia and Russia, and rejected by the EU and Ukraine. This new draft must be as unacceptable as the first one, as Trump reportedly sent it to Ukraine with a demand that they do not share it with their European allies. Quite appropriately, this poll took off with a provocatively worded question about the Orange Baboon, friend or enemy of Europe. And lots of Europeans opine that he is the enemy.

Technically, an enemy is someone you are at war with, and Europe is obviously not at war with the USA. Yet. But Trump is certainly at war with Europe, with the concept of a united Europe that would be the equal of the USA on the international scene. At the core of Trumpism is an obvious desire to weaken Europe at all costs, and to split the UK from the rest of Europe. These are exactly the same strategic goals as our clear and present enemy, the fascist Russian regime, so it makes it quite legitimate to also consider Trump an enemy. He has certainly made himself one by becoming an accomplice to the Russian Reich's genocidal imperialism, in the name of business deals for the MAGAligarchs. European governments are fully aware of that, but are still feart of voicing their concerns publicly as it would trigger some retaliatory mantrum from Trump. And that instantly raises the obvious question about the kind of relationship Europe should have with the USA, submission, appeasement or a head-on collision?

France has obviously chosen full frontal opposition to the Orange Baboon, which they probably can afford more than any other European nation, as they cannot be blackmailed about American support to their military. Even Poland, the most Americanophile of all EU nations, is starting to show some doubt. Their President Karol Nawrocki has delivered a blistering attack on Russia, which is by ricochet a direct attack on the USA's policy of deals with Russia, and canceled a meeting with Viktor Orbán, Putin's plant within the EU. This is obviously justified by past experience, from the partitions of Poland to the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Katyn massacre, and also by a very acute perception of the risk of war with Russia in a matter of years. Other countries, further away from the Eastern borders of the EU, may be less aware of the risk, or in denial about it, but it is definitely on the table and should be a major concern throughout the continent.

Now, if we ditch the rosy glasses of denial and appeasement, it is clear that "a risk of war" is not even the appropriate wording as we are actually already at war with the Russian Reich. The politicariat and mediatariat may call it a "hybrid war" to avoid facing the reality of it, but what do you call a continuous sequence of hostile actions, terrorist acts and sabotage, if not outright war? Especially when openly hostile provocations are no longer limited to Russia's obvious first-tier targets, like France or Germany, but have been extended to the UK and Ireland. How about thinking twice about your fucking neutrality, mates, now that the orcs have tried to murder Zelenskyy in your own airspace? You have to be either very stupid, or bought and sold for Russian blood money, to deny Russia's aggressive intentions. Because the Kremlin's Nosferatu has told us himself repeatedly. Like Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, Putin wants to build Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals". But de Gaulle meant that as a strong, united and democratic Europe, like the ideal European Union, and Nosferatu means that as a string of Russian colonies and puppet vassals. And there are sadly more and more hints that the Orange Baboon sees nothing wrong with that.

If Ukrainian forces leave the territories they hold, then we will stop combat operations. If they don’t, then we will achieve it by military means.

(Vladimir Putin, 27 November 2025)

Forcing Ukraine to give up land is absurd, and decisions about the size of the army are made only by the Ukrainian leadership. Any concessions to the dictator are encouragement to the predator.

(Roger Wicker, 24 November 2025)

Awareness of the risk of war means nothing without readiness to fight that war. I don't mean moral readiness here, or any variant of some mythical national fortitude in the face of adversity, though I could rant for hours about how the bribed Russian agents and the faux pacifists are undermining it, just like their forerunners did in the 1930s. What I have in mind here is the actual practical readiness to kick the fucking vatniks in the fucking arse if they dare venture near here. Le Grand Continent's poll surveyed that in the most basic terms, asking their respondents if they think their country would be able to defend itself militarily against Russian aggression. And the general mood is far from reassuring. Basically, they all admit that they aren't ready to repeal the vatniks, with only France having a semblance of faith in themselves.

