Jeremy's Den: It's Been A Long Time Coming

It's vital that we continue to focus on supporting Ukraine. We cannot allow the war in the Gulf to turn into a windfall for Putin.

(Keir Starmer, 16 March 2026)

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

(Viktor Orban, Die Weltwoche, 13 July 2024)

Back in the Elizabethan Age, that's BCD (Before Compact Disc), common wisdom was that you could only put 40 minutes of music on an LP, 20 minutes per side. Unless you were a Bob Dylan fan and knew he had already squeezed 50 minutes of material on both Freewheelin' and Another Side, 51 minutes on Highway 61 Revisited and Blood On The Tracks, and an unprecedented 56 minutes on Desire. But most bands complied and that's why you have such a fucking shitload of 20-minute tracks from the prog-rock dinosaurs of the 1970s. Then came the CD and the limit was raised to 74 minutes first, and then 80 minutes. And if you think nobody ever tried and toyed with the new standard, you are so fucking wrong, and the track just above is evidence. The Whirlwind by Transatlantic. The studio version is 77 minutes and 46 seconds long, which I suspect they did just to take the piss and prove that you could indeed fill a whole CD with just one song, or maybe it was a dare from some bloke at the pub. So today's soundtrack is a selection from the longest tracks I could find both in my collection and on YouTube, without drowning you in just Brian Eno's ambient landscapes or the Grateful Dead's LSD-infused improvisations, and it's sixteen hours and twenty minutes long. Grab a bottle, a fucking big one, and enjoy.

You're still strongly advised to click on the images for larger and better versions.

I will tell you a bit about Iran, or rather how we here feel about Iran, later, but let's have a look first at what's happening closer to home. Hungary, where the general election is now just 13 days away. This one is dear to my heart for so many reasons. Mostly because it would be so fucking great to see a European nation give Trumputin the finger and turn away from authoritarianism. Orban and his handlers are in total panic mode, so the Russian Reich proposed to help him with a fake assassination attempt. Which can only make you wonder if they didn't do just that for the Orange Baboon in July 2024, as it did look fucking fake, didn't it? The trends of he polls easily explain why Orban and his Russian organ-grinders have totally lost the plot. The pro-Orban pollsters can no longer hide it, no matter how hard they try. The Tisza Party are on their way to a landslide.

Interestingly, the pro-Orban pollsters are still publishing fabricated results, but they are no longer trying too hard to hide that their numbers are fake. Poll after poll looks like a carbon copy of the previous one, with all of them crediting the Fidesz-KDNP with the exact same 6% lead. On the other side, the polls conducted by the independent and pro-opposition pollsters differ quite visibly, though all predict Tisza leading by double digits. The combination of the two means that the last batch of six polls includes four predicting a Tisza win, and only two showing Fidesz-KDNP leading. The weighted average now predicts Tisza winning by 8%, more than enough for a very convincing victory.

Peter Magyar, the leader of Tisza and probable next Prime Minister of Hungary, has handled all the controversial issues of the campaign quite skilfully. For example, he has totally factored in the rampant Ukrophobia in rural Hungary and the way Viktor Orban weaponised it, and has avoided making any commitment to future aid to Ukraine. But he has also strongly hit at Orban's links with Russia, which is also not liked in Hungary, and promised to no longer block votes at the Council of Ministers of the European Union and European Summits, including but not explicitly mentioning those about aid to Ukraine. Which is just what the other European leaders need to hear, as it would remove a major thorn in their arse, and leave just Slovakia's Russian agent Robert Fico to be dealt with. Of course, Tisza's victory would be just a soft-right government replacing a far-right government, similar to what happened in Poland in 2023. But that is the best we can expect in that part of Eastern Europe where left-wing parties are no longer a meaningful force, the return of an open civilised soft right conducting unashamedly pro-EU politics.

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

(Viktor Orban, Chronicles, 20 June 2021)

Statements by the AfD and its representatives often reflect an understanding of the nation that is racist, is based on ancestry and contradicts the understanding of the nation enshrined in Germany’s constitution, the Basic Law.

(Bundesamt für Verfassungschtz, 2024 Report on the protection of the Constitution)

Then, not too far down the timeline, we have a general election in Germany. Three years down, actually. That's another one Trumputin want and need to rig to destroy Europe. Of course, by 2029 Trump will be gone, and a Democrat will be sitting in the Oval, hopefully. Putin will be gone too, plausibly, for lack of spare parts. That would leave just Elon Muck to buy the election for the neo-Nazis, and J.D. Vance to do a paid tour of motivational after-dinner speeches. Current polls are nevertheless worrying, as they show that Germany, unlike Hungary, is not moving away from fascist allies of the Russian Reich, but ready to embrace them. Well, a quarter of them are, which is really frightening as their Alternative für Deutschland is closer to neo-Nazis, whom they do cuddle, than to your usual run-of-the-mill fash. More Tommy Robinson than Nigel Farage. Right now, the polls predict a tie between the AfD and the ruling CDU-CSU, with all left-wing parties at a distance.

One of the oddities of the new electoral law, that was first enforced for the 2025 election, is that not all constituency MPs are sworn in to sit in the Bundestag, if their seats would have been overhang seats, pushing their party above the strictly proportional allocation of seats. 23 constituencies were therefore not awarded and left without direct representation, which is a bit weird in a democracy, but the Constitutional Court validated it to preserve the sacrosanct proportionality in a Bundestag with a fixed number of seats, instead of the former practice of adding overhang and levelling seats. Seat projections are thusly just a matter of basic maths and one ultra-simple Excel formula to allocate seats proportionally to all parties who bagged more than 5% of the national list vote, using the highest averages method per the Sainte-Laguë method. The only exception is the SSW, whose representation is based on the votes in Schleswig-Holstein only. These projected results would be quite a headache for the incumbent Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz. 316 seats are needed for a majority and the incumbent Große Koalition of CDU-CSU and SPD would fall 24 seats short. Merz then would have the choice between an expanded coalition including the Grünen, who are not the batshit-crazy sort we have in the UK, or an alliance with the AfD, which would be a major earthquake. My educated guess is that Merz would give it about 30 seconds of thought and pick the Black-Red-Green coalition.

There is nevertheless a constant pattern in German polling over the last year and how it translates into seats. It's again like there is a waterproof dam between the two sides, and the communicating vessels work in isolation. One on each side of the fence, from CDU to AfD, from SPD to Die Linke. Again the same pre-narrated Clash Of The Titans between far-right and far-left, which is in fact non-existent in Germany as the far-left is too weak. There, it's actually between the right and far-right, more the Polish or Hungarian pattern than the French or British. The German divide is also deeply geographical, with roots in history. At the 2025 election, the CDU-CSU dominated in the Länder of the former Bundesrepublik Deutschland, and the AfD in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik. The split continues in voting intentions polls, and also at elections for the Landtage, the parliaments of the federal states. But it's less and less visible as the neo-Nazi infection is spreading into the West, boosted by interference from Russian bots and the likes of Elon Musk and J.D. Vance. In Germany, the West has not Westernised the East, the East has Easternised the West.

The “patriotic solidarity” camp within the AfD and its youth organisation, the JA, has a racist and nationalist orientation and overlaps in many areas with right-wing extremism.

(Bundesamt für Verfassungschtz, 2024 Report on the protection of the Constitution)

In March 2022, the Cologne Administrative Court confirmed the categorisation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a suspected right-wing extremist threat based on sufficient evidence of anti-constitutional activity.

(Bundesamt für Verfassungschtz, 2024 Report on the protection of the Constitution)

Friedrich Merz has another problem closer in time than the next Bundestag election. Elections for the Landtage, Landtag in the singular, the State Parliaments of the Länder, Land in the singular, the States of the Federal Republic. All sixteen Landtage serve five-year terms, but they don't all vote at the same time. Elections are spread across the whole election cycle, with one to five States voting each year. Here is what the 2021-2025 election cycle delivered. Votes for each year are those cast in the Länder who actually voted, so are not at all representative of any national voting patterns. Which States do vote in a given year distorts the results as all have distinct political personalities, often by very wide margins. The numbers of seats are the national total at the end of each year, showing the evolutions each yearly batch of elections produces, broadly a swing to the right all along this cycle. In case you wonder who is who, Wokopedia has a comprehensive and inclusive repertory of all currently active German parties.

2026 is a year of five elections, in Baden-Wurttemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz, Sachsen-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. That's the real German names. Baden-Wurttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate have already voted in March. Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will vote in September. And that's the commonly accepted English names, which often duplicate the real ones as any translation would be at risk of sounding ridiculous. All voted last in 2021 with one exception. Berlin, who voted twice in 2021 and 2022 after a deadlock led to a dissolution. German law provides that a new Landtag elected after a dissolution serves only for the remainder of the term, to let the cycle be unbroken, just like in Scotland and Wales, so Berlin is back to the polling places this year. The already known results in two states and voting intentions in the other four confirm that it will be another shit year for the establishment parties, with the neo-Nazi AfD again scoring significant gains.

The data for Baden-Wurttemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz are the actual election results, with the current state of voting intentions polling included for the other three Länder. The yearly total is just the sum of all six States, not any sort of extrapolation. Germany do not have the BBC, who fabricate imaginary "projected results" of a general election from the results of local elections, and they're perfectly happy that way. Both March elections have seen the AfD progress significantly, which would have been an anomaly in Western Länder just five years ago, and no longer is. Their prospects look even better in the other three Länder, so they could double their vote, compared to the 2021 elections. This is one more sign of the very worrying evolution of Germany, as the AfD is more dangerous than Reform UK or the French National Rally, and both Trump and Putin will do all they can to get them elected. The seat projections only confirm it.

