Jeremy's Den: So Here It Is, Merry Saturnalia Everybody

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

(Tom Stoppard)

The Christmas tradition of gift exchange packs dialectical significance because it reflects the capitalist extractive power.

(Yanis Varoufakis)

Are you feeling Christmassy? Well, I'm not, but that would be too long a story to tell, so forget it. But YouGov, always ready to survey our wellbeing in the middle of recurrent shitstorms, has probed us about just that. Repeatedly and repeatedlier. And, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Christmassiness is on the rise, just like fascism, the death toll in Ukraine, the price of spinach and the oceans. What a fucking great time to be alive! Not that I want to piss on your parade, mates, but the world would be a better place without carol singers, Owen Jones and lit up Christmas trees in private gardens. No shit. To add to the mandatory seasonal mirth, we have another YouGov speed-poll revealing that barely a quarter of us enjoy Secret Santa gifts, while a third loathe them. Happy Hanukkah anyway, all ye infidels and miscreants.

As shocking as it sounds at first glance, immigration is a very Christmassy topic. After all, Joe, Mariah and the fucking donkey were marginalised and oppressed immigrants, weren't they? Or summat. Then it may just have been the landlord at The Ox And Manger overbooking because he had forgotten he also had to accommodate three trade representatives from BRICS countries. Who knows? First we have to set the stage, with a very illuminating poll from YouGov. That was a very simple question. Does the British public know what "net migration" means? 64% said they do and 32% admitted they don't. Just to leave no stone unturned and make sure, YouGov then asked their panel to pick the right definition from four possibilities. 57% got it right and 30% chose one of the wrong options. Fucking hell!

Then YouGov had another trick up their sleeve to check the credibility and reliability of our deeply held beliefs about immigration. They regularly poll the Great British Public about the main issues facing the UK, an opinion massively shaped by the media and the headlines they choose to promote. Once, just for fun, YouGov added a question about the main issues facing "you and your community", and the results are stunningly different. Immigration got 52% on the generic question, topping the list just above the cost of living. When challenged about the local issues, mentions of immigration dropped by half, and it came a very distant second to the cost of living. So, only a quarter of Brits see immigration as an issue in their own backyard, and this is probably still exaggerated by the influence of the media, and Reform voters' fixation on it. It becomes the major issue GB-wide only because we have heard it is, from the bloke at the pub or the bloke on the BBC. Really scary, innit?

So, thanks to YouGov's astute polling, we have established two very important things regarding the debate about immigration. First, we have no fucking clue what we're talking about. Second, we are highly susceptible to manipulation even when it contradicts our own lived experience. In a word, the perfect Question Time audience. That's why every poll about immigration should be questioned, challenged and even disregarded. Especially those published by The Telegraph or The Daily Mail, and those with questions beginning with, "From what you have heard...". And that is exactly why I am just about to tell you a lot more about recent polls about immigration, and what they say about our state of mind, especially those published in The Telegraph or The Daily Mail, and with questions beginning with, "From what you have heard...". And, aye, I have spared you a rant about the soundtrack this time as it is, ye ken, just Christmassy. Not fucking-carol-singers Christmassy, just plain old Christmassy. Gulp an eggnog and sing along.

Different ethnic and ideological groups can become fault lines across the society. This makes society, by nature, far more fragile.

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

You don’t need legislation to tell you not to do something stupid. As a libertarian, I believe in getting rid of all the legislation. There should only be one law in the country, which is “Don’t be a twat”.

(Jeremy Clarkson, The Telegraph, 23 May 2025)

You may remember that the Labour government revealed a whole plan to get tougher on immigration, that got wiped out of the headlines and Question Time by the Budget psychodrama, but will soon come back centre stage. Because there is no bigger priority than to pass legislation that will make Theresa May's hostile environment look like a welcoming party at the local branch of Amnesty International. These proposals have been polled by More In Common and Opinium, so I have merged their two polls to give you the full big picture. When a measure was mentioned in both polls, I have kept only the result from More In Common. And that's where you realise that the Labour Left and the human rights organisations got it all wrong because they failed to read the room. Because the Great British Public absolutely fucking love these measures, no matter how far-fetched.

These measures are good, we have been told, because they were not inspired by Reform UK, but by the Danish coalition government under social-democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. They are even gooder because, ye ken, at the general election that followed their enforcement, the far-right Danish People's Party lost three quarters of their votes and seats. The only wee detail missing from that laudatory narrative is that the votes lost by the DPP did not switch to the Social Democrats, to thank them for their toughness on immigration, but to another far-right party, Denmark Democrats, who are just as xenophobic and Europhobic as the DPP. So maybe, just maybe, these measures are not as good as we have been told, after all. But that doesn't matter, as our own government's Dane-inspired proposals get 60% approval on average, against just 16% opposing, and the purportedly more "humane" bits get the lowest levels of support.

What will Keir Starmer do next to promote these measures? When the debate was raging in Denmark, some openly called Mette Frederiksen a Nazi, mostly about the bit about confiscating the jewelry, that looked a bit, ye ken, Theresienstadt. Not that anyone would call Starmer a Nazi, he is too bland for that. So we are left wondering what new horror story about invading hordes Benito Farage will come up with to prove that Labour are still weak snowflakes. By the way, there is indeed massive irony in the MAGA mob and the Turquoiseshirts fully endorsing the concept of "civilizational erasure", as the Orange Baboon's National Security Strategy puts it with the usual American misspelling. Or, as it is more commonly known, the far-right conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement, when the only real great replacement in history was the European invasion of the Americas and the genocide of indigenous peoples that followed. That is a fucking civilisational erasure. It's one of very few cases where I can agree with the loopy woke, that we should feel some sort of "white colonialist guilt" ad perpetuum. That and the dehispanification of Benidorm by fat drunk English Brexiteers.

I don’t really know what Reform’s policies are. We know what they think about immigration. We don’t really know what they’d do about it.

(Jeremy Clarkson, The Telegraph, 23 May 2025)

No human action occurs by pure chance, unconnected to other happenings. And none is incapable of explanation.

(Hans Gross, Inspector Morse, 1987)

But unhinged xenophobia is just a means to an end in a wider debate. For years now, the far-right have been hammering the fabricated propaganda that the European Convention on Human Rights is an unacceptable obstacle to proper British immigration and asylum policies, and the only remedy is to leave it. Of course, the reality is far different from the narrative fabricated by Benito Farage and Robert Jenrick, and propagated by lazy complacent media. Since the turn of the century, the European Court of Human Rights, which rules on alleged violations of the Convention, has heard less than one immigration case from the UK per year, and the vast majority have been won by the UK government. The two ECHRs have never been an obstacle to any kind of immigration and asylum policies the UK government wanted to enforce. But the toxic misleading message has gained traction, as shown by a recent YouGov poll that did not probe our desire to leave the ECHR, but support to amending it so it would cease to apply to immigration and asylum cases.

Of course, support for such changes is massive on the right, and opposition sadly not that big on the left, with even a significant fraction of Scots open to the nullification of human rights protections. But even that watered-down version is a deception. No country needs to lobby for changes in the ECHR, as they can apply for derogations. The mechanism for this is embedded in the ECHR itself, and has already been invoked by several signatories, including the UK. The ECHR itself guarantees the right of states to enforce their own laws within reasonable parameters. But the far-right don't want you to know that, as it would go against their real goal, which is the annihilation of all human rights, yours and mine included. Migrants and asylum seekers are just the first targets down that road to lawlessness. Another recent YouGov poll, probing whether we have a positive or negative vision of current British human rights laws, proves that the anti-human rights infection is spreading, fueled by the usual useful idiots of fascism in the politicariat and mediatariat.

It is frightening that we are collectively stupid and gullible enough to fall for fascist propaganda, and be split three-ways about legislation that should receive massive consensual support. Not just because it is designed to protect all of us, but is also an integral part of British heritage. Have we forgotten we were the very first in the world with a primitive embryo of a constitution, 574 years before the Thirteen Colonies ratified theirs? And also the very first in the world with our own Bill of Rights, a century before the USA had theirs with the first ten Amendments to their Constitution, and Revolutionary France cane up with the first variant of what would later become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? In this day and age, human rights remain revolutionary, and that's why Elon Muck's Reactionary Internationale want to erase them, and make way for the regressive Project 2025. Shall we repeat our past mistakes? First, the British Left cretinously imported American wokeism. Now the British fascists are deliberately and knowingly importing American Christo-fascism. Surely we can do better than that, can't we? Not to mention the massive irony and hypocrisy in hearing the far-right, always ready to whine about alleged lawlessness and promote the return of traditional British values, now advocating genuine lawlessness for all and the destruction of essential British achievements, just because that would benefit their donors and serve the interests of their organ grinders at the White House and the Kremlin.

During the Enlightenment, metrosexual elitists published essays that expanded humankind’s horizons in a manner that will go unmatched until the 1989 release of Belgian techno anthem Pump Up The Jam.

(Philomena Cunk, Cunk On Earth, 2022)

I love immigrants. I eat takeaway, I use mini-cabs. I’m down with them.

(Philip Smith, The Thick Of It: The Rise Of The Nutters, 2007)

The real question now, for all of us, is whether or not we can have an adult, civil and fact-based national debate about immigration. We could possibly achieve that if the media, who have a fucking huge responsibility in the spreading of disinformation and xenophobia, stopped promoting fabricated far-right narratives, like the link between immigration and crime, that is not supported by any reliable statistics. Not because the Deep State is hiding the truth, but just because such statistics do not exist. Now, if we could have this rational and fact-based debate about immigration and asylum, the first logical step would be to define what the goals of the British immigration and asylum system should be. Opinium tried that, with a list of eight possible missions, that are admittedly already quite biased and framing the replies into the punitive side of immigration and asylum policies. But we have to admit that this is sadly the direction the debate has gone ever since the mediatariat decided it was good value for money to over-platform Benito Farage and his minions.

