Jeremy's Den: You Put The Load Right On Me

I hang out with losers because it makes me feel better. I hate guys that are very, very successful and you have to listen to their success stories. I like people that like to listen to my success.

(Donald Trump, 29 March 2026)

The idea that a civilization might destroy itself is both ludicrous and likely. We are pathetically inadequate at long-term planning, idiotically primitive in our destructive urges and pathologically incapable of simply getting along.

(Brian Cox)

Fourteen years ago today, we lost the great Levon Helm, drummer, lead singer and occasional songwriter with The Band. So I give you a selection of The Band's songs with Levon singing, sometimes sharing the leads with Richard Manuel or Rick Danko, in chronological order of their initial release. Many of them are later live versions, because that's where Levon shone, drumming and singing at the same time. Something Phil Collins never did, but others like Don Henley or Gary O'Toole did it. It is actually challenging, both physically and mentally, as the patterns are usually quite different between the drum parts and the lead vocals parts. I mean, of course, in real songs. Not the abominable bland AI-generated chain-produced corporate shite that passes as "songs" today. Now just sit back and enjoy Levon Helm's unique voice and drumming, this odd syncopated bouncy beat I have never heard any other drummer do.

Insert summat here about clicking on the images. Just do it.

Do you want to hear another fun story about international law for starters? European law this time, which you may think does not concern us as we are no longer in the EU. But it does, as Hungary was at its centre, in its role as Fifth Column of the Russian Reich inside the EU, thusly impairing the work of our Coalition Of The Willing supporting Ukraine. For years, the other EU nations equivocated and procrastinated, invoking the sacrosanct European law, as they couldn't find a 'legal' way to eject Hungary out of the EU's institutions and revoke their voting rights. Even when a thorough independent investigation proved that Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó was a Russian agent, reporting to Soviet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and colluding with him against the EU, all the European Commission could come up with was that they were "preoccupied" and would look into the matter. But their hands were tied because, ye ken, European law. Fucking pathetic. But it probably only strengthened the Hungarian people's resolve to get Ruszkik haza, Russians out, and the trendlines of polls clearly predicted the opposition Tisza Party outvoting Orbán's Fidesz-KDNP.

The actual result was better for Tisza and worse for Fidesz-KDNP than polls predicted. But just because the Fidesz-affiliated pollsters published extravagantly falsificated results. Interestingly, the pro-regime pollsters were extremely discreet on the last mile before election, as if they had realised fake polls didn't impress public opinion any more, so it was all a fucking waste of time. Eight polls were fielded in the last week, between 7 and 11 April, which is an astronomically low number by British standards. Here, we would have got eight a day. Two polls were fielded by the same regime-affiliated pollster, the local branch of McLaughlin & Associates. The other six were fielded by six different independent pollsters, proving there was some amazing vitality on that side until the last minute. I have projected what these eight polls predicted, and also what happened if you processed only the six independent polls. And there were indeed quite visible differences. Most importantly it proves that the independent pollsters were spot on, missing the actual results by just tiny amounts well below the polls' margin of error.

I have slightly amended my seat predictions to factor in the gerrymandering of constituencies in four counties, designed to cost the opposition five seats if the election was close, and four if the opposition's margin of victory was wider. Interestingly, both sets of polls predicted that the neo-fascist Our Homeland Movement, MHM, would fall below the 5% threshold and lose representation. The MNOÖ, representatives of the German minority's interests and solid allies of Orbán, were predicted to lose their lone seat if you factored in only the independent polls. It is quite interesting that the only thing the independent pollsters missed was that the MHM would eventually clear the 5% hurdle and keep its representatives. It happened because the remarkably accurate independent polls very slightly overestimated the Fidesz vote and very slightly underestimated the MHM vote. By 1%, well below the margin of error of polls with 1,000-1,500 samples. Or maybe it was Fidesz voters admitting that all was lost for their champions, and switching their vote to the MHM at the last minute to keep them in Parliament.

On Election Night, it was a quickly wrapped up thing. Less than three hours after polls closed, Viktor Orbán called then-opposition leader Péter Magyar and conceded defeat. His public concession speech was surprisingly restrained, without any sort of Trumpian whining ad grumbling, or any rant about a rigged stolen election. It would probably have been different if Tisza's margin of victory had been smaller, but it is difficult to argue with a tsunami, even for a shrewd populist like Orbán. Especially when your opponent's landslide is propelled by an 80% turnout, the highest ever in post-Soviet Hungary, and the highest anywhere in Europe in recent years, except the Conclave. The Left should nevertheless be careful what they celebrate. Of course, Orbán's defeat is a serious blow for Trump, Putin and everybody in the European far-right including Nigel Farage. But the alternative to fascism did not come from the left. It came from the right, like it did in Poland and plausibly will in France and Germany. The British "soft Left" have three years left now to up their game and send our homegrown Trumputinist vermin to the woodchipper of history, and that's fucking short.

When you want to be serious you don’t say every day the opposite of what you said the day before.

(Emmanuel Macron, 2 April 2026)

Tony Blair says the Left is in "unholy alliance" with Islamists. It’s a desperate last ploy to quell the anger over Gaza.

(Owen Jones, The Guardian, 1 April 2026)

Thank Dog for The Guardian still opening their opinion pages to Shitweasel. Thank Dog for Shitweasel still addressing the issues of the day with the subtlety of a Tyrannosaurus Rex unleashed in the middle of a herd of antelopes. This comes at just the right moment, when Opinium is offering us summat of a comparative study between the attitudes of the British general population at large, British Muslims and American Muslims, through a trio of polls asking the same questions to representative panels of the three. The most interesting part, and one Opinium surely did not intend, is that we get a perspective of the British general adult population on a few select issues that are never surveyed in the usual run-of-the-mill polls. And that's just as important and enlightening as comparisons with our Muslim neighbours or Muslims from the other side of the Mighty Atlantic. Let's start by exploring the most existential question, how much we love democracy.

Doesn't start well, does it? only seven out of ten Brits root for democracy, and a quarter say they don't know. Or they know and won't say because they're ashamed of it. That leaves 6% who want another type of regime, of an unspecified nature as there is a fuckload of options. Don't just think of a mullahcracy, a Christo-fascist theocracy is probably preferred by more people, all those inspired by Trump and Vance. It is also quite remarkable, and fucking hilarious, that Londoners and the TikTok Generation are both more likely to support an alternative undemocratic regime than Reform voters. I just wonder how that fits with the multitude of sanctimonious woke clichés we keep hearing from our universities and Sadiq Khan. It gets even better when you compare this with Opinium's two Muslim panels, which do not include political affiliations, so the comparison is limited to basic demographics.

The first thing that strikes you here, and will be seen again in other parts of the polls, is that the proportion of undecideds is massively bigger in the general population than in the two Muslim panels. I really love to think that it is the result of two decades of performative wokeism, that has turned millions of us into snowflaky wusses who won't express an opinion because they are terrified of being cancelled. Our Muslim neighbours and comrades are clearly not and do speak their mind. And they support democracy more than the average Brit, A larger minority than among the general population support an alternative regime, which may be a Taliban-like theocracy. But that remains just a fringe, and who are we anyway to lecture them, when some of us openly call for a Putin-like fascist regime unchallenged? Of course, now is also the time to fully enjoy the sight of Shitweasel again showing his total lack of self-awareness, whining about censorship and moral lectures, when his own brand of performative wokeism relishes both like a golden retriever rolling in a stack of pig manure.

The former Prime Minister has no valid response when progressives raise a voice over war crimes, so he seeks to mute them. But we’ll take no moral lectures from him.

(Owen Jones, The Guardian, 1 April 2026)

There are over three thousand gods in the world so I only believe in one less than you do.

(Ricky Gervais)

Now we reach the big issue, the live-grenade-in-a-minefield issue. Blasphemy laws and hate speech. Opinium labelled it as "legally restricting criticism of religion", but you get the gist. Before 1530, blasphemy was a matter of ecclesiastical law, not common law, so only the Catholic Church criminalised it to protect itself. Henry VIII made it a common law offence, protecting only the official establishment superstition, the Church of England. The last death sentence for blasphemy was handed in 1697, the last prison sentence in 1921 and the last fine in 1977. But where are we now? Are we still rooting for blasphemy laws? Or are we hiding behind the convenient excuse of fighting hate speech? A wee smitch of both, actually, Opinium has found. Only a third of us opine that religion should never be immune from criticism, which is very sad.

So one out of eight Brits, and one Labour MP, support blasphemy laws. By the way, do you know why Ruhollah Khomeini had to launch a fatwa against Salman Rushdie over the "blasphemous" content of The Satanic Verses? Because there is no provision in the Quran that says blasphemers must be killed, no legal or theological ground, so the Islamo-Nazi Supreme Führer had to make up summat. The comparison between the general population and Opinium's two Muslim panels reveals a really fucking massive difference here, which I guess you expected. It is actually the only one out of four issues polled by Opinium where you find significant differences. I will not hazard an explanation, as it would be too much like skating on quicksand towards pub psychology. Others, more cognisant than me, have written shitloads of books on this very phenomenon, so just read one of these now. Let's just state the basic obvious for now, that Muslims are more sensitive about religion. And that's that.

Then you would be astounded to know where blasphemy laws still exist. Well, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran are the easy ones, think harder. Russia, you will be pleased to hear, but I'm sure you had already guessed that one. Also five out of eight states and territories of Australia. You did not see that one coming, did you? Now hang on firmly to your seat... Finland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal. A third of the European Union, who'd have thunk? And I am sure we are all old enough to remember that blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales only in 2008, and in Scotland in 2024, but still exist in Northern Ireland. Even in the United States, where the First Amendment allegedly protects absolute and unrestricted free speech, the Supreme Court did not strike down blasphemy laws until 1952, but did not explicitly label them unconstitutional, so some remained in force in some states as late as 2010. And we also know that some of the Christo-fascist ideologues at Donald Trump's court would love nothing more than a federal blasphemy law. Glass houses and all, mates.