Oddly, the French are probably right to feel more confident than the rest of Europe. Drones of allegedly unknown origin, but obviously Russian, recently intruded into French airspace above their main missile submarine base near Brest, and the French opened fire at them, for the first time ever. Don't mess with Macron, Vlad. And this shows exactly what our government should do, publicly issue standing orders to all the Forces, that any drone flying less than a mile from a military base will be shot at and shot down without further warning. And it it's an innocent British drone taking pictures of birds and otters, too bad for them, but they have been warned to stay away. Coincidentally, YouGov had also asked the British public about our military readiness just a few days before, and the results are just as alarming. We were already asked 21 months ago in the same terms, and our opinion hasn't changed, it has even become a wee smitch more pessimistic.

If you look at the bare facts, it is hard to not reach the conclusion that our Forces are definitely not properly prepared to face any kind of direct assault. This is the direct result of very ill-advised budget cuts by the former Conservative governments, and their flawed strategic choices. Even with Labour's commitment to higher spending, this will take years to overturn as the military industry has been weakened. Before our own defence capability is at last restored to the level we need to make the Russian Reich think twice before attacking us, which will happen, we have to continue granting Ukraine a high level of military aid, as they are our line of defence against the vatniks, no matter what our resident bribed tankies say about it. YouGov did not poll the UK about our commitment to aid to Ukraine, but they polled the USA, so I have added them to Le Grand Continent's nine European countries. There are, as usual, two sides to this coin. One says that support to aid to Ukraine is still high in most countries. The other says opposition is growing, either through the proverbial "Ukraine fatigue" or because of the growing impact of the bribed influencers unleashed by the FSB, Elon Muck or the MAGA mob.

On top of all other problems, Europe has to fight off the toxic influences of foreign interference and homegrown defeatism. This is an uphill battle that will surely require some radical measures. Cutting ties with the USA will soon have to be part of it. What Europe must do, and the UK be part of too, is even more obvious after the publication of the Orange Baboon's National Security Strategy. It is a manifesto of interference in European politics to support fascist nationalist parties, wrapped in far-right conspiracy theories about immigration and fake news about the state of European public opinions. It also confirms Trump's burning desire for a business alliance with Russia, imposed on Europe through the withdrawal of US military presence, that has already started in sensitive areas nears the Eastern Borders. Pentagon officials have hammered it down the throat of European diplomats, Trumpistan's new doctrine, that may hold for a wee smitch more than a week this time, is that Europe must get their fingers out and take care of themselves all by themselves within the next two years, because the Yanks will be gone by then. Still happy with those F-35s now, Keir Starmer?

Vladimir Putin ends his illegal invasion of a sovereign nation and withdraws all Russian troops immediately. That is peace. Nothing less.

(Adam Kinzinger, 22 November 2025)

The current talks between the US and Russia are nothing but sham negotiations that take place over our heads. Yet, Europe is not powerless. We must now consistently employ our instruments. Release Russian assets, halt the shadow fleet in the Baltic Sea, take over air defence for western Ukraine.

(Roderich Kiesewetter, 5 December 2025)

In about the same timeframe as Le Grand Continent's poll, YouGov also surveyed their own select panel of five European nations about their attitudes to Ukraine, with the UK also probed on part of the items. It does not tell us anything new about the commitment to financial aid to Ukraine, except that Brits are more supportive than the European Union average, which is actually nothing new either. But it adds another important issue that Le Grand Continent did not touch, the future use of frozen Russian assets in Europe. Right now, only the interests on these frozen assets are used to contribute to Ukraine's defence. But a proposal has been on the table since the beginning, to thaw the frozen assets and use the capital. First to contribute to Ukraine's defence, then to fund their reconstruction after the end of the war. Broadly speaking, that would be the Russian Reich paying reparations for the damage they have inflicted on Ukraine, with the added bonus that we wouldn't have to pressure them for the money, as it would be already in our hands. The British public are the most supportive of this, which is positive as we have a lot of these assets in what was once known as Londongrad. Germany, Spain and Poland are also highly in favour, while France and Italy are more reluctant, thanks to their own governments' positions.

