Jeremy's Den: Half A League, Half A League, Half A League Onward

Families in Makerfield are under immense pressure from a relentless cost of living crisis, and they are completely exhausted by a political system they feel is broken and self-serving. Their feelings echo those of voters right across the country, who urgently want to see that politics cleaned up.

(Veronica Hawking, Director of Campaigns at 38 Degrees, 3 June 2026)

Everyone knows that politics isn’t working. Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be the turning point. From here on, I will give everything I have got to make it so.

(Andy Burnham, 19 June 2026)

Today is a very special anniversary, but we will come to that further down the road. To create a quintessentially English mood, as required by the occasion, today's soundtrack is by The Great Rick Wakeman, with three renditions of his seminal landmark album The Six Wives of Henry VIII. First the original album in all its quirky glory. It is not in the chronological order of Henry's marriages, reportedly because of the technical constraints of the antique support used by then, the vinyl LP. Then the 2009 live performance released as The Six Wives of Henry VIII Live at Hampton Court Palace, which includes three hitherto unreleased tracks. Oddly, it was performed in a different order to the original album, but still not in the chronological order. Finally, we conclude with a 2023 live performance from Live at the London Palladium, the first time the six original pieces were performed on the same night in the chronological order of Henry's marriages, to the best of my knowledge. The extra bonus tracks are a quirky live reworking from Almost Live In Europe and a solo piano digest from his Other Side Of Rick Wakeman tour of 2006,

Now let's start with this month's Great Matter, the Makerfield by-election, and what its result means for British politics in the short term and in coming years. By the way, did you know that the locals never ever call the place "Makerfield"? Ask them where they live and they will all say "Wigan". There wasn't even a Makerfield constituency before 1983, when it was frankensteined from bits of bobs of four existing constituencies, taking its name from the Domesday Book where it referred to a much larger area covering roughly the whole of the boroughs of Wigan and Warrington. Alea iacta est, for better or for worse. The good people of Makerfield have spoken, very loudly, and it's honestly a relief that it's all over now. The most important by-election since the Acts Of Union turned into the most atrocious campaign since the Glorious Revolution, all because of the British Union of Born-Again Fascists. Question Time on the 4th may have been the turning point, as Robert Kenyon sounded like a candidate for a Council seat, not an aspiring MP, while Andy Burnham easily outshone him, sometimes with the involuntary help of the other candidates. Or was it Nigel Farage's outrageously revolting performance at PMQs the day before? At least we know now that Reform UK are totally inclusive, as they will ban all knives regardless of their religion. It was also the Paradox Election, as you had to vote Labour to kick out Keir Starmer, but vote Reform if you wanted to keep him at Number Ten. At the end of the day, the voters saw through the confusion and all went according to plan and beyond, so now Jon Snow is gathering his forces to take over King's Landing.

Clearly, there was a Burnham Effect at work in Makerfield, just as there would have been one earlier in Gorton and Denton if Keir Starmer had not granted himself a short stay of execution. But how do we measure it? Fortunately we don't have to, as Survation and Opinium have done it for us. Some days after the Gorton and Denton fiasco, Survation polled the constituency on how they would have voted if Andy had been the Labour candidate. Then both pollsters asked Makerfield voters pre-emptively how they would vote generically at a general election not involving Andy. So we have a rather precise idea of how many voters he would have displaced in Gorton and Denton, or did displace in Makerfield. In both cases, a fucking lot. In Gorton and Denton, it would have been a 19% swing from the Greens to Labour, which won't happen in real life as it would leave the Greenies with a negative vote share. In Makerfield, that's a 15% swing from Reform to Labour, which could happen and totally reshape the next general. Keir Starmer would have saved us a lot of drama and around £500k, the estimated cost of a by-election, if he had let Andy stand in Gorton and Denton, as the writing was already on the wall.

One of the ugliest moments of the campaign happened when the Panto Führer couldn't resist weaponising the murder of a teenager, against the express wishes of the family, and seized the opportunity to unleash the five million shades of racism in his quiver. Benito was livid that Restore Britain was reported to do well in Makerfield, so he had to out-fash Rupert Lowe by all repulsive means necessary. But he didn't do it from the constituency, because the Poundshop Goebbels is a fucking coward hiding from the media, terrified he may be grilled about his now world-famous £5m bribe from a crypto-currency crook and his pathetic fabrication of a phone hack that never happened. It is therefore heartening that it backfired badly. The punditariat rated the by-election as a risky gamble for Burnham but, at the end of the night, it wasn't even close. Even Restore Britain was not a factor, as Burnham outvoted the combined Fash by 6,120 votes or 13.5%, thusly depriving Benito of his only argument to deny him legitimacy. But the Burnhamites should not overheat about the result as it was so stunning only because of massive tactical voting from the Greens, Liberal Democrats ad Conservatives, whose aggregate vote share fell from 22% in 2024 to 3%. This will obviously not be repeated at a general election, and Burnham still has a long way to go to Number Ten, especially as Starmer is determined to not go down without a fight and will surely not U-turn on this one.

This is a final chance to change. This is what people said directly to me on the doorsteps. We must hear it. We must act upon it, and we must get it right. There will be no second chance, but it is a chance now, from this result tonight, to build a new politics based on unity and hope.

(Andy Burnham, 19 June 2026)

Win or lose, I don't know where I will be after the 18th of June, because this is a tight by-election. People are still kind of weighing up the positions, the candidates. That's where it is right now.

(Andy Burnham, Newsnight, 5 June 2026)

By the way, if you think that racist riots are some sort of modern phenomenon going no further than the late 19th century, a very serious one happened during Henry VIII's reign, targeting French and Flemish people, the migrants of the day. Most of the rioters escaped execution as traitors, which involved being handled like a farm animal getting readied for cooking, thanks to an intervention of Harry's then-wife, One Of Six, Catherine of Aragon. Back to the issue at hand, Survation did not just survey voting intentions in Makerfield, they added a few questions that may shed some light on the voters' motivations, and why the result makes sense. They did not test profound quintessential motivations like "Fuck the Fash" or "Starmer! Oot! Oot! Oot!", both of which could have been Burnham campaign slogans, but some basic political issues that can define where you sit on the political horseshoe.

The first item is obviously a jibe at Robert Kenyon and his shady social media past, which he could not keep out of the public's eye despite trying very hard. But these things have an uncanny habit of coming back to bite you in the arse at the worst possible moment. The other items selected by Survation clearly show panelists leaning towards the left rather than towards Reform UK, the defenders of the privileged few against the people who have made massive bribes from foreigners their main source of funding. Of course, it is sometimes difficult to make out what Reform actually stand for, as they have U-turned more often and on more issues than Keir Starmer. This is probably why Rob Kenyon so often looked properly discombobulated, as he didn't know what was left of the party's manifesto two years on. This is a problem Andy Burnham never had, as he was totally committed to abiding by Labour's manifesto of 2024, while doing everything totally differently. Survation also probed their panel about some key components of the Employment Rights Act 2025.

Of course, this stuff is actually not in the Employment Rights Act, as the government watered down most of its campaign pledges under pressure for the right wing of Labour, lobbying on behalf of business. The panel was thusly asked to show support or opposition to the Act as it should have been, rather than as it actually is. The only oddity is the split verdict on the abolition of fire-and-rehire, which I thought would be more popular with a mostly working class electorate, while the panel's position on the other three items in totally incompatible with Reform's, who are totally fixated on reducing workers rights to please their many corporate donors. The panel is even more to the left than Andy Burnham, whose commitment to "business-friendly socialism" always sounded like 90% business and 10% socialism, in true "soft left" fashion. These are the views of people who would vote Reform to give Labour the finger, not out of support to Reform's manifesto, and were logically attracted to the man who built his campaign on giving the Labour establishment at SW1 the finger. The pollsters also revealed the final brick of the puzzle with crosstabs between voting intentions and past votes.

All five polls included crosstabs with the remembered vote at the 2024 general, the mandatory classic, and Opinium added a digest of crosstabs with the vote at the VE-Eve locals, which were a total fucking disaster for Labour in Wigan, and even more so in the eight wards covering the Makerfield constituency. Both show Labour and Reform holding massive and similar shares of their past votes, but also massive reinforcements for Burnham from all sides, including Conservative voters of 2024. You obviously can't tell which part of this significant tactical voting represented genuine support for Burnham's agenda, as opposed to a determination to keep Reform out, or a four-dimensional chess move to kick Starmer out. Surely there was a little bit of all three. The final result proves that negative motivations work just as well as positive motivations when the end justifies the means. But we are past that now as a new chapter has opened already.

We just need to get in the business of grasping nettles. And why? Because it's fiscally prudent to do so.

(Andy Burnham, Newsnight, 5 June 2026)

Brexit was the greatest mistake this country has made since the war, I have no doubt about that at all. I mean to turn our back on our neighbours in that way, not just in terms of trade but in terms of culture and everything.

(Michael Morpurgo, 2 April 2026)

Did I mention a Very Special Anniversary? Well, I did, as you may remember that ten years ago today, in the wee hours of dawn's early light, we were stunned by the discovery that we had just voted for Brexit. Well, I didn't, but you get the gist. YouGov's exit poll had been a total fuckup that got the numbers toggled, and most of us did not realise we had jumped off the cliff until Good Morning Britain on the Friday. Those of us who hadn't stayed up late, that is, as those who had knew we were toast when the BBC announced that both Birmingham and Sheffield had voted to leave. We even have a two-parter on BBC Two, which isn't much of a thriller as we already know they didn't live happily ever after, reminding us of how seventeen million voters were baited by con artists into making the most stupid decision in the history of a country where they abound. Ten years on, where do we go from here? Back to the EU, say a convincing majority of us.

Rejoin, forward out this feeling, ten true summers long we go round and round and round and round until we pick it up again. But the obvious choice may not be as obvious as it seems, and making it come true may be a fucking mammoth challenge, as this broad consensus totally clashes with the realities of the day. We may have moved on from where we were ten years ago, but so has the European Union. They are, slowly and reluctantly, moving towards greater political integration beyond the original template of a free-trade area, and their rules are changing accordingly. Which means, most significantly, that the opt-outs we were granted in the past are no longer available to new entrants. Alas, poor Yorick, therein lies the rub, as we would be treated as a new entrant if we asked to rejoin, no matter how humbly and respectfully. It's the fucking EU, mates, it's not fucking Netflix, you just can't suspend your subscription and then hope to renew it later on the same terms. And this is where wishes and reality totally collide.