In all 6,236 verses of the Quran, there is not a single verse calling on Muslims to silence blasphemers by force. The Quran is immutable, and all it does is tell believers to respond to blasphemy with dignity.

(Kim Ghattas, Black Wave, 2020)

Behind every great woman, there is a dog waiting at the bathroom door.

(English proverb, definitely, maybe)

Now we have a less controversial issue to examine, if you're not Andrew Tate or Donald Trump, that is. The rightful place of women in society. Since they never used any "gender summat" crapologism, I assume that Opinium meant women per the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, not women per Judith Butler or Sandi Toksvig. They actually asked three questions, about equal opportunities in education, jobs and politics. The results are pretty similar for all three, with just a wee smitch less support for women in politics, presumably because this is where the patriarchy is the most deeply entrenched and old habits die hardest. So I aggregated the replies of the general population into one, what you could call a Composite Index Of British Misogyny. Which, at face value, says that we are mot misogynists.

Of course, people can lie to pollsters and do it all the time including for exit polls on Election Night, or else we would not have so many upsets on The Day After. Let's just admit that all respondents were candidly honest this time, and just 3% of us would welcome the UK morphing into Gilead. That certainly looks good, until you do the maths and realise that would be 1.5 million of the British adult population, which is a fucking awful lot of Andrew Tates roaming our High Streets. But we should not underestimate woke masculinism, which is as real and malevolent as fash masculinism, but more insidious as it advances masked under the guise of inclusion. Now the comparison of the general population and Opinium's two Muslim panels, split this time between the three separate items probed in the poll instead of the basic demographics, shows some interesting traits.

Again, there are fewer undecideds among the British Muslim panel, which contributed to both sides of the argument on education and jobs, thusly making the replies similar to general population. But there is a bigger, and statistically significant as it is way beyond the poll's margin of error, difference about women in politics. This is a bit surprising, as 14 out of 25 Muslim MPs elected in 2024 are women. A the time of the election, 12 out of 19 Muslim Labour MPs were women, but all four Muslim MPs in Jeremy Corbyn's Independent Alliance were men. So much for diversity and inclusion. This has now changed to 11 for Labour and 1 for Your Party after Zarah Sultana defected, but that still leaves Labour vastly ahead in the representation of British Muslims in Commons, especially Muslim women. Opinium's American Muslim panel is interesting too, as the differences with the British Muslim panel are statistically significant, quite visibly about women in politics. It would be interesting to have the crosstabs by political affiliation here, which Opinium did not provide. Four Muslims currently sit in the United States Congress, all of them Democrats in the House of Representatives and three of them women. And we know that the Trumpian Republicans are totally equal-opportunity in this matter, as they would to exclude both women and Muslims from politics.

There are only two things that women don’t do as well as men, and that’s design dresses and cook.

(Germaine Greer)

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.

(Leviticus 20:13)

We have to face reality, there is religious homophobia in both Christianity and Islam, but look up where it comes from. Leviticus, which is part of the Old Testament. Al-A´raf, which retells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, also nicked from the Old Testament. So both come from our shared Jewish heritage. No shit. Of course we know that Hamas threw gay men off rooftops in Gaza before gay-friendly Israel brought all the roofs down to street level. Of course we know that Ruhollah Khomeini, the first Supreme Führer, allowed sex-change surgery so Iran could trans away the gay, one generation before the Mermaids Mengele made it their life's mission in the UK. But let's not judge the book by the colour of his socks, as the rest of the world has form too in these matters, especially the UK where homosexuality was still a criminal offence when Keir Starmer was born. And there is still some way to go as Opinium found out when they asked if "LGBTQ+ individuals", their wording again and certainly not mine, should have the same rights as everybody else.

Only two thirds of us definitely think we should not discriminate, so from now on I will always wonder which one out of three persons I meet while the dog is walking me would send me to a re-education camp or summat. Not being a drama queen here, mates, fuck no. Thank Dog then for the "prefer not to say" option, which is really convenient with questions like this, because what you would have to say would actually be the re-education camp, wouldn't it? Quite remarkably, Londoners and the TikTok Generation again stand out, more homophobic than Reform voters. What the fuck? Now, if you add Opinium's two Muslim panels, the comparison is revealing. Remove the undecideds everywhere and you see that British Muslims are not more homophobic than the average Brit, and even the same pattern emerges. The younger ones are less tolerant than their elders, which is quite a surprise, in the UK. Not in the USA, though, as the demographics differ there, which is not really my concern. So we have rectified a common misperception, and a few others too, just as Opinium endeavoured to do when they started this polling. Well done to us.

This being dealt with, what is missing from current polling is a survey of our feelings towards dogs, in the light of the current massive influx of cynophobia in our media. Funnily, it started in 2024 with totally fabricated conspiracy theories accusing the Welsh Government of wanting to ban "racist dogs" from the countryside. Cynophobia reared its ugly head, for real this time, last month in a very cretinous hit-piece on BBC News. Then The Reformgraph jumped on that bandwagon, with a "lived experience" column that sounds totally made up on the corner of some posh pub table. The militant woke Camden Borough Council, that earlier repainted zebra crossings to "inclusive" colours that spook guide dogs, has also proposed banning dogs altogether from several public places including Primrose Hill, which is clear cynophobic sacrilege given its key role in One Hundred And One Dalmatians. In The War Of The Worlds too, but we don't usually pet Martians. It is totally disturbing to see these hateful attacks on Our Holy Canines on both the left ad right, and the public have a right to know where it cones from. Will any pollster have the baws to explore it?

Will you commit an abomination that no one in the world did before you? You come to men with lust instead of women. Indeed, you are a wanton people!

(Quran 7:81)

The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.

(William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II)

If you have studied international relations during the Cold War, like I did as a student in France in another life, a pattern must have sprung to your eyes. Everybody massively mentioned Nazism and the extermination camps as the ultimate form of evil, which it undoubtedly was. But generation after generation ignored Stalinism and the Gulag, and lots worshipped Mao and the Cultural Revolution, who both killed more people than Hitler. The Western far-left and what was not yet called the Global South were joined at the hip about this, and the same pattern is repeating itself today about ways to mend the abominable wounds left behind by slavery. The United Nations are at the vanguard, as you might expect from this captured and discredited organisation. The last example is Resolution 80/250 of 25 March 2026, exclusively targeting the transatlantic slave trade conducted by the European colonialist nations, again perpetuating the omerta on the various shapes of the Arab slave trade, mostly the trans-Saharan trade that enslaved 10 million Africans over seven centuries. Another side of this pressure is the ever louder demands for reparations for slavery from the West, which YouGov has of course polled, and this one deserves a full display of all its crosstabs.

Opponents to reparations outnumber supporters more than 2-to-1, and the obvious and fully expected divides are between our diverse political tribes and generations. But even Green voters and the easily manipulated TikTok Generation are not totally convinced, and Labour and LibDem voters, who you can hardly call colonialist fascists, are clearly against it. Bear in mind too that the claims for reparations are rotted in a concept totally alien to any law, international or not, collective responsibility. It was first invoked by the Soviet Union against Germany at the Nuremberg Trial, and firmly rejected by all other nations. It is also used by Israel to justify state terrorism against the Palestinians in the West Bank. The basement-dwelling woke keyboard warriors should really be more careful which arguments they use and which precedents they associate themselves with. Especially when even London has second thoughts about the claim and Scotland rejects it.

You can fully understand what networks are at work to feed the narrative about perpetual White Western guilt if you look up the data on modern slavery collected by the Global Slavery Index. We're not talking 1808 in South Carolina here, we're talking here and now. You probably did not expect to find out that the ten nations where modern slavery is prevalent are eight Muslim countries, including three of the richest oil-producing nations on the planet, Russia and North Korea. While the ten nations where it is least present are Japan and nine White Western nations in Europe, seven of them members of the European Union. So much for the perpetual guilt of the West, the perpetual oppression of the Global South, and Russia being the perpetual liberator of the oppressed. Just don't tell Zack Polanski and Owen Jones, they would have to think outwith the comfort zone of their echo chamber within the woke metropolitan middle-class bubble, and they could get hurt.

If you live in a glass house, you’ve got to be careful where you take your shower.

(Gil Grissom, CSI, 2004)

A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

(Donald Trump, 7 April 2026)

You may not remember it because events, dear boy, events are moving fucking fast, but last week started with the Orange Baboon threatening Iran with an Extinction Event. Never mind that it could never have happened, no matter how hard he tried, because he would have needed a Death Star to actually do it. It was also a bit rich when you consider Persia already had a functional civilisation when Trump's ancestors were still roaming the forests of Germany clad in the pelts of bears they had killed with stone-tipped javelins. But what was bound to happen did happen. After less than a day, Trump had another taco moment, and offered the mullahs a fortnightly truce instead of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. YouGov instantly polled us about that Potemkin ceasefire, and obviously we were not fooled. Even before Israel deliberately broke the spirit of the ceasefire, if not its letter, we correctly predicted it would not last. It just happened faster than we thought.