This is quite a sensitive issue, that has triggered loads of discussion, action, reaction and inaction. The EU's share of the frozen Russian blood money has been rehomed to Euroclear, a Belgian financial holding, and are thusly technically under the guardianship of the Belgian government. They strongly oppose releasing the assets to the EU to fund Ukraine, as does Emmanuel Macron out of legal concerns, and Giorgia Meloni because of her alignment on Trump's position. The United States are known to have lobbied European nations against the release of the frozen assets, because part of their deal with Putin is to have them returned to Russia unconditionally. Putin has also threatened the EU with severe retaliation if the assets are released. That leaves Germany, who initially opposed the release, now lobbying for it and trying to strongarm Belgium, which is highly unlikely to succeed any time soon. At the end of the day, that debate should be reframed as strictly political, not wrapped in legal arguments that often contradict each other, as it is part of a wider debate, about which future Europeans see for Ukraine.

It is quite odd that YouGov asked their British panel about Ukraine's accession to the EU, as it is frankly none of our fucking business, while accession to NATO clearly is. But it nevertheless serves a useful purpose, proving again that we are more supportive of Ukraine than most Europeans, with the notable exception of Spain. In YouGov's other four European nations, the levels of reluctance to Ukraine's membership of either the EU or NATO are quite similar, but for different reasons from where I'm sat. I see it as evidence or permeability to Russian influence in France and Germany, and to American influence in Italy and Poland. Which are both equally toxic, and even more so since the Putin-Trump Pact became the dominant factor in political attitudes to Ukraine. Clearly Europe, including the UK, must urgently liberate themselves from both influences, which also means cutting ties with the USA as providers of our military equipment. But YouGov has also found that Europeans have different opinions about the amounts that should be devoted to defence.

This time, the question was not asked of the UK panel, though our answers would have been quite enlightening. But there is an interesting underlying message nevertheless, that Europeans generally tend to believe that their own country is doing enough, but that the European Union collectively is not, without seeing the obvious contradiction between the two. When you look at the bare facts, only Poland is entitled to think so. They are the EU country that spends most on defence, 4.2% of GDP in 2024, higher than NATO's goal of 3.5% on pure military spending, and even higher than the USA. So they have every reason to be unhappy with other EU countries that don't even meet the previous goal of 2% of GDP, like Italy, or have no intention of doing so, like Belgium and Spain. But this kind of bickering is clearly passé when the times demand more European unity and the end of procrastination on the ways and means to achieve it. Let us just hope that the Orange Baboon's National Security Strategy, clearly aligned on Russia's ideological prejudices and strategic objectives, will at last be the necessary wake-up call. The clock is ticking.

Only if we take our security into our own hands and confront Putin with maximum resolve and strength can we force him to back down. Any hesitation or appeasement, or one-sided pressure on the attacked Ukraine, will only broaden the war.

(Roderich Kiesewetter, 5 December 2025)

Ukraine will be ours entirely within a maximum of two years. Possibly much sooner. There will be no sovereignty left there at all, since Ukrainians are absolutely incapable of using it. They never have been and never will be.

(Aleksandr Dugin, 21 November 2025)

Quite predictably, Elon Muck's bots and the FSB's bribed trolls are making a lot of noise about the recently discovered corruption scandal in Ukraine, and the resignation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak. I won't even counter-argue and stress the strength of democracy in Ukraine, as that would be like talking to a duck, never listening and always quacking, They are celebrating because Ukraine, and Zelenskyy himself, will have to go into a period of readjustment that may weaken their position in the ongoing "negotiations" with the Orange Baboon's minions who represent the Russian Reich's interests. There is no doubt that the current turmoil and Zelenskyy's perceived weakness have encouraged the United States to complete their transition into a full-blown ally of the Russian Reich, and to complete their treason of Ukraine and Europe. The most recent Ukrainian presidential polls confirm that Zelenskyy had indeed lost a lot of ground in voting intentions since his glory days, despite a brief revival during the summer.