The AfD are predicted to double their number of seats in the five Länder that vote this year, which would propel them higher again in the national headcount of Landtag seats. The AfD were the eighth party in 2014, in terms of Landtag seats, outperformed by even the now vanished Pirate Party. Then they overtook the FDP in 2016, the CSU and Die Linke in 2017, the Greens in 2019. Only two parties still have more Landtag seats than them, the SPD and the CDU. But for how long? The only hope is that their extremism will be their doom, and that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will catch up with them with a solid watertight case of revival of Nazism, the ultimate sacrilege in Germany. In the meanwhile. Elon Muck's bottomless wallet and Russian blood money. which are often the same, will propel them to unprecedented new heights at every election.

By passing on and furthering Russian narratives from within the AfD, it contributes to the expansion of right-wing extremism in Germany, and Putin's message is then sung in these circles as well.

(Thomas Haldenwang, 22 May 2023)

I want to see an end to this war as quickly as possible because the longer it goes on the more dangerous the situation becomes and the worse it is for the cost of living back here at home.

(Keir Starmer, 16 March 2026)

A month into Donald Trump's illegal war against Iran, it is increasingly clear that the Orange Baboon has not met either of his two war goals. To distract the American public from the Epstein Files, and they aren't. To stay one step ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu, and he hasn't. Pete Hegseth has added a third, preserving the US stockpile of ammunition, to justify ex post facto the termination of military aid to Ukraine, which had been done long before the strikes on Iran even started. Apart from this, the obvious, nothing in that war appears clear, and I am not even sure we know what has really happened, as the US narrative has sown total confusion with its twists and turns and its contradictions. Did the USA enter negotiations with Iran last week, or had the Orange Baboon mixed up his timeline with events of two weeks before? You tell me. In the meanwhile, we have been deluged by polls about every aspect of the war. One of them, from More In Common, shows that we do not want to get involved, but are still ambiguous about the use of our military bases by the USA. Just like our government, I guess.

YouGov pushed their investigations one step further. It's not just about allowing Trump to use Fairford and Diego Garcia to launch carpet-bombing strikes on Iran, there is the deeper question of whether or not we should join the war, just like Tony Blair did in 2003 against basic common sense and decency. Of course the reply is a resounding no, except from Reform voters. Then we have to find the root causes, besides fuzzy moral considerations, and YouGov also probed us about that. We gave the most obvious answer, that Trump's reasons for starting his own "special military operation" are not clear. Again, except for Reform voters, so we should challenge them to explain these reasons to the rest of us. Which could be entertaining as the Orange Baboon himself does not seem to remember why he got his country embroiled in that fucking mess in the first place, and makes up a different fabricated justification at every presser in the atrociously redecorated Oval Office.

Quite revealingly, pollsters now focus on the practical aspects and the consequences of the war, and have given up on probing us about legality, legitimacy and morality. All mentions of international law have disappeared from recent polls, which is a sure sign of maturity and pragmatism. International law is dead. Putin, Netanyahu and Trump have killed it, and all its sanctimonious defenders have done absolutely fuck all to save it. Subdued bark and no fucking bite, one and all. So suck it up, mates, man up and live with it. When the high and mighty are lawless, the plebs have a duty to become lawless too, it's our best protection. Just ask Robin Hood. Don't expect me to pull a Kevin at the sight of international law violated and eviscerated, we're way past that and I leave it to the professional pearl-clutching preachers at The Guardian. Now that we have stipulated that, let's examine an outrageously provocative question that was actually asked by one of our beloved pollsters, Survation. Not just once, but twice, in case we had changed our mind.

So half of us think that Iran was right to retaliate, though a third think it should have been restricted to US and Israeli military targets exclusively. Before you ask, nobody polled if Israel was right to strike any random targets to exterminate the Iranian leadership, as if we are now taking it for granted that Netanyahu can do anything he wants and never face the consequences. It is really an asymmetric war when one side can demolish residential buildings in the middle of a crowded city without anyone raising an eyebrow, while the other side are promised fire and brimstone for the slightest misstep. Not defending Iran here, just pointing at the fucking hypocrisy of the double standards. Oddly, a quarter of us think the mullahs should just have laid low, and then what? Waited for a belly rub? By the way, did you know that 83% of Iran's retaliatory strikes targeted the Arab states around the Gulf, and only 17% Israel? Gathered that from French TV news, a better source than the BBC.

There are others who would have rushed the UK headlong into this war. Without the full picture of what they were sending our forces into. And without a plan to get us out. That is not leading, it’s following.

(Keir Starmer, 16 March 2026)

The American war with Iran is one of the few occasions when the Prime Minister’s judgment has been right all along.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 March 2026)

One of the paradoxes of the Iran Mess is that it hasn't been all bad news for Keir Starmer, quite the opposite in fact. It was not a given, actually, as Starmer's early pas de deux about allowing the USA to use Fairford and Diego Garcia for strikes on Iran showed. That was the trademark Starmer we love to hate, equivocating and U-turning in a way that left everybody confused, and then alienated everybody when we finally worked out what had happened. I wouldn't be as positively praising as John Crace, as Starmer did get it wrong and then got it right after resisting the Orange Baboon's vindictive blackmail to do more than allowing US planes a pitstop in Gloucestershire. YouGov's speed polls caught that, and how it changed our perception of how Starmer was handling the Iran Mess and Trump's bellicose tantrums. Badly, we said at first, and it barely got better in the second week of the war. Then the ever changing events, dear boy, events turned that into approval during the third week.

The tide turned because Starmer was the only one to eventually sense the mood of the Realm. The Reform-lite Rump Tories and the New Model British Union of Fascists instantly wanted us to go to war, and then denied they had ever wanted us to go to war, which made them look like fucking mendacious wankers and left Tony Blair as the only Trumpian hawk, which was fucking hilarious. At the opposite end of the compass, the already morally bankrupt woke far-left, who had never expressed the weeest smitch of compassion for the tens of thousands freedom fighters massacred by the Pasdaran, again shamed themselves by siding with the mullahrchy. Because they are stuck in their cretinous revisionist Weltanschauung according to which the White White West is guilty for all of eternity for all of humanity's sins. Fortunately for him and his immediate future, Starmer is the one who came closer to the public's mood, as identified in two successive polls by Survation.

Of course we are not exactly neutral, as in the dominant option chosen by the polls' respondents, but where we are now is certainly the closest Starmer can come to neutrality without risking actual retaliation from the demented psychopath at the White House. This is certainly not the perfect situation, but who are we to demand perfection from our leaders? Aye, the bloke who says you can increase breast size with hypnotherapy does, fuck him. But all this does not mean that Starmer is out of the woods yet. He still has to make a final decision on support to households facing rising energy costs, and he can't possibly pass that hot potato to Rachel Reeves. Two sur mesure speed-polls by YouGov found that 83% of us support helping all households pay the energy bills without discrimination, while 73% want it means-tested to focus only on the lowest incomes. This may look good, but only if you test the two options separately. It becomes trickier when you pit them against each other.

Interestingly, this other approach switches the results, and means-tested support for the least well-off is favoured, which does make more sense. After all, we still live under a consensus where redistribution through taxation is the norm, and means-testing of benefits is the rule. So why should we handle this specific issue differently? There is an obvious immediate stop-gap solution, extending the validity of the Warm Home Discount Scheme beyond the end of this month, and increasing its amount to £600 per annum, but that surely would make some people unhappy on both the left and right and in the corridors of SW1. The Treasury would surely object on the grounds of lack of money to fund it, as we already have a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies, and they would advise against raising its rate again. Reeves does not have many options, as any tax hike for the higher incomes and corporations would spark massive pre-scripted outrage. So all she has left is the last resort option she has always resisted, but Polanski and Corbyn would approve, a wealth tax. The Autumn Statement could be more fun to watch than usual.

While taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war.

(Keir Starmer, 16 March 2026)

Putin’s hidden hand is behind some of the Iranian tactics.

(John Healey, 12 March 2026)

Fortunately, the Iran Mess has not made us totally forget Ukraine. Thank Dog for YouGov bringing it back to our attention, with a speed poll about what has become the trickiest issue of our commitment to help Ukraine, the boarding and seizure of Russian tankers sailing under false flags. This has become tricky because the Orange Baboon has tied this unrelated issue to his fucking Iran Mess, when he relaxed sanctions on the sale or Russian oil to ease the tensions on the international oil market. Which were orchestrated by the oil companies, by the way. The USA have 60 days of oil reserves and the European Union has 90 days, so there was no rationale for massive price hikes as soon as the first missile hit Iran, except greed and speculation. And Trump owing Putin one, so the Russian Reich will now be able to sell its oil at hugely inflated market prices to fund the genocide of Ukraine. The spanner in the cogs is that no other nation has eased the sanctions on Russian oil, so the Nosferatu's Shadow Fleet tankers remain fair game for us. And YouGov has found that we conclusively support boarding and seizing them to deny Russia the blood money. If we don't, Ukraine will take care of them anyway.