So we are fully supporting the notion that the main goal of the immigration and asylum system must be to reduce the number of small boat crossings. Which is not unacceptable from a progressive point of view as people risk their lives, and too often die, attempting to reach our coasts by all means. But what about the far-right narrative about "them"? "They" come to England to steal benefits. MYTH. Benefits that can be claimed by immigrants are higher and easier to get in France, Germany and the Netherlands. "They" come to England because it's easier to be granted citizenship. MYTH. In proportion of the population, more people are granted citizenship every year in Norway, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands. So why risk it all and come to England? Simples! Because of fucking Brexit. Before Brexit, we were part of the EU's Dublin Regulation, allowing us to send illegal migrants back to the country where they had first entered the EU. Now we can't and are left on our own dealing with the illegals, with jack shit legal way to send them anywhere. That's why the number of small boats crossing has skyrocketed since 2022. Small Boats, A Brexit Benefit, that's the real story. Bozo Johnson and Benito Farage may be in denial about it, but we have the receipts. Then Opinium asked the obvious follow-up to defining the missions, how well or badly the existing immigration and asylum system is performing.

Opinium selected only six items here, but the results are nevertheless quite consistent with the Great British Public's choice of priorities. The current system is not bad at fulfilling what you could call the "compassionate" part of its missions, even if it is not 100% satisfactory. But we collectively opine it sucks at the punitive part of its missions, so that's why it has to change for the harsher. QED, with the usual overtones of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's not forget, finally, that a number of hostile foreign forces have a vested interest in stoking the fire under a divisive extremist version of the immigration debate. Some are at the core of the Trumpian alt-right, to support their fabricated narrative about a decaying Europe facing civilisational erasure, and are relayed here by Reform UK. Others are at the top of the Russian Reich's leadership, who have been weaponising immigration since the refugee crisis of 2015, to weaken European democracies, and their useful idiots and accomplices here are... you guessed it... Reform UK, always welcoming and inclusive of foreigners so long as they are reactionary white supremacists.

Long live the crowds of migrants who commit atrocities and hatefully destroy the rainbow European values!

May all the disgusting faces of European bureaucrats disappear in the stream of future civil clashes!

(Dmitry Medvedev)

I’m supposed to be a very smart person, I can … I have eyes. I have ears. I have knowledge. I have vast knowledge. I see what’s happening. I get reports that you will never see.

(Donald Trump, Politico, 8 December 2025)

It looks like Europe has not yet fully awoken to the reality of the New Model World Order that Trumputin have unleashed on us. A joint reboot of the Monroe Doctrine and the Hitler-Stalin Pact, wrapped in the Centenary Edition of Mein Kampf. It is quite appalling that a number of Europeans still think it's a smart choice to keep sucking the Orange Baboon's dick, while he is busy sucking Nosferatu's. Most of Europe is stuck between silent denial, which is pretty much the UK's official position, and fear of retaliation if they protest, which is just what Trump expects of us. Not only is Europe submitting to the same kind of pressure fascist Russia is using against us, but they also make Trump's case for him, that we are weak decaying snowflakes who will always choose appeasement over resistance. Then we have a poll from Lord Ashcroft, of all pollsters, showing that Americans are not happy bunnies with their President's attitudes. Asked if some negative views mentioned about Trump before the election are coming true or not, there is quite a consensus that he is a fascist wannabe dictator ready to do anything to benefit his own interests, with globally barely a third still in denial about it.

And now the Orange Baboon wants to impose further restrictions on foreigners seeking to get a visa to enter the USA, with us Europeans obviously the main targets. If he gets his way, you would have to disclose the last five years of your social media history. Unsurprisingly, neither Kemi Badenoch nor Benito Farage have protested against this blatant brutal on free speech, which amounts to a level of State inquisition into our private lives worthy of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or North Korea. Can't wait from the official reactions from Keir Starmer and Ursula van der Leyen, who will surely tell us that it is not that bad after all. But Lord Ashcroft also asked his American panel if they think Trump has done a good or bad job on some key issues, including three that are meaningful for Europe, as they are at the core of our disagreements with the current variant of the USA. Again, it is quite clear that Trump has managed to seed the sows of discontent quite widely.

Trump gets strong approval on defence and national security, which will be surely hugely improved by deterring the rest of the world to come visit the USA, but reaps disapproval on foreign policy, phrased in the question with an emphasis on Ukraine and Gaza, and trade, surely the backlash against the toxic consequences of tariffs for the common people. Republicans approve and Democrats disapprove, quite predictably, but the main point is that Trump is losing ground with Independents, which will be an important factor at the incoming midterms. The rising discontent was bluntly highlighted by the election of Democrat Eileen Higgins as Mayor of Miami, generally considered a Republican stronghold. This is the result of another trend that may cost Republicans a lot at the midterms, losing the Latino vote that solidified Trump's victory is several states last year. More relevant to Europe's concerns, Lord Ashcroft also probed the American public about the level of support the USA are currently granting to Ukraine.

Ashcroft's results are more Ukraine-friendly than what we got from recent polling by YouGov, but not in complete contradiction. YouGov focused on the financial amount of military aid, which is more controversial, while Ashcroft was more about a general approach to all manners of support. The American public, including Trump voters and registered Republicans, are generally in a favourable disposition towards Ukraine, unlike their President. Which brings us back to one of the items mentioned above, that the Orange Baboon would be using the Presidency as a way to enact revenge on his opponents, as this is at the core of his attitude to Ukraine. I have mentioned it earlier, and we have to always keep that in mind. Trump has a deep personal hatred of Zelenskyy, and a incurable grudge against him, because Zelenskyy refused to help Trump frame Hunter Biden, over his alleged ties to corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs, during the presidential campaign of 2020. Trump's dementia makes him think Zelenskyy cost him the election, and he is now allied with Russia to make the whole of Ukraine pay for that, not just because he agrees with Putin's fascist ideology. The most despicable abuse of power, allowing the continuation of mass-murder to mend his bruised ego.

The downside to invading your neighbours is that, often, you don’t just create new frontiers, but also new enemies. In the US military, there is a term for this. Blowback.

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

It is a damnable lie for Putin to claim he was driven to invade by NATO expansionism. He is the revanchist and neoimperialist terrified of Ukraine’s choice of a free, pluralist, democratic Western European identity. That’s what he hates, that’s what he fears.

(Boris Johnson, Holberg Debate, 11 December 2025)

YouGov also probed the American public about their views of Ukraine and the USA's attitude. Not that it is really relevant as the people's opinion does not really matter to the Orange Baboon. Because he is the people, his dementia-riddled brain cells tell him. So he only ever listens to himself and the last person who told him what a fucking genius he is, and that usually is Vladimir Putin. This is surely why the Orange Baboon keeps sending Volodia Zelenskyy "peace plans" that are just poorly translated versions of Nosferatu's capitulation demands, and Volodia and his true friends and allies in Europe keep rejecting the most outrageously treacherous parts.

But YouGov has found that the basics of the Orange Baboon's policy are at odds with the beliefs of the American public. Trump totally lives in an alternative timeline, where his conception of exclusively transactional foreign relations have already become the norm. But the American public still clearly believe in the Old World principles of the Truman Doctrine, that defined US foreign policy all along the Cold War, and its tougher version embedded in the Reagan Doctrine in the later stages. The core point of these doctrines was that the United States had a duty protecting Europe against aggression from the Soviet Union. Nosferatu's Russia being the same kind of imperialist rogue state as the latter day Soviet Union, it is quite logical that a large part of the American public still agree that the United States do have a duty to protect Ukraine.

There is summat of a trans-generational consensus on this, and the only clear divide is political. But make no mistake. The cracks that are starting to appear between Trump and part of the MAGA base have nothing to do with Ukraine, but with the Epstein case, the American elite variant of the grooming gangs. And Republican voters' support for Trump's policies, reneging on all international commitments that made America great earlier, is quite stronger than their sense of responsibility to Ukraine. YouGov has surveyed the American people's level of support for Trump's handling of the Ukraine war many times, and their last three updates reveal some interesting patterns. The most striking, given the chain of events we have just gone through, is that the levels of support and opposition have barely changed over the last two months. What tiny changes there have been are within the polls' margin of error, and support or opposition is still massively determined by the respondents' political affiliation.

Then, if you compare the last two charts, you also see that the respondents' support or opposition to the Orange Baboon's mishandling of the Ukraine war is pretty much a mirror image of their sense of responsibility to protect Ukraine. This is both significant and irrelevant, as Trump is definitely not guided by what American public opinion wants. Whatever the polls say, the plan remains to forge a post-war alliance with Russia for profitable business ventures, no matter how deeply it discredits the United States and hurts Ukraine, This is why Europe is such a thorn in his arse and Putin's, and they are both up in arms against European initiatives. Right now, it looks like Trump's strategy to force Ukraine to surrender has again failed. The long-awaited talks in Berlin have led nowhere, not to a peace deal, that is, despite Americans bragging that it was happening. But they strengthened Europe's resolve to insist on adequate security guarantees for Ukraine, and finally deciding to provide them themselves since the United States can no longer be really trusted, and are not willing to put boots on the ground anyway.

