Jeremy's Den: There Is Another Side To This Vision

To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn) and a time to every purpose under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to laugh, a time to weep

(Pete Seeger, Turn Turn Turn, 1959)

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between dog and man.

(Mark Twain)

Thirteen years ago today, we lost the great Ray Manzarek, keyboardist emeritus, songwriter and occasional lead singer with The Doors. Today's soundtrack includes his two solo albums of the 1970s, The Golden Scarab and The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It's Out of Control., with just a wee glimpse of his work with The Doors as a hors d'oeuvre. Great Classic Rock stuff with a zest of jazz, to help you digest the aftershock and the full story of the Earth-shattering VE-Eve elections. Not just at the four corners of England, but also in Scotland and Wales. But, before we explore this month's Great Matter, let's deal with something that has been bugging me for some time already. You may remember I mentioned it some weeks ago: the sudden influx of unhinged cynophobia from all corners of the spectrum at once. Now, one pollster, J.L. Partners, has had the baws to brush aside the omerta and investigate this deeper, asking their panel if they would support or oppose banning dogs from the majority of public outdoor spaces. Their wording, not mine. The results are revealing and appalling, so the full crosstabs, freely chosen by whoever anonymously commissioned that poll, deserve to be quoted verbatim and in extenso.

It is really appalling that one out of five Brits are willing to ban Our Holy Canines from public spaces that are here for their enjoyment and the fulfilment of their whole true self. It is nevertheless interesting to see that women and non-graduates are less likely to fall for the hysterical cynophobia peddled by headline-chasing media and vote-chasing politicians. More evidence that baws and degrees do not make you smarter, it even tends to be the opposite. I see signs of social contagion here, amplified by the irresponsible orchestrated panic about "dangerous dogs" a couple of years ago. Have you looked up official statistics from the ONS lately? I guess you haven't, so let me give you one. 565 humans were killed voluntarily by other humans in 2025 in the UK, that's what is filed under "murder" in the depths of the ONS vaults. Another one from the vaults now. 137 humans have been killed by dogs in the UK in 47 years, from 1980 to 2026. Three per year. Tell me again, who's dangerous? Now we have what is potentially the controversial part of J.L. Partners' crosstabs, the one Zack Polanski would surely find a way to call whateverphobic.

Is it hate speech to say that there are cultural differences in the way humans interact with animals and treat them, especially dogs? From where I'm sat, it's a self-evident truth supported by tens of thousands of years of history, but I'm quite sure you would easily find some newly-elected Green Councillor in Waltham Forest willing to call you a bigot for saying it. It is also easy to find out which countries are regularly denounced by animal welfare NGOs and charities for the state-organised massacre of street dogs. None are in the White White West, you can take my word for this. If you are outraged by the mass murder of badgers in England, but find oven-ready excuses for the mass murder of dogs in Turkey, Pakistan and Morocco, you and your double standards are the problem, not me. And I definitely love the fact that atheists are the less likely to succumb to the fabricated cynophobic hysteria sown by the woke do-gooders and The Telegraph, the strange bedfellows of the year. There are some other fun facts in the last batch of the poll's crosstabs, by area of residence and political persuasion. Of course, London is the most cynophobic region of England, and I would have been genuinely surprised if it wasn't. Also good to see that Scotland emerges as the least cynophobic of the Three Nations surveyed by the poll.

Honestly, there is also a poobagload of reasons why I am totally unsurprised that Reform voters are the least likely to stigmatise and ostracise our Four-Legged Angels, even if they see nothing wrong with shooting hounds in the head when they are no longer "useful" for the vixen-eviscerating illegal hunts, while Green voters, the chemically pure distillate of the woke brain rot, are the most willing to do it. Should we expect the worst after the English locals? "In the name of diversity and inclusion, we must uniformise, sanitise and exclude" is standard woke modus operandi, and I would not be surprised if some over-excited Council newbies implemented that against Our Holy Canines. It would really break my heart, and my dog's too, if I had to commend some Reform UK wankers for jumping to the rescue of our dogs. But it could definitely happen, as we can never underestimate the stupidity and mediocrity of the woke zealots, and the opportunism of the Fash. By the way, if you want to see the bright side of life, follow Niall Harbison on Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube or his own website, and donate to fund his extraordinary work. You won't regret it, and can even check what Niall achieves with your donations, reported for full transparency.

Dogs are the best role models. They don't care if you're rich or famous. Just be nice to them and they'll love you forever.

(Ricky Gervais)

We have to recognise the dangers that we’re in now, that on this trajectory it doesn’t look good.

(Debbie Abrahams MP, 9 May 2026)

We were told in advance that it would be fucking bad for the Labour Party and, in retrospect, that sounds like a fucking understatement. BBC One's Election Night started with a bang, with an "anonymous Conservative source" claiming that Reform UK had snatched all 14 seats up in Basildon. Even before the count started, and of course it was later proved false. The Fash had nicked only 11. But they did nick all seats that were up in a shitload of other Councils. From Hartlepool, which was kind of expected, to Cannock Chase and Tamworth, which probably wasn't. Now the big picture leaves little room for interpretation. It was a fucking disaster for Labour. Lightning never strikes twice, they say, but it just did. Even Morgan McSweeney, if he still had a job, would have a hard time denying it. But, contrary to Focaldata's convoluted demonstration, that has fed the current media groupthink, Labour can really find solace in the fact that it could have been much worse. Because that's what the media told us on a loop just before Election Day, inspired by two different seat projections from More In Common and Britain Elects, that both now look like bogus bullshit bollocks.

The comparison between these projections, still available on Wokopedia for now, and the real national results shows how pathetically laughable they were. There are very solid reasons to believe they never were actual projections, but random numbers thrown around to create a narrative, actually a sub-plot of the many prophecies of doom of recent months. They even complied with the new variant, "Labour is dead because the Greens are out to get them", ridiculously overinflating the Greens' seat projection to twice what they actually bagged. You may also remember how the punditariat was ablaze with a prediction that came out the blue of cyberspace, that Labour would lose 74% of their seats. At the end of the day, they lost only 55% if you compare to the seats they won in 2022, or 52% if you compare to the headcount of their incumbents. Then we can also embrace the mood of the times, and relativise and contextualise. We just have to take a step back and look at the big picture, two big pictures actually.

On the left, you have the 136 Councils who held elections on VE-Eve, but based on their full membership, not just the seats that were up this time. On the right, you have all 316 English Councils, for their whole 16,200 seats. The shift away from Labour leaves less of a bruise if you look at the full strength of the Councils that were in the spotlight this month, and even less if you mix them with all the other Councils in England. The turquoise blotch at the bottom is les impressive when it accounts for only 15% of the seats, instead of 29%. And even that one is not as impressive as the mediatariat are hypnotising you to believe. Hypnosis doesn't make anything bigger, you should know that by now. Not your boobs, not the Fash. England has not been submerged by a turquoise tsunami, mates, and not by a green one either. That's where the antiquated English organisation of local government comes in handy, wit its staggered terms and odd election cycles. It dampens the impact of waves and gives you a second chance to quash them. Which is what Labour just had, after the 2025 crash, and they failed to seize the opportunity. They have two shots left, in 2027 and 2028, which they can't afford to spoil, or else they turn into the Black Knight.

