Jeremy's Den: Everybody's Queen For A Day

I don’t think your ability to fight has anything to do with how big you are. It’s to do with how much anger is in you.

(Amy Winehouse)

You want to be the king? A king rules by rewarding loyalty with loyalty. They take care of the people, even their enemies. How would a guy like you be expected to know that?

(Robert Goren, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, 2004)

Thirteen years and six days ago, we lost the great Lou Reed, the most exceptionally unique rock star to ever come out of New York City. Today's soundtrack includes two albums from the late 1970s, Street Hassle and The Bells. They are mostly overlooked and underestimated parts of Reed's œuvre, but #5 and #2 respectively in my Reed Top Five, #1 being of course the immortal Berlin, #3 New York and #4 Transformer. With three tracks in between from Take No Prisoners, the weirdest live album ever released by Reed. This is the appropriate mood because I will start today's stories with another scion of Nieuw Amsterdam, Donald Trump. Just when you think the Orange Baboon can't stoop any lower, here he goes again. Like night buses in Croydon, the disgusting outrages come in threes. Further attacks on the International Criminal Court. Further betrayal of Ukraine and Europe, with a massive purchase of Russian diesel for short-term electoral gain. Further descent into abjection, with a livestreamed execution by firing squad that even J.D. Vance disapproved. The Orange Baboon has now backed down and cancelled the livestream, which does not make the original decision less abhorrent, because of massive popular disapproval, as shown by one of YouGov's bespoke speed polls.

This will not improve Trump's, or the Republican Party's, popularity ahead of the midterms. Despite numerous defeats in various Courts all across the USA, the Trump administration has not given up on rigging these elections. Their attempts to ban or restrict postal voting have failed, so mow they are trying to get some postal votes excluded from the counts. The offensive has started in California, based on the flimsy pretext that some voters may not be US citizens. Even if the Trump administration's claims were true, and there is absolutely no evidence that they are, it would account for 0.34% of registered voters in Los Angeles County, or 0.09% of registered voters in all of California. Quite obvious evidence that this is nothing more than a totally unfounded attempt to seed doubts about the legitimacy and reliability of the elections, exactly the narrative that Trump has started constructing out of thin air as soon as the polls started hinting at a serious Republican defeat. Sadly. it is working, as YouGov have found that a quarter of Americans are not confident that the elections will be fair.

There is massive irony, which the average American probably does not perceive, is seeing that registered Republicans are the least confident in the fairness of the elections. When their party is the one that attempted a coup to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, and also the one indulging in gerrymandering, voter suppression and all shades of election rigging. Which is all you can expect from an administration that is massively interfering with elections in Europe, taking its cues from the Russian Reich, and openly promoting the worst of the Fash worldwide. Another reason why US citizens are losing faith in the purity of their democratic process is their perception of corruption, which has also been polled by YouGov. Transparency International claims that corruption has increased in the USA since the Orange Baboon's return, and they have the data to prove it. The United States rank 29th and falling in their Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, where Denmark ranks 1st, or the least corrupt of 181 countries surveyed. Another YouGov poll has found that the American public are totally aware of the rise of corruption at home over the last two years, with registered Republicans unsurprisingly the only ones in denial.

It is also quite revealing that YouGov found a transpartisan consensus about the likelihood of members of Congress taking a bribe. Not that corruption is anything new in the United States, it has been there all along, and basically tolerated as a way to insure that all political machines were well-oiled and working. A necessary evil for the greater good, pretty much. It has even been granted legal status by the Supreme Court's Citizens United vs FEC ruling, which allows corporate blood money to be injected uncontrolled into political parties and campaigns,. Just what Reform UK want to enforce here, by the way. Bribes are actually quite easy to detect, including who offers them, who gets them, how much they're worth. All you have to do is connect to the site of the Federal Electoral Commission and check the amounts raised by all candidates. The FEC even nudges you to consider that all campaign donations above $2,000 are somehow hinky and deserve a closer look. That's the USA for you, where all bribes are in plain sight, because the Supreme Court has legalised them. Bear in mind this is the country where a convicted felon can become President and pre-emptively pardon himself for offences he intends to commit later, and another one cam become Attorney General of the second biggest state of the Union and then stand for Senate with the full support of the other convicted felon.

Every Senator, every Congressman, tries to grab a piece of the pie for their own people. The people, the corporations that fund their campaigns and that hire them after they get out of office.

(Ross Vetter, NCIS, 2004)

Some day, Trump will realise that Putin is much more intelligent than him, and it won't end well.