We give all the carrot to Putin and all the stick to Ukraine. It should be the other way round. If we’re weak, Ukraine becomes a brutalised satellite of Moscow and we green-light aggression from the Baltic States to Taiwan, the worst defeat for the US in decades.

(Boris Johnson, Holberg Debate, 11 December 2025)

The decades of Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe, and for us in Germany as well. It no longer exists as we knew it. That's the way it is.

(Friedrich Merz, 12 December 2025)

I was perhaps exaggerating when I said the Berlin Summit led nowhere, as it has indeed given more credibility to the deployment of a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, to protect them from Putin and Trump and piss off both. The UK and France were always on board and now Germany too is, which is quite a novelty. The other interesting part of the Berlin Summit is that the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pretty muck pushed Starmer and Macron aside, and established himself as the new Leader Of The Free World. Or at least of the Coalition Of The Willing. So we definitely needed a German Weihnachtslied in the interval, which is admittedly very German, but perhaps not as Christmassy as its title suggests. But never mind, the important point is that the British public's support for taking part in a peacekeeping force has surged again these last weeks, compared to rather fluctuating and lukewarm support along the year. More In Common fielded a brand new Ukraine poll just before the last wave of gamechanging seismic events, that proves it beyond reasonable doubt.

There is also an interesting pattern her, hinting that defeatism on the woke far-left and complicity with Russia on the corrupt far-right are not convincingly working with their own voters. Reform voters support being part of the peacekeeping force, albeit by a very narrow margin, and Green voters support is as strongly as Conservatives. So Che Polanski should read the room and think twice before rebranding himself as Derek Savage Reincarnate, and Benito Farage should read the other room and stop vomiting FSB-scripted propaganda. It just doesn't fucking work, fortunately. This pattern is even stronger in the replies to three other questions from More In Common, about the level of likelihood we are ready to assign to three plausible future events.

Nobody believes that Russia would respect a ceasefire, and Green and Reform voters have pretty similar views on this to the rest of the population. Conversely, there is a massive consensus that Ukraine would respect a ceasefire, with Green and Reform voters a wee smitch less convinced than the rest, but still massively trusting Ukraine to stick to the deal. It becomes even more interesting with the third item, how likely we feel the Russian Reich will invade another country if the Orange Baboon lets Nosferatu reap the rewards of his crimes. We conclusively believe it will happen, and Green voters by an even bigger margin that average. Polanski's strategy of cuddly appeasement of the genocidal fascists doesn't work with his own voters, and that's fucking brilliant. More In Common then surveyed three potentially controversial items, and here again a massive consensus emerged.

We do think that NATO is essential for the defence of the Realm. Two thirds of Green voters do, which offers conclusive evidence that Polanski's totally irresponsible proposal to leave NATO has no traction, and that Keir Starmer was totally right to go after him about it. More on that later. Then we also massively agree that Europe should invest more in an independent defence and eventually become self-sufficient. It's just a bit contradictory with the idea that NATO Is essential, unless the underlying idea is a future NATO without any allies of Russia in it, let's say Hungary and Trumpistan totally randomly. But the key point is that it torpedoes both the FSB-bribed Reform and their insistence on rejecting anything European, and the deluded Greenies who still think that a free Billy Bragg concert is our best line of defence against a mass-murdering psychopath. Try to see it my way, only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong. From where I'm sat, the only possible path to collective safety is a strong European Military Alliance, excluding hostile foreign interference and The Enemy Within, based on higher levels of funding, including the total confiscation of all Russian assets on the Continent and using them to pursue our own goals. Though we could also save shitloads of dosh if we asked Ukraine to helps us, like with those hunter-killer anti-submarine drones. While you see it your way, there's a chance that we might fall apart before too long. And our world will fall apart if we fall for either the Greens' irresponsibility or Reform's complicity with the enemy.

The Americans are now very, very aggressively pursuing their own interests. And that can only mean one thing. That we, too, must now pursue our own interests. And we're not so weak after all. We're not so small after all.

(Friedrich Merz, 12 December 2025)

The Russians say that they are supposedly not guilty of anything, and that concessions should be made by someone else, but not by them. In the current war of Russia against Ukraine, this logic has reached the most dangerous scale.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 15 December 2025)

There is an interesting twist in More In Common's poll about Ukraine, that totally contradicts what I said earlier about the British collective psyche, about us. Just scroll back up to just below Frankie Goes To Hollywood and it's there. My educated conclusion that we keep responding to polls without having a fucking clue what we're talking about, and are easily swayed by fabricated far-right propaganda. Well, this is certainly true about immigration, but definitely not about Ukraine. Here, we do get our facts right, we do get our priorities and sympathies right, and we do not fall for the equally perverse narratives for appeasement or complicity with Russia. Well, not much, to be honest. We have evidence of that in More In Common's pair of opening questions, about responsibility in starting the war and which side we now sympathise most with.

Of course, a fraction of us play both-sidesism, which is irresponsibly cretinous in this situation. And a bigger fraction choose to stay neutral which, as Desmond Tutu once remarked, is actually choosing the side of the oppressor. Notwithstanding, there is a massive cross-partisan consensus that Russia is responsible for this atrocious war, and that our sympathies go to Ukraine. Even Reform and Green voters are part of this consensus, even if LibDem voters are definitely the best friends of Ukraine at this moment, and Labour voters surprisingly less supportive and more likely to blame both sides for starting the war. Then consensus is stronger with the next question, about how important is it for us that Ukraine defends its sovereignty against Russian aggression. More In Common's wording, not mine.

You could say that the chosen wording is a wee smitch biased, but you can't deny that it does properly reflect the reality. There has been an aggression, which no amount of double standards, relativism or contextualisation can hide. And the victim of the aggression is fighting for its sovereignty, for its very existence even. No amount of FSB-scripted propaganda and disinformation can change that. And it is important for us, and significant that we do not repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, considering that it does not really matter because it is not happening on our doorstep. Because it actually is. The one lesson from the past is that we should handle Putin much more harshly and less complacently than we handled Hitler, because they are two heads of the same hydra. Sadly, we have be slow to face the reality of Russian imperialism, though the warning signs were here since at least 2008 and the aggression of Georgia. But the recent events have at last made us aware of the risk of further aggression and war.

More than two thirds of us are worried about the prospect of war in Europe in the next few years.Again, More In Common's wording, not mine. And it is not unduly alarmist, as it just reflects a reality about which a quarter of us are in denial. It is real because the Kremlin's Nosferatu has told us so himself, repeatedly. He has made it clear that his goal is to partition Ukraine and resurrect Novorossiya, which he has again described a few day ago as "historically Russian". He has made it clear that he will not stop there, with his infamous statement that everywhere a Russian soldier has ever set foot is Russian forever. This is just the blunt way to describe the final goal, the revival of the Soviet Empire, behind a buffer of puppet states. He also clearly adds an ethic supremacist component to his project, as exemplified by the coerced russification of Crimea and Donbas, which highlights the ideological similarities with the Nazi concept of Lebensraum, also rooted in expansionism and genocide. But awareness of an existential threat is not enough, the key is preparedness. And it sadly looks like we are no better prepared than we were in 1939.

Russians don't count their dead. But they do count every dollar and every euro they lose. That is why strong decision on Russian money is needed, and these funds must work to defend against Russia.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 15 December 2025)

Peace On Earth © Ian Fraser, Larry Grossman, Alan Kohan, 1982

Little Drummer Boy © Katherine Kennicott Davis, 1941

Those who seek to destroy us don’t know us well. They don’t understand who we truly are, what we’re about, what we stand for, what kind of people we are.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 21 November 2025)

Then there is something else on which the passive Quislings at the Green Party of England and Wales and the active Quislings at Reform UK agree. That Ukraine should capitulate to all of Trumputin's extravagant demands, and not make us wait too long. Because this is what would least disturb the cosy metropolitan middle-class lifestyle of Che Polanski's fan club, and allow Benito Farage's foreign donors to harvest their share of blood money quicker. More In Common has also probed us about a cherry-picked list of Russian demands, which are technically also part of the Witkoff-Kushner capitulation plan endorsed by the Orange Baboon. Nosferatu has again made it clear last week that he will not budge and achieve these goals by military force if the USA don't coerce Ukraine into submission. Oddly, our senses of the acceptability of Trumputin's demands includes some surprises.

It is indeed quite bizarre that More In Common refers to Ukraine holding elections, which is Trump's obsessive fixation and will happen anyway as soon as martial law if lifted, which won't happen without a fair peace settlement and solid security guarantees. It is also quite offensive to see them mentioning Nazi ideology in Ukraine, which is a core component of Putin's propaganda. There is also massive irony in regurgitating that tired cliché when Trumputin are actively promoting far-right parties across Europe, some of which are totally inclusive of genuine neo-Nazis. It is nevertheless quite reassuring that we consider Russia's most extravagant demands as unacceptable, but also slightly worrying that we are split about granting amnesty to war criminals or using Russian blood money to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine. Beyond the acceptability of these demands, More In Common also probed us about their effectiveness if they were accepted, again with pretty annoying results.