There must be an orderly transition of leadership well before the local elections next year.

(Tony Vaughan MP, 9 May 2026)

Can't believe the amount of Nigerians in town. Should melt them all down and fill in the potholes!!

(Glen Gibbins, Reform UK Councillor in Sunderland, March 2024)

Now, you may ask, what are the genuine deeply-burrowed root causes of Labour's descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench? An oven-ready educated guess is that they are the same as last year, when Labour actually lost very little because most of the elections were held in Conservative Councils. Discontent is like a macédoine, there are so many different bits in it that it's hard to tell what the dominant flavour is. So the first stage is to identify clearly what the electorate's main concerns are, directly from us instead of some marginally representative focus group of ten gathered in the conference room of a hotel in Bognor Regis. Opinium did just that, with the necessary finishing touch that the survey was about issues "in your local area", not what you have read in The Daily Mail about stuff that worries the non-existent Average Brit. The results are quite enlightening and revealing.

Immigration, which Reform UK and the mediatariat want you to believe is the Realm's Great Matter, is actually not. It comes fifth, picked by only one out of five respondents, when the question specifically asks to identify issues of concern "in your local area". Because this is how you get the real answers, not stuff determined by propaganda or social contagion through the Fash-appeasing mediatariat. Strictly speaking, it should not even have been included in the poll's list of issues as Councils have zero power on immigration policies. Even the devolved Parliaments and governments of Scotland and Wales have none. Anyway, it is summat of an atmosphere creator in election times, so Opinium then asked which party we think has the best ideas to handle these issues. To nobody's surprise, Reform are considered the best at handling immigration, the non-issue that Councils are not in charge of. But never mind, the important points are in the assessment of the other issues, those Councils are really in charge of.

Even here, there is some sense of disillusion and frustration. The proportion of people who can't select a party or opine that all of them are crap is huge, twice as big on every issue as the proportion of people actually selecting one of the competing parties. No party is a winner here, as the ideal candidate would be the one considered proficient on all issues, and none of them is. The average scores, with immigration excluded, range from 7% for the LibDems to 14% for Reform, so nobody can boast about genuine popular trust in their abilities. It is therefore no surprise that some big cities facing complex issues, like Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle, find themselves now in a deep fucking mess because their Councils are fragmented in a way that makes a solid and coherent majority impossible. Opinium finally asked which category of issues motivated our vote most, and there is a lot to unpack here, I am not surprised that a fairly high proportion were motivated by national issues, like inciting Starmer to fuck off. But the low level of those motivated mostly by local issues is really annoying, even plainly worrying.

Then the most laughable part, also revealing of voter discombobulation, is that some chose their Councillors on the basis of international policy issues. As if Ms Jones from Lakenham ward in Norwich could do anything to stop the Iran War and save the polar bears while scheduling the compost bin collection down Tuckswood Lane. Fucking hell. On a lighter note, now The Guardian has come up with another inventive explanation of the way the elections went. Basically, that English voters are thick as three blind mice, lazy fucks who can't be arsed to scroll down the whole list of candidates, and thusly pick names that are near the top of the alphabetically-ordered ballot. Which definitely makes the sense if you skip the part where The Guardian have firmly established themselves as the heralds of the metropolitan middle-class' elitist groupthink. Then you could also group the candidates by political party and list the parties by... err.. wait... alphabetical order. Then The Guardian would moan that it unduly favours Advance UK and is unfair to the Workers Party of Britain.

The idea that you could get £5 million and not declare it… Anyone I know would be turning up to the pub in a gold fedora with a pangolin in a handbag.

(Jon Richardson, Have I Got News For You?, 8 May 2026)

Keir Starmer was elected Prime Minister precisely because he was a bit dull. We had had enough excitement from fourteen years of Tory incompetence. And now he’s being punished for governing in grey.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 11 May 2026)

The new map of the London Boroughs' wards by winning party shows really dramatic changes from the previous elections four years ago. The 2022 elections were a success for Labour, though they actually were more of a success for the Liberal Democrats, and a serious blow for the Conservatives. This month's elections were a big failure for Labour, though not of the magnitude the mediatariat wanted them to be, to fit their pre-scripted narrative. Labour lost only a third of their seats in the Imperial Capital and remain the first party there, which is indeed a success in comparison with their national results. But London Labour couldn't avoid a massive Green blob appearing on what was safe Red territory until VE-Eve, pretty much delineating the boundaries of Hipstershire, with Hackney now the throbbing heart at the core of it. But not everything was milk and roses for the Greenies. Just look at Richmond-upon-Thames, where the LibDems now hold all seats on the Council after successfully kicking out the handful of Greens who had set camp there four years ago. The main thing, though, is that Labour have shown more resilience than expected, and defeated the prophecies of doom.

Incidentally, the Imperial Capital's results totally illustrate a quintessential ontological difference between the BBC and me, over their dogmatic and excessive use of the dreaded "no overall control" (NOC) category, which Wokopedia unquestioningly parrots. When a Council is ruled by a one-party minority administration, I assign it to that party, as somebody is in control, undeniably. But the BBC assigns it to NOC because no party has a majority of seats, which I consider a distortion of the NOC concept, showing a lack of awareness of the realities of local politics. This is why they have nine Borough Councils assigned to NOC when I have only four. But the most salient part is how deep down the rabbit hole of pure bullshit fantasy the one seat projection we got before the elections was. It was, very unprofessionally, relayed verbatim by The Guardian, who totally overlooked the twin facts that it came from a totally unknown outfit with no previous election experience whatsoever, and that it did not fit at all with the lone voting intentions poll we had in the same timeframe. The only thing it fit was their owenjonesian narrative that the Greenies would totally dalek Labour in Keir Starmer's back garden, and they fucking failed.

I don't have the full count of the popular vote yet, as the lazy fucks at Wokopedia are slow updating the relevant pages, so we will have to come back to that one at a later date. There are still a couple of oddities to enjoy in the meanwhile. Surely the most surreal situation has happened in Barnet, where a Labour majority gave way to a split down the middle. 31 seats each for Labour and the Conservatives, with one Green Councillor deciding who lives and who dies. Will she push Labour through the finish line if they agree to repaint all zebra crossings the colours of the Palestinian flag? For those of you unfamiliar with London geography, the Borough of Barnet is where Golders Green is located. And the funniest happened in Camden, where one of the Greens' lavender candidates was unexpectedly elected, when the party had assured him he wouldn't, and they needed him only to field a full slate. But the bloke is a teacher in the Borough, which makes it illegal for him to sit on the Council, so he had to resign instantly. Tells you all you need to know about the amateurism of the Greenies.

Labour is messing with our heads. We are now all lab rats in some bizarre, highly unethical psychological experiment. Either they are losing their minds, or we are.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 14 May 2026)

Look back over the past with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future.