One Ukrainian pollster has also surveyed voting intentions for the second round of a hypothetical future presidential election. They did it the same way as French pollsters, testing different scenarios including those with deniable plausibility, just to test all even remotely possible futures. As with earlier polls, Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be easily defeated by Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The new element in the October poll is that he would also lose now to Kyrylo Budanov. We have the usual problem, though. Neither Zaluzhnyi nor Budanov have indicated they are willing to launch a presidential bid, as both are totally focused on their part in the national fight against the genocidal Russian invasion. We can't even be sure that Zelenskyy would stand again, as a wise statesmanlike choice would be to stand down once peace is achieved, and hand over the torch to somebody sharing the same goals of a democratic united Ukraine with its future within an European alliance. Which, of course, would be Zaluzhnyi's perfect once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This snapshot of Ukraine's state of mind wouldn't be complete without polling for a future parliamentary election, which again shows a major backlash against Zelenskyy's party Servant Of The People. Under Ukraine's electoral law of proportional representation with a 5% threshold, the left-wing parties would lose all their current seats, unless they manage to build some sort of United Front, and the only opposition would come from the centre-right and the far-right. But the key point is that a massive majority would go to the broad arc of centrist liberal parties. Again, this assumes that Zaluzhnyi and Budanov would chose to fight under their own colours, which is probably not even the likeliest scenario. A big tent Unity Party of all liberal centrists would make much more sense, as Zelenskyy achieved in 2019 with Servant Of The People. And any credible scenario also implies that all openly pro-Putin parties remain banned, even under pressure from Trumputin and interference from Elon Muck's bot-farms. After all, we did ban the British Union of Fascists in 1940, didn't we? If the Mother Of All Democracies did outlaw the Fifth Column of the Enemy Within, so can any other nation to protect itself, and there is nothing anti-democratic about it.

All this polling, even if it is damning for Zelenskyy, also mean that Trumputin and Muck should be careful what they wish for. If these future elections are free from any kind of foreign interference, which would probably require UN or EU supervision, the brave people of Ukraine would confirm the path they have chosen since 2014. Towards the West under a liberal centrist Europhile government, as there is no way anyone can change that unless they rig the elections. Which is obviously what Trumputin would attempt, and that's why these elections should never happen until a safe, fair and balanced peace has been achieved, and Ukraine granted solid security guarantees under the sole authority of the European Union, with help from their other allies in the Coalition Of The Willing.

Work is in full swing on a detailed plan for integrating Ukrainian society into the unified space of the Russian World. Work is underway on textbooks, emergency programs for mass treatment and psychological rehabilitation.

(Aleksandr Dugin, 21 November 2025)

The premature leak of the full budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility before the chancellor’s statement reinforces our long-standing view that the OBR’s processes demand urgent reform.

(Tribune Group press release, 26 November 2025)

Thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility, belatedly doing what they are paid for and for once not leaking it ahead of schedule, we at last have an official figure for the proverbial "tax burden". It was 34.7% of GDP for the fiscal year 2024-2025, and is predicted to rise to 38.3% in 2030-2031. Which of course it won't, as we all know that the only reliable OBR forecasts are those about the past. And, even if they had the numbers to substantiate that, it would be wrong anyway as Rachel Reeves will no longer be Chancellor by then, and Keir Starmer probably won't be Prime Minister either. But will 2030-2031 be a Burnham Budget or a Farage Budget? That is the question. And it wouldn't be that bad anyway if it did happen, as it would take us from a taxation level similar to Poland's to one similar to Germany's. Not even close to Denmark's or France's. Before we peruse the tsunami of polls conducted after the OBR leaked the Budget, let's have a last look at pre-budget polling. Thank Dog for Survation, not YouGov this time, who probed us, on behalf of the UK Spirits Alliance, which is as impartial about collective imbibition as the Countryside Alliance is about ripping foxes apart, about which items we would consider self-rationing to handle the cost of living crisis.