So, we collectively broadly opine that giving in to Nosferatu's less deranged demands would help peace. Well, that's technically true, as capitulation of one of the parties obviously brings peace. But it is fucking outrageous, beyond the pale even, to believe that the unacceptable becomes acceptable if it can bring the war to an end. Ukraine clearly does not agree, and neither do their real friends and allies in Europe. There is a reason why Nosferatu reportedly considers Europe's presence at the negotiations "inconvenient". He knows that Europe will not agree to turn the unacceptable into acceptable as our leaders did out of cowardice in 1938. And that the Coalition Of The Willing will be an ever-present obstacle across the path to the kind of peace at all costs the Orange Baboon wants to impose on Zelenskyy so that his corrupt MAGAligarchs can sign up for bloodstained business deals with genocidal fascists. But the third angle of More In Common's survey nevertheless shows that we are aware that giving in to any of Nosferatu's abject demands would be a victory for the Russian Reich.

Sadly, a fraction of Brits, as I can't say "us" this time because I feel fucking offended, have no problem granting Nosferatu rewards for imperialism and genocide, though opposition to the wildest ones remains dominant. There is certainly something in there that both the appeaser on the left and the accomplices on the right could exploit to increase our feeling of "Ukraine fatigue", but we must not give up. There are increasing credible signs that the Russian economy is struggling, so much that an economic breakdown may be closer than a military breakthrough in Eastern Ukraine. We also have another interesting development on our hands, that we could put to good use as a precedent, the United States Coast Guard boarding and seizing a Venezuelan tanker on the high sea. The official narrative was that the ship was sailing under a false flag to circumvent sanctions against Iran, so the American action was perfectly legitimate under the "secondary sanctions" doctrine that actually predates Trump. This creates an interesting precedent for Europe. Surely Trump would not protest if a European nation boarded and seized a tanker belonging to Putin's shadow fleet, that is also circumventing sanctions under multiple false flags. Or would he? Surely we should give it a try, seize one of Putin's ships and wait for the reactions. Remember, Keir Starmer, Who Dares Wins.

We count on our European friends who fully understand that Russia is not somewhere far away, it’s right next to the EU’s borders, that Ukraine today is the only shield separating comfortable European life from Putin’s plans.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 21 November 2025)

Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn't take it.

(Tom Stoppard)

Despite the very humbug mood of the last weeks, there are still some good news in the news and polls. First that Your Party may very well be dead before it was even born, as they have managed to lose 40% of their MPs and half their voters in just a few short months. Then there are Shitweasel's new BFFs, the Green Party of England and Wales, eating each other's livers over the imaginary concept of "trans rights" and the cretinous ideological fabrication of "queerphobia". It's not like they haven't been warned that the relentless systemic coercion to support imported luxury beliefs of the entitled metropolitan bourgeoisie, and the inquisition tribunals against their own members to achieve it, are unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. It is undoubtedly a good thing if this North Korean attitude keeps them busy in court over discrimination cases, and ends up costing them more than a general election campaign would. But the trendlines of voting intentions polls remain very bad for Labour, in a quite peculiar way. Reform UK is losing ground, but these voters are flocking back to the Conservatives and pushing Labour into third place, which definitely makes for Keir Starmer's worst Christmas ever.

As a side order to the perennial generic polling, a few pollsters also probe us on whether or not we would consider voting for this or that party. This is distinct from the classic voting intentions, as it does not prove that we would some day vote for them, only that we could be tempted by it and have them on our shortlist on Election Eve. YouGov are the most dedicated practitioners of this approach, and update it monthly. They use a 11-step scale, which I have simplified for more clarity. Only 'definitely, 'neutral' and 'never' are taken verbatim from YouGov's polling, like the three final experts on The Wheel. I have then amalgamated the intermediate ratings into 'likely' and 'unlikely', which erases the fifty shades of likelihood, four on each side actually, but makes the results more readable and understandable. Your Party emerges of that as the most rejected party, even more than Reform. But, quite oddly, the other parties' ratings are not as massively different as voting intentions would make you think. Reform is just much more able to convince and hold voters who are just 'likely' to vote for them than any other party. Surely this is food for though for the other parties' spads.

YouGov added another dimension to their polling add-ons by probing us about how much we trust the five main political leaders in the current landscape. Benito Farage may enjoy a high level of trust, relative to the others in the shortlist, but he also enjoys a massive level of distrust. Only Keir Starmer has worse results than Farage, but with a caveat. We distrust Starmer because we have tried him and reached the conclusion that he is not really fit for the job. But we distrust Farage without having ever tried him because we know beforehand he would be an incompetent buffoon in office, and also totally unfit for the job, and it is so fucking obvious that we don't even need a lived experience to prove it. But we again grant Ed Davey the best net rating of all reasonably credible contenders for Premiership. Polanski gets the same rating thanks to the high proportion of people who don't have an opinion of him, but surely nobody wants a loony wacko on the top rung of the food chain. So, Mister Ed at Number Ten, anyone?

Quite coincidentally, French economist Thomas Piketty recently published a column in Le Monde, which I sadly cannot share as it is behind an unbreakable paywall, arguing that the best defence against the Orange Baboon's neo-fascist Project 2025 is the revival of a true social-democratic political offer. Which is not the same as democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani in the United States, whom Piketty explicitly mentions. I could add Jeremy Corbyn to that list, and also the nebulous concept of eco-populism made up by Zack Polanski. But Piketty also stresses that it can only work if social-democrats repudiate the influence of neo-liberalism on their economic policies. Couldn't agree more, as this is the only way to counter the narrative that the next Clash Of Titans will be an Armageddon between wokeism and fascism, and make sure it never goes that way. So sorry, Wes Streeting, but refurbished Blairism isn't the droid you are looking for. Back to Labour's roots with Attlee, Bevan or Wilson is.

Countries can rise, they can have a standing and a reputation in the world that is huge, and it can go, and it can fall. And I don’t think we should ever think that we’re immune.

(Alastair Campbell, Civilisations: Rise And Fall, 2025)

A story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events, the vaguer it becomes.

(George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant, 1936)

Since this is my last rant of the year, it looks like as good a time as any to make a comparison of our pollsters, just three Most Frequent who do their stuff every week like clockwork oranges, come hell or dry water. That would be YouGov, More In Common and Find Out Now. I guess you know where this is leading, as I have already mentioned it, it's all about visualising the differences between their findings. which are sometimes quite massive even when they poll us on the same day. But a different "us", obviously. This is what you can call house effect, or systemic bias, and some show-offy pundits would surely come with a more convoluted designator involving sampling and methodology, preferably in Latin. Anyway, let's start with what this trio have released in their December polls. Four each from More In Common and YouGov, and just three from Find Out Now, before the Yule Break, and I have used the weighted averages to calculate the seat projections.

What we have here is what even a casual glimpse at the bespoke Wokopedia page reveals. they never fucking agree. December is not an odd one out, it's like that all year round, ans has actually gone worse with time. So, depending on whom you choose to believe, you either have Reform missing a majority by about 40 seats, or bagging a Johnson-like majority of 75. Which does make a fucking difference at the end of Election Day. And, before you ask, the differences between the voting intentions are way beyond the margin of error of polls with samples around 2,000. So there is an effect at work here, and I can't tell you what it is. Identifying the root causes would require a lot more than what the pollsters choose to reveal about their methodology, if they ever reveal anything. Then we have a further illustration of the discrepancies if we track all polls fielded by our trio since the autumn of 2024.

Here we have 49 weeks when all three are present, with 5 more weeks before that with only More In Common and Find Out Now, as YouGov restarted their voting intentions polling only in mid-January 2025. We can see that the differences are here right from the start, and then tend to increase as time goes by. If we focus on the tail end of the sequence, Find Out Now find Reform about 5-6% higher than YouGov, the Greens about 5-6% higher than More In Common and Labour about 5-6% lower than More In Common. Find Out Now are also the only ones who find the Greens outvoting Labour in every poll for weeks. So there is definitely something, even if I don't really know what it is. Bias or just honest differences in methodology, your guess is as good as mine. Then, for our further enlightenment, YouGov also tested our appetite for tactical voting in a number of specific cases, which arguably don't cover all the possible situations. They did not probe the Greens, or maybe they did and found out they would lose against any possible opponent, which made the question irrelevant.

The baseline is the standard generic result, without any tweak, Then the probe shifted to, "imagine that the only two candidates with a chance to win in your constituency are Thisone and Thatone, what would you do?" and we get some intriguing replies. There is no way the winter of our discontent will be made glorious summer for Starmer any time soon, as Labour would lose in both of their direct confrontations, with either Reform or the Conservatives. It is quite telling that even the discredited Rump Tories, whom nobody really wants back in government, not even themselves, still have enough juice in them to defeat Labour. And Reform too, as if a Reform Lite was the real antidote to Real Reform, which is a valid reason to question the wisdom of the electorate. Interestingly, YouGov also probed how many people would abstain in these four situations, who would otherwise have voted. That's a significant 22-23%, except for a LibDem-Reform one-om-one, where it falls to 19%. What is sadly missing is a Lib-on-Lab dogfight, and I have a hunch the LibDems would have won that one too. Because that's how competitive they have become since the 2024 election totally restored their confidence in themselves, the Orange Gladiators For A Fair Deal.

I’m not that competitive. I’m just very good. I think competitiveness is more essential when you need to make up potentially a shortfall. Cause I’m already very good, I can just be kind of minimal competitiveness.

(Matt Morsia)

You're like the annoying kid at school who is still annoying. Keep your mouth shut.