(Marcus Aurelius)

Now we have one of the many oddities of English local government, the Metropolitan Boroughs. Their original legal definition, dating back to 1972, is metropolitan districts within metropolitan counties, which actually does not really help as the metropolitan counties no longer exist. Per current law they are actually unitary authorities, just like the Councils in England and Wales, that have been granted Borough Status by a Royal Charter, summat like towns being granted City Status. But do not think it is as simple as it looks, because it isn't. Of course some boroughs are cities, or some cities are boroughs, like Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield or Manchester. But some boroughs are not cities, like Knowsley, Stockport or Gateshead. And some cities are not boroughs, like Canterbury, Peterborough or Winchester. Nothing is ever simple in England, innit? In fact, boroughs are mostly a Northern thing, with another batch of them within the County of West Midlands. And this geography is the reason why Labour took a fucking drubbing in Metropolitan Boroughs this year, which they had avoided last year as only one was up back then. Doncaster, which they lost to Reform, by the way.

There is an interesting titbit at the top at the chart here. I will mention it just this once, to avoid giving the impression that I have an obsessive fixation on them. The only Your Party Councillors who still have a seat to call their own are those who were not up, and the pattern repeats itself all across England. The irony is that most of them lost their seats to the Greens, who seem to have forgotten they were supposed to be kind to their partners in looniness. Back to the whole picture, switching the focus from the seats that were up this month to the full membership does not really make the results look better, as half of these Councils were up in full and were thusly hit by the full brute force of the voters' anger. These big conurbations, once faithfully Labour from one generation to the next, are Ground Zero of the Reform Rebellion against Labour Central, and it shows. It is also widespread across all regions, with Reform now being the first party in three out of four. Only the North West, Burnham's home turf, has resisted, but for how much longer?

Bear in mind that 2026 is just the beginning of a new electoral cycle, so much worse may be coming. The sixteen Metropolitan Boroughs who had a third of their seats up this year will again be up by thirds in 2027 and 2028. It is hard to avoid the frightening thought that all of them will fall to Reform at some point, if Labour does not take drastic steps to quash the turquoise infection in the meanwhile. Like, ye ken, having a new leader who knows his way around the North. Just saying. Then Liverpool and Wirral will be up in full in 2027, Rotherham in 2028 and Doncaster in 2029, the last year of this electoral cycle. But Andy Burnham, if all goes to plan and he becomes Prime Minister, will not have three years to prove his worth. He will not even have one, as the now firmly established rebellious mood of the party may well put him on the ejector seat if the locals of 2027 go as badly as those of 2026.

The Tories took years of Westminster turmoil to reach their Liz Truss moment. It has taken Labour only two.

(Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, 15 May 2026)

We need a new special relationship with the EU, because Britain’s future lies with Europe, and one day back in the European Union.

(Wes Streeting, 16 May 2026)

Then we have the Unitary Authorities, the template of what all single-tier local authorities are, if you remove all the medieval decorum and jargon of Royal Charters and whatnot. The status and label are widespread all across England, from the Tweed to Land's End, except where the exact same organisation exists with a different label as Metropolitan Boroughs, and where the local elected nobility are reluctant to embrace modernity and simplification. The latter is still found in many parts of the South and the rural Midlands. There are currently 62 Unitary Authorities in England, and the electoral cycles have made them another ticking time-bomb. Only eight held elections in 2025, the first wave of the Reform tsunami, and eighteen this year for the second wave. So more than half will be up in 2027 and 2028, mostly Labour-held Councils in the North. This month, those up were mostly in the South, so we have two winners, the Fash and the LibDems.

Of the eighteen Unitary Authorities holding elections this year, only four were in the North and one of the Midlands, so I have bundled them together for the next chart. But the three Southern regions definitely deserved separate displays, to illustrate what they have in common and were they diverge. In the North East, the most significant case was Hartlepool, the town where Peter Mandelson discovered mushy peas at 39. Labour are indeed lucky that only a third of seats were up, or else it would be a one-party Reform Council. Staggered terms are not that bad after all. The only two Unitaries that were up in the South East are not totally representative as both were held by Labour, not the most common situation down there. But, as seen quite commonly, Labour emerged badly bruised in both.

But the most enlightening parts are the results in the South East and East Anglia, where most of these Councils were up. And we have two very different versions of How The South Was Won, which coexist only to inflict more pain on both Labour and the Conservatives. Interestingly the Greens are showing very little progress in the Southern regions, which at some point looked quite welcoming of their variant of eco-nimbyism. But this time the South East has chosen the LibDems as its Barrage Against Farage. And it worked, a clear indication of that being that the total of Tory and Reform seats is lower than what the Tories had before the elections. This doesn't happen often, so you can only look in awe while the South East anoints the LibDems as its heralds of rebellion.

The best examples are the two new Councils in Surrey, East and West, the only cases this year of a Unitary replacing a lasagna of County and District Councils. This was quite dramatic as it reduced the number of seats from 247 to 72 in East Surrey, and from 287 to 90 in West Surrey. Now that is real streamlining of local government, and a hint of why the local notability are so keen on delaying it elsewhere. The LibDems have taken both by storm with super-majorities, in what were supposed to be deep blue Tory heartlands. Meanwhile in East Anglia, Reform UK is the main beneficiary of the appetite for change, a rather common trait now in that region. This was really bad luck for Labour, complete reverse serendipity, as they lost one of their few Councils there, Thurrock, to a turquoise wrecking ball. But that's also the upside of having the full Council up. You feel the pain of the wipe-out only once, like a bandage taken off a fresh wound, and have four years to recover and reconquer.

There is no point in trying not to upset anybody, that’s what got us into this problem. Sometimes you have to be willing to upset people to get things done.

(Anonymous Wes Streeting supporter, The Guardian, 17 May 2026)

Most of the feverish speculation about a leadership contest has turned out to be just froth and nonsense. We have got to get on with the job.

(Lisa Nandy, 17 May 2026)

Then we have the County Councils, the upper layer of the vestigial remnants of the antiquated two-tier local government that was eliminated in one go thirty years ago in Scotland and Wales, but still survives in parts of England because of the successive governments' cowardice and unwillingness to confront head on the lobbys that support its perpetuation. Local government reform has been a work in progress in England for twenty years, and they are unlikely to see the end of it for at least another three, because they have chosen a gradualist approach, even after Scotland and Wales proved that a Big Bang was the was to go. Six vestigial County Councils were up this year, all in the South of England, all with a Conservative majority or working minority, all with all seats up. And all were a fucking disaster for the Conservatives.

The demise of Southern Toryism has spawned two Souths with quite different politics. Possibly even three, but we don't have enough electoral results from the South West this year to determine whether or not it has become a Third South, The Wessex Of Thomas Hardy Revisited. Kemi Badenoch obviously has a problem with the reality of these New Souths, because neither leaves much room to the Rump Tories. If the electorate repudiates the Conservatives from what was once their base camp on rainy days and days of glory alike, the Cradle Of One Nation Conservatism, what will become of them?

Interestingly, all these Councils were up for renewal in 2025, having been last up in 2021. But the elections were postponed in the hope that they could be reformed from two-tier to single-tier government within a year, which was scrapped after Angela Rayner was hounded out of government by mob pressure over a honest mistake. So this other chart tells the Tale Of Two Souths. East Anglia, Benito Farage's and Rupert Lowe's turf, has turned wildly to Reform, not realising the risk of a major crash before the end of the term. The South East has chosen to repudiate to Tories too, but turned it into a mano a mano between the Fash and the LibDems. Some of the subservient District Councils of these County Councils also had elections this month, with equally appalling results for the Conservatives, but not always going in the same direction as the County Council votes. Fun fact: the Greenies had jack shit momentum in these elections, never going further than nicking the Labour seats, and then missing some. Fucking hilarious.