These are quite interesting results, as we are basically sending our MPs the message that inflation is the best way to tackle alcoholism. And probably also obesity and junk-food-related ailments if the whole Realm switches to a cheese-only diet. Who'd have thunk? For once, YouGov weren't the first to speed-poll us about the Budget Reveal, Ipsos were. What they found is quite a mixed bag for Reeves and Starmer, but it could have been worse. And the replies are often contradictory, which is quite a common fixture of opinion polls when you ask wide-ranging umbrella questions first, and then dig deeper into the details. Unfortunately, this "whine first and think later" attitude is what remains in the headlines, as the mediatariat love nothing more than government-bashing, especially when it is Labour-basing culminating in Reeves-bashing. Not that the mediatariat are all right-wing misogynists, but... Now, let's get evidence of a very gloomy mood out of the way first. The Great British Public are not at all reassured, and more concerned about everything after the Budget than they were before, but is this what we actually think? Or has it more to do with the massive influx of negative coverage, most remarkably by the BBC?

There is an interesting point made by the Ipsos poll, right at the very end. Half of us think we are going through an Age Of Austerity, and just a quarter think we aren't. Sorry, mates, but from where I'm sat, what Reeves just delivered is not real austerity. Austerity is like Greece 2010, massive cuts to working people's income, pensions and public spending. Reeves definitely did none of that, no matter in which direction you twist and tweak the figures. Then we know who is to blame for all the negative coverage, don't we? When in doubt, blame David Cameron and, if Dave is not available, blame the OBR. It is true that leaking the whole budget, albeit inadvertently, before Reeves had a chance to explain why breaching a manifesto pledge does not technically breach any manifesto pledge, was as awkward as the revelations about Steve Witkoff coaching the Russian Reich on how to manipulate the Orange Baboon. Then the OBR's head's head was dutifully chopped off in a matter of days, because Reeves needed an expiatory sacrifice over something that had never happened before. Except when it did happen.

Tax rises won’t come in until 2028-29, by which time it will be irrelevant cause we’ll all be under water, probably being bombed by Putin. But fingers crossed, we might have Farage by then.

(Richard Ayoade, Have I Got News For You?, 28 November 2025)

This was a botched budget delivered by a chancellor who has diagnosed the disease, but refuses to administer the cure. This government has chosen to reject the single biggest thing it could do to turbocharge economic growth and repair the £90bn Brexit black hole.

(Ed Davey, 26 November 2025)

It is fucking hilarious that I am left with just Mister Ed's reactions to the Budget, as Benito Farage has only been conspicuous by his absence of instant knee-jerk reaction. Maybe he was just trying to figure out how much Council Tax he will have to pay next year for the Russia-funded mansion in Clacton over which he already defrauded HMRC of stamp duty. Thank Dog then for The Hipstershire Gazette, who defended contradictory point of views in quick succession, as if they failed to agree on a common narrative beforehand. First they praised Reeves for the progressive bits helping the working class, stressing how the wealthiest would contribute a fucking lot to fund that. Then they switched to slamming Reeves because, ye ken, she actually cuddled the wealthy tax evaders and solved none of the Realm's long-term problems. Then they managed to highlight the most important part, that the Budget has indeed achieved its main goal, shielding Keir Starmer from a leadership challenge until after the predicted disaster at the English locals, while Anas Sarwar is eagerly expecting great fallout for Scotland that would save him from abysmal results at the Holyrood election. But Labour might find some solace in the Ipsos poll probing the public about specific measures in the Budget, and finding not all of it is that bad after all.

Some of these results are a wee smitch confusing, because the Budget itself is confusing, and even confused. But the most striking point is that the public oppose lifting the two-child benefit cap. We already saw that in the pre-Budget polls I mentioned last time, and we double down on it now, in a fucking show of selfishness. Maybe Starmer should now bring back workhouses because, ye ken, Oliver Twist wasn't that bad after all. The massive opposition to the capping of cash ISAs is also revealing, as it is a philosophically progressive measure that puts Reeves on the side of Keynesian demand-side economics instead of the inefficient neo-liberal supply-side economics. What do you do to kickstart a feeble economic activity? Make saving less attractive and hope people will spend more, thusly injecting fresh cash into the economy, and that's just what this one is designed to do. The next batch of items surveyed by Ipsos is more favourable, but possibly for wrong reasons.