There are odd parts in this poll. Reform voters are the most supportive of going after Nosferatu's tankers. I guess they have forgotten where the party's dosh cones from. Oops. Green voters are the least supportive, probably because they have some moral reservations based on international law, or some similar bullshit. But we've been down that road before, so I won't repeat myself. Sadly. we don't have enough big nasty warships available, so the boarding-and-seizing would be like this against that, not really a fair and balanced fight. But just one attempt would be enough to piss off the Orange Baboon, which is a totally legitimate goal in itself. I guess the Great British Public would approve, and even enjoy, Starmer giving Trump the finger, as we do not have a very positive perception of the USA's influence on world affairs. YouGov polled us twice, three months ago and last week, then polled their US panel yesterday on the exact same question, and the results really speak for themselves.

In January, all we had against the USA was the abject betrayal of Ukraine, their unquestioning support for the Israeli genocide of Gaza and prominent members of the Trump administration openly campaigning for Christo-fascists and neo-Nazis all across Europe. Now we also have Trump's attempts to drag us into a disastrous war he is losing, and his deranged insults to everything European, specifically targeting the UK. So it is really no surprise that we have a very negative image of their influence, and that it has further degraded in the last three months. Even supporters of the Trumputinist Reform UK now reluctantly admit the USA have a negative influence on the world, and that surely makes the case for some symbolic retaliation that would really piss off the Orange Baboon. When even a plurality of Americans admit that their own country is a bad influence on the rest of the world, it's time to show sone teeth. One of weapons of mass destruction we had against the Orange Baboon was Charmilla's incoming state visit to Trumpistan. Should they stay or should they go? YouGov asked twice, and More In Common once, and of course they found contradictory results.

We did look fucking confused about this, but it was still 2-1 for not going, so it's really a fucking shame that neither The Palace nor Number Ten listened to the vox populi, and that the visit is going ahead. Again, I totally agree with Mister Ed here. You don't appease and cuddle a fucking psychopath who uses his random moments of lucidity to insult you, after having betrayed all of his country's commitments. It would indeed have been an excellent idea to cancel the state visit, as it would have been a fucking blow to the Orange Baboon's ego, and what's not to love with that? I am also concerned by Charles' wellbeing now, facing the atrocious ordeal of having to sit for three hours in the White House dining room, refurbished with hideous fake gold plating to suit Trump's parvenu tastes, while having to endure an endless rant about all we owe the United States since the Hundred Years War, and haven't paid for. We should have sent him Andrew instead. These two have lots in common, haven't they? And the New York District Attorney keeping Andrew at Rikers for further investigation, Law & Order style, would have been the icing on the cake for us, wouldn't it?

A state visit from our King would be seen as yet another huge diplomatic coup for President Trump, so it should not be given to someone who repeatedly insults and damages our country.

(Ed Davey, 9 March 2026)

Darkness is good. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.

(Steve Bannon)

When thinking about the "special" relationship between us and Trumpistan, always remember that the only special parts of it are that it was especially designed to exclusively protect US interests, and that we had to be especially daft to ever believe it was anything but that. Rewind a century and change back. When the USA belatedly joined the war in 1917, it wasn't out the goodness of their heart to prevent Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare from starving us, it was because US banks had lent billions to us to fund the war effort, and they would lose all that dosh if we were defeated. Likewise, the USA would never have joined the war in 1941, despite Roosevelt's conversion to interventionism, if the Japanese had not kicked their arse at Pearl Harbor. More In Common felt there was summat to poll here, so they did, twice, with quite amazing results.

Barely a third of us think there is still summat special about the relationship, while more than half opine it is gone or never existed in the first place. Interestingly, the 45-64 age bracket, those who were in their twenties or thirties at the time of the Iraq War, are the most likely to think that way. Probably because they still feel the humiliation of Tony Blair poodling for George Bush, and being treated as such by an "ally" who only ever cared for us as cannon fodder and never even thanked us. Opinium also probed our feelings about the fucking relationship, with an array of options focusing on a different approach, the positive or negative impact on our status in the world. Only a third of us opine it has been positive, and obviously Reform voters are the most likely to want to die on that hill. Oddly, the TikTok Generation find more positivity in that relationship than any of their Elders And Wisers. I guess that's because they have no fucking clue that their cherished TikTok is not American, but Chinese.

It also takes a very special kind of brainwashed moron to think that the abusive relationship has ever given the UK much greater influence internationally, as we always have been docilely subservient to the whims of every US President. Roosevelt giving away half of Europe to Stalin. Eisenhower throwing us under the bus at Suez. Bush getting us embroiled in the twin absolute disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. We should indeed praise Starmer for at last resisting to pressure and telling Trump to fuck off. We should also widen the scope of the investigation to everything we have imported from the USA in the last quarter of a century. That would be wokeism, Christo-fascism and Mariah Carey. Methinks that's all the evidence we need to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the USA have been a constantly bad influence on us. Just like the golden retriever who taught your dog that eating fox shit is good. All we need now is Donald Trump reprising Viola Davis' part in a reboot called How To Get Away With Murdering The Special Relationship?, so we can fully enjoy the karmic irony of the awful relationship being totally destroyed by the worst POTUS in recoded history. It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

(Douglas Adams)

They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. They hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.

(Donald Trump, 16 March 2026)

Of course, everybody expected that. Surely Dan Caine and Benjamin Netanyahu had specifically briefed the Orange Baboon about Iranian retaliation, but he slept through it, or heard it and forgot. Anyway, the world has a fucking big problem and it's not Khamenei Junior. Now you have to wonder if Trump is suddenly realising that starting an illegal war against Iran was the same kind of mistake as Vladimir Putin starting an illegal war against Ukraine. Hopes of a quick victory and capitulation of Iran have been quashed in a matter of days, and the likely outcome is another of those "forever wars" Trump was specifically elected to never wage again. The American public are not fooled by the White House's narrative. probably because it keeps changing and contradicting the points that were made the day before. The Orange Baboon's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is struggling with that as, unlike Winston Smith. she cannot edit or erase yesterday's headlines to make them compliant with today's fake news. Now, on top of YouGov, we also have a Focaldata poll showing that the American public disapprove of Trump's handling of the Iran mess by a considerable margin.

Focaldata asked about Iran in a poll that also surveyed voting intentions for the incoming midterms, and found Democrats up and Republicans down. This is not all about Iran, obviously, but a lot of the discontent is about the fallout from the war. The worst part is the sudden increase in the price of gas, which is American for petrol, in line with the price of crude on the international markets going up by two thirds in a month. Trump's main problem is not that he doesn't have support from registered Independents, he never had it, but that doubts are appearing among voters who just "lean Republican", those who are not fanatical Trumpian zealots. These, whose vote my be crucial at the midterms, don't buy one of Trump's core arguments, that the assault on Iran was justified on grounds of national security. Only a quarter of the general population, and third of right-wing moderates, believe the total fabrication that the illegal war will make the USA safer.

It does not get really better if you extend the scope of the question to the whole world. Slightly more Americans believe that Trump's war will make the world as a whole safer, but the largest group is still those who believe it will make it more dangerous. Trump's own decisions are contributing to this, like his totally cretinous decision to 'temporarily" lift sanctions on the export of Russian oil, which will not even benefit American consumers in the short term, but will allow Putin to pour more money into his military budget. Thank Dog half of it will be nicked by embezzlement and corruption, but that still leaves too many billions available to continue the genocide of Ukraine. We should also not underestimate the threat from Iran's terrorist cells embedded in Western countries, which they have just threatened to reactivate against US and Israeli military personnel. If they do, there is absolutely jack shit Trump, Netanyahu and Hegseth can do about it.

The Orange Baboon's position was again weakened when his Director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center Joe Kent resigned and spilled the beans about the lies peddled to justify the attack on Iran. Of course, we all knew already that the "immediate threat" narrative was bogus, but it is still good to hear it from someone who was at the heart of the plot. Kent also poked where it hurts, stressing that Trump's main problem is that he went to war under pressure, because Israel was ready to strike with or without him, without clear war goals, a full plan of operations and, more crucially, an exit strategy. You have plenty of evidence for this in Trump's constantly changing narrative and the obvious scent of improvisation, including the abysmally cretinous strikes on Kharg Island, which is the one asset you need to preserve if you intend to appropriate Iran's oil. Of course, Kent is part of the conspiracist far-right who indulge in casual anti-Semitism, but that does not mean he is wrong. Especially when the bare facts hint that Netanyahu is calling the shots, literally, and Trump just following. The only upside is that it can only increase doubts about the war among the American public, and accelerate the rise of opposition to it.

If you call your allies cowards in February, don’t expect help in March, you stupid cunt.

(Confucius, or maybe not)

Really, I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory. They should help us. Maybe we shouldn't be there at all, because we don't need it. We have a lot of oil.

(Donald Trump, 16 March 2026)

The oddest subplot of the Iran War, was definitely Trump's tango about the Strait of Hormuz. To sum it up, the Orange Baboon whined about Iran closing the Strait to traffic just to piss him off. when it was absolutely not his fault that it was closed. Aye, richt. So he wanted us to send our warships to force it open. Two points, now. First, sending a ship into the Strait would have been inviting an Iranian strike, so Trump was basically telling us that he wouldn't send his ships in harm's way but we must send ours because he said so. Second, what is really needed is sending minehunters into the Strait to clear it, some months from now when nobody is shooting any more. Trump's problem then is that the USA had four minehunters stationed in Bahrain and sent then all to the scrapyard last month. Belgium now has more operational minehunters than the USA. The awkward part is that YouGov did ask its British panel if they would support or oppose sending our warships into Hormuz "to protect shipping from Iranian attacks", which is as biased as can be to elicit positive responses. Amazingly, our response switched in just four days, probably because of the nerve-racking media coverage. But our government knew best and stated clearly they would never send any ship in that trap, and so did everybody all over the world.