There was a very bizarre episode in the immediate foreplay to the ceasefire that did not cease fire, when the Orange Baboon spoke kindly of Iran's plan to make Hormuz a toll strait, even hinting it could be an Iran-US joint venture. Surely Donald Junior and Jared Kushner made him say that, as they saw nothing wrong in making dosh off a protection racket, a time-honoured Mafia scheme. Then the nurse gave Trump his meds and he totally backtracked, even threatening Iran with whatever if they enforced the toll, which they had already done. YouGov actually fielded a trio of polls, because they also wanted to know our assessment of where the ceasefire leaves the two main belligerents. We clearly don't think that it is, or was, our could have been, a success for Iran. This sounds quite obvious, just as if you had asked Londoners in June 1941 if the Blitz had been a success for Winston Churchill. We know, retrospectively, that it actually was, but the people whose home was taken down by bombs might have disagreed. My point is that there might actually be summat of a Blitz Effect among the Iranian population, some unexpected sort of rallying around the flag as the aggressor has inflicted so much damage and killed so many, when you had expected them to be your liberators.

Of course, YouGov also had to speed-poll the other side of the coin, whether or not the ceasefire could be considered a success for the United States. I am really relieved that the results are even worse than for Iran. Trump and his courtiers can brag all they like about victory, the reality is that the USA have been forced to back down. The massive landing, that they had allegedly assembled an XL amphibious force for, never happened. Then the Orange Baboon was forced to send J.D. Vance, who initially opposed the war, to fake negotiating with the mullahs because Witkoff and Kushner are crassly incompetent and would sign anything if there is some dosh to be made off it. So we are back to a weird panto around the Strait of Hormuz, and we are not even totally sure that Trump's two destroyers really went all the way to the Gulf, chasing mines that are probably not even there. YouGov obviously had to probe us about possibly sending British ships to the Strait of Hormuz. We first rejected it, then reluctantly accepted it when the pretext was to protect shipping from Iranian attacks. Now we are strongly against sending any Royal Navy ship there to help Trump's blockade, as it should be to help Keir Starmer stand his ground against the Orange Baboon's smear and threats.

In fact, asking if the fake ceasefire was good for either Iran or the USA is totally the wrong question. It was a success only for Israel. It allowed them to pause the whack-a-moleing of the Iranian leadership and reallocate their resources to another target. Hezbollah, or rather Lebanon, as Netanyahu seems to have a hard time telling them apart. Israel clearly saw it as explicit permission for a full genocide of Lebanon, similar to their genocide of Gaza and the Russian genocide of Ukraine. Because this is genocide, not "just" war crimes, when you deliberately target civilians in residential areas, and displace the whole population of an area you want to annex. Israel, Russia, same actions, same crimes. And the USA also cannot escape the harsh reality of the Iran War. Trump has lost. Remember what I told you last time. If Iran is sitting at the negotiating table, Iran has won. And this is just what Trump has invited them to do. No war goal has been reached, because no proper war goal ever existed. The regime hasn't changed, the centre of gravity of power has just shifted from the mullahs to the Pasdaran, which is worse for the Iranian people. Trump has lost because he never really knew what he wanted with that war and got bored. Fucking toddler.

Wonders never cease. He blinked. He may be human after all.

(Alexandra Eames, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, 2003)

I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up on energy, businesses’ bills go up on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.

(Keir Starmer, 9 April 2026)

YouGov is obviously not our only source of information about how we feel about Trump's Iran fiasco. Ipsos has also fielded a big comprehensive poll that explored some stones left unturned by YouGov. This was fielded before J.D. Vance made a return trip to Islamabad and terminated talks with Iran even before they had really started, so our current mood may be even less favourable to the USA than the Ipsos poll. They found that two thirds of us oppose Trump's military action against Iran, and he can only blame himself for that. We are not poodling to you, Orange Baboon! But the most important part, from the governments' point of view, is what Ipsos identified as our main concerns in these unpredictable times. This was obviously from a pre-scripted list, not spontaneous stream of consciousness replies, but it covers most key issues.

The one item Ipsos should have included, and didn't, is our level of concern for the Lebanese people. Right now, it seems that only Emmanuel Macron and the Pope are really outraged by Israel's genocide of Lebanon though, to his credit for once, Zack Polanski has also mentioned it and urged Keir Starmer to act to stop it. Otherwise, the poll identified the main areas of concern quite correctly. Broadly, a domino effect from instability in the Middle East, threatening our national security and our economy through a new oil crisis. But we do not have the cards here, Iran does. Or maybe the Kremlin's Nosferatu does, as he has been openly taking the piss with an offer to mediate for peace between the Orange Baboon and the Pasdaran. But what could we do? Honestly, there is only one sensible option on the table, which is to do jack shit and let the Orange Baboon sort out his own fucking mess. This is where we unearth evidence that the Iran War is obviously testing everybody's ingenuity, and especially the pollsters' imagination. Ipsos came up with just four options, all of which are complete non sequiturs.

#1 is irrelevant, as Trumpanyahu don't need any weaponry from us. Perhaps we could offer EU marmalade instead. #2 has already been granted and cannot be rescinded, unless we want Trump to treat us like Spain, threatening to use the bases anyway and telling us to get fucked. Then, as everybody expected, not one US ship and not one US plane showed up in Spain in the seven weeks of hostilities. If Trump chickens out in front of Pedro Sánchez, who is like a Starmer con cojones, imagine what he would do in front of a bawed Starmer. #3 won't happen as we already haven't got enough lads for a proper Trooping The Colour, and nobody wants to recall Harry to active duty. #4 is the dumbest as it is bound to fail, so better leave it to Macron. If, by some miracle, it worked, Manny would gloat about it for months, but that wouldn't really matter as he already thinks he is the Best In Show of the century. This naturally leads us to the logical follow up, how we rate Keir Starmer's handling of the situation. The situations, that is, the war and Trump's mantrums. Ipsos did not poll that one, but YouGov did, repeatedly.

I can't help feeling that we are totally unfair to Starmer here. We thought he was handling Trump well a year ago, when he actually wasn't, still poodling to him for a few missiles for Ukraine, which they never got anyway. And, as soon as he rebels. in a relative way, we say he is handling the situation badly, This is fucking absurd. I could say the same about our appraisal of his handling of the war itself, which has oddly gone up, then down, them up again for no obvious reason that I can remember. I genuinely think that Keir deserves better than that. He hasn't navigated the mined waters of this hopelessly absurd war flawlessly, especially in the very first days. But once he found his comfort zone, a minimal concession followed by a solid resolve to never go further, he has been pretty good at it. The crosstabs of YouGov's last poll on this are quite revealing. Left-leaning voters and the under-50s think Keir has done well, even Green voters. Those on the right and the older geezers think he has done badly. So, maybe Keir shouldn't worry too much, as he has support where it actually matters, and just keep on keeping on. Like refusing to be dragged into Trump's last hissy whim, the blockade of Hormuz, and keeping our minehunters dry for a later task, the removal of the imaginary mines.

The rest of the world is paying a Trump tax as a reward for the American people having voted an unstable, not very clever sociopath into the White House.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 30 March 2026)

This is not a war that we started, nor is it a war that we joined, notwithstanding the advice of the opposition parties, but it is a war that will have an impact on our country.

(Rachel Reeves, 24 March 2026)

Rachel is right, of course. A hard rain's a-gonna fall because, ye ken, we're at war. Just not with Iran. Ipsos surely think we must be prepared for everything that will hit us between now and the Autumn Statement, so they tested a whole array of abominations worthy of a plague of locusts 2.0. The staff at Ipsos must have listened a lot to their parents' and grandparents' horror stories of 1973 and 1946, as there a distinct whiff of Ted Heath's response to the Yom Kippur War Oil Crisis, that cost him the election some months later, with a discreet pinch of Attlee's postwar restrictions. Next thing you know, BBC One will bring back Rylan for a double-length series of Ready Steady Snoek. Of course, we do reject the rationing of food, we're not that desperate yet, but also of moisturiser and condoms, if that's what Ipsos meant with "personal care" items. Keir Starmer may not be Winston Churchill, as the Orange Baboon infamously said, but the overall feeling from that poll is that We The People do not have the Blitz Spirit either, and are not ready for sacrifices. Yet.

Several questions in this poll show a lot of popular support for all sorts of subsidies, that would make coming hardships more bearable. As if there was a magic money tree somewhere, funding billions in subsidies out of thin air. This is part of the same delusion as believing you can be granted any service for free. "There is no such thing as a free meal" is not a neo-liberal soundbite for election campaigns, it's a basic truth. If you're not paying for it, it's because somebody else has, through general taxation. It would be worse for subsidies as it would be new spending, and Rachel Reeves would have to fund it either with tax hikes, or by slashing spending in other departments. Think it through, mates, do we really want to appease the fossil fuel lobby by defunding the NHS? Or are we smarter than that, and will ask motorists to make some tiny sacrifices for the greater good? We are indeed lucky that the lousy state of local government in England makes every year an election year, so we are unlikely to be asked for any sacrifices before VE-Day. Past that, Labour may well have more pressing concerns to deal with, so maybe immobilism will be our saviour.

There is a side story you may have missed amidst all the fracas, but is quite entertaining. Pope Leo XIV, né Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, was invited to celebrate Ron Kovic's birthday in Trumpistan. This would have been quite a jolly, with VIP Lounge treatment at the Donald J. Trump International Airport, a solemn mass at the Donald J. Trump Cathedral and a pescetarian state dinner at the Donald J. Trump House. But Holy Bob told them to fuck off because of a brawl with Pete Hegseth's staff over Vatican City's disapproval of illegal wars. Catholic convert J.D. Vance was really miffed by the whole incident, but he sadly wasn't present in DC to prevent it, being too busy campaigning in Hungary for Putin's lapdog Viktor Orbán. Pope 267, who is actually the 265th, went even further than cancelling his holiday, and pledged to never return to the USA so long as POTUS 47, who is actually the 45th, is in charge. "What the fuck does this have to do with anything?", you may ask. Just that we have our own Head of Church's state visit to the USA, that is proceeding despite popular opposition, proving that Holy Bob has bigger baws than Sly Keir.