Interestingly, the one item in that sextet that triggered hostile reactions from the "progressive" side is the change in the range of cars available through Motability. Reeves denies that the decision was ill-advised and rushed under pressure from the right, but she surely will have to clarify which models do qualify as "premium" or "luxury". Surely, cars specifically equipped to handle wheelchairs should be excluded from the exclusion, no matter which descriptor has been assigned to them by the Treasury or DWP. But that is an adjustment she should have thought of before including a blanket provision in the Budget. Oddly, there has not been similar outrage about the taxation of Salary Sacrifice contributions to pension pots. Probably because only a small number of people can actually afford to set aside more than £2,000 per year. The ill-advised part is actually that it will take effect only in 2029, just a few months before the next general election, and that may not be good for Labour's electoral fortunes. The final items on Ipsos' laundry list also reveal more support than opposition to Reeves' measures, but again with some surprises.

Why does the British public so vigourously oppose Mayors being empowered to raise a tourist tax? It is actually granted only to the fifteen Regional Mayors, so that applies only in about half of England by population, and mostly on the East Coast from the North East to Cambridgeshire. Several Mayors have already enforced a tourist tax in their area, and a study in Greater Manchester, which has a tourist tax since 2023 at the request of the hotel industry, has found no adverse effects on the tourism industry's performance. Tourist taxes also exist in most EU countries and have never deterred tourists from coming en masse to the really popular destinations. The key is to enforce a small rate on a great number of payers, just as Andy Burnham has done in Manchester. I have also calculated the average levels of support and opposition, which is of course an imperfect indicator, but proves two points. The Budget is not really unpopular, and Reeves can argue that the popular measures are more popular than the unpopular ones are unpopular. So Mister Ed may be wrong, and that Budget is not that bad after all despite its shortcomings.

Labour was elected on a promise of tackling the cost of living crisis and growing the economy, and this is the second budget where it’s failed to do either. For millions of people struggling with higher bills, all this budget really offers is higher taxes.

(Ed Davey, 26 November 2025)

This budget is a smorgasbord of misery, a budget for Benefits Street paid for by working people.

(Kim Badenoch, 26 November 2025)

Surely the leader of the Rump Tories thought she had a point, because her zinger about the Budget earned her applause from her party's benches. But it is obviously not as simple as that, and the Great British Public know it. This kind of attack becomes totally laughable when you remember that Badenoch served as Secretary of State for International Trade under Liz Truss, the fortunately short-lived Prime Minister who cost the Treasury £65bn in one day because of a totally botched Budget that sent the financial markets into a frenzied spiral of speculation against the pound. Pre-scripted one-liners will not make Badenoch relevant again in the eyes of the British public, as we also have YouGov's post-Budget poll as evidence that her criticism of the budget is not widely supported. In a subtle variation on usual polling, YouGov did not ask if we support or oppose a select laundry list of Reeves' measures, but if we think they are the right or the wrong thing to do. Which I don't think is meant in a moral sense, but in a practical sense. And we mostly think Reeves has done the right choices.

Here too, I calculated an average rating, for what it's worth, and it says that Reeves' Budget is considered half right and one third wrong. There is a clear sense that the respondents understood right and wrong in a very practical and pragmatic sense, not a moral one, but that we do have a tendency to approve of measures that we see as beneficial for our own interests, and dismiss those we feel could be detrimental. Hence the negative views of the cap on tax-free contributions to pension pots, or the cap on transfers to cash ISAs, probably even from people who cannot afford them. Then YouGov also found a strong dislike for the one iconic measure supported by everything that breathes and thinks on the left, the repeal of the two-child benefit cap. Which does make sense if you remember that only 6% of households have three or more underage kids to support, but lacks any semblance of compassion, solidarity or selflessness. Just bear in mind that the Labour Party would have been dragged into the turmoil of mass rebellion and a leadership challenge if Starmer had not allowed Reeves to include it in the Budget this time, and the resulting instability would have been a much worse outcome for all of us. All of us. Think France-like chaos and then come back to me with a revised opinion.