And all Trump had left was throwing a hissy fit while insulting his allies. Said allies for once reacted as a united front without the need for lengthy consultations, and told the Orange Baboon to go fuck himself, while starting to make plans for clearing the Strait. Just later, much later. The oddity here is that the European nations are not those who need the Strait the most, China is. The Orange Baboon actually asked China for help, and they turned a blind ear, so he went ballistic on the Europeans. That totally makes sense in the parallel world he lives in. Trump can't admit it, but all he has achieved is offering the NATO nations a golden opportunity on a silver platter to reclaim their independence from Big Brother, even Keir Starmer sees it. Other than that, his mantrums and contradictory statements made the situation more confusing than it already was. And we have YouGov's polling, fielded weekly before Trump's handbrake U-turn, to prove that the American people were fucking confused.

A large third were nevertheless agreeing with their Supreme Guide that other countries, of a yet unspecified type, must help the USA clear the Strait of Hormuz for the benefit of Xi Jinping. Who, by the way, has more operational minehunters than the whole of NATO combined. Why not let him clean up the mess all by himself, then? That may be the only option left for the Orange Baboon, now that he has also lost Japan after cracking a Pearl Harbor joke in front of their Prime Minister. This was actually a weird phase of the US aggression of Iran, as the Orange Baboon bragged that he had predicted Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz in case of war, just as he had predicted that Osama Bin Laden would knock down the World Trade Center. In The Art Of The Deal, the crap book he didn't even write. In 1987, when Al-Qaeda did not even exist. Of course, both claims are fucking bogus. The abject Hormuz fiasco obviously fueled a feeling of gross impreparation and improvisation among the American public.

Only one out of six Americans believed that the Pentagon did have a real plan to counter the closure of the Strait. The same proportion thought it was more of "it can happen, and we'll burn that bridge when we come to it" variety. Then almost a third thought they were totally unprepared, which is probably true when you consider the totally shambolic nature of Trump's handling of that situation. It also reinforced the underlying feeling that Trump had been dancing to Netanyahu's tune all along, focusing on Iran's ballistic missile capability and the elimination of the Islamo-Nazi leadership, which are Israel's priorities. If the free flow of shipping through the Strait had been part of the plan, Trump would have sent a real Armada including a massive amphibious capability, stationed it just outside the Strait and enforced a no-fly zone over the whole area, as a prelude to a landing of Normandy magnitude in and around Bandar Abbas. It would probably have cost hundreds of American fatalities, which is why it was not considered in an election year, but it would have solved the problem once and for all. The biggest irony is that the Orange Baboon was sending an amphibious task group the weekend before he totally changed strategy, with a reduced force of 2,500 to 4,000 ground troops, and objectives clouded in mystery, while giving Iran like two weeks advance warning. Then everything changed. But did it really?

NATO has always been a one-way street. We protect them, but they do nothing for us. We do not need NATO’s assistance. We never did. Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea.

(Donald Trump, 17 March 2026)

We don't need any help actually. I think NATO’s making a very foolish mistake. We don’t need them but they should’ve been there.

(Donald Trump, 17 March 2026)

Donald Trump is facing a situation that would be seriously problematic for any leader of a civilised democratic country, but is not for an authoritarian psychopath who listens only to his sycophants during his scarce moments of lucidity. The people are not following him, and even his most faithful zealots are starting to have doubts about the justification and wisdom of the Iran War. Especially when newly released information hints that the official motives for the war were totally bogus. The Foreign Minister of Oman, who was involved in the negotiations with Iran along the totally incompetent Kushner and Witkoff, has testified that Iran was ready to pause their nuclear programme for five years. Keir Starmer's National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, who was also at the table, has confirmed that a deal was within reach. Such information can only strengthen opposition to the war in the USA, and it does. YouGov have surveyed the levels of support and opposition among the American public since two weeks before the first strikes, and military action against Iran never had popular support.

There was some sort of "Hail To The Chief" surge in support after the start of the attack, but it wasn't really big and has died down now, while opposition has continued to progress. Interestingly, people "in the know", especially the Omani Minister, openly promote the now familiar narrative that Trump is the monkey and Netanyahu the organ grinder. This is probably the worst part of the story for the Orange Baboon as it vindicates the conspiracy theorists in the openly anti-Semitic wing of the MAGA mob, who are a-plenty. He needs these people, has even appointed some to first-tier positions in his administration, and now his perceived weakness towards Israel is alienating them. There is definitely some karmic justice in there. It wouldn't be too serious a setback for Trump if he still had the confidence and support of the saner Republicans, but YouGov has evidence that both are eroding in that part of the electorate too.

YouGov asked their American panel if they think the conflict with Iran is going well or badly, and the dominant opinion is that it is going badly. It hasn't changed much since the first strikes, and just three out of five registered Republicans are optimistic about it, far below the level of support Trump needs to feel on safe ground with his own troops. Pessimism is surely justified as Iran has shown more resilience, despite the carpet bombing and the assassinations, than the USA expected. We could even be close to Trump's nightmare scenario, that Iran shows enough resolve to keep on fighting until the USA's stockpile of ammunition is exhausted, including what they have hijacked from Ukraine. That's what's bound to happen when you use salvos of $3m-a-piece Patriot missiles to shoot down $20,000 drones. The American public have had enough of Trump's and Hegseth's chest-thumping, especially after the Pentagon begged for an additional $200bn to fund an unpopular war with no clear goals and no end in sight, while Trump simultaneously eased sanctions to let Iranian oil into the USA. The whole strategy, or rather the total lack thereof, is totally incomprehensible, so a sizeable majority of US public opinion now support ending the war quickly.

Sun Tzu once wrote that supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. Trump is doing the exact opposite with Iran right now, endlessly pounding them without breaking their resistance, so he may have inadvertently stumbled on the recipe for supreme mediocrity, and not just in war. Further polling from YouGov shows that the American public have definitely been hit by Iran Fatigue, after just a month of hostilities. 66%, including 59% of registered Republicans, want Trump to seek a ceasefire. But they have no illusions about their ego-fueled Supreme Guide. 50%, quite evenly spread across all political persuasions, think he will go on with the war until he has reached his military goals, and only 26% that he will try and end the conflict even if there is clear evidence that it damages the USA's economy. Then Trump, in his daily hour of lucidity, knows a can of worms when he sees one, and has been struggling for a week to put the toothpaste back into the bottle. But can he open negotiations without conceding that the war goals can't be met, so Iran has won? Oops.

Our allies did not refuse to help America. They refused to help Trump. There is a huge difference.

(Gavin Newsom, 27 March 2026)

Just over two weeks in and it’s increasingly looking like the The Donald is only in the war for its entertainment value.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 March 2026)

Batshit-craziness is contagious, you know that. don't you? Just like Covid and the clap, through social contagion, Close Encounters Of The Worst Kind. We have textbook cases of that in England, with the parallel rise of Reform and the Greens. But Patient Zero was obviously from the USA, and we have another YouGov poll in the evidence locker. They chose a not-too-subtle approach, though, and didn't ask directly if their American panelists would support or oppose Trump ordering the illegal invasion of another country's territory, like Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait and Vladimir Putin in Georgia and Ukraine. Instead, they asked if their panelists would want US ground troops to succeed if they were sent to nick foreign territory by brute force. Which is a sure way to maximise approval, as not supporting The Boys is sacrilege in the USA, whatever the circumstances. But the panelists obviously saw the trap and did not fall for it.

Even against Iran and Cuba. another of the MAGA's pet hates, US public opinion is not unanimously behind a Putin-style pre-scripted invasion, whatever the fabricated justifications. The US public are also painfully aware that the Orange Baboon made the same mistake about Iran as Nosferatu about Ukraine, he underestimated them and a walk in the park has transmogrified into an eternal war à la Starship Troopers. Just what he promised would never happen under his rule, and it's made even worse by the widespread feeling that Iran are now calling the shots. The lack of overwhelming popular appetite for an invasion of Iran is understandable if you listened to the chest-thumping competing narratives at the end of last week. The Pasdaran bragged they could bring 1 million men to the shoreline to fight off The Great Satan, while the US top brass can deploy at most 17,000 in a reasonably short time, even if they scrape through the bottom of the barrel. Then YouGov also detected that Middle America's main concern is not the war itself, but its consequences on their cost of living.

It does not look good for the Orange Baboon when three quarters of Americans, including half of Republican voters, express concern over quickly escalating prices. There is some massive irony in this, as inflation in the USA is actually lower than it was a year ago, 2.4% vs 2.8%, and far from a life-threatening level. But US consumers are quick to react to just part of the picture, that the price of groceries is rising at a much faster pace than the average price index, and that filling their car's tank will soon require signing up for a second mortgage. No shit. The price of gas, which is American for petrol as you have surely already noticed, rising to $4 a gallon, a 25% hike in one month, is a sure sign that the mullahs have unleashed the locusts of Armageddon on Nebraska. Then Trump will probably blame Starmer for that too. But he can't turn a blind ear to another of YouGov's recent findings, that two thirds of US public opinion now want a ceasefire in this war they never wanted and don't understand.