Stop pretending local elections are the same as a general election. You know what you’re doing, I’m not playing the game, it’s very silly.

(Kemi Badenoch, 17 May 2026)

It’s compelling to say tell progressive voters to vote for Andy to get Starmer out, but the flip side is you’re saying to Reform voters that if they vote Reform they can finish the Labour party off for good.

(Anonymous Andy Burnham supporter, The Guardian, 18 May 2026)

Finally, right at the bottom of multi-tiered local government, we have the remaining District Councils. Of course, they are not really at the bottom, as England still has 10,480 Parish Councils. Which are summat like the Northgrippian stratum of local government, dating back to the Victorian Age in their current definition and powers. But it is fair to assume that nobody gives a shit about Parish Council elections, and they are not even covered by the BBC or mentioned on Wokopedia. So that leaves the Districts as the last entities of interest, for better or worse. When districts were created, by the same Act of Parliament that established the Parish Councils, there were 1.380 of them. By the 1970s, they had been reduced to a more manageable 296, all of which technically still exist today. But a vast number of them have been reformed into single-tier local authorities under different descriptors, and only 164 still remain as components of the antiquated two-tier local government organisation. They are the most likely to be renewed by thirds, and just 48 held elections this month. With results that do stray off the "Reform Tsunami" scenario.

There is a reason why we see different patterns here. Only six District Councils held elections in the North, all of them in Lancashire, and only seven in the Midlands. The bulk of the elections happened in the South East and East Anglia, where different laws of politics apply. Lancashire and the Midlands show the classic pattern of the Great Replacement of Labour by Reform, and it can plausibly only get worse when the other thirds of the same Councils come up. Definitely have to watch these spaces in 2027 and 2028.

The South West and South East, which I have bundled here as only two Councils held elections in the South West, again show gains for the LibDems. These are also the only regions where the Green have bagged significant gains, so the combined forces of the Tories and the Fash are contained below the number of seats they had at the start of the previous electoral cycle four years ago. In East Anglia, the patterns are oddly and significantly different from those seen at the County Councils elections. The Councils have become Reform's playground, but the Districts maintain a very strong LibDem presence, stronger than Reform's in ten out of fourteen Councils where the LibDems are represented. Will that result in some frictions between the Counties and the Districts? Surely the voters paved the way for it when they chose to establish some LibDem counter-power in the Districts.

No District Council held elections in 2025, so this year's batch are the first to feel the full effect of the reshuffling of voting patterns towards anything but Labour. It is quite remarkable that, in District Councils too, this did not conclusively benefit the Greens. Bagging only 34 new seats, when Reform nicked 249 and Labour lost 148, is not really a ringing popular endorsement. The punditariat clearly gambled on some sort of Gorton and Denton effect at the locals, which the pollstertariat encouraged with some totally extravagant seat projections, and it did not materialise. But what does the future have in store? 2027 may be a turning point, as it is four years after 2023. Which is a self-evident truth, but also a full cycle after the 2023 locals, when a record 152 District Councils held elections, including 105 for their full membership after boundary changes. Most of them then returned to the classic electoral cycle of renewal by thirds, so a fucking lot will have elections in 2027, and it definitely does not smell good for Labour or the Conservatives, who will have shitloads of seats to defend against Reform and the LibDems. We ain't seen nothing yet, mates.

If Labour can’t win in Makerfield, they may as well pack up and go home. If they do win, all bets are off in terms of the Prime Minister’s future.

(Luke Tryl, The Guardian, 18 May 2026)

What I think the public really need to hear from us right now is that we’ve got a plan to turn things around.

(Lisa Nandy, 17 May 2026)

What is the purpose in existence of elected Mayors? There are none in Scotland and Wales. They are the exception in England, rather than the rule. Basically, they are an anomaly when you consider the rules of the Westminster System and the Realm's constitutional arrangements. It's like having an elected President of England without changing anything to the powers of Parliament. Total nonsense. You could argue that they serve a purpose as overseers of the police forces in their territory. But you could also argue that the police forces worked better when they were run by professionals, and that putting them under the authority of an elected official was one of the worst reforms of the Coalition government, as it has allowed the penetration of the police forces by ideological influences from above. Six mayoral elections were held this month, five of them in London, and the last one in the town where Jakko Jakszyk first saw King Crimson perform live when he was just 13.

In 2022, only two elections needed a second round, technically the count of the second preferences, in Croydon and Tower Hamlets. The switch back from Instant Runoff to First Past The Post, engineered by Boris Johnson shortly before he exited stage left, pursued by a bear, means there was no such uncertainty this year. Both incumbents were re-elected, but against different backgrounds. The Conservative minority administration has lost the elections in Croydon, when Aspire have increased their majority in Tower Hamlets. But the pair that made headlines are Hackney and Lewisham. In both a by-election had been held to replace a disgraced Labour Mayor for the remainder of the term. In both the Greens mincemeated Labour at both the Council elections and the Mayoral election.

Labour also had a close shave with doom in Newham, sandwiched between the Greens and the Newham Independents Party. Who are actually anything but independents, but more like closet Corbynites advancing masked to campaign on a single issue, Gaza. To which they have recently added Iran, who deserve all our solidarity as victims of a white supremacist colonialist aggression. Or summat. Of course, all that bullshit has nothing to do with Council politics, but obsessive Labourphobia is a sure way to bag votes and seats in some necks of the woods. The NIPs got 24 out of 66 on Newham Borough Council and now have four years to learn what a pothole is, and that you can't blame Israel for them. Well, not all of them. And the Palme d'Or goes to the Watford LibDems, who actually bagged more votes than in 2022 but a slightly shrunken vote share because the irruption of the Fash and the Greenies increased the turnout, and are the only ones with a majority of the popular vote.

If people want to trigger a leadership contest they can, but I think the idea the rest of the country is obsessing about who is the leader of the Labour Party is just for the birds.

(Lisa Nandy, 17 May 2026)

We don’t do hospital takeovers in the Labour Party. It’s not what we’re about.

(Lucy Powell MP, 9 May 2026)

I am sure I heard massive sighs of relief coming from the Burnhamites as Labour held Manchester City Council. Which was never in the danger zone anyway as only a third of its seats were up. Labour could have lost all their seats, which they nearly did, and would still have held a majority. But give it two more elections on the same voting patterns in 2027 and 2028, and Manchester is lost. Not to the Fash, though, but to the Greens, which is just a different Circle of Hell. But not everything was as rosy elsewhere in the Wild Wild North. It was definitely more like Cannibal Holocaust than The Sound Of Music, actually. This is what this month's election results say, and it doesn't look really better if you zoom out to the headcounts of the full Councils. It just says that one more round like this would make Reform the first party in the North by a wider margin than Labour ever had. Bugger.