(Andrea Jenkyns to Zack Polanski, The Jeremy Vine Show, 15 December 2025)

Keir Starmer has recently triggered controversy, though I see it more as faux outrage, when he called the Green Party of England and Wales "nuts" and "irresponsible" over their stance that the UK should leave NATO. The Greenies were obviously not happy bunnies with that, and called Keir "Trumpian" in return. This is the new hyperbolic epithet the loopy lefties have come up with, displacing "fascist bigot" as their preferred slur for anyone who disagrees with the tiniest detail of the woke doxa. But it is certainly not as clever a choice as they think it is. Overuse it as much as you overused "fascist" and it will soon totally become just as ridiculously inoperative and irrelevant, comrades. Then I must say I am 110% with Keir here. I do believe that Che Polanski is an irresponsible wanker about anything related to defence, national security or foreign policy. I just totally abhor his weird mix of woke relativism and archaic faux pacifist groupthink from the Cold War era. A YouGov speed poll found the Great British Public split about the incident, but a plurality think that what Keir said was fair.

Characteristically, only Green voters massively think that Keir was unfair to call them nutters. But nutters would say that, wouldn't they? The issues with the Greenies are wider and deeper than just their cretinous assessment of NATO. The Greens have totally embraced relativism and contextualisation, two concepts at the core of the woke doxa that are actually bywords for revisionism, when it seeks to justify ideological anti-Semitism and the appeasement of Russia. Polanski himself being Jewish, and using it as a cheap stunt to deflect criticism, does not change the deeply flawed nature of the party's ideology. Opinium sensed that something isn't exactly right with the Greens, and probed them with the exact same list of criteria they apply to all other parties. And that is totally fair, mates.

I'm not one to howl at the moon with the pack, but this time I will. We collectively opine, and I personally opine, that the Greenies are incompetent, out of touch with the people, not representative of what the people think and untrustworthy. In a word, not fucking ready for government. More accurately, unfit for government. Which is obvious to anyone with half a functioning brain, and a self-evident truth for anyone whose brain has not marinated in the woke cesspit for the last ten years. Then I wouldn't want to sound unfair and unbalanced, or Trumpian, so let's deal with the other loopy wanker at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Benito Farage. YouGov devoted a sur mesure poll to him and his party when accusations of early-onset racism surfaced, and Opinium also probed their panel about him for the same reason. And validating and affirming that other self-evident truth, that the Führer is just as out of touch with real people and unfit for any position of power as the Greenies, is just the soft start.

No holds barred here, it's a fucking Shoot Out At The Fake News Factory. Aye, Benito is a fucking racist, Reform are fucking racists, their policies are fucking racist, their voters are fucking racists because they knowingly support fucking racists. Guilt by association, mates, and for once I'll go for it. For too long there has been this whiny narrative about far-right voters being just lost souls in deep suffering, only protesting against all the injustice in the world. Kind of fascist snowflakes. It didn't hold water ten years ago, and even less now after all the complacent media coverage of Reform. It's no longer a protest vote, if it ever was, it's a vote of adhesion, of belief in the party's values and policies. Its voters thusly deserve to be chastised as much as the Führer and his cronies. You asked for it, mates, so it is fucking fair.

Nigel Farage… his plane crashed… he had a near-death experience and came back more of a fucking dick.

(Jamali Maddix, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, 2016)

Power can be like a drug, and once you’re hooked on it, very, very, very hard to give up, because you can’t really see life beyond it.

(Alastair Campbell, Civilisations: Rise And Fall, 2025)

Now that both loopy sets of extremists have been fully clothed for Winter, which is the French version of getting properly dressed down, let's have a look at what this week's batch of polls predicts. Polling has slowed down in anticipation of the Saturnalia Break in Snowdonia, which is much more welcoming this time of year than Magaluf, so I have to rely on a smaller pool of polls. Opinium have closed shop twelve days before Christmas and won't be back until next year. Most others have gone into hibernation for now, so I am left with the usual trio who poll us every week come eggnog or Brussels sprouts. So all I have this time is the aggregate of the last three polls conducted just before Christmas by our three Most Frequent Pollsters, More In Common and Find out Now The super-sample is an unusually low 6,192, and it sucks for Labour just as badly as you all expect.

There is no surprise in this snapshot because it is just the continuation of trends that have been at work since the autumn of 2024, and amplified by the switch of many Conservative voters to Reform after the local elections of 2025. Labour are now just as strongly rejected as the Conservatives were under Rishi Sunak. But always see the bright side of life, it is nowhere near the huge level of rejection the Conservatives experienced under Liz Truss. Yet. They may even find some relief in the decrease of Reform's predicted seats, below a working majority for the first time in months. It is also quite amusing to see that the Liberal Democrats are still in a hugely favourable position, which would prove, if verified at the election, that the 2024 result was not an outlier and that we have to take Mister Ed more seriously. The SNP are also serendipitously benefiting from the turn of events, dear boy, events, even if they have fuck all influence on any decision made in SW1. They should also reflect on the fact that, even if they surge back to 45-ish MPs, their position would be far worse under a Reform regime.

Are these trends now unshakable? Clearly not, as we are still 43 months away from the next general, and that is like a trip to the outer rim of the known universe and back in political terms. Remember that in December 2020, just as far away from the 2024 election as we are now from the next one, the Conservatives were leading in the polls by a few points, and Focaldata predicted they would be the first party in a hung Parliament. Which would be like a dream scenario for Labour right now, but also says we shouldn't draw hasty conclusions from the current state of public opinion. Consider also that we have been groomed by the media, and especially the politics desk at the BBC, to believe in the ineluctability of a Reform landslide. Should we all submit to the fabricated narrative and just look at the self-fulfilling prophecy self-fulfilling? Surely not, and the answer is definitely not in the Green Party of England and Wales. Mark my words, mates, we will escape the Turquoiseshirts if and only if there is a rebirth of true social-democracy in the UK. Sadly, this is more than we can expect from the current Labour leadership. All change, then?

We now have ample evidence from neuroscience and psychology that peoples’ brains seem to change once they get ahold of power. This is a recipe for disaster.

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

I think leaders often find it difficult to separate out their own interest and the national interest, and they can persuade themselves that the two are one and the same thing. And it leads to levels of brutality and ruthlessness. And I think once that happens, it is dangerous.

(Alastair Campbell, Civilisations: Rise And Fall, 2025)

But what are the really important issues that shape our vision of politics and guide our choice at the next election? Pollsters love probing us with a laundry list of miscellaneous issues, some of which we never even suspected existed, as they are totally irrelevant to our daily lived experience. But all pollsters do it anyway at regular intervals, probably because the organisations who commission these polls anticipate that the results will make for juicy headlines, whatever we choose to put at the top. And it rarely fails, probably because the mediatariat are relentlessly grooming us to deliver the concerns that will fit the editorial they have already written, whether they are real or not. With so many pollsters feeding the fire, I had to pick one. So I chose YouGov, and what their final political trackers of the year delivered. And, guess what? Immigration is no longer topping the list, the economy is, as if we had finally realised that there is no correlation between the number of small boats crossing and the price of baked beans.

YouGov actually submitted fourteen issues to the panel, but I have chosen to extract only the ten most oft-quoted ones, to avoid cluttering the charts. The other four all bagged less than 10% anyway. Or should it be "fewer than 10%"? I always have doubts about this one. Then came the moment of reckoning for our Dear Leader, YouGov asking us how well the government has handled our key issues and concerns this year. Quite predictably, huge majorities opine that the government hasn't handled anything well, but plain fucking badly. Of course YouGov also has evidence that it has gone only worst and worser for the government all along the year. It is fair to assume that, whatever New Year's resolutions Keir Starmer makes for 2026, his star will never shine brightly again. Especially as YouGov have also detected that we collectively always fail to stick to our resolutions.

YouGov then had to offer us the possibility of alternative timelines, which they handled by asking us which party we think would be the best fit to handle our concerns and priorities correctly. Oddly, as this all comes from the same poll, the labels chosen by YouGov differ a couple of times from one question to the next, We thusly got law and order instead of just crime, and foreign policy instead of just Brexit. Then I guess there is nothing wrong in probing the public about wider domains of governmental action, rather than the narrower issues identified earlier. And it plausibly has little impact on our replies anyway. I have a hunch no party leader will be happy with these results, as nobody is a clear winner across the board, spiced up by solid numbers picking none of the above fuckers or just don't giving a fucking shit.

At the end of the day, what we have here looks even worse than the perennial Preferred Prime Minister polls, a glimpse of which I will offer you below the fold and the Velvet Underground. If you reasoned only on the basis of voting intentions, you would expect Reform to score full marks, the Greens to do well and Labour to be down the drain on every issue. But this is not what this poll reveals. It is much more like a rainbow mosaic, with a wee smitch of Fox Mulder. Trust No One! There is a whole fat squadron of cooks in the kitchen, and we definitely need someone to claim us, someone to follow. We just can't agree on whom we should pick, and the lot of them are not even good enough for us anyway.

There’s a sort of moral corruption that power can do to people. You certainly see it having sometimes a very corrosive psychological impact on people. You’re prepared to do anything, anything to stay in power and to meet your objectives, up to and including killing people.

(Alastair Campbell, Civilisations: Rise And Fall, 2025)

To prevent recessions from turning into depressions, it is the government’s job to encourage gift exchanges, and even to subsidise gift-giving, by reducing sales taxes during the holiday season.