(Fyodor Lukyanov)

Trump's deal with Putin for diesel is also beyond the pale, like if Roosevelt had bought a million Volkswagens from Hitler to make cars more affordable for the American public, but the reality of it is not that significant. Oil consumption is 105 million barrels per day worldwide, 20 million in the USA, and about 20% of that is diesel oil of the sort the Russian Reich is scheduled to deliver. But it won't have any visible effect in the long run. The expected first deliveries cover less than a day of US diesel consumption and will arrive after the midterms anyway. The whole package will cover just about two weeks of US consumption, so there is no way it can cause prices to drop. The deal is also puzzling, and plausibly a dud, because Russia has a shortage of diesel for its domestic needs, and is forced to import lots of it from India at highway robbery prices. The Orange Baboon's posturing is thusly totally representative of the post-truth alternative reality in which he, the MAGA mob and the Kremlin's Nosferatu live. This is the combination of three factors. Trump's fascination for authoritarian regimes, his unsatiable greed and his personal vendetta against Zelenskyy. YouGov have probed their US panel about the sanctions and their repeal, with results that don't point in the same direction, just as you would expect.

There is an interesting twist to this polling. The American public do support the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2022, but their memory is faulty. Back in the day, when it actually happened, both support and opposition were higher and far fewer sat on the fence. Just saying. More to the point, Americans are split on the diesel deal, which only proves that a fucking massive number of them are gullible enough, or stupid enough, to believe that it will do what Trump say it will. Make Diesel Cheap Again. But they also have no illusion about his real motives. It's all about short term domestic point-scoring, or saving a few seats from the incoming midterms debacle. Too bad YouGov forgot the third obvious option, that Trump did it because some of his cronies, say Kushner or Baboon Junior, are bound to make dosh off the deal. Remember that, when investigating Trump's motives for anything, you should always put "financial gain" at the top of the pile. That glove usually fits.

For a few days after this new Day Of Infamy, the Orange Baboon's minions were in a fucking frenzy, calling all NATO countries to strongarm them into stopping arms deliveries and intelligence to Ukraine. Because Trumpistan does not have the cards they think they have. US military aid to Ukraine has already been cut down to zero, they even have nicked EU funding to buy Patriot missiles for themselves, so Trumpistan has fuck all leverage here. Even Patriots can be replaced by European missiles of similar performance without US approval, specifically Aster missiles, for which France has now granted Ukraine a licence to manufacture them locally. Intelligence from other NATO countries pretty much provides Ukraine with most of what they need, except the early detection of Russian ballistic missile attacks. Which won't matter if US data fed to Five Eyes is instantly leaked to Ukraine by one of the other participants. Just saying. Trump thusly cannot sell Ukraine to the Russian Reich for his own financial gain, unless the other allies in the Coalition Of The Willing follow and betray Ukraine too. Which is as likely to happen as Zack Polanski becoming Prime Minister. The UK now has just one possible course of action: reaffirm our unwavering support for Ukraine, no matter how deep Trump's malevolent perfidy goes, so that their own resolve doesn't falter.

We are now going to burn every last Russian refinery and every last port to hell. All of it, down to the final one.

(Kyrylo Budanov, 10 October 2026)

Hard to believe there was ever a world leader as dumb as Donald Trump. Can’t spell, can’t read, has never managed anything approaching an original thought. His brain is like a radio playing at top volume, but between stations.

(Stephen King)

The Orange Baboon is obviously playing with fire in the eyes of the world, but the Midterms Mood of the American public is unlikely to make the real foreign policy issues a major factor in the elections. Their priorities are clearly the state of the economy and the cost of living, with only 6% considering foreign policy an important problem, according to YouGov's latest opinion trackers on behalf of The Economist. The betrayal of Ukraine will not sway the core MAGA electorate, it will probably validate and affirm their faith in their Supreme Guide, but that will gain jack shit votes. On the other hand, swing voters are likely to be swung by the massively shared feeling that their country is a runaway train, out of control on the wrong track, rather than by the illusion of a treasure trove of Russian diesel that comes with strings of blood money attached. At the end of Election Day, it all boils down to who Americans think will make them better off if they control Congress and, at that game, Democrats lead. Or, more accurately, Republicans fail, as even the expected winners are not carried by a wave of enthusiasm.

More than anything else, we can see signs of disillusionment and loss of faith in the political system. That's nothing new and is not specific to the USA, though they surely have more reasons than us to feel that way. The person most responsible for this state of mind is obviously Donald Trump himself, and his constant disregard for the rule of law. His blatant lurch towards out-of-control authoritarianism makes even dyed-in-the-wool illiberals like Orban and Netanyahu look like snowflakes, as the regime is openly taking its cues from the Putinist Russian Reich. Every action undertaken by the Trump administration, and specifically the Department of Justice, over the last year shows a clear strategy to rig the midterms by all means available. Of course, Putin goes much further than Trump to steal elections, for now. But gerrymandering, disenfranchisement and threats of legal action against opponents are evidence of the same strategy of intimidation and denial of democracy. The American public are definitely aware of this, as shown by another recent YouGov survey.