Now we have four polls about the infamous state visit, and it's 3-to-1 against going. But it has been officially confirmed by The Palace and we even have the dates, just eight days from now and for a gruelling four days of sycophantic BBC coverage. Which I will not watch, but I will definitely watch the replay if there is anything like a major diplomatic incident. That may very well happen if Trump is off his meds and goes off script during his state dinner speech. After all, he has already managed to insult Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Cyril Ramaphosa, Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, Sanae Takaichi and Mohammed bin Salman quite directly, so why should Charmilla be immune? Above all, why would we want to keep the defunct not-so-special relationship alive? It's not fucking Pet Sematary and, if it was, it would do more harm than good. Keir Starmer must definitely go all the way down his road to Damascus, or else it will be our road to Samarra. Be bold and tough, put the UK's and Europe's interests first, encourage the Orange Baboon to leave NATO instead of cajoling him to stay and you will have your place in history. But the one big reason to cancel the visit is that we can't allow J.D. Vance within touching distance of Charmilla. Just look what it did to Pope Francis and Viktor Orbán.

The idea of a special relationship we should now completely forget.

(Peter Ricketts, 8 April 2026)

We need to have a mature, respectful debate about trans rights. Wherever we've got to on the law, we need to go further.

(Keir Starmer, The Andrew Marr Show, September 2021)

You could have thought that gender self-identification, the legally allowed falsification of legal documents, was off the table and wiped out of the political discourse since the UK government quashed the SNP's asinine Gender Recognition Reform Bill and the Supreme Court validated and affirmed the primacy of reality over fantasy. But the Green Party of England and Wales thought they had to revive it in their current draft manifesto. But you wouldn't know if you haven't been paying attention to detail, as they are very careful to hide it from sight, like the unruly uncle who peed in the plant pots at Nan's funeral. It was never ever mentioned during the Gorton and Denton by-election campaign, as they know it is kryptonite in the eyes of two demographics they absolutely needed for a win, the white working class and the Muslim electorate, both long-time Labour supporters and both socially conservative. But it is in their policy proposals, and was probed by Merlin Strategy, who unsurprisingly found convincing opposition to it, worth detailing across all demographics and politics.

For the avoidance of all doubt and ambiguity, Merlin Strategy chose a long and detailed wording, describing the policy as self-identification for trans and non-binary people, meaning for example transwomen can have access to the same spaces and opportunities as those born a woman. Always smart to highlight the practical consequences instead of the ideological justifications, as this is how you get honest replies, except from the quarter of us who won't take a stand because they are terrified of being called Trumpian bigots by the cancel culture zealots. But we still see that the case for self-ID is weak because women oppose it as much as men, contrary to a widely spread narrative. It also has weak political traction, as only Green voters support it, while Labour and SNP voters are split down the middle, instead of being the strong supporters the trans ideology lobby expected them to be. It doesn't get better when you consider the other crosstabs used in the poll.

Ironically, Scottish voters, who were like the test sample for self-ID just like for the poll tax, are more massively against it than any region of England save the LibDem-friendly South West. Gender self-identification is mentioned in the Green Party's manifesto for the 2024 general election, in the part about "Defending your human rights", but they surely did not need polls like this one to know it is highly unpopular, and a potential vote-killer. Why else would they keep it hidden at the best moment to promote it, a by-election campaign that attracted national attention? Could the Greens be no different to run-of-the-mill establishment politicians? Courage in politics means standing by your policies, even if they are unpopular, if you genuinely think they are in the best interest of the people and the country. Pushing unpopular policies out of the way is what poll-driven politicians do, it's political cowardice. The Greens have proven they are political cowards too, despite their narrative of rebellion and insurgency, just like the old-school politicians they aspire to replace.

Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.

(Nicolas Chamfort)

The Green Party are high on drugs, soft on Putin.

(Keir Starmer)

Something odd happened in the aftermath of the infamous Gorton and Denton by-election, a once in a lifetime event, or maybe it was just a once-a-year event. The Londoner metropolitan mediatariat and punditariat had a Damascene Epiphany, as they realised they may have been betting on the wrong horse for a whole year. The decline of Reform UK and the rise of the Greens in voting intentions, validated and affirmed by the by-election, meant that they had to change the narrative and make up a different self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the metropolitan mediatariat and punditariat are more than a Londoner bubble of groupthink, they are the Borg Cube. And, if you have seen these iconic episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know what the trademark colour of the Borg Cube is. Green. So, "Nigel Farage will be the next Gauleiter of Großbritannien" gave way to "Zack Polanski will unseat Keir Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras". But what are the people's motivations to vote Green? More In Common beat YouGov to it this time, and graced us with a whole poll of our deepest secret thoughts about the Greens.

So, the main reason why somebody would vote for the Greens is that they like their policies. Which is a perfectly good reason, and probably the main motivation of the supporters of any party. But it is also very revealing that most of the motivations are not pro-Green, but just anti-Labour. Eight out of the ten most-chosen reasons for voting Green are just that, and seven out of these eight could equally be used to justify a vote for Reform UK. That is fucking confusion, as it only leaves us with "I stan Zack", and we can hardly consider that a reasonably sound and well thought out political analysis. I guess all we need now is Polanski showing up at Glastonbury, the perfect conformist bourgeois mass event, in between Lewis Capaldi and Dizzee Rascal, to check if he can get the same chant of approval as Jeremy Corbyn some centuries ago. Before this happens, More In Common also offered us a full slate of very good reasons to never vote for the Greens.

Lack of experience is definitely not the good reason many people think it is, or else none of us would have ever got our first job, and we would still be stuck with the Liberal Party as the main force of the British Left. But saying that the Greens are fucking irresponsible wankers, if you allow me the rephrase the second most-quoted reason as what it actually means, is definitely a very valid motivation for never wanting them anywhere near the corridors of power. It is also revealing that most motivations here focus on what the Greens actually have to offer, rather than on how different they are from Labour or any other party. Half of the most quoted reasons for not voting Green are directly linked to their actual policies, not to our feelings of like and dislike, which could easily make you conclude that anti-Green voters are more articulate and politically proficient than pro-Green voters. As a relevant side order, YouGov cast an interesting light on today's Britain with a poll about which social class we self-identify as.

So we mostly identify as a working class country, and barely anyone identifies as upper class, though 1% of the adult population is still summat like half a million, a lot more than the hereditary peers and their extended families. And the biggest contingent is within the TikTok Generation, who also identify as the most middle class of all. even if it totally does not fit at all with their parents' generation, two notches up. Funny too that LibDem voters self-identify as the most middle class of all political tribes, but we should probably have expected that from the party who dominate Oxfordshire and Somerset, and own Richmond Park. I am not saying that the class we are born in predetermines our politics, though it obviously helps. But Tony Benn was a hereditary peer, wasn't he? Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, 2nd Viscount Stansgate. He renounced the peerage, but that did not abolish it, so it lives on in his eldest son. Then I guess we should ask Owen Jones what he makes of Reform voters identifying as working class significantly more than any other demographic, while Green voters feel more middle class, even if the party itself doesn't admit it.

Working class people are increasingly looking to the Greens as the only party which will tackle the cost of living crisis and stand up for their rights.

(Anonymous Green Party source, The Guardian, 30 March 2026)

I've actually never taken a drug in my life, or even drunk alcohol, but I still don’t sit here as the fun police.

(Zack Polanski, The Guardian, 1 February 2026)

But the litmus test is not how much you stan Zack or want to cancel Keir, but whether you actually agree with all the stuff the Green Party of England, Wales, Gibraltar and the Isles of Scilly have on offer. The best place to find that is of course their Manifesto for the 2024 general election, with the sole caveat being that they since reframed some of the proposals that made them look like fucking wankers, while doubling down on some others that definitely make them look like fucking wankers. Just don't let me be misunderstood, though. Being a woke wanker is still a lesser evil than being a fascist, but I still would have a hard time choosing between a passive Putinist and an active Putinist. Just saying. Then we had two polls surveying the people's assent of the Green manifesto, from Lord Ashcroft and More In Common. The items tested by More In Common have a "neither" option, as if people could genuinely neither agree nor disagree with something, and the items tested by Lord Ashcroft do not. There are a few duplicates as sone items were tested by both, but most were not, so we have a fairly comprehensive picture with this combination of the two.

For full disclosure, the average reply for all 24 items mentioned in either poll is 40% support versus 39% opposition. This is hardly conclusive, and not really the massive vote of confidence any party needs to be a credible contender for government. The first third of the pollsters' laundry list gives us some hints on how we reached this situation. Some proposals are massively controversial and divisive, while others could be consensual if you forgot that other parties also propose the exact same things. You also quickly realise that the Greens' most controversial proposals are basically totally fake radicalism and rebellion. There is nothing bold and stunning in pandering to the wet dreams of the Camden Town hipsters, who love nothing more than getting high on veterinary medication, or kowtowing to the radicalised fringe of the electorate for whom prevention of radicalisation is fascist anathema.

You definitely get a strong feeling that the Greens, pretty much like the Turquoiseshirts, are living in an alternative reality that none of us common people will ever gain access to. But Zach And The Boys are also smart enough to find ways to live up to their newfound "socialist eco-populist" persona, with some hugely popular proposals they have nicked from multiple actors in the worldwide progressive scene. Closing the wage gap, making the überwealthy contribute, taxing disproportionate corporate profits, nationalising providers of basic necessities, who wouldn't agree with that? Never mind that all of this has been around in left-wing circles for a generation, and that neo-liberal zealots have never been able to prove conclusively that any of it was unfeasible, or that the windfall tax on energy companies already exists and was enforced by the Conservatives. Just let Zack enjoy his fifteen minutes under the spotlight, he fought hard for that.