(John Maynard Keynes)

Then we must never forget the most important part, that the British parliamentary system has become de facto presidential. We do vote for a party, though I could argue that we actually vote for a person who happens to belong to a party, and sometimes we pick the person rather than the party. But we also have that thought at the back of our minds, that this not just about choosing an MP, but also ultimately choosing a Prime Minister. And that's where Prime Minister polls come into play. For generations of pollsters, it was always about pitting the sitting Prime Minister against the Leader of Not-My-King's Loyal Opposition, except in the very rare moments when a Third Man loomed on the horizon. Because they are pretty much always men, aren't they? Well, mostly. It would have thusly made sense to poll Roy Jenkins or David Steel against Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot in 1983. It has become worse today because nobody remembers that Kemi Badenoch is Leader of the Opposition, everybody thinks it's Benito Farage because that's what the mediatariat have implanted in our brains. And there is always the possibility of a Very Labour Coup before the next general. So Ipsos decided to poll a wider variety of duels than usual, with some fun results.

Of course I had to use the full data tables, as the digest published by Ipsos omits part of the picture. Like what proportion of us think that it would make no difference whether we pick one or the other, how many opine that neither of the proposed choices is any good, and those who simply don't give a shit. The idea here was to poll Starmer first against a handful of potential rivals, then test Farage against the same. Not Badenoch, mind you, as nobody thinks the Rump Tories will come anywhere close to Number Ten in the foreseeable future. So she is just mentioned as one of many against Keir and Benito. The first lesson is what a fucking lot of people think that everybody sucks, but mostly when it's a left-on-left duel. Second lesson is that Streeting, Miliband and Polanski don't stand a fucking chance, though they probably would have against Badenoch if she had been submitted to the full test. Third lesson, to nobody's surprise, is that Andy Burnham would be a better choice for Labour than Keir Starmer. Never mind that he would have to snatch back a seat in Commons first, which appears to be quite a distant prospect right now, so we are left with the pollstertariat's most beloved scenario, the three-way race between Keir, Kemi and Benito.

And now there's a fucking surprise in that, as Kemi Whats-Her-Name has visibly gained ground though having done nothing to deserve it or justify it. Or could it be people assuming that there will be a Reform-Tory coalition in government after the next general? Then it could marginally make sense to see Badenoch as a plausibly less utterly catastrophic option than Farage as Prime Minister. That's really the only situation where I see her having some credibility. But Badenoch may also crash into the brick wall of reality at flank speed at the next election. The regional crosstabs of current polls all show Reform doing extremely well in East Anglia, so her North West Essex seat is clearly in the danger zone, and plausibly just as safe as a Labour seat in Greater Manchester. Honestly, if I was Benito Farage, I would put this seat in the top tier of my targets, to prove I mean fucking business and there will be no quarter for the snowflakes. So it's not totally far-fetched to imagine that the pollsters' preferred threesome could be cut down to a solo act, with only Farage remaining on the pitch. Now that would be a fucking upset.

Farage should never be interviewed without being forced to answer for failures of Brexit. That the man whose lies fuelled the Brexit vote, which has cost UK billions, and who said Liz Truss’ budget was “the best Tory budget since 1986” could be trusted on anything is mind-boggling.

(Caroline Lucas, 20 July 2025)

It is no matter to the common people if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.

(Jorah Mormont, A Game Of Thrones, 1996)

As an early Christmas gift, we have got a new Full Scottish from Ipsos. Which has not revealed anything we did not already knew about Scotland's state of mind. There were actually some new news for Ipsos in there, as they hadn't polled us for almost six months, but definitely none for us common people who have been paying attention to what has been happening since. That was summed up by STV's headline about this poll, which is actually already passé. Reform has not surged just for Ipsos's benefit, they have surged months ago, and everyone except Ipsos has seen it. You can see it in the evolution of Scottish voting intentions for the next general, measured as the month-by-month aggregate of all polls all along 2025, Full Scottish and Scottish subsamples of generic polls included. The Full Scottish are actually pretty similar to the aggregated subsamples of GB-wide polls, you can take my word for that.

Here we have the perfect illustration of the workings of our beloved first-past-the-post. Contrary to what their zealots and sycophants say, including those in the punditariat, the SNP are just very mildly progressing, not really recovering, not snatching back the busloads of voters they lost to Labour last year. All they have is a massive dose of serendipity, with a little help from the English Union of Fascists. Reform UK's surge is actually manna from Nèamh for the SNP, as it splits the opposition vote, pushes all of these parties below the threshold of relevance, and makes every one of them less likely to bag a significant number of seats. The month-by-month seat projections for 2025 make the case that the SNP's best case scenario is Reform UK staying around 20%, which would rule them out of bagging any Scottish seats, and the other parties spread across the low-to-mid teens, which also disqualifies them in most constituencies.

But, even if Reform clear the 20% hurdle and become a credible threat in a number of constituencies, the SNP are still predicted to surge back to a majority of seats. This is why John Swinney, The Scottish Pravda, Ballot Box Scotland and John Curtice should be really careful what they brag about. If you crawl to success by standing on the shoulders of fascists, you're definitely not on "the right side of history"™. Not just that, it can very easily backfire. Reform on 19.9% get no seat, on 20.1% they get one, on 22% they get eight. all snatched from the SNP's predicted harvest. One held by the SNP in 2024, five they would have gained back from Labour, two they would have gained back from the Conservatives, and would now escape them if the Turquoiseshirts are just a wee smitch too successful here. So don't you play with fascists cause you're playing with fire.

Just take that and just do the opposite of that. Just crush. Just be as aggressive as you possibly can. Just do that. Lay down a marker, that’s what you’ve got to do.

(Matt Morsia)

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

(George Orwell)

Ipsos also polled the incoming Holyrood election, which will be held on the 7th of May 2026, in case you had forgotten. You will be bitterly disappointed if you expected to see massive changes in our voting intentions before the end of the year, because there are none. Ipsos just confirmed the trajectories we are now familiar with. The SNP still conclusively leading, albeit with a very mediocre performance, compared to the 2021 election. Compared to the 2011 and 2016 elections too, by the way, as the SNP's predicted vote shares look a lot more like their 2007 results. But the other parties are in very different positions from back then, as Labour and the Conservatives are both heading to their worst results since 1999, and we now must get accustomed to the New Model English Union of Fascists becoming the second party here.

It would be foolish to expect a complete reversal of fortunes before the election, unless we witness a truly seismic event of an unexpected nature. To be honest, the Scottish mediatariat is just as fucking useless here as their English counterparts. Even The Scottish Pravda obsesses way too much about the woes of Scottish Labour and does not devote enough attention to Reform. Even the news that David Coburn may allegedly have been at the receiving end of Russian blood money, just like Nathan Gill, when they were both MEPs, vanished from the news cycle at flank speed and was not investigated further. It should have been, if only to keep the story of Reform being bribed FSB agents alive, even if there was no admissible evidence against Coburn. That's how you construct a narrative, mates, these days. Don't bother about facts, just rely on casting doubt about your opponents. Which has clearly not been done enough, so the Ipsos poll's findings also lead to a worrying seat projection.

Owen Jones and The Scottish Pravda would find reasons to rejoice here, as we would get a pro-Independence majority. Well, allegedly pro-Independence, nominally pro-Independence. The Alba Party, which I once entertained high hopes for, have definitively lost any chance of serious consideration by allowing faux pacifist faux socialist pro-Russian influencers to rise to top positions. Just as sadly, the Scottish Greens are prospering, presumably as the most obvious substitute vote for disgruntled Labour voters, just as is happening in England. We thusly can only hope that the next First Minister will rely on common sense, and never bring the Greenies back into the Scottish Government. Because I'm just like the English metropolitan mediatariat, I do need my self-fulfilling prophecy to self-fulfill. The one that says that the SNP's only workable choice is and will be a coalition with Labour as the very junior partner. Just big enough to add up to a majority, and just wee enough to have no deciding voice in the government's policies. Thank Dog again for the first-past-the-post part of our deeply flawed AMS system allowing that to come true.

You can always rely on the left to turn up to a knife fight armed with a composite motion.

(Alexei Sayle)

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

(Garry Kasparov)

Of course, Ipsos also surveyed a hypothetical future second Independence Referendum, and found it would deliver 47.5% Yes to 43,5% No, or roughly 52-48 for Yes in real money. That's the kind of results that sends The Scottish Pravda into a celebratory mood weeks ahead of drinks at The Ox And Manger, but it is still not good enough. We have a victorious No in about half the recent polls, so the dominant trend still points towards a tie. Unless the undecided and unsure, who could be as high as 12% according to the weighted average of the late 2025 polls, are successfully brought to the Yes side. But I wouldn't bet my shirt on that, or anything else.

To add some spice to the broth, another poll from YouGov has also surveyed our feelings towards devolution. There is no oven-ready conclusion here as none of the proposed options bagged an outright majority, but I will nevertheless venture that devolution is quite popular. The favourite option is that more powers should be devolved, and it is massively boosted by SNP and Green voters. But there is still a strong minority on the right who wish to repeal devolution, so that may become a real debate if we are collectively dumb enough to send Benito Farage to Number Ten. The YouGov poll is also just about a question of principle, and generic support for devolution does not tell us which powers exactly we would want to be devolved. I guess Full Fiscal Autonomy would top the list, but it is obviously a double-edged sword. Even your supporters can kick you under the bus, and make you the most unpopular person since Richard III, if you have full powers on taxation. Just ask poor Rachel Reeves, standing in the cold and sleet outside her local because the landlord has barred her.

There is another way strong support for more devolution could easily backfire, if a three-way referendum between Independence, DevoMax and the status quo put DevoMax on top. It's a bit like the ancient fable about The Dog And The Wolf, or a Jack London novel. Should we settle for a comfy and loving forever home, or gamble on the appeal of total freedom and answer the call of the wild? I don't have the answer to that but, human nature being what it is, not really different from Dog's, it is quite plausible that staying in our forever home could prevail, even if it is not that loving. Unless Yes activists reframe the debate in a totally different way, like the choice between the risks and challenges of freedom, and staying in an abusive relationship, which is pretty much what the Union has been for three centuries and change. But would it be enough to convince a majority of us to choose freedom? Not really sure, mates, and that's where we sorely miss Alex Salmond's drive and eloquence.