A majority of Americans think that the Orange Baboon will not accept the results of the elections, and even a quarter refuse to say that he should. This is alarming not just because of the belief itself, but also because this is the kind of question nobody would have asked about any previous President. Because no other President ever attempted a coup to overturn the results of an election, and no other President could even be suspected of contemplating that. If you look back at the history of the American Trifecta, the last President who enjoyed a friendly Congress for the whole duration of his term was Jimmy Carter. All those that followed had to deal with a split Congress, or a hostile Congress fully controlled by the opposition party, at some point. None ever even thought of shutting down Congress, as some of Trump's minions are reportedly advising this year, by refusing to swear in newly-elected Democrats while pursuing malicious legal actions in all districts the Republicans lost. That's the kind of behaviour you would have expected from Robert Mugabe or Alexander Lukashenko, not from the Leader Of The Free World. Alleged.

You know why I attack the press? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.

(Donald Trump)

Through your actions, you have shamed us before our children, humiliated America on the world stage and, worst of all, divided our nation.

(Admiral William H. McRaven, to Donald Trump, July 2026)

If the Democrats win, which they will unless the Orange Baboon stages a coup, heads will roll. Because that's what happens when the Great Leader refuses to take responsibility for his own failures and always blames someone else. Or it may just be that firing people in a hissy fit reminds him of his better days hosting The Apprentice, from which he was fired too, by the way. He has already pre-emptively fired his brand new Press Secretary Katie Zacharia after just five days in office, or a tenth of a liztruss, the new SI unit for time in politics. This is a truly exceptional moment on the Orange Baboon's timeline, the first time in two years he has fired someone for being a crassly incompetent liar. Though she being a woman probably made it easier for him. YouGov submitted a shortlist to their panel, to determine who they think is likely to be fired next, and who should be. Masculinist drunk Pete Hegseth, the bloke who loves being called War Secretary in remembrance of the old days when the USA actually won wars instead of just starting them, wins in both categories.

Don't worry if you have no fucking scoobie who these people are. I'm not sure the average American knows either, as they have a shorter attention span and are far less smart than us, and you can still look up all those blokes on Wokopedia anyway. Aye, they're all blokes, This is the Trump administration, remember. Then, to be fair and balanced, do you know who Alex Norris, Miatta Fahnbulleh and Anneliese Midgley are? Well, you don't, do you? Yet they're ours, all members of Andy Burnham's Cabinet. But singling out one sacrificial lamb, even if Drunk Frat Boy Hegseth can hardly be described as one, won't exonerate Trump from his responsibility in the predicted debacle. He is interfering in the midterms more than any President has done before, quite heavy-handedly, and has even forced the Republican Party to pour hundreds of millions into the midterms, that they had ringfenced for the 2028 presidential election. Not a winning strategy, and the American public are quite aware of who should take the blame for the backlash against the Republicans.

The dominant feeling among the American public is that Trump's involvement in the campaign is hurting the Republicans more than it is helping them, and polls totally support this even in supposedly safely Red States. So it totally makes sense to pre-emptively single him out as the one who should be held to account for the anticipated disaster. Only registered Republicans disagree, in some sort of "the dog ate my homework" attitude. But it is definitely odd, and obviously not fully though through, to blame uncontrollable economic factors when part of Trump's narrative is that he can indeed take back control over these factors. That was the whole storytelling behind the infamous deal with Putin, that it would magically solve the major cost-of-ling issue and make everybody happy ever after. Somebody should explain them that such a mix of delusion and devotion to the Supreme Guide is a deadly combination, but it would probably fall on deaf ears anyway.

Smell of rotting meat in the air, that’s the vultures gathering.

(James Deakins, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, 2006)

The fact that we are at war has turned socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy.

(George Orwell, 1941)

An interesting subplot of these American elections is the fight against what some progressives have called the Great Lexical Replacement, the Trump administration's efforts to ban the use of some words like diversity, woman, climate, black or fat. There is definitely massive irony in seeing the harshest criticism coming from the ranks of the woke left. These are the people who wanted to sanitise the English language and ban common words like mother, brother, sister, son, daughter. In a word, all the dreaded "gendered" terms. But also, obviously, sex and, just like the MAGA, fat. Both camps have a shared goal, depriving us of the simple words needed to accurately describe reality. But Democrats have proved smarter, as they have muzzled the worst woke extremists in their ranks, while the Republicans still let the MAGA nutters roam free. So rejection of the perceived out-of-touch extremism, that cost Democrats a shitload of votes in 2024, is now working against the Republicans, and we have the conspicuous swing in voting intentions to prove it. With voting already underway in all but three states, it is hard to imagine the tide turning.