Now there is a very puzzling item at the tail end of the third third of the items tested by our duet of pollsters. The wagging tail end, actually, as it concerns our beloved Holy Canines. Where the fuck does this idea of a fucking licence to own a fucking dog come from? Is that meant to be summat like the Social Services investigation when you apply to adopt a human baby? I strongly suspect summat similar, which would be fucking ridiculous when Courts don't even use the full force of existing legislation against animal abuse. You know why this happens? Because animal abuse cases are tried in Magistrates Courts, that can't hand prison sentences of more than six months. If you want abusers to feel the full force of the law, you have to move these cases to the Crown Courts, where no limitations on sentencing apply. And also mandate that these will be juryless trials, to circumvent the oven-ready argument about the Courts being already clogged. We obviously cannot hope David Lammy to make that move, or Reform proposing it as they see nothing wrong in animal abuse at the hands of their posh donors, so maybe the Greenies should appropriate that. You never know, it could even be popular.

People had seen us as a party for climate justice but hadn’t realised the extent to which we are a socialist party.

(Kate Dodd, Green Party coordinator in Wakefield, The Guardian, 7 February 2026)

This is an extremely new approach, but I can see it becoming popular very quickly, because it’s so safe and a lot cheaper than a boob job.

(Zack Polanski, The Sun, 12 June 2013)

The increasing personalisation of British politics over the last 50 years has led to some local variant of presidentialisation, where a party's chances are only just as good as their leader's personal stature. There is no reason why the Greens should escape that curse, and two recent polls have caught just that, one from More In Common and one from Lord Ashcroft. More In Common started softly. with the time-honoured question about how strongly people would consider voting for the Greens at the next general, without further comment attached. Having thusly established a baseline, they went for the jugular, digging up the old story about increasing boob size by hypnosis. An interview has recently emerged of the Green Party’s Leader, Zack Polanski, speaking to the BBC in 2013. In this he repeated claims that “the evidence is growing” that hypnosis could be used to enlarge a woman’s breasts, in their own chosen wording. Then they asked the question again, only to find that the likelihood of a Green vote had fallen dramatically across all demographics, just as you would expect.

This is of course totally unfair and riddled with Schadenfreude, as nobody can seriously think that Polanski really believed that this claim was true. Or we wouldn't if he hadn't doubled down on it publicly, which makes his current denial of the whole episode less credible. Arguing that he was just naively using his acting skills to convince customers is not the best defence, as we can then legitimately ask if he is not acting again today in his newfound political role. Lord Ashcroft chose to go 100% personal, reminding their panel that Green Party leader Zack Polanski used to be a hypnotherapist and once claimed he could increase the size of women’s breasts by hypnosis, and then asking if that made their opinion of him more or less favourable, Of him, not the party, so that was deliberately ad hominem, and the replies were just as bad for Che as the More In Common poll. A reminder of his past hurts his credibility across all demographics, especially women and even the usually gullible TikTok Generation. Even worse, Green voters are split down the middle over this, Che's kryptonite.

The Greenies have now found another way to distance themselves from the working class, siding with the resident doctors in their neverending pay rise war against Wes Streeting. Remember that resident doctors have already got a 35% pay rise over the last four years, the biggest part if it from the Labour government, and now demand an extra 26% on top of that. For full disclosure, resident doctors currently make £48k in their first year, £56k in their second year, £62k when they are upgraded to registrars. Their demand would increase that to £78k after three years on the job, when a nurse or paramedic makes £35k to £42k after three years. The median full-time salary in the UK was £39k in 2025, so it's easy to see that rooting for the resident doctors is not the hill an allegedly socialist party should choose to die on. Unless there is an ulterior motive, like having identified resident doctors as their best cannon fodder in the wokeification of the NHS for the benefit of the trans lobby. This does make sense as the British Medical Association, which supports the resident doctors' strike, is a thriving hive of transcultist groupthink. That's exactly how opportunistic run-of-the-mill politicians focused on expediency would act, and there is every reason to believe the Greenies are no fucking different.

Actually increasingly more and more as I work with people, there's starting to become anecdotal evidence, at least, of a growth in breast size.

(Zack Polanski, BBC Radio Humberside, 18 June 2013)

NATO was created as a defensive alliance. It was not an alliance that was designed for one of the allies to go on a war of choice and then oblige everybody else to follow. I'm not sure that's the sort of NATO that any of us wanted to belong to.

(General Sir Nick Carter, BBC News, 15 March 2026)

Over the last few months, two entities have displayed an obsessive fixation on NATO, the Green Party of England and Wales and the Trump administration. Both have shown a similar willingness to demean NATO and weaken it. Both have issued contradictory statements but fueled suspicions that they both want to destroy NATO from within. There is definitely a commonality of purpose between the loopy far-left and the fash. The destruction of all structures and organisations where civilised democratic nations work together to ensure their safety against aggressions. The difference is only in the means. Trump turns NATO into a protection racket and then threatens to withdraw from it anyway. Polanski wants to cut defence spending when we need it most and disconnect us from international defence cooperation we are a part of, and is an essential part of our national security strategy. Fortunately, we do not live in the same fantasy world as Zach, and the British public's support for NATO membership has remained strong through the years.

YouGov has tracked our support for NATO for more than six years now, and it has surged from an already very high level just after the Russian aggression of Ukraine. Which is embarrassing for the likes of Polanski and Corbyn, as they are in total denial about the true ethnic supremacist, imperialist and genocidal nature of Putinism, and how we should protect ourselves against it. The full crosstabs of the most recent iteration of this tracker are enlightening, as they show that absolutely nobody in Great Britain is willing to go along with Polanski's defeatist and Russia-appeasing rhetoric. Green voters massively support NATO membership, and so does the TikTok Generation, the usual preferred target for the Greens' indoctrination. NATO membership is not open for debate, there is a massive consensus across all demographics and politics. Even Scotland supports it 15-to-1, more strongly than England. The Great British Public clearly has no room for the Green Party's barely intelligible position, or Zarah Sultana's call to withdraw from the "imperialist war machine", and we can only hope it stays that way.

But the road is not paved with milk and roses, as we are still facing the threat of Trump gutting NATO from the inside. Rather, I think we are, though it is difficult to be sure of what is on Trump's mind, as I am not sure he even knows from one day to the next. There may be a couple of good things coming out of his insane war on Iran, though. First, the Europeans in NATO have proved Zarah Sultana wrong with their refusal to be dragged into it despite Trump's increasingly deranged mantrums. Second, the whole world knows without a doubt that the USA can no longer be trusted on any issue, and that we must be ready to go on without them. The British public are clearly worried that NATO without the USA would be weaker, but also optimistic that it would go on, even Reform voters tend to lean that way. Starmer's path is clear now. Skip the stage of grief and whining over Trump's betrayal, go straight to being part of the solution. An alternative Alliance, the foundations of which are already here with the Coalition Of The Willing supporting Ukraine against Trumputin.

Obviously, NATO's credibility has again been weakened by its Secretary General, the Ornge Baboon's obedient lapdog Mark Rutte, describing it as a platform for the United States to project power on the world stage, just days after the shambolic attack on Iran. This is just the kind of cretinous outburst that fuels the Russian Reich's propaganda and the far-left's narrative about NATO being just a tool of US imperialism. Then the Greens do have a point, we need a fallback strategy to protect us against the Orange Baboon's appetite for destruction of NATO. But mine is certainly not theirs, as I don't see our future in any sort of alliance with countries who have been on Russia's side for years. Any future Trumpistan-less New Model NATO has to include obvious allies like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, but certainly none of the Global South. If we want to talk to them, we have the United Nations for that, where they always have been faithful foot soldiers of the Russian Reich. I can easily see why Che Polanski wants to drag us into that trap, but our government is surely smart enough to steer away from it.

One Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: the integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO.

(Anne Applebaum, The Myth Of Russian Humiliation, 2014)

Trump lacks some of the qualities traditionally valued by the British. He has no class, no charm, no composure, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity.

(Neil White)

The New York City branch office of YouGov has also tracked the support for NATO membership in the USA, and a deep dive into their archives has dug up surveys dating back ten years. The results are not what you would expect from the country who ceaselessly bragged for eighty years about being the leader of the free world and the guiding light of democracy, or whatever. In the real world, the feelings of US public opinion towards NATO make them a weak link amidst the Alliance. Support for withdrawing from NATO went down in 2022, in the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it rose up again as soon as the summer of 2022. Trump's shenanigans and his constant demeaning of the USA's allies has kept it at a high level ever since, about one out of five Americans.

It is quite revealing that support for NATO membership in the USA, the alleged pillar of the Alliance, is steadily some 20% below support for membership in the UK. So you clearly see why no British Prime Minister should ever tolerate lectures from any US President about our commitment to NATO, when barely half of their own people support staying in it. Support for NATO membership is also fluctuating more wildly, and is therefore more fragile, in the USA than in the UK. When your commitment to the most powerful alliance in living memory depends on your public opinion's or your President's mood swings, you can shove your fucking lectures up your arse, mates. The inbuilt frailty of the USA's involvement in NATO is also supported by the crosstabs of YouGov's most recent snapshot of their US tracker.

Harris voters and registered Democrats massively support NATO membership, proving again that they are more aware of the real world and smarter than the average MAGA. Trump voters and registered Republicans are lukewarm, as Trump can't even have a majority of his own tribe in favour of NATO membership. MAGA as the continuation of the Nazi-appeasing isolationism of the 1930s, who'd have thunk? We now have to draw the harshest conclusions from all this. It would be cretinously naïve to think that this is just a phase, and things can only get better with Trump's successor. First, it could be J.D. Vance and things would only get worser, Second, the tenant of the White House is not the problem, the whole US political system is. Trump has conclusively proven that the checks and balances mean jack shit if you are determined to ignore and crush them, and any future POTUS will be tempted to do the same, even a Democrat. So it is our government's duty and our best interest to reframe our alliances, forget the USA and turn once and for all towards Europe. But YouGov warns us that the situation may not be ideal there either.