Despite all the bombast and sabre-rattling, the Orange Baboon has surely realised this is an unwinnable war, just like Putin's war in Ukraine. Does Trump still really think he can bring Iran to its knees before the deadline he set himself on the day of the first strikes, which was five weeks, or the 4th of April? No fucking way. Remember this is a country of 92 million and seven times the size of the UK, that has shown an unexpected ability to strike back, whatever you throw at them, with massive help from Russia. Even the extermination of the top level of the Islamo-Nazi leadership couldn't stop them. Of course, we already know how it will end. The Orange Baboon will strike a deal with the Islamo-Nazi mullahs. but not because he will chicken out. He will strike a deal because he is already bored and there is no dosh to be made off an endless war for Donald Junior. He will strike a deal like he did with the Taliban, and blame his successor for the inevitable atrocious consequences. Mark my words, mates. In fact, the only real question is when Israel will have unalived so many of the Iranian leadership that the only ones that remain are all Mossad agents. But they won't tell Trump, just to see how far he is ready to go for a juicy oil deal with Iran.

Trump is not just happy to take the US down with him. He won’t rest until he’s also completely screwed over the rest of the world.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 24 March 2026)

I'm not going to stand here and pretend to you that we know what the situation will be in three or six months' time. We don't.

(Keir Starmer, 16 March 2026)

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. The Temptations sang it first in March 1970, in a classic Motown song directly targeting the Vietnam War. Edwin Starr then made it a hit later that same year, and it got a second life in the mid-1980s thanks to Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Bruce Springsteen. Mostly Springsteen, fortunately. Now Donald Trump has made it relevant again with his absurd, ill-prepared and shoddily conducted aggression of Iran. He almost makes Putin look like a master strategist in comparison. Just almost. But what about The War, the Big One, World War Three? If you dive deep into YouGov's archives online, you find out they have been asking us about it for a very long time. We were supposed to say how likely we felt that war was to erupt in our lifetime first, then in the next forty years, and now in the next five to ten years, which definitely sounds like a more pragmatic approach. Of course, our replies have varied significantly over time, reflecting how the situation of the world translates into an Armageddon Scare, or not.

We are slightly less warscared today than we were two years ago, and you surely remember that nothing happened back then, other than the usual skirmishes between Israel and Iran, which were nothing compared to the current Trump War. Or IT did happen and we don't remember because we're all in The Matrix, or a Matrix within a Matrix within a Matrix. Who really knows? The crosstabs for the last iteration of this questioning, fielded this month, reveal that the War Scare is shared across all political persuasions, but that the TikTok Generation are much less worried than their elders, and plausibly betters. Then, if we are so warscared, how confident are we that the armed forces in Britain could effectively defend the country in the event of a third world war, as YouGov so elegantly put it? In a word, notalot. The more to the right we are, the less confident we are, which is odd and plausibly not very significant. But the older we are, the least we trust the Forces to put up a fight against the Russians, on the beaches and in the streets, and that is probably more significant.

In this context, YouGov added some spice by probing which of the Forces is seen as the most important to national security. The Royal Air Force won, quite narrowly actually, but more conclusively with the older geezers who must have watched too much Thunderbirds when they were kids. The younger generations prefer the Army, probably not because they have listened to too much Status Quo, that one was before their time, but it could be because of reruns or that interview of pre-Meghan Harry-In-Khaki in Afghanistan. This is so fucking unfair, as the Navy is obviously the most essential of the Forces. Who kept the lifelines open in 1917 and 1943? Not the fucking Air Force. Who brought The Boys to France in 1914, 1939 and 1944? They didn't swim there, did they? There is no such thing as Dad's Navy, either, innit? But there was The Battle Of The River Plate, Sink The Bismarck! and Hornblower. Sadly, the Navy did nothing to enhance their public image with The Curious Incident Of HMS Dragon In The Mediterranean. In a truly Holmesian way, the curious incident was that she wasn't there. Three weeks to reach Cyprus when Greece and France both had ships on station three days after the attack on Akrotiri, our base. To make it worse, the Navy had to admit they dragged her out of drydock, where she was under refit, because no other ship was available. Then they obviously needed some time to paint over the big red dragon at the bows, which was a bit too much "dragon marks the target" in hostile waters.

Then we have learned summat this month. The Green Party of England and Wales do not support leaving NATO, even if their Supreme Guide Che Polanski does. Instead they want to... err, wait, checks notes... leave NATO. First, they say, try and reform NATO from the inside, which will prove impossible because, ye ken, Trump. Obviously, they do have a point here. Then, they say, form a new alliance with like-minded European nations and others like Canada and Japan, which I fully agree with and... wait for it... nations from the Global South. And that's the part that makes the whole thing even more cretinous than the basic option of just leaving NATO. What the fucking fuck? An alliance with countries that are joined at the hip with the Russian Reich and China? An alliance with countries that have aided and abetted the Russian genocide of Ukraine, have helped Russia circumvent sanctions, have fully supported the Islamo-Nazi mullahrchy in Tehran? No fucking way, mates, that's even more asininely irresponsible than before. The Greenies are really fucking hopeless.

There’s a reason why Muhammad kept his arse on the mountain. He was safe there.

(James Sinclair, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, 2003)

The Royal Navy of England has ever been its greatest defence and ornament. It is its ancient and natural strength, the floating bulwark of the island.

(William Blackstone, Commentaries, 1765)

Let's take some time for an aside now, about the sorry state of the Royal Navy. I have often mentioned it, as it is the combination of my pet concern and my specialist subject, and you probably think it cannot be that bad. But it is, and I have the data to prove it. All you have to do is to look up the numbers and types of ships operated by various nations, which is publicly available. Some details of the ships' design and performance are kept under wraps, but not their numbers, types and sizes. It is thusly very easy to compare the Royal Navy to other nations of comparable second-tier power status. The first tier, as in the USA, China and Russia, is deliberately not incöuded here. I give you the full spectrum of combatant ships first, but those that actually matter are the red, blue and green bits. That's the largest surface ships, that contribute to power projection, and the submarine forces. The orange bits are smaller surface ships that contribute only to maritime boundary protection, what was known as coast defence in the Victorian Age, and now covers the whole of the Exclusive Economic Zones.

This is a sad sight for British eyes, as we are not just outnumbered by our closest European friends and allies like France and Italy, but also by more unlikely competitors like Turkey and South Korea. And don't get me started on India and Japan, that are very deliberately elbowing their way into the very private club of first-tier military powers. Now you can argue that the numbers are not all that matters. the size of the fleets is more important. Which is totally right. as twenty small ships are usually no match for ten big ones. This is, as you certainly know, measured by the displacement of the ships, which is defined by Archimedes' principle. To keep a long story short, and the physics simple, this is the weight of the ships, or their mass if you are a guardian of vocabulary purity, here displayed in thousands of tons. We have bigger versions of every main type of warship, but does that make them more efficient? It certainly does not in the case of the carriers, and is highly debatable in the case of the destroyers. We do get lots of steel for our money, but not necessarily good value too.

We have a huge advantage here, as our two F35 carriers are fucking big, almost twice the size of any real aircraft carrier owned by any other nation except the United States and China. But size does not equate quality, as we very well know from experience. The same could be said of the Type 45 destroyers, which we love to call the best in the world, which they're not. They have the same capabilities, on a bigger hull, as the French and Italian Horizon type, which was the original design chosen for the Royal Navy, until we dropped out of the project because of the Navy Establishment's "Not Invented Here" superiority complex. Just to have whole chunks of their propulsion replaced because it didn't work in warm waters, which never happened to the French and Italians. Whichever way you look at it, there is a huge problem with warship design and procurement in the UK, and it has been here for generations. Since the 1910s at least, as wartime experience like the Battle of Jutland proved that our very expensive dreadnoughts were inferior to their German counterparts. We also discovered very quickly, as early as 1917, that American battleship designs were also better than ours. And look at what the whole of the once proud Royal Navy looks like today. The whole of the power projection forces of the Royal Navy, that is.

There is just one wee mistake in that representation, as we actually have six Astute-class submarines in service, not five. Unless it implies that there is again one grounded on a Scottish island, awaiting high tide to break free. But you get the gist, which is true to life. Two dozen first-tier warships remaining from a Navy that numbered hundreds just a couple of generations ago. This is quite pathetic when you consider where we come from and the part the Navy has played in British history. Of course, and contrary to popular belief. Britannia did not always rule the waves. It's even a rather new thing actually. as the Spanish. Dutch and French all dominated us at some point along the space-time continuum. Remember that the Royal Navy did not exist until Henry VIII, four centuries after the Scottish Navy was founded, and that having a weaker navy than the French was a contributing factor in losing the American Independence War. The Royal Navy did not reach the top rung of the food chain until the Napoleonic Wars, decades after Rule, Britannia! was written, and did not hold on to it for very long. 130 years, give or take. But what matters now is what happened much more recently.

Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men. We always are ready, steady, boys, steady! We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.

(David Garrick, Heart Of Oak, 1759)

I am not talking about failure, I am talking about my supreme confidence in the British fleet. Superlative ships, excellent equipment, the most highly trained professional group of men, the most honourable and brave members of Her Majesty's Service.