We do have some very clear red lines drawn in the sands of time, the transcription of as many red flags dangled under John Bull's nose by the European Union. What is unacceptable for us is now their unshakeable rule, what would be acceptable for us is unacceptable for them, and there is just fuck all chance these positions can be reconciled. You'd have better odds at making Putin and Zelenskyy agree on a peace settlement. Our politicians are quite aware of that as they have all read the fine print, and this is why they are unwilling to address the issue directly. Even a credible reset on our terms is hugely unlikely, as the Single Market and the Customs Union also have strict rules, like making freedom of movement for people, not just goods, a non-negotiable pre-requisite for joining. Good luck with that, when we already know what the Rump Tories and the Fash would make of it.

It was a ridiculous decision. Somehow we have to understand when we make a mistake, we admit it and make a change.

(Michael Morpurgo, 2 April 2026)

I do think that it is a crime, and I’ll use that very strong word, what both Farage and Boris Johnson did, which was to lie and lie again, and are still not been held accountable for such a problematic policy.

(Mariana Mazzucato, Channel 4 News, 3 June 2026)

Now, if the very legitimate conditions imposed by the European Union on all new entrants make us go into anaphylactic shock, where does that leave us? There are like half a dozen options, if the EU does not laugh them off ad totally undoable, and our dedicated pollsters have tried them on us. YouGov released their findings first, with the caveat that seeing something included as an option in a poll does not mean it can actually happen in the real world. It is also quite unrealistic to list contradictory options side by side, when we would have to choose between one or the other in the real world. What you get here is just a broad outline of which options the government could realistically pursue, if you set aside the aforementioned red lines, which pretty much exclude rejoining and reinstating freedom of movement, and also make the Single Market and the Customs Union unpracticable, as both have some big strings attached too. Since we rule out the status quo and a more distant relationship, that leaves us with just one option, the gaseous "closer relationship" of undefined contour.

You may wonder what a closer relationship without rejoining either the Single Market or the Customs Union might be, and so do I. Unless this is the actual content of the soon-to-be-forgotten Starmer Reset. I mean, aligning our food safety regulations on the EU's does not make us any closer to them, it just makes homegrown food safer and fitter for human and canine consumption. And makes lawsuits from US Big Business more likely if it totally bans them from dumping on us the same kind of chemically-tainted shite they dump on their domestic customers, which would be an unacceptable violation of the rules of free trade. No shit, mates, I could write the complaint for them. Now,, as always, what one pollster found is contradicted by another pollster. Opinium did it this time, finding far fewer of us ready to rejoin the EU than YouGov, because they chose to offer four options pitted against each other instead of being assessed individually.

Opinium's mode of inquiry is certainly more realistic, as it surveys four competing options, just like they would be in real life. Obviously, it instantly torpedoes the common narrative about our appetite for rejoining the EU. How many of us actually want to do it? I have a hunch it is closer to about a third, as Opinium found, than to more than half, as YouGov keeps finding poll after poll. Because what emerges from all this polling is that rejoining is like the default fallback option when no credible pragmatic alternative is offered, because we do not want to perpetuate the current state of our complicated relationship with the Continent. But we are also unhappy with the actual consequences of rejoining, which can be easily pictured as losses of sovereignty because that's what they are, and we are still unwilling to endorse that. That's how the very theoretical "closer relationship" gains traction, and why politicians don't feel any urgency in defining more precisely what it actually means. Why would they when so many support it already, and filling the blanks would only trigger another hostile campaign of disinformation?

Just look at the data. They left. Businesses left. So now because they left, because our market is so much smaller, what was Brexit but a massive reduction in our market size?

(Mariana Mazzucato, Channel 4 News, 3 June 2026)

I think that, as one looks back, the blessed sponge of amnesia wipes the slate of memory clean.

(Michael Gove, Have I Got News For You, 5 June 2026)

Finally, we have had a surprisingly candid perspective on Brexit from Lord Ashcroft. Ten years ago, Mikey supported Brexit while suggesting that British firms should move their headquarters to Malta to continue benefiting from the EU's goodies, which was admittedly no more hypocritical than Benito Farage applying for a German passport. Now, every time Mikey surveys our voting intentions, which is like once a month, he adds some craftily designed questions about a select specific issue, and this month it was Brexit's turn. The key question proves that even Mikey now has sone kind of buyer's remorse about Brexit, or is at least trying to be more honest about it than his former bandmates in the Rump Tory Party. Of course, it has made life harder for all of us, except Benito Farage's foreign billionaire donors. That's what happens when the most stupid decision since the Charge of the Light Brigade costs you 15% of your foreign trade, 8% of your GDP and £100m per annum in taxes. Brexit has made us poorer and weaker, collectively and individually, and only fucking morons can deny it. Besides the entitled few who have benefited from it, that is.

There must be a way out of this mood of doom, and Mikey's poll suggest we have found one. A fucking referendum, for fuck's sake. Remember that the keystone of the foundations of our true constitutional order is the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, which must be considered absolute, immutable and non-negotiable. In this constitutional order, referendums just do not exist unless they are conjured by cowardly politicos who want to run away from taking a stand on supposedly controversial issues. We all know that, in the present state of our politics, the only ones with a vested interest in another referendum are the Fash. Because it is the only way they can unleash another campaign of hate, lies and fabrications lavishly funded by Trumpian Christo-fascists and Putin's blood money, as was the Vote Leave campaign of a decade ago. Ten years on, we should have at least learned that lesson. And now we have a poll loudly saying that we haven't.

There is a reason why Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher both vehemently opposed the very concept of a referendum. There is reason why only three have ever been conducted in the 1,140 years of the Realm's existence. It is just the most un-British way to solve a political disagreement, and also the one most vulnerable to hostile foreign interference and manipulation, especially in this day and age of AI-generated fake news. Politicos on the left and centre, who appear amenable to the idea of another referendum, should definitely think twice, think it through and reconsider. Offering the Fash yet another platform to spread division is definitely the last thing we need. Now, for a lighter perspective, if you thought that Shitweasel was the only one publishing total bullshit about Brexshit... oops, sorry... Lexit in The Hipstershire Gazette back in the day, you'd be badly wrong. Their perennial sanctimonious centrist Simon Jenkins also did, which was fucking hilarious coming from a self-confessed Remainer, who later relapsed and praised Keir Starmer's "Brexit Reset". Which has probably transitioned from "work in progress" to "straight to shredder" by now anyway.

I'm convinced that the security and prosperity of the UK depends on institutionalised, deep and strong relationship with the rest of Europe. I'm absolutely convinced of that.

(David Miliband)

Brexit was an economically damaging project promoted by politicians who peddled the nationalistic pish.

(Robert Kenyon, 2016)

Now, if we absolutely want to stick to the constitutional monstrosity of a referendum, the obvious follow-up question is when we want to hold it. Ipsos asked, as nobody else had done it yet, and came up with quite absurd replies. Ipsos proposed two options, before or after the next general, and the replies are identical. Except from LibDem voters, who are oddly in no hurry to get that fucking referendum, and favour holding it after the next general. So, if we do not really care when a hypothetical referendum is held, why keep fixating on having one in the first place?

The government has actually come up with another strategy to improve our relationship with the EU and progress towards restoring closer ties, one that does not involve any referendum about the nuclear option of rejoining. Instead, it would involve baby steps enforced using the so called "Henry VIII powers", which are the delegation of legislative power to the executive by statute, technically primary legislation that allows the government to pass secondary legislation without referring it to Parliament. It is much clearer if you look up Erskine May for the details of how it works. With the current uncertainty about who will be in charge next month, this is no longer on the table for now, but Opinium has polled it anyway. We are not really sure about it, though we lean toward approving it, despite loud opposition from some MPs in the name of parliamentary sovereignty. Never mind that these are the same who most loudly lobby for another referendum. But, more coherently, those of us who are more willing to let the government legislate without parliamentary intervention, so things get done faster, are also those who are the most supportive of closer ties with the EU, For once, that makes sense.

But which components of a Brexit Reset are we willing to approve? Bear in mind that anything that could be negotiated to bring us closer to the table would be a concession to the EU, and would be portrayed as such and as a loss of sovereignty by the Europhobes. YouGov have polled what could be the most plausible options for such rapprochement, showing that we do have some red lines that directly contradict the apparent massive appetite for rejoining. Interestingly, a couple of these stumbling blocks echo issues raised by the Vote Leave campaign of yore, while the evolutions we now support the most are also staunchly opposed by the Europhobes. Then there is an interesting contradiction about immigration policy. We do oppose being part of the EU's newly enforced New Pact on Migration and Asylum because the focus is on just one part of it, the solidarity mechanism for the rehoming of asylum seekers. But we forget, and the poll conveniently does not mention, that joining the Pact would also reinstate the provisions of the earlier Dublin Regulation, which allowed us to send back illegal migrants to the country where they had entered the EU first. The small boats did not exist as long as we were part of it, and their number skyrocketed as soon as Boris Johnson made us leave it. The EU did protect us from unwelcome illegal immigration, a basic truth that both the Rump Tories and the Fash don't want us to be reminded of.

This assembly of red lines shows how many of use still suffer from the toxic combination of English exceptionalism and British impero-nationalism. It also identifies which buttons the Fash should push to maximise the impact of another campaign of hate and lies. Because this is their only setting, as Robert Kenyon again proved on Question Time when he blamed the housing crisis on "ten million people coming in a short period of time", when actual net migration was 171,000 in 2025, so "an extra ten million" would take 58 years. Then he claimed, out of the turquoise, that 1,000 migrants enter the UK every day via "the boats", so 365,000 a year, when the actual number for 2025 is 41,000 or like one tenth of his fabricated figure. But the Fash have learnt nothing from the backlash of rage over Benito's abhorrent exploitation of Henry Nowak's murder to score cheap political points. They did the same, instantly, after the horrifying knife attack in Belfast two weeks ago. Make no mistake, the Fash will turn every incident, minor or serious, into a justification for more racism and xenophobia. And will squeal about denial of free speech if they are challenged, or throw a hissy tantrum like their role model the Orange Baboon.

Shouldn’t we start calling out the disaster that Brexit has been more directly? I think we should. I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime. That’s my belief, and I’ll say it clearly.