Oddly, the North of England, once at the vanguard of Brexit, has become the closest approximation England has of Continental Europe. All the ingredients are there: derelict post-industrial wastelands, a deserted and neglected countryside, thriving university communities embracing the latest "progressive" fads, deprivation in the inner cities down the road from pockets of affluence in the suburbs. And the consequences are there too: the parallel rise of a belligerent post-woke far-left and an uncompromisingly xenophobic far-right, the demise of classic social-democracy, the extreme fragmentation of political representation. Thank Dog then, in a weird way, for Reform UK always inserting an element of comic relief in an otherwise bleak landscape, with the total crackpots they recruit every year and have to throw under the bus to preserve the brand and the Führer. Like in Sunderland, where the Fash seem to have attracted the same kind of nutters they attracted last year, and the year before, and... Fucking hilarious that the party of racists is so full of black sheep.

Interestingly, these results do not paint the North as an ultra-fertile ground for the Greens, contrary to the narrative Polanski and the mediatariat have fabricated after Labour's Gorton and Denton fiasco. Now there is a specific area of the North that deserves special attention because of where events, dear boy, events have taken us. Winterfell... oops, sorry... Greater Manchester. Ten different Councils exist in the area covered by Greater Manchester, totalling 645 seats that are up by thirds on a four-year electoral cycle, England's favourite oddity. All of them have thusly had seven elections since Andy Burnham became King Of The North in 2017, and the results have gone from solidly Labour to solidly Labour to solidly Labour to not-so-solidly Labour. Not sure how Burnham's rivals for the Ejector Seat could weaponise this against him, but surely they will try, won't they?

One Council in Greater Manchester deserves a special mention now. Wigan. One third of its seats were up and it was one of these few special places where Labour could lose all their seats and still keep control of the Council, which is exactly what happened there on 7 May. Now local MP Josh Simons has decided to resign, and Labour's NEC has allowed Andy Burnham to stand at the by-election for the Makerfield constituency, which covers a third of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan. But Burnham should definitely look that gift hose in the mouth, as Labour won the seat by only 5,399 votes over Reform in 2024, and Reform outvoted Labour 2-to-1 at the Council elections. In the wards covered by the constituency, Reform bagged 49.8% of the vote and Labour 26.9%, a 23% lead for the Fash when they led by "only" 21% across the whole Council. So it will take a lot more than the kind of Burnham Miracle hypothetical polls predicted in Gorton and Denton to hold that one. Oddly, a lot will depend on what the Greens do. They weighed only 4% in Makerfield in 2024, so it is safe to conclude they have fuck all chance of winning the by-election. So I interpret Zack Polanski's statement about Burnham as a subtle hint he is preparing his troops for a decision to not stand in Makerfield. Now we have Caroline Lucas, the Greens' Gordon Brown, advocating they sit this one out. Out of solid pragmatism, I guess, so the Greens cannot be accused of having handed the seat to the Fash. But that gift horse, for once, Burnham definitely shouldn't look in the mouth.

The country needs to know if Andy Burnham is serious about breaking out from the terrible orthodoxies from the past, or if he will just be more of the same.

(Zack Polanski, 14 May 2026)

There are few in politics who have had the experience of being the subject of a Labour party-style coup, the British equivalent of being dragged from your office to be put up against a wall.

(Daniel Boffey, The Guardian, 16 May 2026)

It's definitely not a good sign when you get a TV ad about mental health back to back with one for a pawnbroker in the same commercial break, and that's what you got if you were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on Sunday night. No wonder, then, that so many people did stupid things on Election Day, which they will regret very soon just as they regret voting for Brexit. Now Labour have lost Birmingham too, after telling us with absolute certainty that there was no way they would ever lose Birmingham. Because, ye ken, millions of Brummies had told them they loved their Labs so much they were ready to endure a Hundred Years' Bin Strike to keep them at City Hall. Labour may just have misunderstood what people meant with "Labs". And then they just made Birmingham Council a fucking ungovernable mess, with even Galloway's Wankers Party invited at the table. Where is Joe Fucking Lycett when you don't need him?

There had been many changes across the Midlands during the previous election cycle, all favouring Labour. Now it is all undone and worse, and Reform have become the Party of the Midlands by quite a margin. Of course, there had been massive warning signs at the 2025 elections, but none of it had happened within the safe confines of the County of West Midlands, which we now know was just a fucking time-bomb waiting to explode up Labour's arse. That's why you have a thousand reasons to despair of Labour. In the Midlands, they fucking knew what was coming for them, and had a whole year to prepare for it, dig the trenches and bring in the sandbags. But they did jack shit or, if they did, it only made matters worse.

Last year the LibDems saved the day, more or less, when they snatched Shropshire off the claws of the Fash, but no such deus ex machina could be expected this year. Labour had to feel the full shockwave of the people's wrath, no matter how misguided the people's choice of a solution was. Of course, Reform UK are not, and will never be "men of the people". They are in it for the dosh, mates, increasing your council tax so they can raise their own wages and pay consultants who work for the party, not the Council. But you asked for it, didn't you? You know what is bound to happen because you saw it happen up the A46 in Lincolnshire, yet you still voted for it. Something Wicked This Way Comes, and you will be stuck with it for years, mates. The only consolation is that, like everywhere else, the loopy Greens failed to make any significant breakthrough outwith the comfy tofu-munching middle-class neighbourhoods and the university campuses.

There’s a temptation to go into the bunker because you’re always full of advisers, and sometimes the advice is contradictory.

(Jeremy Corbyn, The Guardian, 16 May 2026)

What we are seeing is that the Conservatives have already troughed and are on an upward trajectory, whereas Reform seem to have already peaked.

(Bernard Jenkin MP, 8 May 2026)

The results of the local elections in the South of England have again shaken the foundations of the Rump Tory Party, in their erstwhile safe places. The Fall Of The House Of Badenough was surely in the cards, but nobody really expected the Conservatives to lose 55% of their seats in the Leafy South, while the Liberal Democrats increased their regional headcount by 32% and Reform multiplied it thirteenfold. The Tories are in total denial, and rallying around Kemi's bold statement that "Conservatives are coming back" and have achieved "great results". In a relative way maybe, as these elections were slightly less disastrous for them than last year's, but they still lost a third of the seats they defended. The massive irony is that they saved a higher proportion of their seats in the North and Midlands than in the South, and scored bragable gains only in parts of London. You have to wonder what Kemi will say when Tory Councillors start defecting en masse to Reform because the grass is turquoiser on the Fash side of the tracks.

The results in the South West are not the most significant as only four Councils held elections there, all with a weaker Tory presence than usually seen in the South. But what has happened in the South East and East Anglia is meaningful, with 27 and 23 Councils holding elections respectively, including ancestral Conservative strongholds. Nothing illustrates the demise of the Tory brand better than the simultaneous loss of Essex and Suffolk to the Fash, and the two brand new Surrey Councils to the Liberal Democrats. There is a high probability now that, when Reform finally crumbles apart, the last trace of their existence will be a tiny turquoise ribbon along the East Coast from the Thames Estuary to the Humber. But it is equally likely that it will be difficult to dislodge the Liberal Democrats once they have burrowed themselves deep into that Midsomer Murders Middle England that has morphed over the years from a thousand St Mary Mead to an extension of London.