(Margaret Thatcher, 5 April 1982)

Margaret Thatcher's praise of the Royal Navy, in the aftermath of the Falklands War, is indeed massively ironic when you look at the reality of her politics, as defined in the Defence White Paper of 1981. If it had been enforced, HMS Hermes would have been scrapped and HMS Invincible sold to Australia. thusly depriving the Falklands Task Force of its two main vessels. Except that there would never have been any Falklands Task Force, because nobody would have sent one lacking the air power provided by the carriers. If the Argies had waited just another three months before invading, Las Malvinas would be speaking Spanish now and Thatcher would have lost the 1983 election. The amount of damage done to the Navy during the Tory Era of the 1980s and 1990s is painfully visible if you compare our strength to that of the two largest navies in the European Union, France and Italy. Only the power projection elements, the true Blue Water Navy are shown here, at some meaningful dates. Meaningful for us, if not for them.

The 18 years of Thatcher and Major resulted in the Navy's core capabilities being cut by half. It took successive governments of various shades another 30 years to cut the Navy by half again. The Royal Navy today is down to 23% the number of ships it had in 1979, when the Marine Nationale is down to 42% and the Marina Militare to 71% and growing again in the last 15 years. Yet they faced the same international environment and the same economic difficulties as us, so why are we the only ones who got it so fucking wrong? We have some clues to the who and how if we visualise the power projection strength of the Royal Navy on the year of each election since the Blairslide, which also helps relativise and contextualise, as Owen Jones always urges us to do. But what we see is that the Royal Navy lost 29% of its major ships during the New Labour years, and then 27% during the Tory years of the Five Prime Ministers. So both were just as bad.

It would be unfair to accuse Keir Starmer of having again weakened the Navy, even if the numbers say that he did. There is a darker reality behind these numbers. The Conservatives deliberately let some ships rot away on the far side of Portsmouth Harbour, unmanned and unmaintained, while keeping their names on the active list, and nobody noticed. Labour then had little choice. Our last amphibious ships, those essential for any overseas operation, were sold to a better owner, Brazil, and the anti-submarine frigate force was again cut after years of neglect. The Type 23 frigates, designed in the late 1970s, unavoidably reached the end of their operational life during the 2020s. But design work on their successors, the Type 26, did not start until 2015 and the first ship will not be delivered until 2028. Another clear sign of dereliction of duty by the Conservatives, when the need for a seamless replacement programme was already obvious many years before. It does not get really better if we compare our short-term plans with those of France and Italy, and also to the new unexpectedly emerging European naval power, Turkey.

Our shipyards are on a very tight schedule to complete the new ships, Type 26 and Type 31, so the target for 2030 may not be met. Even if it is, the pace of new construction is too slow, and we will still have to keep the elderly Type 23 afloat and active until 2035, long past their shelf date. Sadly, the new commitment to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2032 and the directions set in the Strategic Defence Review of 2025 have little potential to genuinely improve the Navy's strength and capabilities in the foreseeable future. So far, only eight Type 26 and five Type 31 have been ordered, so this is less than a ship-for-ship replacement of the Type 23, sixteen of which were built. The Defence Review's target for 2035, a destroyer and frigate force of 24, require 18 frigates, which is totally unachievable as the next new class, the Type 32, is still in limbo. There is a fallback option, though, ordering frigates from abroad, just like Scotland is ordering ferries from Turkey and China. Japan has a design that is totally compliant with our needs, and they can build it in three years if we buy it off-the-shelf with only minor modifications. We have done that before, haven't we? Nécessité fait loi, as they say in the country of my birth.

The Royal Navy must fulfil new roles and continue to evolve how it fights, moving towards a dynamic mix of crewed, uncrewed, and increasingly autonomous surface and sub-surface vessels and aircraft.

(Strategic Defence Review, June 2025)

The job has proved to be a blessing and a curse for Keir Starmer. Something he wanted so badly has begun to destroy him from the inside out. And yet he can’t let go.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 March 2026)

You really have to love Nigel Farage's uncanny ability to make a fucking arse of himself at every opportunity. One of the last such occurrences was Benito having a hissy fit because YouGov had found Reform UK on "only" 23% in one of their polls. That's a typical Trump-like mantrum from the Clacton Führer here. What does he expect? That the pollsters will massage their numbers to cuddle him? For all we know, some of them may well be already doing that. For the record, the same week YouGov found the fash on 23%, 6% down on their peak in their polls, Find Out Now found them on 26%, 8% down on their peak, and we didn't hear Snowflake Benito whine and squeal about that one. The trendlines of voting intentions poll do show Reform going down, but we shouldn't celebrate too soon, as they have already gone down and then up again. Interestingly, the trendlines also see Labour, the Conservatives and the Greens converging on very similar vote shares. Not all polls agree, though, but the law of averages has to start adding up, hasn't it?

Three weeks after Benito's mantrum, our three main pollsters, the trio who set the tone because they survey us every week like a clockwork orange, all confirm that they see the Reform vote declining. More In Common and YouGov both have the Turquoiseshirts down 6% on their peak now, and Find Out Now, who were always the most Farage-friendly, have them down by a more spectacular 10%. Can't wait for Benito Farage channelling his Inner Orange Baboon again, and whining about rigged polls and fake news, like the White House's Crybaby always does when public opinion doesn't go his way. The evolution of the most significant findings by our trio of dominant pollsters clearly confirm Reform losing ground, but the relative positions of Labour and the Greens are more ambiguous. We are still in a situation where Reform's biggest asset is the split vote on the left.

Meanwhile, Che Polanski has made a brave and stunning proposal, ditch our obsession with GDP and focus instead on wellbeing. Which is Che following the proverbial best international practice, as this is already monitored by the OECD and the Mayo Clinic. Never mind that the OECD is still prioritising GDP as the key indicator, and publishing the Well-Being Index only as a side order. Polanski also conveniently dismisses a very basic truth. For the working class, and the lower echelons of the salaried middle class, wellbeing is primarily defined by the amount of money you bring home to cover not just the basic necessities, but also some niceties that make your everydays brighter. He would know that if he was a socialist, which he is definitely not, instead of a vaguely social-liberal metropolitan hipster espousing fashionable bourgeois luxury beliefs. This, coupled with his deplorably simplistic views on foreign relations and national security, make him as unfit for a government position as the worst of the fash. Then I loved it when he got his arse skelped on Twitter for being an arrogant ignoramus.

Keir Starmer is compelled to hang on for as long as possible. But his eyes are now hollowed out. He looks to be running on fumes.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 March 2026)

Insulting the country’s intelligence isn’t generally a vote winner. But I guess Kemi knows best.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 March 2026)

Today's snapshot of polls includes the seven most recently published, conducted by Opinium, More In Common, Verian, YouGov, BMG Research and Find Out Now between 18 and 30 March. That's a super-sample of 15,065, which happens to be 1.09 times the mass in kilogrammes of the Great Bell known as Big Ben, second of the name. There is a mix of bad and good news in there. On the good side, the New Model British Union Of Fascists are down to a quarter of the votes, while they rode triumphantly on a third of the votes before this year's rerun of the Winter Of Our Discontent. On the bad side, current voting intentions do not show a political landscape made glorious summer, as the anti-fash vote is still split broadly three ways, with the irresponsible ultra-woke fanatics at the Green Party of England and Wales having their brows bound with victorious wreaths way beyond what their asinine student politics deserve.

If you look at the seat projection from this batch of polls, Reform are dragged way below the quota of MPs needed for a majority. But they would clear that hurdle if the Rump Tories decided that their priority is getting ministerial cars back instead of working in the best interests of the Realm and its citizens. The Tories themselves are not in good shape, so that hypothetical Turquoise-Blue coalition would bag only 342 seats, which would make it potentially fragile. There are also some interesting points in the evolution of my seat predictions since the 2024 general. We already know that the Surge Of The Fash did not begin until after the English local elections of 2025, and that it is safe to assume it was due to social contagion by the rapidly spreading narrative about the inevitability of a Reform landslide, conveniently promoted by the billionaire-owned mediatariat and an abhorrently complacent BBC. Now we can see that the Fall Of The Fash, with some ups and downs, started about six months after the locals, when enough Englanders started to realise how crassly incompetent Reform are at running Councils.

Right now, Reform are predicted 103 seats below their peak, which was in September 2025. Labour are predicted 31 seats above their nadir, that was in November 2025. The Liberal Democrats are 13 seats above their worst, which was a long time ago in October 2024, when Labour were still enjoying some popular support and predicted to hold their majority. But the combined forces of a hypothetical Lab-Lib Pact amount to only 193 seats, still well below Reform's harvest. Now I am left wondering what the BBC, who has long ago ditched any pretence of fairness and balance, will come up with to boost the Reform UK vote again. Giving the atrociously partisan Chris Mason, the de facto Head of PR for Benito Farage, his own daily show, maybe. Then they would have to stop cuddling the other fanatical fringe at the opposite end of the political horseshoe, like they did last weekend with an asininely cynophobic dogwhistle worthy of the dog-culling Taliban. Can't have it both ways, mates.

Richard Tice is Reform’s new money-saving expert, who is there to tell everyone only idiots fail to take advantage of aggressive tax avoidance loopholes.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 March 2026)

As a party, and as a movement, we cannot hide, we cannot just go through the motions in the face of decline.

(Angela Rayner, 18 March 2026)

Reform UK is really the fucking gift that keeps on giving. Now they have been forced to ditch one of their Scottish Parliament candidates after it surfaced he had embezzled taxpayers' money from Covid grants. They already have an MP who did just that too, and is now sitting as an independent, so that should have told them to focus the vetting in just that direction. Thank Dog they didn't, and offered us yet another opportunity to ridicule their crass incompetence. Then we have had a brand new Full Scottish from the most unexpected source, Lord Ashcroft. The last time Mikey sent his sniffers North of Gretna Green was five years ago, a month before the last Scottish Parliament election. And now they're back, a month before this year's election. What they have found will leave you shell-shocked, just as I was, but let's first look at how this new dataset has affected the trendlines.