(Andy Burnham, Labour Party Conference, 30 September 2025)

Ukraine performed a historical miracle. The coming funeral of the Russian Empire, which I believe is not far away, is the result of the heroism of the Ukrainian people and, yes, of Zelenskyy’s political leadership.

(Garry Kasparov, 1 June 2026)

You may remember how I described the USA's and the EU's position on the supply of arms to Ukraine, quite a while ago as Joe Biden was still POTUS. It was like, "We will supply you the weapons you need to repeal Russia once you have proved you can repeal Russia without the weapons we could supply you", and I didn't phrase it that way just to be witty. The biggest change in the last two years is that we have now reached the point Ukraine is doing just that. Under pressure, Ukraine has developed the most innovative defence industry in Europe, focused on delivery and not procedure, as our own defence industry too often is. The added bonus is that Ukraine can now tell the United States to fuck off. They no longer need anyone's permission to strike selected targets deep inside the Russian Reich, and the Orange Baboon's insane war against Iran has offered them the opportunity to become major partners of the Gulf States, who also feel let down and betrayed by Trumpistan. It has been a long time since we got the last comprehensive poll of our attitudes towards Ukraine, and now we've got a new one from the most unlikely source, Lord Ashcroft. Some of the questions Lord Mikey asked have been tracked by YouGov since the beginning of the war, so we have some sense of the continuity and consistency of our resolve to support Ukraine.

A clear majority of us still support delivering military equipment to Ukraine, which is a good start. The irony is that what Ukraine needs most is Patriot missiles, and we can't send them any because we don't have any. For once, we did the right choice and procured Franco-Italian Aster 30 missiles instead of the US product. But we did not buy the land-based version, just the naval version for the Type 45 destroyers. Now these are being retrofitted with British CAMM missiles, so we could surely send all the surplus Asters to Ukraine. The land and naval versions are identical, so those we have can be fired from land batteries that France and Italy have already delivered to Ukraine. Interestingly, an upgraded version called CAMM-MR is now under joint development by the UK and Poland, who intend to replace Patriots with CAMM-MR in their new Wisla air defence systems, the Polish equivalent of Israel's Iron Dome. Which would both make dozens of Patriots available for Ukraine, and open the door to the later delivery of CAMM-MR. But this a more distant prospect, so we must also relentlessly use the other weapons we have to cripple the Russian Reich's capability to wage its genocidal war.

There is still widespread and consensual support here for further sanctions against Russia, despite Keir Starmer's ill-advised decision to delay some to appease motorists. Bear in mind that the only persons in the world who want to repeal sanctions against the fascist Russian terrorist state are Donald Trump and his court, because they sense the opportunity for business deals with Putin's crime syndicate, which would financially benefit the Orange Baboon and his family. This is why Trump expressly forbade Ukraine to strike the infrastructure of the Russian oil industry, which they are now doing anyway with what Volodia Zelenskyy ironically calls their home-made "long range sanctions". At a longer range down the space-time continuum, we will also have to make a decision about sending British troops to Ukraine as part of a European peace-keeping force designed to deter the Russian aggressor. Remember Russia threatened to target foreign embassies in Kyiv, and murder foreign diplomats, just days ago, so any future deterrent to further aggression will have to be fucking massive and powerful. Fortunately, the Great British Public still display conclusive support for being part of the peace-keeping force, and that should definitely convince our future government to go for it.

Now I cannot avoid mentioning a very ill-advised decision made by Volodia Zelenskyy, to be done with it and move on. I do not indulge in double-standards, like the various shades of our local Putin appeasers, so Ukraine must be held to account when they fuck up. And Volodia has, big time, with his twin rehabilitations of Andriy Melnyk and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which have triggered vocal protest in Poland and Israel. I honestly don't give a shit about Israel's reaction, as they are fully committed to their own imperialist genocidal aggression, first in Gaza and now in Lebanon. But the widespread indignation in Poland is more than justified. You just cannot endorse what would be called a terrorist militia today, one that murdered Jews and Poles, without expecting some backlash. Volodia should have known, as reactions to the earlier celebration of Stepan Bandera, which admittedly occurred years before he became President, clearly showed that Ukraine's European allies will never accept the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, even wrapped in the oven-ready excuse that their true fight was against genocidal Stalinism. Zelenskyy has scored a massive own goal that could and should have been avoided, and opportunistic motivations linked to domestic politics do not make it any better. Had to say it, mate, though my complete disapproval will not weaken my total resolve to support Ukraine's fight against Russian fascism. You're a fucking lucky lad, Volodia, do you realise that?

Europe is still not ready to say the magic formula: Russia must lose, Ukraine must win. But the war cannot end while Putin is in power, because under Putin war has become the way the entire Russian state apparatus exists.

(Garry Kasparov, 31 May 2026)

Trump has already done everything he could for Putin. Cut aid to Ukraine, stopped giving weapons, even stopped selling them to Europeans, raised oil prices with the Iran war, quarrelled with Europe, and practically buried NATO.

(Garry Kasparov, 31 May 2026)

The Ashcroft poll of Ukraine extends far beyond the UK, as Mikey's troopers also surveyed France, Germany, Poland and the United States with the same array of questions. So we thusly have a comprehensive view of the state of public opinion in four allies of Ukraine and one ally of Russia in the Global West. Then they ventured much further and also polled Ukraine and Russia with sur mesure questionnaires. So we will also have a unique glimpse of how the victim and the aggressor assess the current situation of the war, which I will deal with further down the road. First, Mikey had to establish the background to all the rest of the polling. Who do we think is winning? And we clearly think that it is not clear. Ukrainians have a slightly more positive vision of their own position, and Russians were not even asked.

It is a pity that Russians were not asked, as their reply would have been enlightening. Come on, mates, how do you feel about your oil industry, the one without which Putin can't go on with his genocide, being burned to the ground by Ukraine? How do you feel about the 9th of May humiliation and the dwarf parade? How do you feel about Saint Petersburg, Pyotr Veliky's sacred brainchild and the city where Putin was groomed by the local political crime syndicate, being repeatedly violated by swarms of drones, including select hits on the Kronstadt naval base? Disabling one of the few modern Russian warships is a direct message from Zelenskyy to the West. Ukraine have already neutered Putin's Black Sea Fleet and they can do the same to his Baltic Fleet, removing a clear threat to the European Union's Eastern flank. But how do European public opinions assess our options for the immediate future? Lord Ashcroft has surveyed that with two different approaches, craftily designed to highlight our contradictions.

A majority of Brits, and strong pluralities in Europe and the USA, agree that our best option is to support Ukraine, either out of self interest or as a matter of principle. Even Germans narrowly agree, far from the usual faux pacifist stance and two generations of Realpolitik that, for all intents and porpoises, protected Soviet and then Russian interests more than their own or the Global West's. Alas, poor Volodia, it didn't last long as Germany returned to its pro-Russian leanings when faced with a binary choice between supporting Ukraine until the Russian Reich has to admit defeat, or bringing the conflict to a swift end that would include forcing Ukraine to accept concessions to their genocidal imperialist aggressor. It is especially disturbing as Lord Mikey used the exact same wording for the capitulation option in both questions, and they fell into the obvious trap head first. Sadly, we also see traces of the Putinist influence in France, fueled by bad faith populist politicians exploiting popular discontent over domestic issues. That again leaves us as the most determined to support Ukraine until their Victory Day, though there is now a worrying number of us sitting on the fence, more than other pollsters found earlier.

Interestingly, Germany lost the election for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations' Security Council this month. for the first time ever. The two seats allocated to the so-called "Western European and Others" group are up every two years on even years, and Germany was elected without a glitch every time they stood for one of these seats. This year, Russia indulged in intense lobbying against Germany's candidacy, exploiting their traditionally very pro-Israel stance, and it worked. Regardless of what you may think of Germany's position on Gaza, the vote illustrates again what a farce the United Nations have become. If Trump had openly campaigned against one of the candidates, it would have triggered a massive backlash. When Putin does it, it's just business as usual. The United Nations have de facto granted Russia a veto on the candidates for non-permanent seats. Just another instance of the United Nations discrediting themselves and descending into the indignity of woke-infused revisionist double standards, which seems to have become their defining trait since António Gutteres became their Secretary General.

Trump must feel offended: I did everything, so why can’t Putin win? All the conditions were ready. But Putin has not won and the war is moving in the wrong direction for Moscow. Russia has no serious breakthrough potential.

(Garry Kasparov, 31 May 2026)

After every Russian escalation into a NATO country we hear leaders repeating the mantra, "We stand with...". But we could do much more than standing around.

(Gabrielius Landsbergis)

Do you know how old the now famous Dormition Cathedral in Kyiv is? You could say 948 years and you would be right, or 277 years and you would also be right, or 26 years and you would still be right. It was built three centuries before the current variant of Moscow's Kremlin, reconstructed in the 18th century, savaged and demolished by the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and finally totally rebuilt a generation ago after the independence of Ukraine. Volodia Zelenskyy has built a complete narrative about it now, after the Russian strike that set it ablaze a few days ago, quite hyperbolically calling it a crime against humanity. It may be a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990, but it is probably quite similar to our own national treasure HMS Victory, which reportedly has less than 20% of the original ship left. Anyway, Volodia would have been in dereliction of duty if he had not weaponised the event against Putin, the self-appointed Defender Of Christianity who destroys churches, for the benefit of European public opinions among which support for Ukraine is not as consensual and determined as it once was.

There is significant evidence of Ukraine fatigue, which Vlad The Butcher and his bribed tankies are exploiting to the fullest, when a significant number of people in the three main European Union nations opine that their governments have done too much to support Ukraine. The attitude of Polish public opinion will have to be watched more closely in future polls, as it has become significantly less favourable to Ukraine after an unavoidable controversy about the rehabilitation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army by Zelenskyy. Poland's President Karol Nawrocki has stoked the fire when he stripped Volodia of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour. There is probably a hidden agenda here, as Karol Nawrocki is a political opponent of Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk and is also weaponising the controversy as part of his nationalist agenda, and to embarrass Tusk. But the fallout of Zelenskyy's controversial decisions also shows in Polish attitudes towards specific types of aid to Ukraine.