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.

(Albert Camus)

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

(Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens Of Titan, 1959)

YouGov extended their survey beyond voting intentions, with the same kind of questions they use GB-wide in their monthly Political Trackers. First, what do Scots consider to be the main issues facing the nation. There are clear differences with what YouGov find in their GB-wide polling. This poll shows that Scotland has a different sense of priorities and pressing issues to the rest of the UK. Most noticeably, we are less fixated on immigration than the English, despite being in the receiving end of pretty similar far-right-friendly narratives from the mediatariat and parts of the politicariat. This is one of the few positive things the SNP should take credit for. The Scottish Government are not part of the general shift to the right about immigration, and it does fuel a less obsessively negative attitude in Scottish public opinion. And we thusly have the economy, implicitly including the cost of living, and health as our main concerns by a strong margin.

Immigration still comes third, because right-wing voters are just as prone to choose it as their English counterparts, but left-wing Scots are definitely pushing the moodometer in different directions. Interestingly, independence ranks only 11th here, as even SNP and Green voters do not put it at the top of their list, but just 4th and 6th respectively. Most of the issues listed here are reserved, so YouGov found a way to make the follow up question smarter. They cherry-picked three devolved domains and did not ask if we feel the government is handling them well or badly. Instead, they asked if we feel these services are good our bad in our local area. Which is the best way to avoid hasty assessments based only on what BBC Scotland News and the bloke at the pub just said. The resulting picture is indeed quite satisfactory.

Even Conservative voters have to admit that the NHS, schools and the Polis are in quite a good shape. SNP voters have a massively positive view of the three, but they would say that, wouldn't they? It's like asking a Catholic if the Pope shits in the woods, or summat. Only Reform voters are determined to piss on the parade, which makes sense when the very foundation of your beliefs is to whine about how much better everything would be if you ran it. Like in Kent, which Scottish media should mention more often to show us how well everything works under Reform. Or rather does not. But this kindness and benevolence we ´feel towards our local services does not extend to our government. Both of our governments, actually.

The SNP manage to put on a brave face against adversity only because we are more disapproving of the UK Government's record than of the Scottish Government's. Surely because SNP voters massively approve of the Scottish Government's record while Labour voters massively disapprove of the UK Government's record. Interestingly, only Conservative voters have a more positive view of the UK Government than of the Scottish one, while all others go the other way, even Reform voters. This is the odd part, as Reform's perennial pet hate, wokeism, has certainly infected the Scottish Government more than the current UK Government. Not that I really give a fuck about what Reform voters think, given their support for a party that only wants to import a mix of the worst of Trumpistan and the worst of the Russian Reich into the UK, and Make Scotland Small Again. So fuck them, one and all.

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.

(Eugene V. Debs)

Calling it Your Party, when the two leaders both think it’s My Party, is not good. But they had a vote, and they’ve decided that neither of the two people who set up the party should sit on the committee that runs the party.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 5 December 2025)

The special relationship between the Labour Party and the North of England is indeed a complicated game. They're the folks who voted Leave in 2016, Labour in 2017, Conservative in 2019. Labour in 2024, Reform at the 2025 locals, and are contemplating Reform in 2029. True to himself, Keir Starmer is handling them with even more care than he handles the Orange Baboon, always feart that a misunderstood word may hurt their feelings and turn them fascist for good. And, if that was not the real deep nature of his own true self, somebody would remind him of Gordon Brown's BigotGate Gaffe. It surely did not cost Labour the 2010 election, but let's just pretend it did so we can justify getting all cuddly on those voters whom we would love to call fucking morons, because we owe them the £90bn Brexit Black Hole, Dominic Cummings and George Galloway's Last Return. The month-by-month tracker of voting intentions in 2025 fully illustrates How The North Was Lost.

Of course, the Labour vote started to crumble already in 2024 and they were already pretty bad shape by New Year's Day. If you remember what I told you a year ago, the decline started around the time rumours started floating about Rachel Reeves' first Budget, and it hasn't got any better since. The 2025 data are here to remind us that Reform really took off in May after the locals, feeding mostly off the Conservative vote and totally off the mediatariat's fabricated self-fulfilling prophecy that Reform was now undefeatable just because they had gained Councils they are now proving unfit to run. A fire had started raging and the media poured accelerant on it, never forget that. Of course, The Rise Of The Nutters, aka the Green Party of England and Wales, has only made it worse for Labour during the autumn.

The evolution of the seat projections is quite a painful sight, as we see Turquoise Rising month after month, though the significantly lower December projection can be interpreted as a sign that we may have reached peak Reform already. and sailed past it. Could a Reform Reflux in the North be a harbinger of the shape of things to come in the rest of England? I also assigned some seats to Your Party on the basis of the vote for the independent "Gaza candidates" last year, and the assumption that they would still be there and standing for the new party next time. Which is probably a very bold hypothesis, as we can't even be sure that Their Party will still be around this time of next year. Remember when I told you that they had all the ingredients to become a reboot of Change UK? Now that was an easy self-fulfilling prophecy, and it has pretty much worked according to plan. The seeds of self-destruct were sown right from the start on a very fertile soil. I just fully enjoy the irony in Jeremy Corbyn being unseated as the Defender Of The True Faith by a poseur young enough to be his son, who has never managed to get himself elected to anything other than as a leadership-picked party apparatchik on a list. What a fucking future for The Left!

A Your Party spokesperson said that the leadership model they wanted was not top-down, but bottom-up. But in the end, they arrived at a compromise. Tits up.

(Hannah Fry, Have I Got News For You?, 5 December 2025)

Capitalism makes people stupid and then makes them arrogant about their stupidity.

(Stokely Carmichael)

Now, if you think that Scotland and the North weren't bad enough already for Labour, just look at what is happening in Wales. It's a fucking debacle heading towards an extinction event. It wasn't doomed to happen, as Labour regained some strength there in the spring, but it has been a downward spiral ever since. Reform have even gained back some ground in December, snatching votes off the Rump Tories, who never stood a chance anyway. Welsh Labour are now in the worst position possible, with Plaid Cymru and the Greens both nicking votes off them from the left.

Keir Starmer's fate my well be in the balance, despite denials from the corridors of power at SW1. It looks that the plan is Starmer using a hat-trick of disasters at the May 2026 elections, in England, Scotland and Wales, as a lever to reset, or reboot, his Premiership. It's like what you do with a laptop gone mad, turn it off and turn it on again. Or the Labour Plotters might choose to turn Starmer off, and never turn him on again, picking instead just another face that we know from the TV show. That could really happen if next year's polls continue to predict Labour holding less than a handful of Welsh seats, as they have continuously done for the last six months. Or is it "fewer than a handful"? Have doubts about that one too.

But has there really an irreconcilable divorce between the Labour Party and the good people of Wales? Other polls from YouGov show that Keir Starmer's favourability rating in Wales had declined sharply, while Kemi Badenoch's has remained stable, and Ed Davey's and Benito Farage's improved. But First Minister's Eluned Morgan's rating has also remained stable, so she is now more popular than Starmer with the Welsh public. Nevertheless, Plaid Cymru's leader Rhun ap Iorwerth is still more popular than both of them, and almost as popular as Farage. This definitely makes sense when poll after poll shows the Welsh political landscape shifting from the Lab-Con rivalry of ages past to a duel between Plaid and Reform. But none of it explains why the Welsh electorate would grant such massive levels of support to a party that are basically English nationalists, with nothing good in store for the Celtic Nations.

The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

(William Blum)

Oprah Winfrey once said, "The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams". She's clearly never gone for a Brazilian in a Cardiff beauty salon.

(Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Only Connect, 15 December 2025)

We have also had two more Senedd polls, one from Beaufort Research in late November, and one from YouGov in mid-December. Their findings were not similar, with one putting Reform in the lead and the other Plaid Cymru, but both broadly confirmed the pre-existing trends. It is going to be a one-on-one between Reform and Plaid, as each can expect between a quarter and a third of the popular vote, and plausibly closer to a third each. This means that all other parties, most conspicuously Labour and the Conservatives, will be relegated to watching the duel from the sidelines. Who will prevail is still a matter of conjecture with more than four months left before the election, but one result is already carved in limestone. No matter who wins, it will be the end of more than a century of Labour domination West Of Offa's Dyke. For that reason alone, this is an election that will be remembered for years to come.

And here we go again, per the last YouGov poll of the next Senedd election, with a proportional representation system that does not deliver proportional representation, because of the choice to hold the election in sixteen six-member constituencies instead of one national at-large constituency. Who comes first and second and third nationally thusly does not matter, It all comes down to who comes first and second and third in each constituency, because coming further down than third delivers you very bad odds at getting a seat in most cases. That rule of thumb works quite well with this poll, as only six constituencies out of sixteen are predicted to elect MSs from more than three parties, because of the high de facto threshold with just six members per constituency. Four constituencies are predicted to be represented by just two parties, six by three parties, three by four parties, two by five parties, and only one by the full spectrum of six parties that would gain representation in a theoretical single national constituency. The two big players, Plaid Cymru and Reform, thusly bag conspicuously more than by strict proportionality, while the lesser players bag less.