The aftermath of these elections is also as good a time as any to reflect on the growing infiltration of British politics by democracy-hating extremists of al shades, too often with the complicity of established parties desperate for cheap and quick electoral gain. The Greens, never missing an opportunity to showcase the crass stupidity at the core of the woke doxa, have endorsed both fanatical trans activists and radicalised islamist homophobes in the name of diversity and inclusion, and got some elected as Councillors. We have also heard a neo-Nazi thug, a frequent host of His Majesty's Hospitality, openly calling all ethnonationalists and white supremacists to infiltrate all the parties of the right, to spread Christo-fascism across England. He actually did not really need to, as they have already infiltrated Reform UK and some of them became Councillors under that banner. Benito Farage has absolutely no problem with that, so long as their past is not exposed and embarrasses the party, which forces him to reluctantly disown and expel them. But the stains will never go away, no matter how deep down the rabbit hole of denial Che and Benito crawl. Out, damned spot! out, I say! What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

You have to join a political party. I don’t care if it’s Reform, if it’s Advance, or it’s Restore, or it’s the Conservative Party.

(Tommy Robinson, Unite The Kingdom march, 16 May 2026)

Just like Theresa May’s early promise of “strong and stable leadership”, Keir Starmer's vow to “end the chaos” has become a sour joke.

(Tom Clark, The Guardian, 17 May 2026)

Councils that have all their seats up at once are a fucking nightmare in times of radical political change. This is where you witness the biggest instant impact of the electorate's mood swings, that they regret later when they realise they have elected incompetent dim-witted wankers. Which is bound to happen when you put your Council in the hands of a party with no local base, except the blokes they recruited at the pub on a Saturday night, and no prior experience other than leafletting for Britain First. Now you're stuck with them for four long years and there is no escape route, except the remote possibility that Reform totally falls apart and self-destructs within those four years. We would probably be en route for that already if the mediatariat, including the incompetent BBC, did their job instead of sucking Farage's dick for juicy headlines. But they don't so we can only look at the wreckage in despair, and a deep sense of nostalgia for the olden days when election campaigns were not half AI-generated fake news and half bullshit, but just all plain bullshit. When was that again? Five years ago?

But there is summat of a trompe l'oeil within a chiaroscuro in these results, as they include the 32 London Borough Councils and their 1,817 seats, half of what was at stake this month. If you discard the London results, to get a picture of the real England outwith Hipstershire, it does look quite different. It is not Londophobic to look at it that way, it is just the admission that things do look different if you remove Londocentrism from the equation. What is Labour's main problem right now? Losing the working class. But there is no working class left in London. Production sectors accounted for 42% of London's workforce in 1961, and services and administration for 58%. Now it is 12% and 83% respectively. So we shouldn't be surprised if London generally, and the SW1 bubble specifically, don't have a fucking clue about the lived experiences of people from elsewhere in the UK. It's like a fucking Stephen King series, Under The Dome with the M25 as the Outer Limit.

The London-less results are a bigger disaster for Labour as they somehow managed serious damage control in the Imperial Capital and totally failed pretty much everywhere else. It also emphasises that there was no Green Tsunami, as two thirds of their seats and all their Councils were in the protected confines of Central London. So the Greenies can definitely not brag that they are the Barrage Against Farage, the LibDems are, mates. But, when you think of it, there may be a worse fate than life under a Fash administration. That's living in one of the infamous "no overall control" Councils, where nobody has the slightest hope of a working one-party minority administration, and the only outcome is a hotchpotch coalition of blokes who hate each other's guts, profoundly loathe each other and can't even agree on what a pothole is. Good Morning, Birmingham!

There was great hope when Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana joined forces. But I’m afraid some of the behaviours were very poor and they lost a historic opportunity.

(Ken Loach, The Guardian, 17 May 2026)

The loss of faith of voters across the North, so many of whom once saw us as their natural party, is our fault and nobody else’s.

(Andy Burnham, 18 May 2026)

Not many Councils have chosen to have their seats up by halves every two years. Only seven have enforced this electoral cycle, with half the Council up on even years, so all of them held elections this year. There was just one significant upset, that contradicted my usual talking point that the LibDems are the best Barrage Against Farage in the South of England. In Gosport, all LibDem incumbents were defeated by the Fash, so they also lost control of the Council. But it looks more like a very local phenomenon than a general loss of confidence in the LibDems. They have gained seats on Hampshire County Council while the Conservatives suffered heavy losses to Reform. Just one ferry away from Gosport, the LibDems have gained seats and control of the Council in Portsmouth. They have also held all their seats in nearby Fareham and Havant. The overall picture is not one of Reform triumph, but more like increased disorder as three out of these seven Councils are now rated as "no overall control".

The other halves of these Councils will be up in 2028, for seats that were last up in 2024, a good year overall for the LibDems and Labour. So there is still room for another round of gains for Reform, and also for the LibDems countering is as most of these Councils are in the South. But two years is also a fucking long long time, considering all the unexpected stuff that may happen in the meanwhile here, there and everywhere. Will the UK have dug deeper into turmoil and chaos, or will some semblance of sanity have returned? The oddity of the situation is that the answer to this one depends on the result of one by-election a month away, and so far we can only assume it has even odds of ending in another fucking disaster. What a great time to be alive.

If I get to stand, a vote for me will be a vote to change Labour, because Labour needs to change if we are to regain people’s trust.

(Andy Burnham, 18 May 2026)

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain forever a child.

(Marcus Tullius Cicero)

Councils that had only a third of their seats up are the most interesting at these multi-faceted elections. They are both a lifeline and a curse for Labour. In some of these Councils, seventeen generations of Labour quasi-monopoly meant they could lose a third of their seats and still keep control of the Council with a majority. But the same Councils will again have a third of their seats up in 2027 and 2028, and that makes them fucking time-bombs waiting to blow up in Labour's face, if the spread of the Fash infection is not quashed in the meantime. Quashing the Great Green Replacement too would be a good idea, when you think of it. If you look at the bigger picture, that with the Councils' full membership, you can easily reach two opposed, contradictory and incompatible conclusions. Remember, kids, always three adjectives to drive your point home. The bright side is that Labour are still the first party in these Councils, and can hope that a less hostile climate would help revive the incumbency factor. The dark side is that there is no way to know if the climate will be less hostile for Labour next year, so they should just as well brace themselves for another brutal cull.

Now, as the mediatariat and politicariat are moving on to the next Big Thing, the Duel For Labour, there are already interesting signs of what we will have to endure after the expected change of Prime Minister. Shitweasel has set the tone in The Guardian, without even waiting for the result of the Makerfield by-election. Obviously, he will savage Burnham just as he savaged Starmer, though I suspect Burnham does not give a fuck about the widely discredited pseudo-journalist Jones. But it is nevertheless revealing of how the loopy woke far-left are wired, Totally like Trump and Putin. They tolerate nothing short of total submission to their doxa and diktats and, if you don't kowtow to their cretinously irresponsible ideology, you will be daleked. That's why they are gambling on the Fash winning in Makerfield, and would prefer Wes Streeting as Prime Minister. So they can sanctimoniously tell us they told us so, while slurping a gluten-free almond-milk flat white at an organic café in Hackney, and Labour has to be destroyed. Fortunately, we have YouGov to refocus us on the real issues, with what may also be a veiled reference to the Green Party of England and Wales.

Just five years ago, we had a leader trying to be ousted by their own party. We had leaders being accused of anti-Semitism. Feels very 2019. Luckily, there isn’t a new virus on a cruise ship.