Poles emerge of this poll as the least supportive of humanitarian aid, and part of an unholy triad of refuzniks when it comes to military aid. Therein lies the most worrying part of YouGov's findings, the growing hostility to military support in France and Germany. It is easily explained in Germany by the combination of Kremlin-bribed neo-Nazis, also supported by Elon Muck and J,D. Vance, and legacy faux pacifists, including survivors of the "better red than dead" generation who benefited from subsidies from the Soviet Union and East Germany during the 1980s. It is more ambiguous in the country of my birth, where the far-right National Rally is now torn between born-again Atlanticism rooted in Trumpism and its more traditional extremist Russophilia, and only the far-left La France Insoumise is still openly siding with the fascist Russian Reich. The UK thusly remains Ukraine's most faithful and solid ally, notwithstanding the massive caveat that we have no fucking clue how Andy Burnham would handle this, and foreign policy generally. There are also revealing differences in the way the five countries assess the Russian threat.

Poland is obviously quite aware of the true nature of the Russian threat. Which is only natural as they have witnessed the bloodthirsty savagery of the hordes of orcs first hand for centuries, and the vatniks have destroyed their nation thrice already. Great Britain has never witnessed that the same way, except our soldiers who rubbed noses with the orcs on the banks of the Elbe in 1945 only to see them rape and savage underage German girls, but recent experience has made us more and more aware of the threat. We were already the most aware in Western Europe two months ago, and recent Russian provocations have definitely increased that awareness. The vatniks are testing us because they know we currently are the weakest link in the defence of Europe, and we have kind of validated that when we sent a one-gun patrol boat to confront a Russian frigate twice her size, that was shooting at innocent bystanders on a yacht. But at least we are not in denial, as a third of French and Germans are thanks to the relentless propaganda vomited over there by FSB-controlled influencers. Let's hope we will keep this healthy awareness of the Russian threat in the future and never give the keys of Number Ten to the bribed traitors who want us to become the 47th oblast of the Russian Reich.

U.S. generals understand the new reality. Ukraine is now the most combat-capable army in Europe, and America has to learn from Ukraine. Cooperation with Ukraine is necessary to prepare effectively for confrontation with China.

(Garry Kasparov, 31 May 2026)

Negotiations with Putin mean selling part of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territory to buy time for calm preparation before Putin’s next aggression. Nothing else is happening here. Russia’s whole system is aimed at continuing the war.

(Garry Kasparov, 31 May 2026)

But being aware of the existential threat embedded at the core of the fascist imperialist genocidal Russian Reich does not mean that our continental brethren are clear about what should be done to eradicate the threat for the next seven generations. The French and Germans are lukewarm on further sanctions to Russia, partly because their FSB-bribed influencers still maintain that the sanctions are not working, which is a fucking obvious lie, or that they hurt the sanctioner more than the sanctionee, which is total bullshit as the whole of Europe has adjusted long ago to the impact of the sanctions on their own economy. The same two are also massively supporting the delusion that our strategy should be to diplomatically seek a peace deal with Putin. Would de Gaulle have let Churchill and Roosevelt negotiate a peace deal with Hitler in 1944? Obviously not, and today's situation is similar. What we should seek is the total destruction of Russia's economy and military industry, which Ukrainian "long range sanctions" are close to achieving, and the elimination of the top war criminals, starting with Putin.

Europeans are equally ambiguous about the next key issue, Ukraine's membership of NATO. Offering Ukraine security guarantees without NATO membership would be a fucking sick joke if it was not pathetically insulting. Security guarantees are exactly what we explicitly signed up for with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in return for Ukraine sending back all its Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia and agreeing to never own any in the future. And we all know what happened when we had the opportunity to enforce it. Just thinking of offering the same kind of empty promises today is both irresponsible and abjectly obscene. Some Europeans are offering this only because they are still groomed to accept the narrative that they should not provoke Russia, while the reality is that Russia is at heart a vicious aggressive nation that needs no provocation to attack weaker neighbours. The obvious only way forward is to offer Ukraine full membership of NATO. The sooner the better, and it should even be done while the war is still ongoing, so that the Kremlin receives the right message.

Now, let's admit for a second that we do reach some kind of peace deal with the Russian war criminals, and that the fighting stops along a demarcation line broadly similar to the frontline on the day of the ceasefire. Which, by the way, is further evidence that we should help Ukraine take back as much of the occupied territories as they can, and also isolate Crimea, so Ukraine has all the cards and Russia has none. Then we would have to decide whether or not to send troops to Ukraine. Make no mistake, it would make no difference whether we send them on a limited mission of peacekeeping or to help train the Ukrainian military. In both cases, Russia would consider this as a provocation, and Shitweasel and the other Putin-enablers in the loopy woke far-left would squeal and squeak "escalation". So there is no point in not going the Full Monty and not doing both. But we would have to ensure that our force in Ukraine does not duplicate the planned impotence of UNIFIL, that watches Israel's ransacking and genocide of Lebanon from the sidelines. Proper efficient peacekeeping means that we would have to send a fully equipped force, just as if it was an overseas combat deployment. The key is to show muscle, teeth and baws, to send an unequivocal message to the Kremlin that we would instantly strike back at the slightest violation of the ceasefire.

Now our friends and allies in the European Union must urgently clean their stables after revelations about a massive scandal. The Irish political establishment wanted it hidden, but it is now in plain sight. Ireland is the major supplier of alumina to the Russian Reich, a chemical compound used in the manufacturing of military equipment. Ireland can't even plead blissful ignorance here, as the have banned the export of alumina to Israel for this precise reason. This again illustrates the abject duplicity and the moral bankruptcy of the virtue-signalling woke, which the Irish government undoubtedly are if the nation isn't. They love riding their moral high horse and sanctimoniously lecturing the rest of the EU about their moral obligation to oppose Israel's genocide of Gaza and Lebanon, while turning a blind eye to their own Aughinish Alumina, which is pretty much a Russian enclave on Irish soil, aiding and abetting the Russian genocide of Ukraine. All in the name of protecting jobs, the same kind of excuse used by European industrialists in the 1930s to justify juicy business deals with Nazi Germany. Ireland have also constantly refused to send any kind of military aid to Ukraine, in the name of their sacrosanct neutrality, while delivering essential supplies for the military industry to the most genocidal imperialist state since the Third Reich. It has even been rumoured that they want to block discussion of the EU's defence policy during their six-month stint chairing the Council of the European Union, though this is probably beyond their power. Now, if Keir Starmer wants to go out not with a whimper but a bang, he just has to order the Royal Navy to intercept and seize any ship carrying alumina to Russia through the Channel, just as he has done for a tanker of Putin's shadow fleet. But he is probably too much of a hollow man to do that now.

Everything Trump did as President benefited Putin. He's the only person on the planet Trump never criticized. Donald Trump was the only one who could save Putin, and that’s exactly what’s happening now.

(Garry Kasparov, 29 May 2026)

I thank our warriors for their precision. Ukraine’s plan for long-range sanctions is being implemented exactly as needed to bring peace closer. Glory to Ukraine!

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 3 June 2026)

After the VE-Eve locals, some overzealous Reform councils thought it was a good idea to remove Ukrainian flags from Council buildings. Which should be properly called vice-signalling and not virtue-signalling. Uncoincidentally, the same thing had happened in France after their municipal elections in March. Some newly-elected mayors from the Putinist far-right ad far-left had Ukrainian flags removed from their city halls in the name of neutrality. They have all forgotten the late Desmond Tutu's oft-mentioned quote, that if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Probably because neither the Fash nor the Woke see Vlad The Butcher as an oppressor, but as an inspiration, on top of being a very generous donor. Our Ukrainian brethren should not totally despair just yet, though, as a plurality of us still agree that we should show our support by flying the colours of Ukraine on Council buildings. It could be better, should be better actually, but it's still a positive.

Ukraine has had a very positive image of the United Kingdom since the days of Boris Johnson. They didn't care that his exuberant support was part of his ego trip and shameless self-promotion. He delivered and never wavered, and that's all that mattered. He actually never delivered as much as he could have. as we had our hands tied by Cowardly Joe Biden, who was influenced by his advisers into never doing anything that could really threaten the genocidal Russian Reich. Ukraine's were thusly forced to fight with one hand tied behind their back for years, through the combination of American cowardice and agitation by FSB-bribed faux pacifists in Western Europe. This shows in the Ukrainian people's verdict on who helped them the most. NATO totally deserve coming last, as their Secretary General Mark Rutte was never more than the USA's obedient sock puppet, making complete inefficiency a strategy. It is nevertheless quite odd that Germany receive the second best rating after the UK, as their Chancellor Olaf Scholz constantly betrayed Ukraine in an absurd policy of appeasement of Russia, and the current one Friedrich Merz has reneged on his one meaningful promise, the delivery of Taurus missiles.

History books will also remember that Keir Starmer was immensely popular in Ukraine up to the very last days of his Premiership, more popular there than he ever was at home, with a final net positive of +51%. In the UK, his final net rating, on the eve of his departure, was -46%. They surely also remember that we were the first to lift restrictions on the use of the weapons we provided, thusly allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, and that it happened on Starmer's watch. They also fully appreciate that we are the only country so far developing a new ballistic missile specifically tailored to meet Ukraine's needs. Three new models of low-cost cruise missiles using British components only, to avoid interference by American export restrictions, have also been developed and will be delivered to Ukraine this year. This also happened on Starmer's watch, so his legacy will live on in Ukraine if it does not in the UK. No other European country has gone that far to respond to what the Ukrainian people still see as their first priority, delivering more military equipment to contribute to the Russian Reich's defeat. Which is probably inevitable now that Ukraine are supplementing foreign aid with the products of the own very successful military industry, which are wreaking havoc on essential parts of Russia's infrastructure.

Ukraine has shown the whole world its new capabilities when it struck a refinery in the suburbs of Moscow not once, but twice in two days. The amazing part is that the Soviet Union built a refinery, and Russia kept it operational, only 15 kilometres from the Kremlin, or 10 miles. That's roughly the distance between Holyrood and Edinburgh Airport, or between Westminster and Richmond Park for those familiar only with the geography of the Imperial Capital. Not really smart of Putin to keep a vulnerable strategic asset, which covers half of the Moscow Region's fuel needs, so close to the city centre and in the middle of a residential area. Which was not residential when the refinery was built, but has become due to the expansion of the city in the last fifty years. These strikes definitely give credibility to Volodia's threat that, if Kyiv is struck again, then "your Moscow will burn too". It already is, actually, which was bound to happen when Ukraine produces enough long range drones in one day to saturate the Russian air defences and bring the war to the Gargoyle Midget's doorstep. The dildo of consequences never arrives lubed, and now Ukraine is shoving it all the way up Putin's arse.