YouGov has been regularly polling a panel of European countries, all members of the European Union, since the start of the Russian aggression of Ukraine. These surveys cover a wide variety of topics, and have very quickly expanded beyond the Ukraine War, the sadly forgotten war on our doorstep. Each country's public opinion's position on NATO membership is also covered, and the most recent findings are not the most encouraging. Only four out of seven countries in YouGov's panel show massive support for NATO membership, similar or superior to ours. But the triptych of the Old Latin Europe are more reluctant. There is no obvious single reason that would explain all three situations, and they are not equally critical. France is obviously the one we should keep an eye on, as the first military power in the European Union. And even of all Europe, when you consider the sorry state of our own Forces. This is a fucking headache as we have no idea who will be President of France thirteen months from now, and which direction they will take regarding their national security and foreign relations. Not really the uncertainty we need, on top of Trumputin recarving the world behind our backs..

Trump is a troll, and like all trolls, he is never funny and never laughs. His mind is simple, like a bot running on petty prejudices and various nastiness, with no layer of irony, complexity, nuance, or depth. Everything is superficial.

(Neil White)

Let’s go forward and recognise that a stronger, closer relationship with Europe is in the UK’s best interest, particularly in a world that is as volatile as it is.

(Keir Starmer, 13 April 2026)

Maybe you don't remember it, but we have a very meaningful anniversary coming up in a couple of months. One that Benito Farage would celebrate with Sussex Champagne and Yorkshire caviar if he wasn't so overcome by grief after his friend Viktor Orbán's repudiation by the Great Hungarian Public. Ten fucking years since the fucking Brexit referendum, mates. We will obviously see a tsunami of polling to commemorate it, so More In Common have anticipated with a wee poll of their own, which is like a hors d'oeuvre for the 101 we will see until The Day. More In Common advanced more craftily than pollsters usually do, asking us what kind of relationship we want with the European Union on a select list of key domains, not generically as a matter of principle. Quite rightly so, as current events tell us that principles mean fuck all, and it is better to be guided by pragmatism. And our pragmatism tells us that the right choice is closer ties with the EU, albeit reluctantly so on climate change and regulations. Probably because Putin's bots have fed us endless lies about EU regulations, from bent cucumbers and square sausages to the infamous German Marmelade, which is jam, not marmalade.

With numbers like these, Keir Starmer should clearly stop channelling his inner Basil Fawlty and start mentioning Brexit. Not in a subdued way, but with a clear message that Brexit is an abomination that must be eradicated by all means necessary. Starmer must now channel his inner Cato and reboot his proverbial catchphrase, going summat like ceterum autem censeo Brexit esse delendum. He has nothing to lose in the long term, and very little in the short term too, as the incoming VE-Eve elections are lost for Labour anyway. More In Common also clearly identified our massive buyers' remorse over Brexit. Alas, poor Yorick, what's lost is lost, we can't regain what went down in the flood. But, if we could replay 2016 ten years on, our hindsight-infused reply would be a massive vote to remain under the wing of Mother EU. If you remove the undecided and abstainers, those who would whine about the result whatever it is even if they did nothing to shape it, that would be a mammoth 65% to remain versus 35% to leave.

But we do not live in a country where they turned back time, so we have to live with the hand we were dealt by the combination of David Cameron's complete lack of leadership skills, Russian blood money and our own gullibility. This is the perfect evidence that we should always stay strictly within the canonical parameters of representative democracy, and never allow it to be tainted by a pretence of direct democracy, which is antipodean to the very foundations of the Realm's constitutional arrangements. Sadly, the ill-advised anomalies of 1975 and 2016, which do not constitute precedents in any legal sense, have given some mythical legitimacy to the fallacious unconstitutional concept of referendum, when European matters are at stake. So More In Common could not possibly skip asking if we want another one, and of course we do.

Of course, this is the totally wrong answer to a totally wrong question. Because there is no place for a referendum, a practice both Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher unambiguously rejected, anywhere in the process of rejoining the European Union, and having one in 2016 was a complete anomalous aberration. Because, in a representative parliamentary democracy like ours, there are only two powers. The Executive, that is broadly defined by the Royal Prerogative, today de facto the Prime Minister's Prerogative. The Legislative, that is rooted in the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty. Since we do not live in a direct democracy, Power To The People may be a fine song title, but it is just that outwith general elections. In between, all powers are delegated by We The People to the Government and Parliament, with no exception. And that's it. In real constitutional terms, the Government has full powers to negotiate and sign an international treaty like reaccession to the European Union. Then Parliament, and Parliament only, has the power to ratify it, or not. That's how it worked when we joined the European Communities the year A Horse With No Name topped the charts, and that's how it should work to rejoin. To the letter of constitutional powers, with no referendum in sight, no matter how loudly Benito Farage squeals because he is deprived of yet another campaign of hate, fabrications, falsifications and lies.

Brexit did deep damage to the economy, and the opportunities we now have to strengthen our security and cut the cost of living are simply too big to ignore.

(Keir Starmer, 13 April 2026)

Additional lyrics © Robbie Robertson, 1973

I think Reform UK are an existential threat to this country, who we are and what we stand for.

(Wes Streeting, 25 March 2026)

Find Out Now and YouGov are now publishing polls mentioning Your Party and Restore Britain by name in their prompts, instead of bundling them with the other Others, so I have decided to feature both separately too. Not that it changes much, as both are credited with pitifully low scores, very unlikely to change the balance of power in the next Commons. But that's full disclosure for you, mates. And Thank Dog for YouGov introducing this major innovation, in between surveys of the most existential issues of the day. Trendlines of voting intentions still see the Reform vote declining, but these voters are just swarming back home to roost with the Conservatives. Labour is still not doing well, though there are some hints that the Green vote may be going down too. We can only hope, can't we? Just don't fall for the lazy narrative spawned by just one by-election, as we have a whole array of elections in just 18 days, that will enlighten us one way or the other.

My current snapshot includes the last seven polls, fielded by Freshwater Strategy, More In Common, YouGov, Ipsos. Find Out Now and Opinium between 10 and 17 April. That's a super-sample of 12.984, or the price in £ of 1,559 kilogrammes of organic smoked tofu at Tesco's online. Information valid at time of publication. Terms and conditions apply. No deliveries in Northern Ireland. Reform UK is down again on 24%, roughly 8% down on their peak in past snapshots. This totally fits with Nigel Farage's favourability rating, which had gone down 6% in one month, from 32% to 26%, according to More In Common. More relevantly, only 19% of respondents have picked Benito as their "preferred Prime Minister" in this week's More In Common poll, which now probes a five-way race also involving Starmer, Badenoch, Davey and Polanski. Farage has less support here and now than Orbán had in Hungary in the week before his crushing defeat. Let that sink in.

Now one existential question remains hanging like Thor's hammer over Keir Starmer's head. Everybody in the SW1 bubble has known for a long time that Peter Mandelson was a Seveso-grade accident waiting to happen, and now it looks more and more like a Fateh ready to fall from the skies on Oman. Will Peter Mandelson single-handedly achieve what Owen Jones, Anas Sarwar, Donald Trump, The Telegraph, Andy Burnham and Morgan McSweeney combined couldn't, and force Starmer to resign? Or will it be Humphrey Appleby? There is definitely material for a six-parter on BBC One about the whole fucking fiasco, if they make it more House Of Cards than Yes, Prime Minister, with maybe a zest of The Diplomat. I already see Hugh Bonneville playing Keir Starmer. Of course, YouGov could not leave us in the dark about what we think about these events, and has already speed-polled us quicker than the Orange Baboon types a whole page of insults on Fake News Social, so that SW1 could have a whole week-end to ruminate the results, and decide on the less risky scenario.

So, we do think that Starmer has been dishonest, which politicians always are, so this is not a capital offence. But there is no majority pushing him to resign, especially not among Labour voters. It is not especially enlightening, as we have already had like a dozen polls with more of us in favour of Keir leaving than of him staying. The last time YouGov asked, six weeks ago, we were 44% wanting him to leave and 31% wanting him to stay. The Mandy Fiasco has changed fuck all, so everybody should take a deep breath and a wee dram. Methinks the Labour Party would be extremely wrong to bow to pressure and P45 Starmer next week, after what promises to be a Demolition Event at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee tomorrow. First, it would look like they are obeying John Swinney, the last to howl at the moon demanding Starmer's resignation. Fucking bad optics. Second, if they do that now, who can they possibly scapegoat and fire after the widely prophesised debacle at the 7 May elections? Didn't think that one through, mates, did you?

On days like these you reckon the Prime Minister would have more chance of being believed if he had said the dog ate his homework. After all, it’s quite possible that Keir Starmer has not yet realised he doesn’t have a dog.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 17 April 2026)

In the Highlands of Scotland, they are far in the rear of every other part of the English realm in all the comforts and conveniences of life, as well as in mental and physical development.

(Frederick Douglass, Our Composite Nationality, 1869)

Survation recently conducted two Full Scottish, one for Scotland In Union, the other for Diffley Partnership. Oddly, the voting intentions tables of the Scotland In Union poll were never published, though we got the results of their usual heavily massaged question about Independence, which I will not even mention, but the full details of the Diffley poll were quickly disclosed and publicised on their site. Then we had one from Find Out Now, that turned into a freak attraction with the help of Electoral Calculus, but we will look at that later. Finally, we had the monthly deliveries from Ipsos and Norstat, another MRP poll from YouGov, and finally a regular one from More In Common. We cannot say we are deprived of up-to-date information, but the problem is what the fuck we should make of it. Ipsos, the only one to ask the trick question, found that 42% of Scottish voters could still change their mind before the election, which was 37 days away when they conducted their poll. So don't be surprised by this sextet of polls again delivering vastly different voting intentions.