The last word on the Budget, for this year, goes to BMG Research, who have also piggybacked a Budget poll on their latest voting intentions poll. They obviously polled the level of support for this or that part of the Budget, and I will not bore you with that as it revealed nothing new that hadn't been revealed already by Ipsos and YouGov. But they also added a line of inquiry that the other pollsters missed. Do we think this Budget will have a positive or a negative impact on a select sample of our key concerns? We generally think it will have a negative impact on everything, which sounds a wee smitch exaggerated from where I'm sat, with one exception that is a most stunning contradiction of a major point of what we told pollsters. We credit the Budget with a positive impact on the levels of poverty, including child poverty, while we oppose the one single measure that can have a positive impact on child poverty, the repeal of the two-child benefit cap. If you are looking for logic, don't search for it in the UK, mates.

All in all, Reeves' Budget is imperfect because it is contradictory. With recession knocking on the door, what you need is a full shift to demand-side economics, disincentivising saving and incentivising household spending to boost economic activity and salvage the High Street. Some of Reeves' measures fit that profile, but others still go in the opposite direction. At the end of the day, or the fiscal year, there will be disappointment in the air. This Budget, like the one before it, is unlikely to cure our collective doom-and-gloom mood and deliver solid growth. Polls show clearly that it failed to boost our confidence in a brighter future ahead, quite the opposite in fact, and that's why it will fail eventually. By the way, coming back full circle where we started, I stand corrected from last time when I said that the "tax burden" was 39% of GDP last year. As we have seen earlier, it wasn't. 39%, or 38.9% according to the OBR's latest updated calculations, is the total of public sector receipts, which include other sources of revenue than taxation, like interests on public sector assets and income from public corporations. Taxation generates only 89% of the receipts.

It’s not many chancellors who get a guarded thumbs up from the left wing of the Labour Party and the financial markets. That might even be a fiscal first.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 27 November 2025)

The public has just forgotten that normally you have a Prime Minister for a set number of years. Nowadays, someone’s been in for a couple of months and we think, “Oh, boring. Let’s have another Prime Minister. Who else is there?”

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 21 November 2025)

Thank Dog for YouGov, always ready to poll the Great British Public on the major existential concerns of the day, and also occasionally devoting resources to minor issues like the war in Ukraine and our voting intentions for 2029. The trendlines of voting intentions show that the gap between Reform and Labour is very slowly narrowing. Are we rewarding Labour for Wes Streeting showing more baws against the junior doctors, whose strike has become really unpopular, than the Orange Baboon against Nosferatu? Or are we belatedly punishing the New Model British Union of Fascists for Brexit, the single most damaging and most cretinous decision in British political history since the Tea Act of 1773? Bit of both, surely, and backlash for the Russian blood money bribes too. But what we see in the trendlines is a combination of Reform losing back to the Conservatives and Labour gaining back from the Greens, so it might not be the magic recipe Labour need to survive the next election, if it keeps them close to a tie with the Conservatives for second place.

We had a larger than usual harvest of polls at the end of November, with some pollsters delivering the latest results of their monthly surveys, on top of the regular weekly contributors. Today's poll-of-polls is thusly made of the eight most recent polls, fielded by BMG Research, Opinium, Focaldata, Freshwater Strategy, More In Common, JL Partners, YouGov and Find Out Now between the 26th of November and the 3rd of December. We have a super-sample of 14.749, or roughly the design displacement in tons of the ill-fated German Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee.

My model's seat projection is again less Reform-friendly than Electoral Calculus's algorithms, and close to uniform UK-wide swing, still colloquially know as uniform national swing, even if the UK is not a proper nation, but more accurately a polity, as conceptualised by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. Then we have the polling oddity of the month, a poll commissioned by Restore Britain and conducted by Find Out Now, about where voting intentions would go if "a party led by Rupert Lowe" stood candidates in all constituencies. The results may not be what Lowe expected when he paid for that poll, even if he felt he had to brag about it on his website.