This surely gives you a hint of what comes next. The Ashcroft numbers drove the SNP's trendline up, Labour's and Reform's down, and left the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats stagnating at mediocre levels. I am considering only the constituency vote here, as it is where the wrecking ball of certainties will come to hit you in the plexus. I just don't know what is the most stunning and disturbing part of the seat projection from the Ashcroft poll. That I, for once, basically agree with The Scottish Pravda's projection? Or that what I told you couldn't fucking happen in a million years. and I explained you very convincingly why it could never fucking happen in a fucking billion years, is actually fucking happening if you believe Mikey's poll? Aye, the SNP snatching 65 out of 73 constituencies, an outright majority from the constituencies only, on 39% of the popular vote. How the fuck can that be fucking real?

There are many factors at play here. I guess that having the opposition vote split roughly five-ways between the contenders does help. Then there are the poll's regional crosstabs showing the SNP significantly overperforming in Central Scotland and Glasgow, doing just so so but massively outnumbering Labour in West Scotland, also doing just so so but unexpectedly vastly outnumbering the Conservatives in the North East and South, and Honest John's your uncle. That just spares the LibDems, overperforming in Edinburgh and the Highlands, where it matters for them, and holding North East Fife, that had become notionally SNP after the last round of boundary changes. Lord Mikey's sniffers also probed our voting intentions for the next general election, and detected similar patterns to the Holyrood vote.

Here too we have a visible surge of the SNP vote and the Reform vote nosediving, while the other parties remain stuck in mediocre vote shares. What's happening here certainly gives you a hunch of how this will translate into seats. After all, we have seen that movie before, haven't we? It is the continuation of the now familiar scenario where the SNP snatch back a fuckload of seats without gaining any votes, and even while losing votes. Not the result of any outstanding campaigning on their side, though, as it's just the opposition parties providing the ingredients of their own debacle. But what can we actually expect from this surge past the 2024 vote that the Ashcroft poll predicts? No spoilers, I will tell you below the fold, and after you have listened to 32 minutes of Umphrey's McGee. You won't regret it.

Scotland is wet and dreary. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Even when it’s nice, it’s covered in a cloud of these bastard little insects called midges, so you have to stay inside anyway.

(Iain M. Banks, Transition, 2009)

People will tell you Scotland is all romantic and rugged but I’ve yet to see the evidence. Plus it’s full of Scots. Case rested.

(Iain M. Banks, Transition, 2009)

When you look at the sequence of Commons voting intentions polls conducted in Scotland, the steep decline of the Reform UK vote is even more striking than the demise of the once proud Labour. The English Nationalist Party are now down to a level that would keep them safely away from a massive presence in Commons if it was duplicated all across England. Looks like Scots have at last come to terms with the reality of Reform, the party who want to downsize the Scottish Parliament for no other reason than they don't like it, repeal speed limits in city centres, repeal the smoking ban for minors, and above all repeal the gun control laws passed after the Dunblane massacre. The last sextet of Full Scottish polls, fielded over the last two months, clearly show the kind of freak patterns that hugely benefit the SNP.

It's definitely the kind of alignment of the stars you would never expect. Nowhere else can you expect any party to bag a majority of seats while losing votes on the previous election where they were reduced to a tiny minority. It's a textbook case of serendipity rarely seen in British politics, but that could become the norm in a fragmented political landscape. Of course, it is quite unfair to the opposition parties, but first-past-the-post always was, wasn't it? It's just that nobody ever imagined a party performing only mediocrely, but bagging a landslide because the opposition was split five ways. Even the 2024 general wasn't that extreme. but methinks that still does not make the case for proportional representation, in case you wondered. Our preferred pollsters have also continued probing our voting intentions for the hypothetical Independence referendum that will never happen, and the resulting trendlines are still Yes-friendly.

But don't jump for joy just yet, as Independence polling is as relevant to the real world as polling for a multi-party election in North Korea. Or elections in Russia, when you think of it. But the long term trends of polling can also be misleading and give you false hopes, as recent polls actually swing alternatively between a Yes majority and a No majority. So the last one who published its finding may disproportionately set the tone. A snapshot of the most recent ones is more relevant, and the weighted average of the last sextet of Full Scottish predicts a tie.

Lord Ashcroft added uncertainty with a question about what we think an Independence referendum would deliver, regardless of what we want it to deliver. So we believe No would win if the referendum was held this year, which it won't. But we marginally think Yes would win if the referendum was held in 2031, which it won't either. Neither results is really significant because of high number of undecideds, so we should try not to read too much into this. Not read anything at all, actually, if we want to stay within the boundaries of plausibility. Just bear in mind that the only way we would get a second referendum is Zack Polanski becoming Prime Minister. And that would be such a fucking disaster for a thousand reasons that I don't even want to consider it. So maybe we would be dealt a better hand with Nigel Farage at Number Ten. which we know from earlier polls would boost the Yes vote. All we need is convince Benito that a referendum would rid him of all the Scottish scroungers that are a burden to the Treasury because they are subsidised by England. No shit, mates, on a misunderstanding it might work.

Scots are the people who should have repeal of the Union; for that, if they are separate from England, they might have a government wholly popular and intelligent, to a degree which I believe does not exist in any other country on the face of the Earth.

(John Bright, January 1843)

There are still parts of Wales where the only concession to gaiety is a striped shroud.

(Gwyn Thomas, Punch, 18 June 1958)

The Scottish Pravda have developed a keen interest in Welsh politics, which are as relevant to ours as the Borough Council elections in London. Then I guess everything Labour is fair game for them. so it is only natural that they are filled with Schadenfreude at the sight of YouGov's latest Senedd poll for ITV Cymru, which is indeed fucking disastrous for Labour and replete with high hopes for Plaid Cymru. The trendlines reflect some recent polls that showed a surge of the Labour vote, which is still a possibility if they take their fingers out in the last few days of the campaign, but not the biggest likelihood or even plausibility. The YouGov poll does not show that surge, and relies on a much bigger sample than the polls that show it, three to five times as big, so I definitely lean towards believing YouGov and crediting Plaid Cymru with a much more comfortable position than other pollsters found.

It is fucking hilarious to see that Reform UK are doing jack shit to seduce Welsh voters, and wouldn't act differently if they had decided to sabotage their own campaign. First there was Benito calling Welsh speakers "foreign speakers", not the smartest move in a nation that actively promotes its cultural heritage. Then you had one of Reform's pre-pubescent candidates impersonating Adolf Hitler and pretending it was John Cleese, which nobody believed, not even his bandmates who sacked him on the spot. But the biggest blunder was to "translate" all the constituency names into English, bogus English actually, in an official press release. It's definitely a fucking shite move to affirm yourselves as English nationalists, ethnic English supremacists even, in Wales, and the seat projection from the YouGov poll reflects there is a price to pay for being fucking morons. YouGov's own projection differs slightly from mine, but not by much, and leads to the same likely outcome. First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth leading a Plaid-Cymru-Green coalition government.

There is a lot of karmic irony in this seat projection, coupled with a sense of merciless fate. The incumbent First Minister and leader of Welsh Labour, Eluned Morgan, is predicted to lose her seat in Ceredigion Penfro. Jane Dodds, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, is likewise predicted to lose hers in Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. Darren Millar, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, would be luckier and hold his seat in Clwyd, but just by a hair as the sixth of six. Rhun ap Iorwerth, on the other hand, would not have a nail-biting Election Night, as Plaid Cymru are predicted to bag four out of six seats in Bangor Conwy Môn, where he is the incumbent for the old Ynys Môn constituency and standing for re-election. There is no such certainty for Dan Thomas, the successor of Russian agent Nathan Gill as Benito Farage's sock puppet in Wales, as he was still a resident of Bath until very recently and hasn't chosen a safe landing pad in Wales so far. Anthony Slaughter, the local branch manager of the Green Party of England and Wales, has found his in Caerdydd Penarth and is predicted to bag a seat there with a compostbinload of votes to spare.

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

(Dylan Thomas, Adam, December 1953)

It’s double or quits. As far as I’m concerned we are just going to go for it. If we bombed people would ask questions. My entire focus and energy is on the planning and preparation for it.

(Nigel Farage, December 2025)

We're 37 days away from the English locals, and the English establishment media are still displaying zero interest in them. You could think they have already written their post-mortem columns for The Day After, pontificating about the irresistible advent of another batch of out-of-their-depth Farage Youth as Council leaders, with Che Polanski and Shitweasel Jones in a quacky duet of "We Told You So". There has been no generic polling for these elections so far, which is just as well if you remember how wildly off piste such polling was in previous years. Yet J.L. Partners have conducted a very selective, partial and biased poll, covering only Councils where elections were first pushed to 2027 because of that Godot of English politics, local government reform, and then reinstated in their proper slot this year. That's just 25 Councils, mostly District, very unevenly spread across England. First we have four in the North West, all in Lancashire actually.

What we have here must obviously be handled with extreme caution, as it can't be treated as an accurate snapshot of the mood of the North. The England-wide average and the regional averages mean jack shit because of the very restrictive nature of the samples. But we may. just may. have some interesting hints at Council level. The first key factor is that, despite the North being quite open to Reform in Westminster polls, their results here are quite mediocre. Being 4.6% behind Labour regionally definitely does not smell like the kind of Reform flash flood that Benito Farage expects and the punditariat love to predict. We may even try and guess who will be in control of these Councils after the elections. Just guess, because this is the textbook case where local factors usually have more weight than the generic trends found by polls. Also bear in mind that all four Northern Councils polled by J.L. Partners have only a third of their seats up, thusly making any kind or Reform tsunami impossible.