Ukraine’s allies, including three US presidents, spent years protecting aggressor Russia and tying the hands of the victim. Their rationales were cover for cowardice and corruption and now have been refuted in practice. Target practice.

(Garry Kasparov, 18 June 2026)

The only way to guarantee peace is deterrence. You must be strong enough to make the enemy desist from the possibility of attacking you. It is strength that builds peace, not weakness.

(Giorgia Meloni, 18 June 2026)

Over the last two years, Ukraine has done what nobody thought possible, especially the Russian Reich. Instead of endlessly whining about their alleged allies' deficient support, they have taken matters into their own hands with their legendary determination and built, pretty much from scratch, what the EU now recognises as the most impressive defence industry on the continent. What they are already producing is evidence of that, and it seems we ain't seen nothing yet. Of course there are gaps, as they still can't produce planes and warships, but what they have done is a textbook case of a priority-driven strategy. The Ashcroft troopers have asked their Ukrainian panel how successfully they think their defence is working. There are vast areas of doubt, which is totally understandable when your everydays are a succession of genocidal Russian strikes on civilians, mass-murdering grannies and children. The AFU must still increase the lethality of their strikes on the Russian military, as the population will not feel confident and safe as long as air raid sirens are heard every day in every major city. They have had undeniable major successes, they just need to make it more visible for the whole population.

Ashcroft also tested which concessions Ukrainians would be ready to make to reach a peace settlement. Giving up on any part of the nation's territory, as defined by the borders of 1991, is clearly a taboo, but NATO membership is not. But these red lines are actually already passé, as this poll was conducted before Ukraine demonstrated they can flatten to the ground the whole of Russia's oil and weapons industries. The tables and the tide have turned and Nosferatu knows it, or he would not be begging for "dialogue with the EU" and proposing to restart the peace talks where they left off four years ago in Istanbul. This is pathetic and unacceptable for Ukraine as the starting point would be their capitulation, while the only legitimate starting point now is Russia's capitulation. Zelenskyy knows it, Putin knows it, Trump knows it, the writing is on the wall. The only question is when someone will dispose of the last obstacle, Putin himself. Might be the FSB, might be MI6, might be China, might be by bribery, might be by brute force, it doesn't matter who does it and how, as long as it is done, and the sooner the better.

Now, if I were Volodia, I would feel reassured by what happened, totally unexpectedly, at the G7 Summit in France. I'm not talking about Trump's histrionics here, signing his capitulation to Iran in Versailles. But about his massive U-turn from support to the Russian Reich to alignment on Europe's commitment to support Ukraine. Manny Macron took credit for that, quite rightfully, as he did engineer it during his multiple apartés with the Orange Baboon. Did Manny take advantage of a disoriented senile old man's lapses of lucidity? Or did he just cuddle his massive ego? We will never know, and I honestly don't give a fuck, as the end more than justified whatever means were used. The most important parts are boosting delivery of air defence systems and long-range strike capabilities, including US ones, and opening the door to the production in Ukraine of Western weapons under licence. The irony is that Volodia now has a credible alternative strategy if the West again fails him, turning to his newfound allies and customers in the Arab Gulf States, who are deeply appreciative of Ukraine's help against Iranian drones, and have absolutely no reason to continue appeasing Trump, who has badly let them down. Would be quite amusing if next year's summit of the revamped Coalition Of The Willing met in Dubai. And I'm not even kidding here... well... just a little.

We, the Germans, the UK, the French, all are of the view that the tide has turned in this war. It is a matter of time. Putin is going to lose this war.

(Mark Carney, 17 June 2026)

Only the total defeat of the Russian Federation and the Ukrainian flag in Sevastopol will knock the virus of empire out of the brains of Russians. Russians must see that the empire is dead.

(Garry Kasparov, 23 April 2026)

The Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War lasted 1,417 days and ended in the complete destruction of Nazi Germany. The First World War lasted 1,567 days and ended in the demise of the Tsarist Empire. Russia's imperialist and genocidal Special Military Operation in Ukraine has lasted 1,641 days so far and Russia is in a weaker position than it has ever been during these four years and four months, while Putinism looks more like dying Tsarism than triumphant Stalinism. So it was as good a moment as any for Lord Ashcroft to poll Russia, a rare endeavour for Western pollsters. Let's just hope it is more reliable than the usual FSB-monitored polls that tell you Putin has 82% job approval. There are hints in the crosstabs that Mikey did indeed get honest replies, for example to his question on which direction Russia should take in the future. Only a minority think they should look West, but there is a massive generational divide. The 18-24s, who are not the amorphous TikTok Generation we have to endure here, are definitely unwilling to be confined forever to the bleak reboot of the Soviet Union imposed on them by the Kremlin's Nosferatu.

Likewise, the 18-24s are the most likely to admit that our sanctions are working and have made their life Hell. Globally, the vatniks are split between those who are in denial about the impact of the sanctions and those who admit they have negatively impacted their life, which is self-evident when you consider the genuine factors. Massive tax hikes, galloping inflation, deteriorating standards of living, recurring shortages, a crumbling economy. A bit like 1970s Britain without the prospect of an incoming election to kick the fucking bastards out. Of course, Nosferatu's tankies in both the bribe-fed far-right and the loopy far-left still want you to believe that we should lift the sanctions because they are not working and are hurting us more than them, but the Russians themselves beg to disagree. And they obviously know best.

Of course, what matters most is how the Great Russian Public feel about the SMO itself. Here the poll sends discordant messages. 74% think the SMO is necessary to protect Russia's national security, 62% think it is a success, 75% think it had to be done because NATO is a threat to Russia. Nigel Farage and Tommy Sheridan could have told you the same, couldn't they? But this facade of support is just a Potemkin consensus, and we have evidence of that when the panel are pushed further with more detailed options. Then support for the SMO falls by 20% and four out of ten openly dissent. Again, the 18-24s are at the vanguard of discontent. Again, our sanctions are the key factor explaining opposition to the disastrously failing SMO. Urban Russia is also more likely to dissent than rural Russia. They were the privileged areas that the regime tried to protect from the worst consequences of the war, like being coerced to the front with a 98% probability of never coming back and a 2% probability of coming back with missing pieces. But reality is hitting there too since it started raining drones.

This poll proves that the proverbial "Ukraine fatigue" is stronger in Russia then in the West and, just as importantly, that Ukrainians are more determined than Russians to see the conflict end on their terms. There is also conclusive evidence that Ukraine's strikes deep into Russian territory, especially the elimination of high-ranking military figures at the heart of Moscow, have pushed Nosferatu's paranoia to stratospheric levels. Discontent is growing among the elites and oligarchs, and also among the population of the urban areas like Moscow and Saint Petersburg, because Ukraine has proven that the Russian military, which consume 40% of the nation's budget, can no longer protect them. The war is coming home in the most painful way, even if Ukraine has ruled out deliberate attacks on civilians, unlike Russia who has made them their main modus operandi. So the unthinkable has now become the plausible. Either Ukraine eliminate Putin themselves because, in this one specific case, they no longer give a shit about the restrictions in international law. Or Russia's political and military establishments join forces to get rid of him, just like they eliminated Stalin's chosen successor Lavrentiy Beria three generations ago. Both scenarios lead to the same result. Putin's successor stops the war and begs for a peace deal within a week. Mark my words, mates.

The Russian Federation regularly "loses" guided airborne bombs in its own and occupied territories due to insufficient military training and crew fatigue.

(British intelligence, June 2026)

Active defence is the only real defence, the only defence for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive. Only the greatest fool or madman would hold up passive defence as a magic weapon.

(Mao Zedong)

One of the key issues right now is how our defence spending will evolve in the next five to ten years, and how much popular support there is for the obvious choice, increasing it by amounts unseen since we succumbed to the delusions of the end of history and the dividends of peace. Are we willing to undo the damage done by a generation of neglect? Are we ready to do it by all means available? Of course, our dear YouGov have polled it extensively, but their findings are quite a disappointingly mixed bag. Good news first, as support for increased defence spending has significantly gone up since last year. It has even become kind of consensual as even Green voters are now leaning towards supporting it, albeit reluctantly, despite the irresponsible opposition of their party's leadership. YouGov found that before the current governmental psychodrama over defence, More In Common and Opinium confirmed it after it had started.

The obvious follow-up question to such massive support fir more spending on defence is how we intend to fund it. And this is where it all goes South. Not for lack of creativity, as YouGov came up with twelve different options. The most recent estimate of the required spending hike, if you can decipher the nebula of amounts that have been thrown on the table, is £48bn over four years, £12bn per annum. That's 1.3% of the projected amount of tax receipts for 2025-2026, or 3.6% of the projected income tax receipts. Which does sound like a fucking lot until you factor in that it is also about £0.25 per voting age adult per year. Doesn't look like much now, does it? Interestingly, YouGov's options do not include the most obvious one, a wealth tax, which would deliver about double what we need to boost defence. Real patriots would be willing to contribute that, wouldn't they? So we are left with two people-validated options. Cutting unemployment benefits, which does have majority support if you weed out undecideds, but would be extremely risky and potentially explosive politically. Or taxing the highest incomes more, which does have outright majority support, but could meet fierce opposition from the Rump Tories and the Fash, but also from the Treasury sticking to its very passé fiscal dogma.

Now, if you agree to concentrate the tax hike on the 10% highest earners, who contribute 60% of income tax receipts according to HMRC statistics, you would have to increase their contribution by 6%. Surely Nigel Farage would incite riots again and lead the revolt himself if you did that. Or he would just incite the riots and then watch them on GB news from the lounge of his £1.4m bribe-funded country mansion in Surrey, because he is a fucking elitist coward who never mixes with the oiks. The background to all these scenarios is a very strong popular dissatisfaction at the way defence is handled by the government. YouGov has tracked it since The Last Days Of May, and the Conservatives got away with it for years despite their proven neglect of The Forces. The tide turned only under Rishi Sunak when more conclusive evidence of that neglect came under the spotlight. Now We the People have conclusively turned against the Labour government, with half of us opining that they are handling defence matters badly. This is unfair as they are not responsible for the sorry state of The Forces, but also justified as they are all bark and no bite, acknowledging the seriousness of the situation but unable to enforce the proper solutions.