Of course, there had to be a freak sensation in this batch of polls, and it was delivered by Electoral Calculus processing the Find Out Now poll with their dreaded MRP model. They said it would deliver an outright SNP majority on the constituencies only, which sent The Scottish Pravda, who had paid for that poll, into a frenzy of celebration. The problem is that the numbers don't add up, as you get vastly different results on the classic uniform national swing. On 32% of the vote, down a third on 2021, that's 57 SNP constituencies, not 67. So I definitely stick to what my own model says on Find Out Now's numbers. By the way, have you noticed that the SNP no longer enforces the Joanna Cherry Rule, which was just a malevolently opportunistic one-off. Otherwise Stephen Flynn would have had to resign his Commons seat on 22 March at the latest to avoid the Neil Gray imbroglio of 2021 and have the Aberdeen South by-election on the same day as the Holyrood election. The new polls also make the Day After situation much clearer and simpler for Stephen FM, as this batch leaves just one option for a solid majority not subjected to the whims of an unreliable uncontrollable junior partner. SNP cum Labour, again, what else? Unless you believe YouGov and its massive SNP constituency vote, which walks and quacks like an outlier, and the SNP thusly bagging the Impossible Majority.

Survation also tried an approach of tactical voting. Specifically, what would we do if only the Blacks and the Tans had any chance of winning our constituency, and we would have to pinch our nose and vote for the least-hated ones to keep the most-hated ones out? Despite the fragmentation of the national vote, this is still likely to happen quite often, as all opposition parties retain some vestigial strongholds. I can't decide if I should feel reassured or worried that Survation found that the SNP would win all of their duels, but it is good that they also found that Labour would dominate the English Nationalist Party. They forgot one scenario, though. What would you do in a constituency where only the SNP and the Greens can win? I really want to see that one tested, as it is what's coming in Glasgow Kelvin and Maryhill, Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith, Edinburgh Central and Edinburgh Northern, by descending order of the predicted Green vote.

In the meanwhile, the Scottish Greenies are once again proving that they are total fucking nutters. You may remember that Mad Mags Chapman was demoted from the top rung of the North East list by a membership vote some months ago, which was good news as it meant she would lose her seat. But she's back now, as the bloke who beat her has been removed from the list because of an outstanding complaint against him. so Maggie, against whom there is an outstanding complaint, is back topping the list and likely to hold her seat. To make it more farcical. the bloke in question, Guy Ingerson, and his second-in-command of Rainbow Greens, Emma Cuthbertson, have both quit the party and accused it of being "queerphobic" and protective of "cishet" women in positions of power. It's hard to imagine that anyone could outnut Chief Nutter Chapman, but someone just did, The fucking gift that keeps on fucking giving.

The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute. The Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling, and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.

(John Galt, Ringan Gilhaize, 1823)

In the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. If that is a crime, send me back to jail.

(Craig Murray, 15 October 2023)

Now we have a new party competing for our list votes, who self-identify as Alliance To Liberate Scotland, and are duly registered with the Electoral Commission since 2 February. The last authorised changes happened on 9 March, when they registered several descriptions they can legally use on campaign material, but other parties are banned from using. They also self-identify as a bold new political party who are not another political party, depending on which page of their site you read, but all pages agree that they are a single-issue party dedicated solely to achieving Scotland’s independence. Their words, not mine. They even ordered a poll from Find Out Now, to find out... well, not their voting intentions, but just how likely we would be to vote for them. The results are both merciless and priceless.

I'm taking the piss here because, obviously, there is a but. There's always a but, innit? And here we're talking fucking big butts. Because the two brains behind ALS, who are not mentioned on their web site are the faux pacifist Hamas-hugger Craig Murray and the faux socialist Putinist agent Tommy Sheridan, the two blokes who single-handedly drove the Alba Party into the ground with the awful influence they had on Kenny MacAskill. Two fox-shit-eating golden retrievers. IYKYK. Clearly, not many of us are drawn to them, which is fucking good. They have somehow managed to get enough people on board to field lists in all eight regions, though some of these are incomplete. Which is perfectly legal as you can stand even if you have just one name on the list. But having eight lists does not mean they have better odds of snatching a seat, as the rest of the poll's crosstabs show that no region is welcoming them with arms wide open.

Tommy Sheridan is topping the list in Glasgow, and Craig Murray in Edinburgh and Lothians East. To his credit, Tommy has only ever stood for elections in Glasgow as a socialist, while Craig is a serial electoral carpetbagger from Norwich to Edinburgh through Blackburn, and from the Liberal Democrats to the Workers Party. ALS did not actually buy just one poll from Find Out Now, but three. The aforementioned national one and two sur mesure ones for Edinburgh and Glasgow, for Craig and Tommy. So all the elves know who the top dogs are and how they deserve special treatment to the tune of a few thousand pounds. Not very socialist, methinks. They really did not need the extra expenses, as the results of the two regional polls are a teeny weeny smitch different from the crosstabs of the national poll, but not by much. And they still do not make the case for local voters waiting for them as liberators with flowers in their arms, like Putin expected Ukraine to welcome his vatniks.

I just don't see the purpose of ALS as it is definitely not the legacy party for Alba, and treads on the same waters as probably half a dozen just as tiny outfits. Then we all know how misleading these "would you vote for me?" polls can be, as pollsters like YouGov actually use this method for the bigger parties on a regular basis, and it rarely fits with the voting intentions in generic polls. Because the reality of your future vote emerges when you compare the parties, not when you look at them individually, as this is definitely a situation where good is not good enough. It's just like Highlander. In the end, there can only be one, and I certainly hope it won't be these tankies. It will be interesting, though, to see if anyone puts them in a proper voting intentions poll, just once, for the fun of witnessing how badly they do. Such chancers definitely have fuck all to offer to make the cause of independence live long and prosper, they're more like repellents actually, and we deserve better.

Russia is not my enemy and their military action against Ukraine was provoked by the aggressive actions of NATO. Russia is justified in defending itself from NATO aggression. Open your mind to the truth hidden by the elites. Russia was provoked.

(Tommy Sheridan, 19 November 2024)

The people of Snowdon assert that even if their prince should give seisin of them to the king, they themselves would refuse to do homage to any foreigner, of whose language, customs and laws they were thoroughly ignorant.

(Address of Welsh lords, 1282)

We have every reason to expect that The Day After, VE-Day, will be business as usual in Edinburgh, except for the change of tenant at Bute House, that is. But we also have every reason to believe in a tectonic tsunami of Extinction Event magnitude in Wales. The Fall Of The Cardiff Wall. Cymreig Chicxulub. Welsh Labour's K-Pg. Plaid Cymru's leader Rhun ap Iorwerth had every reason to deliver a combative speech at their manifesto launch on 9 April, precisely four weeks before the election. A new poll by Beaufort Research had been published the week before, putting Plaid Cymru 3% ahead of the English Nationalist Party. Which is not remarkable in itself, as YouGov has regularly found bigger leads for Plaid, but it is the biggest lead ever found by Beaufort. so it confirms already quite favourable trends in voting intentions.

There are nevertheless two potential spanners in the cogs before Rhun can do his victory lap. On one side, Labour could regain some lost ground, in a relative way, and it seems entirely reasonable that Plaid Cymru should prepare themselves for that situation, which has been seen in some recent polls. On the other side, polls have also shown that the Greens could snatch votes from disgruntled Labour voters, that would have been expected to go to Plaid. Remember there are no Welsh Greens, no ectoplasmic non-entities like a local Ross Greer, this is the Green Party of England and Wales, Lider Maximo Polanski's troops. Now, if we have a combination of the two on Election Day, which cannot be categorically ruled out, this could lead to quite a conundrum and headache for Rhun ap Iorwerth. The seat projection from the Beaufort poll, less flamboyant for Plaid than the last YouGov poll, illustrates just that.

Beaufort's own projection and mine differ slightly, but point in the same direction. You have the Greens not bagging enough votes to be more than a token gesticulating presence at the back of the chamber, and Labour bagging enough to be more than ghosts haunting the corridors of lost power, and that is such stuff as nightmares are made on, to reflect the actual line from The Tempest, for Rhun ap Iorwerth. He cannot tie his fate to the goodwill of the Greens, as they would not bring enough seats to the table for a majority, which would make him vulnerable to parliamentary guerrilla from Labour. Striking a deal with Labour would guarantee a majority, but would expose him to claims of treason from the most radical in his base, while putting him at odds with his combative anti-SW1 campaign rhetoric. If the actual results reflect this poll, and not YouGov's more Plaid-friendly predictions, VE-Day could turn into summat of a Hangover Day for Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Whatever else may come to pass, I do not think that on the Day of Direst Judgement any race other than the Welsh, or any other language, will give answer to the Supreme Judge of all for this small corner of the Earth.

(Gerald of Wales, Descriptio Cambriae, 1194)

The newest MP in The Commons is the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer, who used to be a plumber. She’ll now earn £98,000 a year, but she’ll do it for 90, cash.

(Roy Wood Jr, Have I Got News For You?, 3 March 2026)

Survation, always ready to outperform YouGov, have regaled us with a new poll about the Gorton and Denton by-election. Because, ye ken, nothing puts you on safer ground than polling an election after it happened. No shit, Of course, I am totally unfairly taking the piss out of Survation here, because what they actually did is a genuine post-mortem of that infamous by-election. You surely remember it was the one the mediatariat, punditariat and pollstertariat wouldn't touch with a six-mile bargepole because they did not know how to handle it, and did not have an oven-ready self-fulfilling prophecy to feed us. Of course, this did not prevent the punditariat from punditificating ex post facto, lecturing us from the apex of their knowledge about how the result was inevitable. And now we have a new self-fulfilling prophecy, that Green Is The New Turquoise and Che Polanski is Labour's Rider Of The Apocalypse. But we have Survation to enlighten us about what really happened.