(Jon Richardson, Have I Got News For You?, 8 May 2026)

It is vital that we unite in Scotland to ensure our Parliament is fully Farage-proofed. That means having the power before 2029 to decide our own constitutional future without Farage being able to block us.
(John Swinney, 9 May 2026)

There are Portillo Moments at every election, and this Holyrood election was no exception. First we had Angus Robertson taken down in Edinburgh Central, the seat that should have been Joanna Cherry's, by the unsufferable Unicorna Slater and five thousand fucking votes. To add insult to injury, Angus ended up third behind Labour, nine thousand votes down on his 2021 result. Then there was Glasgow Southside, Nicola Sturgeon's seat of fifteen years, also falling to the Greenies with the SNP losing more than half their vote. The swings in both constituencies are so massive that you have to wonder if John Swinney did not send teams of liquidators to both on the specific mission to get anyone but the SNP elected and raze the most visible remnants of Sturgeon's legacy to the ground. The trends of polls since 2021, compared to the actual results, look quite good for the pollstertariat. They were quite close overall, even if some polls were fucking wildly off. At the tail end, I have highlighted both the constituency and list results only for the SNP and the Greens, as the gaps are ginormous for both. Otherwise, to avoid a massive pile-on of labels, I have selected only the results I consider most significant. The constituency vote for Labour, the LibDems and the Rump Tories. The list vote for the English Nationalist Party.

Now the SNP has won a fifth term, nineteen years in charge going on twenty-four. That's the second longest streak in power in any European nation, after Vladimir Putin. Under the leadership of a bloke who first became leader of the party nine months after Vladimir Putin first became Tsar. Take that, Honest John. There is another amusing coincidence. The SNP just lost six seats, which is eerily similar to when they lost one out of six Commons seats at the 2001 general. Under the leadership of... well, you know. Take that too, Honest John. So let's have a honest look a the results. Forget that the SNP came first and ask yourselves if this really qualifies as a victory. After all, the SNP went down 10% on the constituency vote, 13% on the list vote, and lost 10% of their seats. And, whichever way you spin it if you are paid by The Scottish Pravda to always see the bright side of fox poo, how does falling seven seats short of a majority ever qualify as a mandate for anything?

I must confess that the funniest part of the results is the SNP losing four seats to the Liberal Democrats, those who lost Big Boy status at Holyrood five years ago under a totally inept cringeworthy leader, and have now increased their seat count by 150% under the same leader. +150%, that's how real victory looks like, innit? Certainly more than starting your fifth term with the English Nationalist Party gaining a beachhead with 13% of the Scottish Parliament's seats. If logic prevailed, John Swinney should now find himself under pressure, and the threat of a leadership challenge. We have just the bloke for that, Stephen Flynn, who has oven-readied himself for years. He could even argue that the SNP has lost fewer votes in his landing pad at Aberdeen Deeside than the national average. Or maybe Stephen is more bark than bite, and then very subdued bark, and Honest John will stay. Longer than Keir Starmer, but who wouldn't? Then you may remember that we had a shitload of seat predictions on The Day Before, so now is your moment of Schadenfreude, when we pick the best and worst predictions.

I missed it, but so did YouGov, and on roughly the same numbers, so no harm done. It is quite amazing that the one closest to the actual results, with three out of six parties spot on, is Ballot Box Scotland, who too often donned the persona of SNP zealots ready to inflate the party's results. This time they didn't, kudos to them. But the fucking hilarious part is that the worst prediction came from Electoral Calculus, the favourite seer of Faux Guru John Curtice, from whom he nicks "his" expert seat predictions. And they were a fucking way off, inflating both the SNP and Reform way beyond any other prognosticator. Well, that was fun while it lasted, wasn't it? Well, not really, it was fucking boring and the only fun bit was Honest John starting that fairy tale about a Labour-Reform "grubby deal" out of thin air. It was a fucking dead cat, he totally made it up and he knew it. But why miss the fun? Then, if you look at it honestly, the SNP are the last who should piss on Labour for having an election strategy that factored in a high Fash vote in a fragmented electorate. Because it is plainly obvious that it is exactly the combination that allowed the SNP to hold so many constituencies while losing massive chunks of the popular vote. Inconvenient truth and all that, Honest John.

I will have more to say on the way forward on independence in the coming days and weeks.
(John Swinney, 9 May 2026)

It’s going to take time for the party to come to terms with the fact that over a century of Labour rule in Wales has ended. And we can’t shy away from that fact.

(Anonymous Welsh Labour source, The Guardian, 9 May 2026)

Scotland has definitely not made history this month, even if The Scottish Pravda claims we have with their fairy tale of an "unprecedented pro-Independence majority", when we all know the SNP and the Greenies have fuck all real interest in Independence. But our Celtic brethren on the far side of the Isle of Man have, with a Senedd election the significance of which went beyond ending a century of Labour dominance of Welsh politics. Plaid Cymru won't say it out loud, for fear of being called Anglophobic by the English Nationalists, but it also marked the symbolic end of 742 years of English rule in Wales, direct or by proxy. The voting intentions were quite good, though they underestimated the final surge of the Plaid Cymru vote in the last days of the campaign. But they definitely got all the dominant trends right.

There are nevertheless some worrying patterns elsewhere, imported from England. The Welsh pillar of the Red Wall around Wrexham has turned turquoise, and so have vast swathes of rural Mid Wales. But the old coal mining communities in the South, from the Rhondda to the Taff, have not. They went en masse from Labour to Plaid Cymru. How Green Is My Valley, still! Even Cardiff disowned Labour and contributed half their seats to Plaid Cymru's triumph. It is also fun to compare the Last Day predictions with the actual result, even if we have had fewer for Wales than for Scotland. Mine was not far off, though YouGov was one step closer, and the moment of fun is that Electoral Calculus totally missed it, and by an even wider margin than they missed Scotland. And I am definitely not ashamed of the Schadenfreude. a very legitimate feeling when one of the pillars of the punditariat gets his arse skelped by events, dear boy, events.

As we all expected, Rhun ap Iorwerth is now First Minister of Wales, and his first speech was really good. Saluting his predecessor, promising integrity and openness, setting clear goals and refusing deliberate confrontation definitely sounds extremely smart. I just hope it will work, and that the oppositions will not perform stunts of obstruction. Our Welsh brothers and sisters deserve better. The only wildcard here is what the attitude of the UK government will be. I am not talking about Keir Starmer's attitude here, as he won't be here for very long. But Andy Burnham should definitely be asked, and he'd better avoid bland platitudes about how much he loves Wales, and go straight to the heart of the matter. Would his government fully cooperate with the new Welsh government, even if it means exposing Welsh Labour's shortcomings and failures? This could be one of the very first tests of Burnham's determination to act in good faith and for the good of all.

This was an election about Wales and Welsh voters didn’t support us.

(Anonymous Welsh Labour source, The Guardian, 9 May 2026)

Some say we will look like the Tories if we change leader. But would they have done better if they’d kept Boris in despite Partygate? Or kept Truss after she crashed the economy?