With such high levels of support for increased defence spending and discontent over the way defence is handled, it is indeed appalling that the government is again stalling and procrastinating, with the release of the Defence Investment Plan delayed by nine months. All the Ministry of Defence has to offer are unbelievably lame excuses that totally undermine its credibility. The priorities are obvious, and cross-Cabinet consensus is what you secure first when you need a big amount of extra funding. Even before John Healey's dramatically performative resignation, you could only question Keir Starmer's readiness to fight for this "generational increase" in defence spending, and his real commitment to getting it done. The government is not only badly letting down communities who expected increased investment to boost their own capabilities, but also sending the wrongest possible message to our allies in Europe and our enemies in the United States and Russia. That of a government that has cornered itself into impotence with his chronic inability to make any serious decision and stick to it, not to mention the proverbial "tough choices". And the more it lasts, the worse it gets, and the more difficult reconstruction will be.

With our armed forces overstretched, Labour now seems to be investing in a new weapon of war. The long-form essay. It gives another meaning to the phrase "drone warfare".

(Ed Davey, PMQs, 3 June 2026)

The excellent and extensive cross-government work that completed in January – overseen by you, me and the chancellor – confirmed the scale of the challenge and the rising demands on defence.

(John Healey, 11 June 2026)

In a complete shocker amidst a shocker-heavy period of turmoil, John Healey has now exited stage left, but not pursued by a bear. Instead, he has unleashed the bear on his unsuspecting former colleagues, with a resignation letter that deserves the BAFTA for Best Backstabbing Hatchet Job. After all, if you throw a live grenade into a barrel of shit, you have to do it with panache, and John Healey did just that, much better than Wes Streeting. This was in almost comical contrast with Speaker Lyndsay Hoyle's pathetic performance in Commons the day before, when he showed more concern for decorum and rigid compliance with bureaucratic procedure than for the urgency of properly dealing with matters of national security. Of course, Healey's resignation will not solve the major conundrum the government is facing, because both Starmer and Reeves are bawless. The Chancellor is terrified of going against the herd of Labour MPs who demand billions for benefits for electoral gains. The Prime Minister will not rule against the Chancellor as he is terrified she would resign too, thusly turning the current chaos into full-blown Zombie Apocalypse. This will not strengthen our confidence in The Forces' capabilities, which has been polled and tracked by YouGov for seven years now.

This first tracker shows our level of confidence in the Armed Forces's ability "to defend Britain itself against any possible military attack". Their wording since 2019. Initially, they surely had a very conventional type of attack in mind, like the United States staging a Normandy Redux landing on Bermuda because owning it is essential to their national security. But the nature of the plausible attacks has changed since, and we know that because they are already happening in a protean way. Now that's Elon Muck encouraging racist riots with deepfake videos or the FSB cyber-attacking democratic nations to boost the advent of fascist regimes. Our defence has to adapt, while preserving our traditional conventional capabilities, and we are doing it painfully slowly. The rest of Europe adapting just as slowly is not an acceptable excuse. YouGov also tracked our confidence in the ability of our Armed Forces "to be able to take part in military operations overseas". "What could possibly be wrong with overseas operations?", you may ask? You mean other than the fact that the last one Badenoch, Farage and Blair wanted us to get embroiled in was the Orange Baboon's absurd, illegal and failing war with Iran? The very concept is very questionable, and our level of confidence in our ability to actually make it work is at an all-time low.

The problem with overseas operations is that those we embarked on in the past are tainted by our policy of granting ourselves some sort of police powers over what is happening in foreign nations. This has been United States policy since 1945 and we went along with it in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to massive failures and loss of credibility. The only overseas operations we should be part of now are genuine peacekeeping forces, explicitly requested and approved by the nation where they would be deployed. Think Ukraine next year, even if a credible peacekeeping operation would require summat like a third of the British Army's available personnel. YouGov completed their triad of trackers with our level of support for Trident renewal, which is kind of a moot point as it had already been approved. Interestingly, support for it has sharply increased at the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and support for giving up nuclear capability has been cut by half since. I certainly do not support the concept of unilateral nuclear disarmament, with is just a component of Soviet and then Russian infiltration of the loopy far left, but that does not mean we should unquestioningly acquiesce to the political establishment's consensus on keeping a nuclear deterrent at all costs.

There is a lot to say about the stubbornly relentless pursuit of continuous nuclear capability, which has been a totemic sacred cow of British politics for the last seventy years. The most obvious objection is that, unlike France's nuclear deterrent, ours is anything but independent. The technology we use is provided by the United States, and the final decision about using it or not would be made at the White House, not at Number Ten. This has to be seriously questioned, scrutinised and challenged now that Donald Trump has killed the last vestigial remains of the delusion of a special relationship, and reframed the United States as an enemy and plausible threat to the whole of Europe including us. If you look at the complete picture with the required pragmatism, you very quickly reach the conclusion that we should disentangle ourselves from the toxic relationship with the United States, but have no credible oven-ready alternative to maintain a British nuclear deterrent. The real question thusly becomes whether or not we should keep one at all, especially when we see Ukraine successfully resisting the allegedly second most powerful nuclear power in the world with makeshift conventional means, and already know that China will always forbid the use of even the smallest tactical nuke by Russia under any circumstances, and do have the power to make Russia obey their orders.

Since then, you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.

(John Healey, 11 June 2026)

I am certain that a headmark date for 3% of GDP on defence in 2030 is what Britain must set. This commitment would have strong cross-party support. Other European allies are stepping up in this way.

(John Healey, 11 June 2026)

One of the pillars of the credibility of our defence is our commitment to NATO, which is still alive and kicking despite Trump's efforts to neuter it to please his BFF in Moscow. There is a reason why the loopy far-left want either to leave it or dilute it in an amorphous non-entity inclusive of Russia's accomplices in the genocide of Ukraine, Like the Orange Baboon, they are just obeying orders from their organ grinders at the GRU. YouGov have also tracked our support for NATO membership and our assessment of its importance for our national security, and their last update in unequivocal. The first question was asked in one of YouGov's standalone polls, so includes political crosstabs with all five main parties who will stand everywhere in Great Britain. The second question is a recurring item in YouGov's monthly Political Trackers, that use quite outdated crosstabs limited to just three out of the 410 registered political parties in the UK, information valid at the date of publication, the three legacy parties that shaped British politics for a century until the 2020s. Whichever way you crosstab it, there is a solid consensus to support membership of NATO, including Green voters, and equally solid agreement that it is important for our national security.

Being part of a large defensive alliance definitely makes sense when we see Russian warships escorting tankers of the Kremlin's shadow fleet, prowling around offshore wind farms off Suffolk, and now opening fire at a British ship off the Isle of Wight. Obviously, they do not want anyone coming too close, in case that would uncover evidence that they are engaged in sabotage, which would not be a first. Russia is becoming more and more aggressive, like a cornered savage beast in its death throes, as shown also by the deliberate targeting of historical landmarks in Ukraine. But any alliance is just as strong as its weakest link, which is clearly the United States now that Putin's flying monkey in Hungary has been deposed, and also as strong as the level of confidence its members have in each other. YouGov of course polled us about that too, and we have mixed feelings. We are fairly confident that we would help any ally under attack, but less convinced that they would reciprocate. This is also taken from YouGov's Political Trackers, and shows higher scores than average with the voters of all three legacy parties. So the elements of doubt have to come from elsewhere, like Reform and Green voters. YouGov definitely have to extend these crosstabs now for a fuller view.

I can only hope that John Healey's resignation will not jeopardise our defence policy, but also have to mention there is one specific point he did not address in his resignation letter, because it would have made him hugely unpopular with Labour MPs, but is nevertheless the core of Starmer's dilemma. The tough choice that was never made between defence and welfare. That's the can of worms both the Conservatives and Labour have been kicking into the long grass all along the last two parliamentary terms. It's the blue whale in the room, but it looks like it can't be avoided in the next round of Cabinet infighting. Between the 2024-2025 fiscal year and 2025-2026, the welfare budget has increased by 6%, or 2.4% in real terms after inflation. The defence budget has increased by 3.3%, or actually decreased by -0.1% in real terms. So you can hardly argue, as Zarah Sultana has very asininely done, that money is stolen from the poor to fund war. The welfare budget has increased by an average 2.9% per annum in real terms since 2021, so you shouldn't be surprised that Reform's talking point, that it is out of control, is gaining traction. But that's somebody else's problem now, and a YouGov speed poll has found a plurality of us opining that Healey made the right decision, though a tiny smitch more are sitting on the fence. We are in fact quite unsure about this, as the massive political and generational divides show.

The new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis will soon find out that being seen as a "good boy" may be enough to ensure success at the Little Houghton Parish Dog Show, but not in SW1. The challenge has been made even more difficult by the resignation of the Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, just hours after John Healey and with pretty much the same arguments, and the added serious accusation that the government was ready to spend dosh on outdated weaponry. This has the ring of truth because the military establishment are more focused on process than on results, and are totally allergic to radical innovation that would force the military industry to react and adjust swiftly. The Ukrainian way, developing the most efficient combat drones in the world in six months by trial-and-error, is total blasphemy for people who live in a world where the norm is to spend more time drafting the blueprints for a warship than Japan needs to fully design, build and deliver one ready for service. This makes Jarvis' task even harder in a political context of doubt and discontent where the loopy Putin-enabling faux pacifists have developed a new narrative, that may sound credible and appealing if you scroll through it fast and don't figure out the fine print, to demean not just the nuclear deterrent they always rejected, but also every serious effort to reconfigure and strengthen our conventional forces.

Healey's resignation is a wake-up call for Starmer and Burnham. Stop repeating the mistakes of the Conservatives and get serious about funding our armed forces properly. We cannot afford years more political chaos while our national security is put at risk.

(Ed Davey, 11 June 2026)

The reality is, we are spending too much time preparing for last year’s war, not tomorrow’s, and I urge the House to push for transformation, push hard, and push for delivery this side of 2030.

(Al Carns, resignation speech, 15 June 2026)

It looks like we have just witnessed the genesis of an epiphany of sorts after we digested the fire and brimstone of revelations about the derelict state of the Realm's defence. First we had John Healey's and Al Carns' take-no-prisoners resignation letters, then the Chief of the Defence Staff Richard Knighton telling an assembly of ermines that we ain't seen nothing yet, which would have been a head-on-a-pike offence under Henry VIII and an instant sacking situation under any other Prime Minister. YouGov's last polling on defence, which I mentioned earlier, was conducted between 6 and 8 June, three days before John Healey's brutal resignation. More In Common polled pretty much the same issues between 12 and 15 June, in the immediate aftermath of the Healey and Carns resignations, and it looks like their messages of doom have been heard loud and clear. There is indeed a pretty massive swing in the assessment of our readiness to conduct military operations and defend ourselves against foreign attacks.