The baseline here is the generic voting intentions poll conducted by Find Out Now on 26 October, two days before the sur mesure poll for Lowe. Bear in mind that Find Out Now are the pollster who always gets the highest numbers for Reform UK and the Greens, and the lowest for Labour, so there may be a wee smitch of systemic bias at work here. The point is that an ultra-reactionary immigration-obsessed party could bag 10% of the popular vote, so summat like 3 million votes. The irony is that they would snatch all of these from Reform UK and the Conservatives exclusively, and slightly strengthen the left-wing parties by ricochet. Thank Dog then for first-past-the-post, that makes sure that Restore Britain would get fuck all seats, except Lowe himself in Great Yarmouth, but that their presence would massively slash Reform's harvest of seats, and the Rump Tories' too. The hypothetical Union Of The Rights, which Benito Farage seems to promote these days, would fall from 420 to 304 seats, while the combination of everything and everyone on their left would jump from 211 to 327, a majority. That does not mean they would be able to govern together, just that they could block anything a Reform-Tory-Lowe coalition would propose. Or maybe Plaid Cymru and the SNP could be convinced to sign up for some sort of non-aggression pact, and pave the way for a Lab-Lib-Green minority government, probably ditching Starmer and Reeves on the way. Could Rupert Lowe be the one man with the magic powers to make Ed Davey Chancellor and Wes Streeting Prime Minister?

A group of MPs were asked in 2018, “Who do you think will be Prime Minister in ten years?”, and they all said, “Oh, it could be, you know, this person, this person”. Wes Streeting said, “Me”.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 21 November 2025)

Growing wealth inequality is the most common and crucial element in societal collapse. It corrodes the social fabric.

(Luke Kemp, Civilisations: Rise And Fall, 2025)

Of course, Restore Britain is in no way able to launch a GB-wide operation in the foreseeable future, and Lowe himself is bound to lose his seat to an official Reform UK candidate. So, for now, that leaves Reform alone waiving the flag of the true English values of Christo-fascism and xenophobia. Them and Robert Jenrick, that is. And now they can rely on unquestioning support from the Orange Baboon, based on his personal version of Mein Kampf costumed as a security strategy, and Elon Muck, who is now going after the European Union, just because they want him to abide by the law, as everyone else does. So we can expect the next general election campaign to look more like a septic tank overflowing than civilised and respectful debate. And the English mediatariat will fucking love every fucking second of it, because it will make for juicy headlines and shocker reruns. That's how low they have stooped.

The breakdown of predicted votes by nation and region of the Realm confirms that the Reform vote has declined slightly, but in a very unequal way. It is no longer as evenly distributed as it looked a month or two ago. But the way the other parties' vote is split still grants Reform a straight path to an outright majority of seats on barely 30% of the popular vote. That's first-past-the-post at its worst, but still not a reason to endorse proportional representation. The answer is to gain back the votes that have erred towards the Turquoiseshirts and give them good reasons to never wander that way ever again. And also to gain back the voters who have strayed towards lesser parties who only help Reform gain more seats. For example, if Labour snatched back all the votes they have lost to the Greens, they would gain 90 seats from all over the place. 12 from the Greens, 17 from the SNP, 5 from the Rump Tories and 56 from Reform. Not good enough, but you have to start somewhere, haven't you? And nullifying the loopy Greenies' power of nuisance is as good a place as any, innit?

What remains to be seen now is whether or not the Labour Party's reaction to recent events can help them rebound in voting intentions. We already had evidence of massive injection of Russian blood money into our democratic process, like the £8m poured into the Vote Leave campaign to help them spread disinformation and fake news in support of the Brexit abomination. Now we also have more evidence than we need of the Orange Baboon's long-term plan to inflict fascist governments on European countries by all means necessary. And we have the homegrown infection, Reform UK, at the confluence of both. It's just up to Labour to ditch all pretense of civility when dealing with the Turquoiseshirts, smash them and demolish them at every opportunity. There is definitely room for a fucking lot of negative campaigning against Benito Farage and his flying monkeys, to expose all the damage they have already done to all of us, and how much more they would inflict if given more power. Don't let the LibDems do the work for you, mates, go for the jugular and corner the fucking fascists.

Wealth inequality, in short, hollows out societies, leaving them to be a brittle shell which can be cracked asunder by numerous different shocks, such as disease, climate change and invaders.

(Luke Kemp, Civilisations: Rise And Fall, 2025)

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Jeremy's Den

08/12/2025

Du Schaffst Das Nicht, Keir

Du Schaffst Das Nicht, Keir