(Tony Vaughan MP, 9 May 2026)

In the very first YouGov poll after the cursed VE-Eve elections, Reform went up 3% in England outwith London, and 6% up in London from their previous poll held two days before the elections. Also in the Imperial Capital, the Greenies went 2% up and Labour 5% down. In Scotland, the SNP went 6% up and Labour 7% down. In Wales, Plaid Cymru went 13% up, aligning with their Senedd vote share, while Reform went 2% down and Labour 4% down. That's the typical knee-jerk reaction, an amplified confirmation bias, that we already saw after the 2025 locals when it triggered Reform's rise to unprecedented scores and the mediatariat's conversion to Benito Farage's press office. Now the very welcome trend of continuous decline of the Fash has been broken, and they are again increasing their voting intentions. The only upside is that the Greens are losing ground, in line with their mediocre performance at the VE-Eve elections.

In the meanwhile, Keir Starmer has not become more unpopular, as he has already reached the bottom of the pool without the energy for a kick back to the surface. People just want to turn the page and see him gone, and we have the polls to prove it. Something Starmer has just done did not get any media attention, especially not from The Guardian, but watchful women on Twitter revealed it. To replace Wes Streeting, a renegade and traitor in the eyes of the trans lobby, as Health Secretary, Starmer appointed James Murray, who is on record as a full supporter of the trans lobby. Not the smartest move when Labour's main challenge is how to get back the socially conservative working class voters who migrated to Reform UK, not the woke hipsters who switched to the Greens. Starmer again showed his total inability to read the room and feel the people's pulse, so maybe he deserves to left alone by the side of the road after all. The fate no dog ever deserves, but some humans do.

This week's snapshot of voting intentions is a small one, as pollsters are enjoying a wee break after their intensive polling of Scotland and Wales. All we have is four polls conducted by Find Out Now, Techne, YouGov and More In Common between 13 and 19 May, with an aggregate sample of 9,412, which is more than the Greenies got votes in Cheltenham, Winchester, Peterborough or St Albans, to name just a few. But we have the Fash back up to 27% and Labour badly bruised on 18%, half their already mediocre vote share at the 2024 general. Nothing that a change of leader can't cure, says a YouGov poll of very optimistic Labour Party members. Or very delusional, some may think. Anyway, what the current batch of polls says is that the Fash would be Number Ten's next tenants, as all they need for a majority is a polydactylous handful of renegade Rump Tory MPs crossing the floor. But they would get a fucking lot more than that, ready to plunge the Four Nations into terminal decay for a ministerial car. Mark my words.

Bear in mind that, contrary to a popular myth perpetuated by the BBC at every Election Night, the majority in Commons is not 326. First because Sinn Fein do not take their seats and the Speaker and Deputy Speakers do not vote at divisions, which instantly reduces the headcount to 639 and the majority to 320. Besides, when the House divides, the Tellers cast their votes to show which side they're on for Hansard, but their votes are not counted. The maximum number of votes than can be cast and counted is thusly reduced to 635 in the current Parliament, so the actual working majority is 318. The Fash are therefore just six seats short per current polling, not fourteen. Remember this is the party that ordered its newly-elected Councillors in Ipswich to talk only to GB News, as they are terrified honest unbiased media would expose them as dim-witted easily corruptible neo-Nazis. If such media still existed here, that is.

The hope wasn’t there enough in the first two years of this government. That’s why it’s important for me now to set out where hope resides.

(Keir Starmer, 9 May 2026)

My preferred option is for the Cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there’s plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role.

(Catherine West MP, 9 May 2026)

Shortly before the VE-Eve elections, Survation fielded two polls simultaneously, one of the Realm's general population and one of a sample of Labour Party members selected for them by Labour List, about the inevitably incoming leadership contest. Of course, they needed some foreplay before reaching the main course, so asked about Keir Starmer's career prospects first. I have extracted from the general population poll the crosstabs for Labour's 2024 voters and their current voters, those who still intend to vote for Labour now. These are much more supportive of Starmer, which makes sense if you consider they are the last true faithful, Starmer's Last Men Standing. Some of which are women, of course. But their significant support does not change the dominant feelings. Starmer is toast and must go, so that somebody more skilled can take over before it's too late to avoid total extermination.

It indeed looks like the Next Big Thing, the election the punditariat will be endlessly punditificating about, will be the Labour Party's leadership contest. Wes Streeting has fired the starting gun, in a bold, but possibly not totally thought through, move that surprised only those who had retreated to a sensory deprivation tank to fight off their election PTSD. From where I'm sat, Starmer has an oven-ready way to outfox the backstabbing Streeting: call his bluff and request that the Parliamentary Labour Party vote right now. The supporters of the other two likely contenders, Andy Burnham and Angela Rayner, would have no choice but to vote tactically for Starmer, so Wee Wes would pretty much spontaneously combust and eliminate himself from the competition. Labour members actually don't like Wes. Survation asked their Labour List panel to rank nine possible contenders in order of their preference as the next party leader, which I translated into a simpler three-steps scale, and Wes emerges only fourth, with less than half ranking him in their Top Three. Of course, Andy Burnham dominates, despite being currently unable to stand.

We know that relying only on the party members' mood might lead to massive mistakes, as the Conservatives learned the hard way when their Middle England grassroots chose Liz Truss over the MP's choice Rishi Sunak. But it can also align with what the general population want, and it looks like it does in Labour's case right now. Survation asked their panel of the general population a parallel question, whether they would have a more favourable or a less favourable view of Labour if this or that person replaced Keir Starmer as leader and Prime Minister. The Top Five are the same as with the party members, with one interesting surprise though. We The People put Yvette Cooper second, thusly pushing Wes Streeting to fifth place. Cooper and Burnham are old acquaintances, as Yvette succeeded Andy as Chief Secretary to the Treasury when Gordon Brown moved him to DCMS. But would she support him if he finally managed to enter the leadership race? And would it matter?

Now the battle plan of the Burnhamites, basically recycled Blairites who find Wes Streeting too last century's Blairite, is that we should make Britain more like Finland. The only flaw is that the glue that holds Finland together is nothing that Clive Lewis uses as an argument. It is the shadow of a fascist imperialist genocidal neighbour on their Eastern border, who wants to invade and enslave them because they were once his, the Russian Reich. On our Eastern flank, we have Denmark and Norway, and Moscow didn't even exist the last time they invaded us. Kyiv did, though. Just saying. This convenient omission is more than an elephant in the room. This time, the elephant is the room, and has totally crushed Clive's otherwise rather weak argumentation. If Andy Burnham really wants to convince We The People that he is destined to be Labour's and the Realm's Saviour, he will have to do better than letting his stormtroopers publish stuff that sounds like a mediocre PPE paper from a not-too-smart first-year student at the University of East Anglia. By the way, Lewis is the MP who offered to give up his seat to allow Burnham to return to Commons, an offer he might want to reconsider now that the Greens have gained control of Norwich City Council with enough votes to make them clear favourites in a hypothetical by-election in Norwich South.

One day is fine and next is black, so if you want me off your back, well come on and let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

(Mick Jones, Should I Stay Or Should I Go?, 1982)

Ray Manzarek, né Raymond Daniel Manczarek Jr.

(Chicago, 12 February 1939 - Rosenheim, 20 May 2013)

Jeremy's Den

20/05/2026

There Is Another Side To This Vision

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There Is Another Side To This Vision