This is much bleaker than what we got in earlier polls, and it's hard to imagine that only Healey, Carns and Knighton influenced us into such a massive shift of mood, which is quite desperate, depressing and defeatist. The overall international climate probably played a part in that too, so my best educated guess is that the real assessment is probably somewhere in between the YouGov poll and the More In Common poll, and we need in another one in six or eight weeks, once Iran is no longer centre stage. I certainly don't buy that the Great British Public really think that we would be beaten by Iran. I shudder at the thought of what the poll would have found if the designated invader had been Ukraine. Of course, to everything there is a season and to every problem there is a solution, so More In Common has oven-readied one for us.

Mind you, defining the alternative as "cutting benefits" is a simplification. You would already signal a real awareness of priorities is you shifted higher-than-inflation increases of spending from welfare to defence. To compensate, just think in terms of sacking all the unnecessary staff at DWP, who just feed useless layers of bureaucracy and contribute nothing to the reality of welfare. Of course the military could also do their part in the streamlining. The Royal Navy certainly does not need 39 admirals, 97 commodores and 335 captains when we have only 24 active front-line warships, so just cut the deadwood, mates. Now, if we agree to the broad principle that we have no problem forcing grannies to eat their dog to avoid freezing to death, or summat, we have to be more specific about which cuts we would accept without causing more riots than a video of Benito Farage in the middle of a corn field. Of course More In Common did ask.

To cut a long story short, you don't touch the NHS, schools and police forces, but it's OK to give up on the Turner Prize, bike lanes and solar panels. Cutting spending on international aid and immigration is kind of a red herring, as the former basically no longer exists already, and the latter goes down naturally as net migration goes down, which you would not know if you pay attention only to Reform's totally fabricated fake numbers. Of course we wouldn't be trapped in that neverending dilemma without the obsolete fiscal rules and fiscal taboos Andy Burnham has promised to perpetuate to neuter Wes Streeting and Darren Jones out of the leadership race. Ironically the most progressive change in tax policy came from Wee Wes, when he proposed aligning the rates of the capital gains tax on those of the income tax. This would generate an estimated £12bn per annum, more than enough to bring defence spending in line with John Healey's initial request, before the Treasury chainsawed it to an unacceptably low level. GB News and The Telegraph are up in arms against Wes' proposal, evidence that it is a fucking good idea. Andy just has to nick it from Wes and we are good. Ain't life grand?

I can’t describe the level of inefficiency in the system that we’ve been left with and we’re trying to unpeel. It is just layers of bureaucracy which now cost us more than the product you’re getting itself.

(Al Carns, The Guardian, 16 June 2026)

Cabinet members backstabbing each other is an unprecedented departure from the high standards that have been set by previous governments.

(Michael Gove, Have I Got News For You, 5 June 2026)

The UK government when into full dog-eat-dog mode pretty quickly after Healey's and Carns' resignations, as exemplified by new revelations about the Defence Investment Plan fiasco, which show how infighting and bureaucratic parochialism took precedence over the pursuit of the greater good and jeopardised a key component of our national security. The worst consequence is the transfer of a major military project from the Ministry of Defence to the Treasury, as if we would solve our problems by switching responsibility from people with a massive record of crass incompetence in project management to bean-counting bureaucrats who have no fucking clue what project management is. Sadly, all of them only wanted to save their arse from the fallout of the leadership brawl that seemed unavoidable at the time, and widely predicted to be what Season Eight of Game Of Thrones should have been, with the King Of The North making the Iron Throne his after making mincemeat of the Lannistarmerites. The virtual bloodshed has been avoided, but the people may come in the way of the best laid plan, as three pollsters have found that we are inclined to request a snap general election, one of them twice.

The numbers are broadly in the same ballpark, but no poll sees an overwhelming majority loudly demanding a snap election. Those squealing most vociferously for it are Reform voters, following their Führer who never demanded by-elections when four Tory MPs defected to Reform. A new Prime Minister is under no constitutional obligation to call a snap election to confirm his or her mandate, and it is a long established tradition. There was no snap election between 1780 and 1784, yet there were four Prime Ministers and a change of majority due to defections in between. More recently and relevantly, James Callaghan did not call a snap election in 1976. Neither did John Major in 1990. Gordon Brown in 2007, Theresa May in 2016, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak in 2022. Why should Andy Burnham bow to pressure and create an unconstitutional precedent just to appease the squealing and squeaking Fash? But let's imagine for a moment that he would, and the real question becomes how risky a snap election would be. Three pollsters so far, including one who did it twice, have tested their routine generic voting intentions against a scenario explicitly mentioning the King Of The North as Leader Of The Red Pack, and their findings are only mildly encouraging.

These four polls were conducted before the Makerfield by-election, so maybe another one conducted now would be more Burnham-friendly. Now we know that the Burnham Effect in Makerfield, the swing from Reform to Labour, was much bigger than any of these three polls predicts, which is a good reason to handle these hypotheticals with care. Unsurprisingly, none predicts a Labour majority appearing as if by magic. Two even still see Reform as the largest party, and two have a Lab-Lib coalition as the only viable option for a majority, which is probably not a scenario Andy Burnham would be happy with. This is the awkward situation you end up in when polls hint you could easily nick votes off the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and even the Conservatives, but that Reform would be a much tougher nut to crack. There is nevertheless a reason to be cheerful, as the Burnham Effect is stronger in the second Deltapoll survey than it was in the first conducted a month earlier. Thank Dog for small treats.

The unavoidable conclusion is that Burnham still has a lot of work to do to establish his own image and mandate in the public's eye. How successful he is will be measured by the evolution of generic voting intentions polls in the next year, how quickly they switch back towards Labour. Until we see that happening conclusively and steadily, he has every reason to play it safe and kick the mere concept of a snap election into the long grass. Knowing when to call a snap election is a matter of flair and opportunity. Gordon Brown had the opportunity but lacked the flair in 2007. Boris Johnson had the flair and created the opportunity in 2019. For Andy Burnham, the best course is probably to let the current Parliament run its course, so he has enough time to establish his own solid record and make the people forget Starmer. But he will first have to contend with his unlucky rivals in the leadership race, who may be tempted to undermine him from the backbenches if he does not offer them a position in his Cabinet. Which would be another kind of challenge, requiring some special talent to handle difficult egos.

How you feel about backstabbing obviously depends on whose back you’re stabbing. In some cases, it’s a solemn duty. In other cases, it’s a positive pleasure.

(Michael Gove, Have I Got News For You, 5 June 2026)

Sometimes it feels as if Labour is dead set on replicating the chaos of the Tory years. There is a sadness in Keir’s refusal to read the room. It may not be fair, but his time is over.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 19 June 2026)

Since the last general election two years ago, there have been five by-elections for seats in the House of Commons. Reform UK lost four out of five, despite being the favourites in three. In the same period, there was one by-election for a Holyrood seat and one for a Senedd seat. Reform lost both. Of course they did not stand a chance in Scotland, but they were huge favourites in Wales. In any other party, the leader would have been held to account for such an appalling record of failure and ousted, but no such thing happened with Reform UK. Probably because it is not a real party, despite being registered with the Electoral Commission, but a business entity owned and controlled by a chosen few. Chosen by Benito Farage, that is. So there is little hope we will ever see a Reform leadership contest, and instead the talk of the town is a plausibly incoming Labour leadership contest. Which could happen because the party's constitution says so, but it could very well be a rushed affair like Margaret Thatcher's succession in 1990. But first things first, what did we think Keir and Andy should have done?

This is of course a totally moot point now, but was polled by YouGov as soon as Makerfield declared, as the results were published around lunch time on the 19th. It may have been the poll's goal to prove that we were reluctant to see Starmer soldier on, and quite willing to give Burnham a chance. That sounds about right, doesn't it? YouGov dropped the ball at that point, but Ipsos and Survation filled the blanks. Ipsos conducted a generic poll with a representative subsample of Labour voters of 2024. Survation, with the help of LabourList, probed members of the Labour Party. To nobody's surprise, all three sources converge on nominating Andy Burnham as the next carer of Larry the Cat. His closest and most credible rivals don't stand a fucking chance, especially and most relevantly in the eyes of party members. The Moving Finger writes and, having writ, moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it. So Andy it is, mates, and there is no way out of it, so we can move on too. To the coronation. Or not.

Of course, there are always trick questions in that kind of context, or contest, and YouGov also asked them. What really makes us think that Andy is a better fit for the job than Keir? What makes them so different to each other? What kind of bold change can we expect from Andy that we would never get from Keir? I suppose we could rely on Shitweasel's profound analysis here, for this brief moment when he does not savage and smear anything with a red rosette on, which of course won't last. Or we could just watch the polls, which of course only scratch the surface of a topic that could mobilise the Islington North Debating Society for a whole week. Lo and behold! We don't think they're really different. We don't think Andy would bring that much change. So, what the fucking fuss? And, to make it even more ridiculous, we're not even sure who would be the best Prime Minister, except that it could be "none of the above". Who is not on the ballot. Yet.

Just a couple of years ago, we boasted that the United States had had fourteen Presidents during Queen Elizabeth II's reign. Which did not prove much as POTUSes tend to come and go like the tide at Portobello beach. But now the French can joke that, when he departs the Élysée next year, Emmanuel Macron will have dealt with six different British Prime Ministers during his Presidency, And the fucking joke's on us, mates. Once again, events, dear boy, events have overtaken us, faster than a herd of orcs running away from a Ukrainian drone. Now Starmer is out for good, Streeting has conceded without a fight, implying he never had the necessary support for a leadership bid, so Burnham can step in unchallenged. Let's hope it stays that way, so we are spared anything embarrassingly reminiscent of the painfully protracted Conservative leadership contest of July 2022, which was the perfect opportunity for the mediatariat to fill the slow news cycles of the summer break with bits of psychodrama and soap opera. But, if things go tits up because of some hopeless challenger from the fringes, the NEC can still waive the rules and temporarily suspend the Collins Report, dispense with the membership vote and put the decision solely in the hands of the PLP. This would be quite brutal and we would hear Shitweasel squealing "denial of democracy" from ten miles away, but would also be the only way to put Burnham in the driver's seat within the one-week window of opportunity they have in July between the NATO summit and Commons rising for their yearly Magaluf Break. Mark my words.