Of course, these predictions are just tentative and may well be totally off. After all, voters still have five weeks of total lack of interest to make up their minds before we again see dogs at polling stations, which is English English for polling places, as you surely already knew. Will a super-sample of 10 million voters, give or take, all across England, confirm what the Westminster voting intentions polls are already telling us? That peak Reform is behind us, and that they are not just declining, but nosediving in some regions. We will have a clue when the BBC publish their "predicted vote shares", extrapolated from the real results. Last year, the BBC had Reform on 30%, so I expect the prediction to be around 25% this year. A 5% drop would be consistent with generic polls, and anything less would tell us that the cows have not come home to roast. Yet.

It is the single most important event between now and the general election. On it depends the future of our Prime Minister, the future of the Leader of the Opposition and indeed my own relative strength or otherwise as leader of Reform.

(Nigel Farage, December 2025)

Richard Tice has the absence of personality of a shopping channel presenter on a graveyard shift. The man with the charisma bypass. There’s even less to him than meets the eye.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 17 March 2026)

J.L. Partners next selected six Councils in the Midlands. All of them are legally defined as District Councils, though one self-identifies as a Borough Council and another as a City Council, just to make the already illegible organisation of local government in England more confusing for the average reader. The high level of the Reform vote in all six Councils is quite flabbergasting when you consider that these voters have direct view on Reform's shenanigans at the neighbouring Warwickshire Council, led by a grossly incompetent Nuneaton-born 19-year old who skipped a university education because universities are a conveyor belt for socialist wokeism. No shit, Sherlock. And now the lad is also a candidate for the Nuneaton and Bedworth Council. Who said double-jobbing was bad? Obviously not Benito Farage.

Of the six Midlands Councils polled by J.L. Partners, none is up in full. Nuneaton and Bedworth has half its seats up, and the other five only a third. In that context, the best the Turquoiseshirts can hope is turning an incumbent majority into a minority or a coalition, which they will not be part of. No recipe here for any bragable triumph worth uncorking the Sussex bubbly. They may be predicted big vote shares in the Midlands too but, like everywhere else where just part of the Council seats are up, it is hugely unlikely to result in tectonic changes in Council control.

I am also factoring in the rise of the Green vote since their shocker win in Gorton and Denton, which may well trickle down from the parliamentary vote to the Council vote. I have summat of a hunch that this is more likely to happen to them than to any other party, especially in the very special context we're in now. The locals are just five weeks away now, so it is safe to assume that the electorate's mood will not change much in the meantime. Unless something very unexpected and very spectacular happens, which will not be in Mar-a-Lago or Iran. Pretty much all scenarios have been explored and dissected at length, from an American capitulation to a full-blown reboot of Saving Private Ryan, so nothing coming from there can surprise us any more. The only thing that could still swing some voters would be a continuous rise in the price of petrol, but it would be fucking daft to believe that a Reform Council could do anything about that.

The people understand that taxes do have to go up now. I am dead against increasing taxes and I will do as much as I can to lower that bill and that burden.
(George Finch, The Guardian, 3 February 2026)

Nige and Honest Bob it is. The double act that’s guaranteed to raise a laugh. If you’re very lucky. The pair who want to turn politics into a downmarket reality game show on their own YouTube channel.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 17 March 2026)

More District Councils are up in the Leafy English South than anywhere else this year, so J.L. Partners have naturally polled more down there than in the Midlands and the North combined. At face value, the J.L. Partners poll hints at a very visible surge of the Reform vote, but there are many mitigating factors. The main one is that this lone poll was conducted two months ago, just after Number Ten announced that these elections would not be postponed after all, and would be held at the scheduled date. So, any justified wrath local voters may have felt at the time has most likely ebbed since. Also bear in mind that Labour's image and Starmer's personal ratings have been improved by the events surrounding the Iran War, which may sway some of the patriotic voters, who are a-plenty in the South and value Britain standing its ground against a bully. So nothing is as simple as the polling data make it look.

The two Sussex Councils will be ones to watch here, as all their seats are up,, the ideal situation for sudden radical change. In a previous life, both would have been likely Conservative majorities, but today we never know. East Sussex, with its known woke enclaves around university bubbles, could be a Clash Of Titans between Reform and the LibDems. and West Sussex between Reform and what remains of the Tories. Last year's experience makes me think that having all seats up makes them easier preys for Reform, though probably not ready for a Reform majority. The fash's shenanigans and abject incompetence in neighbouring Kent could be an efficient repellent, we can only hope. Four more County Councils have all their seats up this year in Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Oddly they have not been included by J.L. Partners, though all four must be high on Farage's target list.

There is obviously a lot of uncertainty in these locals, whatever the poll says. Two key factors will influence the results. How deeply burrowed in their respective wars are the incumbents? How evenly, or unevenly spread, will the Reform vote be? The ideal combination of the two, which is deeply entrenched incumbents and an evenly spread Reform vote, would directly lead to Reform snatching failure from the jaws of triumph, bagging far fewer wards and Councils than last year even on a reasonably successful share of the popular vote. My best educated guess is that this serendipitous alignment of the stars will happen more frequently in the South, and thusly limit the magnitude of the Reform surge. But the most important factor is that the majority of these Councils have just a third of their seats up, so even a strong Reform vote will have only a very dampened impact, making significant changes in control unlikely.

I must confess it is a fucking mystery to me why people would vote for the fash, for having their Council run by Reform. We know what they promise, lots of stuff they know they can't achieve, and what they deliver, the exact opposite of what they promised. Who in their sane mind would vote for a 10% Council Tax hike, closing down the walk-in clinic the Labour Council opened last year because the fash want you to pay for healthcare, Plato banned from the public library because he's woke and speed limits repealed because they are an infringement on your liberties? I know, about a quarter of the Sassenach, which means they are just as fucking stupid as Americans. And don't even get me started on gun laws. Thank Dog these are not within the Councils' prerogatives.

Our key audience is people who did not vote. There will be a big emphasis on social media campaigning to motivate them to get registered and offer them a fundamental change.

(Nigel Farage, December 2025)

FLAG, n. A coloured rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees on vacant lots in London. "Rubbish may be shot here".

(Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary, 1906)

There hasn't been any exciting London Polling in the last month, and Sadiq Khan has miraculously avoided making a total fucking arse of himself for once, so I have no new news to share about the Imperial Capital. Thank Dog then for Focaldata who graced us with a vividly stunning poll about what will undoubtedly be one of the key issues of the next general election campaign. The proper use of the Flag Of England. No shit, mates, they really did field a poll about that. It was commissioned by British Future, a think tank that claims to be non-partisan despite being directored by a former General Secretary of the Fabian Society. Which of course does not put them squarely on the left of the compass, probably not even to the left of Ed Davey, but surely to the left of Keir Starmer. But what do Englanders think the Saint George bunting actually represents?

The wording of the poll's options obviously begs an existential follow-up question. Where do we draw the line between national pride and nationalism? Surely we could get a first-year PPE student to write a 100-page essay on the ontological differences between patriotism and nationalism, Surely ChatGPT has all the sources it needs for that, culled from three millennia of scholarly debate. Or we could stage a debating match between St Andrews' and Oxford's finest, going like "why is Saint George patriotic and the Saltire nationalist?", preferably on neutral ground of historic significance, like a car park in Leicester. But what are the Sassenach's real feelings about their flag, you may ask. Of course, Focaldata has an oven-ready answer to that.

That's were you really feel the Fabian touch, as all of the options offered are various shades of progressive inclusivity. I am sure some were frustrated that they couldn't pick an option saying that the England flag is a proud reminder of how Harold Godwinson beat the fucking crap out the fucking Vikings at Stamford Bridge, and how Bobby Moore beat the fucking crap out of the fucking Hun at Wembley Stadium. Obviously, no poll would be worth its salt if it did not include a cross-checking question, and that's just what this one did, obviously. And the general tone of the replies goes firmly in the same direction, obviously.

We feel the Fabian touch again here with these craftily, if also sanctimoniously, worded options that leave little space for the free speech of the likes of Vigilante Bob Jenrick or Rupert Lowe. Couldn't have done it better if they had asked Gary Lineker to write the questions. The fun part is that, if I was English, I would obviously agree with everything the poll says. But I have a duty to poke fun at it because it all sounds so forced, which is what you get when your subliminal message is that people should feel ashamed or guilty if they err on the side of "wrongthink", as defined by the guidelines of the Fabian Society. After all, there should be room too for people who stan Lucy Connolly, or are outraged that Wandsworth Prison did not bury William Joyce wrapped in Saint George. To each his own, mates. Even the Fifth Column of Quislings 2.0 bought and sold for Russian gold.

The greatest danger to the Britain we love does not come from Tehran or Moscow. It comes from within. From a dark form of politics that wraps itself in the Union Jack while working to undermine everything that flag is supposed to represent. Of course, I’m talking about Nigel Farage. And Reform.

(Ed Davey, 16 March 2026)

Слава Україні! Героям слава!

Jeremy's Den

31/03/2026

It's Been A Long Time Coming

No comments:

Post a Comment

It's Been A Long Time Coming