This is indeed quite a textbook case of how the best laid schemes of mice and men go fucking awry, and leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy. Or summat. Proportional representation using the highest averages method mechanically favours the parties that come first or second. Splitting the vote into six-member constituencies amplifies that as it additionally favours the parties that come first or second in the largest number of constituencies. Which in this case are Plaid Cymru, coming first in eight constituencies and second in seven, and Reform UK, coming first in eight constituencies and second in six. That leaves little room for Labour, the LibDems and the Greens, coming second in one constituency each, or the Conservatives, coming first or second in none. Labour obviously expected the system to favour them, as they plausibly expected to come first or second in all constituencies when they designed it, and now it's backfiring badly. The path is cleared for a massive Labour defeat, and First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth, who will just have to cherry-pick two out of three from the Greens, Labour and the LibDems for a majority coalition. Unless he plays it safe and calls all three onboard, which would indeed be a clever move in the face of a massive Reform intake.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

(James Baldwin)

Am I the only one who’s getting a little sick of these Greenies? If they had their way, we’d be living in caves like terrorists,

(Denny Crane, Boston Legal, 2007)

The situation is even worse for Labour in the Midlands, which used to be deeply red in the Blair era, before turning into Con-Lab battlegrounds in the current millennium, with the Conservatives enjoying a solid lead until next year. It looks like it's Reform's turn now, as this is the only part of England where their voting intentions have remained roughly stable in December, while they have gone down in every other part of the Realm, except across the border in Wales. Even Andrea Jenkyns' atrocious singing at the Reform Conference was not enough to turn away voters, so Labour probably has to abandon all hope in the Midlands too. For now at least until events, dear boy, events finally drive Reform into a massive trainwreck, which has in fact already begun, as their incompetence is revealed in the Councils they conquered last May.

Prospects don't look better for the Greens, despite the recent surge of their voting intentions in the region. They gained the North Herefordshire seat last year piggybacking on rural conservationist nimbyism, and these are votes they snatched off the Conservatives, not Labour. So there is little potential for growth here, especially since the Green Party endorsed the fundi Polanski over the local realo Ellie Chowns. Gains in the urban constituencies are highly unlikely as these have become Lab-Ref battlegrounds, and the Greens also lack any pre-existing base there. Birmingham is not Bristol, and neither is any big city in the Midlands, where the Greens have only minimal representation in Councils. So they have to accept being just spectators while Reform harvest Labour seats by the score.

The turquoise tsunami would not spare the Rump Tories either. The most iconic loss would be Robert Jenrick, dislodged in Newark after fifteen years representing it. This only validates and affirms the basic principle that desperately seeking the Reform vote will lead you nowhere, as voters will always choose the original over the copycat. Labour are also predicted to lose some notable Grandees, most significantly Liz Kendall in Leicester and Pat McFadden in Wolverhampton. There is definitely some bittersweet irony and a sense of karma here, with both of Keir Starmer's Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions being eliminated. Revenge Of The Plebs, mates.

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

(Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1944)

Liz Truss says all kind of weird stuff in her YouTube show. She says at one point that everyone in Britain is marrying their cousin. But I think that's just because she was an MP for Norfolk.

(Phil Wang, Have I Got News For You?, 12 December 2025)

You know the saying about the Russian Reich, "never believe anything until the Kremlin has denied it". Surely the same applies to Nosferatu's English minions, Reform UK, who are now strongly denying that they committed election fraud to get Benito Farage elected in Clacton. The vociferouser they deny it, the likelier it is to be true, especially as everybody who was there remembers their campaign as a juggernaut, and we all know juggernauts cost a fucking lot more that £20,660, even on Amazon. And now the Wheelie Bin Führer of Clacton has escaped criminal investigation and prosecution on a technicality. The government must urgently repeal the one-year statutory time limit for election fraud, or make it five years to match the duration of the parliamentary term that was impacted by the fraud. And of course make it retroactive to cover the 2024 campaign, so Benito can still be investigated and prosecuted in due course. If only that could stop Reform's rise, which is also visible in the evolution of voting intentions in the South of England all along the year. Interestingly, the December results hint that, like the North and unlike the Midlands, we may already be past peak Reform in the South. Just wait and see.

Thank Dog too for the Reform-dominated Kent County Council, who are definitely the gift that keeps on giving and our best purveyor or arguments against putting the New Model British Union of Fascists in charge of the Realm. First they have blocked scrutiny of their management of Council's finances, specifically of their DOGE-like claims of imaginary massive savings. Then it was revealed they are in fact lavishly paying assistants whom the Council does not need, and are there only as damage control against complaints about the Council's failures. Which is a very good reason to discourage scrutiny. Hiring political aides under cover of them being just assistants is exactly what led to the National Rally's European Parliament assistants scandal in France. Which led to Marine Le Pen's conviction for embezzlement, including a ban from standing at elections for five years. Wouldn't it be nice if it led to the same outcome here? The revelations about Reform's corruption have sadly not been enough to turn the tide, so they are still predicted to bag a massive harvest of seats in the South.

What we also see here is a continuous trend all along the year, of the Liberal Democrats resisting the Reform surge much more efficiently than Labour or the once dominant Rump Tories, and could even score a few more gains. They are proving to be quite resilient, and significantly haven't be hurt by The Rise Of The Green Nutters the same way Labour has. Seeing Uncle Ed's Band emerge of a chaotic year as the best firewall against the surge of fascism is definitely not something most of us had on our 2025 Bingo Cards. Of course the LibDems remain tainted by their ties to the transcultist lobby and their funding by the puberty blockers industry, but misguided flawed progressives are still better than unhinged fascists, aren't they? Remember this was just my reasoning for supporting Kamala Harris against Donald Trump last year, and nobody can tell me I was wrong about that. It is not like choosing between plague and cholera, as they say in the country of my birth, it's more like between measles and brain cancer, and I'd take measles any day. Because Ed Davey is definitely right about one thing. Prime Minister Nigel Farage would be as much a disaster for the UK as President Donald Trump is for the USA, and the same brand of disaster too. We have the evidence right under our eyes and we can't ignore it.

Reform can afford to be very welcoming now because they just got 9 million quid from that dodgy bloke who gave Boris Johnson a million quid, and Boris Johnson gave him an £80 million defence contract, allegedly.

(Richard Coles, Have I Got News For You?, 5 December 2025)

I think people that eat Christmas cake should be arrested, to be honest. I think it’s disgusting, vile. It’s like a big thing that everyone’s in on, just winding me up. They pretend to like it. Then they go around the corner and just spit it out.

(Matt Morsia)

Did you know that Zack Polanski stood twice as a Liberal Democrat in the London Borough of Camden, then left the LibDems when they refused to let him stand for selection at the Richmond Park by-election? LibDem rules were that only local residents could stand, which was very unfair to a carpetbagger, so Zack dutifully whined about this homophobic anti-Semitic injustice, no shit, and packed to the Greens. The Greens do not have a residency rule, so they allowed Zack to stand thrice in Westminster constituencies and Council wards, where he has never lived either as he is a Hackney resident. Needless to say he lost all these races, and only got elected as the third party-picked list candidate for the London Assembly in 2021. But could Zack, rebranded as the English Mamdani, the superhero of the tofu-munching wokerati, get his best life now, as leader of the party that is slowly nicking votes off the once-dominant Labour in Keir Starmer's own back garden?

The Greens could even bag their first seat in the Imperial Capital, that would be Stratford and Bow, which includes the place where Jimi Hendrix wrote Purple Haze. Just saying. Under strong winds, the Greenies could even snatch Leyton and Wanstead and Poplar and Limehouse too, creating a big green blob of three adjacent constituencies in the formerly very red East End. The real question now is whether or not Che Polanski would risk leaving his comfy party-apparatchik list seat at the London Assembly, and gamble his street cred on a real race in a real constituency where he would have to talk to real people about real issues. If he did that, methinks he should avoid either of the seats in Tower Hamlets, where performative sanctimonious rants about "queerphobia" may not be the smartest choice of a USP. But Zack could still make a tough decision, if he is serious about the destruction of Labour being his life's mission. Grow baws and go challenge Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras. Now that would be a fucking fight for sore eyes.

Then there is no better conclusion to this last article of the year than Ipsos' Nice and Naughty Lists for 2025. This is from a poll, so we decided who went on which list. Honestly, most of it was pretty predictable, if you scroll back through all of the media coverage of the year, and also the usual non-seasonal polls. And Keir squeezed here between Elon Muck and Paedo Andy is just the sight we need for a really Merry Christmas.

It was a very bad year indeed for Keir Starmer, so being considered the third naughtiest kid on the block will probably not ruffle more of his feathers. Though rating him worse that Elon Muck and Benito Farage is kind of us adding insult to injury. Keir can't even find some solace in the thought that 2026 will be a better year, as it has all the explosive ingredients laid out in advance to be even worse shit. Unless events, dear boy, events turn out to be even more catastrophic than anticipated, election-wise, and the Very Labour Coup finally happens, clearing the way for someone else to appear on Ipsos' Naughty List of 2026. Just can't wait. Of course I can't let you go enjoy the sprouts without that quintessentially English Christmas anthem by Slade. The official video, craftily edited from two separate appearances on Top Of The Pops, so that even the most fleetingly furtive glimpse of Jimmy Savile was forever yezhoved. Cheeky bastards.

The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march, so nothing can be lost to it.

(Tom Stoppard)

Слава Україні! Героям слава!

Jeremy's Den

25/12/2025

So Here It Is, Merry Saturnalia Everybody

No comments:

Post a Comment

So Here It Is, Merry Saturnalia Everybody