This is Labour’s last chance. It was plain when knocking on doors in Makerfield that this was a vote for Andy, not Labour, and they were only going to give him one chance. But he must deliver.

(Neal Lawson, The Guardian, 19 June 2026)

Burnham thinks a smile and more buses for Manchester qualify him for Downing Street.

(Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, 22 June 2026)

At first, I found it quite fun that the first overt backstabbing of Burnham in The Guardian, which was predictably almost instantaneous, did not come from Shitweasel, but from their perennial extreme-centrist Simon Jenkins. Marina Hyde also had a hit piece in her, but she is a better writer than Jenkins, so she got away with it thanks to wit and irony. In between, we had the mandatory dose of Shitweasel, for a character assassination of Keir Starmer that was as classy as shooting at a corpse with a mortar while pissing in the coffin. You would think it's hard to be as abjectly outrageous as Kemi Badenoch at today's PMQs, but Shitweasel succeeds without the slightest effort. That's probably all we should have expected from the discredited repugnant woke bottom-feeder, and The Guardian should hang their heads in shame for publishing such fucking crap. Then The Scottish Pravda pre-emptively started Burnham's witch trial, forgetting that the very content of their own column proved that their accusations were anchored in a bedrock of bad faith, resting on approximation, distortion and simplification. Only John Crace seems to have remembered that the "progressives" should focus their energy on demolishing the Fash, not their own. YouGov certainly did not cool down the mood with their very odd idea to survey us about our expectations of Burnham's Prime Ministerial performance when he isn't Prime Minister yet.

Of course, Starmer's batman Darren Jones giving up on a leadership challenge to Burnham because he has been "reassured about his economic plans" is not the most auspicious foreword to a Premiership Of Change. But there is quite an atmosphere of systematic demolition of Burnham from various corners of the mediatariat, as if there was some urgency in rebranding the King Of The North as some Knave From The North who will inevitably deceive, betray, fail and be gone. This is the dark side of an arrogant two-tier mediatariat who have appointed themselves kingmakers, hypocritically whining about a revolving door Number Ten while creating the exact hostile environment that will make any politician feel totally washed out in a matter of months. These people are obviously not angels, only dogs are, but none deserve that amount of pre-emptive abuse and denigration. None but the Fash, that is. YouGov felt they had to make it even worse by asking us what kind of leadership contest we want.

This is totally absurd, in a panem and circenses way. This is the future of the UK we're talking about here, it's not The Traitors SW1 or fucking Squid Game. There is a sense of obscenity in the mediatariat demanding their pint of blood and harsh one-liners for their headlines, when what we need is the exact opposite, a swift change of pilot allowing Burnham a quiet transition period during the summer break. He will face enough challenges already, without having to worry about spike strips across his path. Especially when the harshest jibes come from the very side that should give him at least the benefit of the doubt. Fortunately, common sense has prevailed within the Labour Party so far, and we are probably safe from the kind of divisive month-long campaign the mediatariat are longing for. Let's just hope it stays that way, as that sort of clown show is the last thing we need on top of the worst heatwave in living memory, while the leader of the strongest English-speaking country in America, formerly the strongest in the world, is deteriorating into dementia-fueled obsessive fixations under the eyes of the world.

We’ll have to see how long Burnham can credibly sell the idea that he is just a relatable guy this event has happened to, as opposed to because of.

(Marina Hyde, The Guardian, 23 June 2026)

We’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have hope and optimism to win an election. That’s been in short supply over the last eighteen months.

(Patrick Hurley MP, 19 June 2026)

The game-changing event of the month did not actually happen in the ballot boxes of Makerfield. It did happen in the columns of The Guardian with the announcement that Your Party had split, and nobody had noticed until Zoe Williams whined about it in print. It was indeed a very predictable Monty Pythonesque ending for a party that had already lost a third of its MPs to internecine feuds, and had all its momentum, if there ever was any, nicked by the rise of the Greens earlier this year. Now the trends of voting intentions still show Reform riding high after the artificial boost the local elections gave them. At the other end of the compass, the Green vote is still going down, which is not a bad thing per se. It is just a pity that their current numbers still mean millions of wasted votes that would be put to better use defeating the Fash in marginal constituencies.

Today's snapshot includes the last five polls fielded by More In Common, YouGov, Find Out Now, J.L. Partners and Opinium between the 16th and the 22nd of June. That's a super-sample of 11,410, or eight times the number of votes the Greens, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives put together got at the Makerfield by-election. With Reform flatlining on 27%, the current numbers could still deliver a Reform government with the predictable reinforcement by the most opportunistic of the Rump Tories. It was also very tempting to simulate what the Makerfield Effect would change, but in a realistic way. So I erased all of the massive tactical voting from the Greens, LibDems and Conservatives, as a Makerfield-only one-off. This leaves just the bare bones of the Makerfield Effect, which are still a solid 8% swing from Reform to Labour, compared with Burnham-exclusionary bespoke polls of the constituency. Bear in mind that, with a model using the results of the 2024 election as its staring point, this does not mean I assume there would not be any tactical voting at all GB-wide. just that there wouldn't be more than in 2024, and that it would follow the same patterns. That still works quite well for Labour, who would just go down from a Blair-like majority to a May-like quasi-majority, as you surely remember that the actual working majority for the purpose of divisions is 318. The next batches of polls, and I expect shitloads of these in the immediate future, will be fun to watch.

There is another challenge on the horizon for Andy Burnham, and for all party leaders, actually, except those on the payroll of a hostile foreign power. As if interference from Israel, the Russian Reich and China was not enough, it looks like we also have to defend the integrity of our democratic process from interference from the Unites States. We already knew that Elon Muck had tried to rig the Makerfield by-election in favour of Restore Britain, but it's one level higher now, with J.D. Vance himself involved in lies and fabrications intended to boost Reform UK. This is just more evidence that we urgently need to reform the rules about donations to political parties and block bad faith influencers on social media. It can be done, we just need to be fully committed to it. The only ones who have anything to lose are those already squealing about "violations of free speech". Don't fall for it, they are not our friends. There is a reason why the Orange Baboon is heavy-handedly interfering with our policy choices on behalf of his courtiers in the tech bubble. He wants us permanently exposed to the infestation of Christo-fascism from the youngest age, ready to accept all fabrications and fake news as the New Truth. That would be Brave New World revamped by the writers of Black Mirror, a worse fate than an AI-generated reboot of 1984.

Andy Burnham’s sole claim to Downing Street is that he is currently preferred by most Labour MPs. Two years ago, the same was true of Starmer. What has gone so wrong?

(Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, 22 June 2026)

Nigel Farage seems to be under the impression he deserves some credit for coming a distant second in Makerfield. He’s yet to get the gist of the electoral system.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 23 June 2026)

By the way, there also were two by-elections in Scotland on the Glorious Eighteenth Of June, in Aberdeen South and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. Neither was polled by any pollster, as nobody gave a fuck about what could happen there while the fate of Civilisation As We Know It™ was being decided in Makerfield. Nobody gave a shit if the SNP would hold nine seats or stumble down to seven, if they would propel a loser of 2024 and a party apparatchik to Commons or not. Because the SNP would still have jack shit influence on the Realm's policies either way. It was nevertheless quite a shocker to see the SNP lose in Aberdeen so brutally, with the Rump Tories ending within a rat's whisker of a majority of the popular vote. But Kemi Badenoch is totally wrong to claim some Murrell Effect was at work, as the SNP held the Arbroath seat with a massively increased majority. I suggest instead that the good people of Aberdeen were just unwilling to get a recycled MP who had lost his own seat in 2024, and whose only claim to fame was friends in high places of the party's apparatus. But this is not evidence of resurrection for the Scottish Tories, even if the SNP is doing poorly in the most recent generic polls.

In marked contrast, our Celtic brethren at Plaid Cymru are doing really well, proving that Andy Burnham is not the only one who can take down the Fash. But we must also look at the bigger picture across England. Not only do we have a hypothetical projection predicting you could get a majority of seats on just 27% of vote, we also have regional projections delivering massive majorities of seats on rather tiny vote shares, often lower than the 34% that propelled Labour to a landslide two years ago. This gives more weight to calls for electoral reform, which Andy Burnham has made his without specifying the practical details. I still exclude full proportional representation, and a real two-round system sounds like heresy in the UK, so the next best thing would probably be the Supplementary Vote, which has just been reinstated for Mayoral elections, uncoincidentally on the day of the Makerfield by-election, to be used first for the Mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester. The first preferences would certainly duplicate votes under first-past-the-post, but without the massive damage resulting from a split vote on the left, while the second preferences would still allow massive tactical voting, just as in Makerfield to keep the Fash out. Kind of the best of both worlds within the confines of acceptability for the Great British Public. Maybe we should give it a chance, then.

You can see that the Liberal Democrats are still doing really well across the English South, where their Class of '24 have successfully burrowed at the heart of the fabric of the local communities. But will it last? Because, ye ken, I must confess I am a wee smitch disappointed in Ed Davey these days. All he had to do was to stay quiet and keep cuddling his newfound righteously middle-of-the-road clientèle in Midsomer and St Mary Mead, and all of a sudden he jacks out of his box in vociferous support of the trans cult, indulging in more extravagant hyperbole and virtue-signalling fabrications than even Che Polanski would ever dare. Even Mister Ed's brother thinks this is fucking wrong and driven by just short term opportunistic politicking. Or did Bridget Phillipson solicit Ed's intervention to justify her own procrastination and equivocation long enough to let attention-seeking MPs unfamiliar with parliamentary rules gather signatures on a prayer motion over something that is not legislation, another virtue-signalling move designed to appease their organ grinders in the trans lobby? What the fucking fuck, Mister Ed, are you writing the draft for How The South Was Lost?

In relation to what happens next, obviously, we had a mandate two years ago to carry out change and we’ve done incredible things, There’s more to do and that’s what I’m focused on. It is what I was elected to do, which is to serve my country.

(Keir Starmer, 19 June 2026)

Jeremy's Den

24/06/2026

Half A League, Half A League, Half A League Onward

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Half A League, Half A League, Half A League Onward