This is again the sad story of what is and what should never have been. Of course, if Keir Starmer had instructed Labour's NEC to let Andy Burnham stand, he would have held the seat with only minimal damage, as the Greens would have snatched only the votes from George Galloway's loopier-than-thou Wankers Party. There is no point in whining now, as voting intentions for the next general hint that Hannah Spencer would hold the seat. But it's early days, three and a half years until the election, and a fucking lot can change in the meanwhile. Including the Greenies being sent back to the organic woodwork they crawled out of, once the complete irresponsibility of most key points of their manifesto is exposed. Survation put the Burnham Supremacy scenario in a different light too with their crosstabs, showing how G&D would have voted if Andy had been standing, compared to their general election vote and their actual by-election vote.

Interestingly, Burnham would not have just bitten off a big part of the Green vote, but also quite a chunk from Reform UK. This is, not coincidentally, the mix Labour need if they want to avoid being left starkers in the cold at the next general. Candidates that can plug the vote leak towards the Greenies, while losing fewer to the sirens of Reform. Now, if Labour actually face a tough choice next week because of Peter Mandelson, they know what to do. Be an Andy, not a Mandy, and make Burnham Prime Minister. Aye, they can't because he's not an MP, but when there's a will, there's a way, innit? Just make the succession contest last summat like two months and you have more than enough time to find an ageing MP somewhere around Greater Manchester who will agree to retire against some benefits, like an ermine in Starmer's Resignation Honours List. Graham Stringer may be convinced if you ask nicely, and don't botch the by-election this time. Let the Burnham in, and do it quickly. The law says that a by-election must be held within 35 working days of the date of the receipt of the requests to hold it. Their jargon, not mine. But it does not say you can't fast-track it to, let's say, 15 days, does it? Simples. Problem solved.

Hannah Spencer is a plumber and she said she wants to change the cistern.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 3 March 2026)

The Green Party’s historic success in the Gorton and Denton byelection means the future of British politics is now even more uncertain than it was already.

(John Curtice, 27 February 2026)

To make the week even worse for Keir Starmer, Anas Sarwar and Eluned Morgan, J,L, Partners have published the data from a full MRP simulation of all elections that are scheduled for the 7th of the 5th. But it seems there was a glitch in The Matrix, as they first published a file with all results for England, Scotland and Wales, then it vanished, and finally they republished another file with just England and Wales. But I was lucky enough to notice it the first time around and snatch the full file, so here you have an exclusive of J.L. Partners' complete findings for all elections. There is a blue whale of a caveat though, as this comes from an MRP simulation, and they published only the aggregate results by constituency, council and electoral region. It is not proper polling, as you do not get any sample size, estimate of turnout, demographics or all the other crosstabs pollsters routinely use and publish. Which is why I did not use what is actually not a poll in my snapshots of Scotland and Wales, and will only grant you a quick glimpse of what J.L. Partners found in both.

Let's just stipulate that the findings for Scotland and Wales look credible, compared to the real polls we have from other sources, and move on. Of course, the big part here is the findings for the 136 English Councils that have an election this year, as it's what the punditariat will mostly focus on on VE-Day. Of course, all polls of local elections must be handled in a relative way, as this is the English way. IYKYK, or you can just listen to be reminded. Local election polls are notoriously unreliable because they borrow their templates from general election polls, as there are hundreds of cases where these do not fit the specifics and peculiarities of Council elections. Council polling should explicitly offer the choice for Independent candidates and Residents, which are a strong presence here and there, likely to snatch votes off the establishment parties. This year, they should even prompt for the newcomers, Your Party and Restore Britain, instead of bundling them with the other Others. But we have to make do with what we have, albeit reluctantly and with flashing caveats, so here is what J.L. Partners found for the English locals, split between the various types of Councils they still have there.

Obviously, life would be simpler for everyone if England had a single type of Councils, with the same powers all across the nation, like Scotland and Wales. But even Angela Rayner's local government reform did not go that far, as it only aimed at merging the remaining County and District Councils as Unitary Authorities. The current variants of Boroughs, and the ancestral sui generis entities like the City of London Corporation or the Council of Isles of Scilly, would remain untouched. Then, what we see from the poll, compared to the 2022 results, is that Labour are at their most vulnerable in the Metropolitan Boroughs, the constituent parts of the big conurbations in the North and the West Midlands, which used to be Labour strongholds. Just one Metropolitan Borough was up last year, Doncaster for all its seats, and it switched overday from a Labour administration of 51 years, the last 15 of which with a Labour majority, to a Reform majority. Labour are also in a risky position in District Councils, a fair number of which are Labour-held in Lancashire. The poll also gives us a glimpse of how the Councils could go depending on which proportion of seats is up, the full Council, one half or one third.

Interestingly, Labour is at its weakest in Councils where only a third of the seats are up. But it does not necessarily mean big headlines of Labour doom on VE-Day. For example, Labour currently hold 86 out of 96 seats on Manchester Council, and 30 out of the 32 that are up this year. So, even if they lost all their incumbents, which is unlikely to happen, they would still have a majority on the Council. But Labour majorities are definitely under threat from Reform in Leeds and Wolverhampton. And you may also want to check the results in Sheffield, where a Labour minority administration could be ousted by the Liberal Democrats and Greens, not Reform. But the combined forces of the mediatariat and punditariat will obviously be chasing headlines of doom in the Metropolitan Boroughs that have all their seats up. Despite Labour's official denial, there is a very real possibility that the Bin Strike Election in Birmingham turns into a fucking disaster, even if a Reform administration's sole response would be a 20% Council tax hike to hire private bin collectors. We might also witness major crashes in Gateshead, Newcastle, Sunderland and Wakefield, to name just a few.

Nigel Farage has been promoting a £2 million investment in bitcoin, just months after announcing that Reform will accept donations in the form of cryptocurrency. Or, failing that, rubles.

(Gabby Logan, Have I Got News For You?, 17 April 2026)

Hubris lurks in every corner for Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch. The feeling that they are only one move from disaster at any time. They are safe until the moment they aren’t.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 15 April 2026)

Now, if we scroll through the English regions from Berwick to Penwyth, or rather from Tyneside to Exeter if we focus just on those who hold elections in 18 days, the picture of doom has many shades. Labour are obviously under massive threat in the North, where J.L. Partners estimate they will lose half their votes, while Reform would jump from non-existence to nearly 30%. But the Conservatives are also facing major losses from their current 109 Northern seats, and the Greens could easily sneak 100 to 150 new Councillors through the cracks in the left-wing vote. It is also worth remembering that Reform have never taken over a Council with less than 34% of the vote for a majority, or 30% for a minority administration. So their regional averages of 29% to 31% don't put them in the ideal situation for a landslide of epic proportions.

If you also factor in the proportion of seats that are up, and agree that upsets are unlikely where just a third of seats are up, that leaves just four possible gains for Reform in the North, according to J.L. Partners' numbers. Barnsley, Gateshead, Kirklees and Sunderland. To which they could possibly add minority administrations in South Tyneside and Wakefield. That's a wee harvest when you consider that 35 Northern Councils will hold an election on 7 May. But only 11 have all their seats up, which is kind of a shield against massive changes. Then we shouldn't overlook the potential of the Greens, which the poll sees forcing Labour into a minority administration in St Helens and winning their own minority administration in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Strangest things have happened, haven't they? And could happen in the Midlands too.

At first glance, this looks even worse than the North for Labour, who are poised to lose more than half their votes, while Reform would reap almost a third. But Reform face two obstacles here. First, only six out of fifteen Councils holding elections are up in full. Second, their predicted votes are not in the Councils where they would guarantee maximum effect. On the poll's numbers, only Newcastle-under-Lyme and Walsall would be taken over by a Reform majority. Interestingly, the poll does not put Birmingham at the epicentre of the danger zone, even if Labour are predicted to lose their majority, but they already have an escape route mapped for them, a coalition administration with the Liberal Democrats. Otherwise, the best Reform are predicted to do is forcing Labour into a minority administration in Sandwell, and the Conservatives in Solihull. In total contrast, the poll makes Coventry a safe hold for Labour. We could also have some interesting situations in the South.

A record 54 Southern Councils are holding elections this year, including 14 with all seats up and another 6 with half the seats up. I am not including the Imperial Capital here, that has a life of its own, but just the real Leafy South at the heart of Middle England. Labour are not the ones under threat down there, as they have little to defend. The Conservatives are, but not always from Reform. The Liberal Democrats too have a big part to play. The poll says that Reform have a path to a majority in Essex, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Thurrock. All in East Anglia, four snatched from the Conservatives and one from Labour. Reform could also secure a minority administration in Hampshire, but the other Tory-held battlegrounds are uncertain. East Sussex rates as a LibDem-Reform marginal. East Surrey, West Surrey and West Sussex are Con-Lib-Ref three-way marginals in J.L. Partners' findings, with the LibDems topping the poll in all three. More unexpected places to watch when the results start to fall. VE-Day could be more lively than anyone expects.

Hitler was a failed art student and a vegan who blamed all his problems on rich people and the Jews. If he was around today, he'd be attending the Green Party conference.

(Leo Kearse, 28 March 2026)

Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm

(Elaine, 26 May 1940 - New York City, 19 April 2012)

Jeremy's Den

19/04/2026

You Put The Load Right On Me

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You Put The Load Right On Me