It is quite revealing that nine out of the ten pundits who regularly publish ratings of the competitive districts now predict Democrats taking back control of the House of Representatives. The latest batch of polls confirm it, as it predicts Democrats ahead by 10% in the popular vote and bagging a net gain of 30 seats on the 2024 elections, or 41 seats on the notional results after the off-cycle gerrymandering of 2025-2026. Interestingly, and amusingly, we are in the same ballpark as after the 2018 elections, the midterms of the Orange Baboon's first term, when Democrats won the popular vote by 9% and took back control of the House of Representatives with a net gain of 41 seats. A verdict that Trump 45 fully accepted, by the way. Ironically, the only proven case of election fraud at these elections was perpetrated by Republicans for a Republican seat in a Republican state, leading to annulment and a rematch. Just saying. So history can repeat itself without being a tragedy or a farce, contrary to what Shakespeare wrote. Or was it Karl Marx? Whatever.

But the predicted results of these elections are only part of the story. The most interesting subplot is what the predicted victory has in store for the Democratic Party. It is also a victory for the Democratic Socialists, the bandmates of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani, who have totally succeeded in making themselves acceptable even to moderate voters by emphasising social policies closer to the classic blue-collar Democratic narrative. It works because Trump is in complete denial about the cost of living situation and Republican candidates are left without serious arguments when this is raised on the doorsteps. The most recent YouGov tracker for The Economist has found that inflation, Trump's leadership and the economy are the three main concerns of the American public. All three work heavily against the Republicans, and immigration, their favourite bait, ranks only seventh on the list of the most important issues. This clearly invalidates the preferred strategy of the Democratic Beltway establishment, a softer approach amenable to case-by-case compromise with the less batshit-crazy Republicans. The elderly Democratic Beltway Veterans will now have to face their worst nightmare, the complete reboot of the race for the 2028 Presidential nomination, that will unavoidably begin as soon as the dust has settled on the midterms.

The Red States we're gonna hit hard. You think an insult from Trump hurts me? Bring it on, buddy. You're a loser.

(Doug Ford)

I don't respond to a dictator like Trump, a bully like Trump. I'm not gonna take any advice off a guy that's the king of bankruptcies .

(Doug Ford)

As this is my very last prediction, right on Election Eve, this is the perfect moment to have a look at the full membership of the House of Representatives, broken down by region and state. First what came out of the 2024 elections, showing familiar patterns of American politics across the last generations, and Gen Z especially. The Northeast and West are deep blue, the South is deep red, the Midwest ebbs and flows between the two, currently being a whiter shade of red. But dominance does not men uniformity, and there are big blue blobs in red states and vice versa. Rule of thumb, which is mostly validated by close inspection, is that cities are blue and the countryside is red. Or you may adopt a non-binary view, with political shades seen as a spectrum, just as the relativist woke left defines pretty much everything. And there is even some truth in that, if you split the Congressional districts into three categories, Deep Blue, Deep Red and swing seats in the middle, those who make or break majorities, and mostly went for the Republicans two years ago, even if the global result was a very tiny majority. And you definitely have to click on this one, to get a readable version in a pop-up.

For this last projection, I have set aside total reliance on algorithms using the latest national generic polls, and included all reasonably credible individual district-level polls I could find. The problem with these is that we do not have enough of them, as most pollsters focus only on districts they consider competitive. But we are getting closer as time passes by. Only 67 seats out of 435 qualified as competitive after the 2024 elections, as most Representatives appeared solidly entrenched in their districts. In the run-up to this year's elections, 96 seats have been identified as competitive, 60 Republican-held and 36 Democrat-held, and that may not even be the full extent of the battleground. I have factored in available district-level polls in 84 districts, which is still not much. But sometimes somebody surveys a district that nobody considered competitive, and gets a fucking big surprise. One such example is KY-6, carried by the Republicans on 63% in 2024, which seemed impregnable until one lone pollster surveyed it in July and found a tie. Then more went there, and now we have six polls in a row predicting it will switch to the Democrats. This is not an isolated case, others have been detected in the most unlikely places like Georgia, Missouri or Texas. And so we reach the current picture, with Democrats solidifying their hold on the Northeast and West, toggling the Midwest, and achieving a status quo in the South despite the Republicans' heavy-handed strategy to steal seats in "their" states.

The district-level polls also show the limitations of the Republican gerrymanders when facing a significant blue wave. Gerrymandering is predicted to work as planned in Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee, where Democrats are predicted to lose one seat each. It totally backfires in Texas, where Republicans expected a gain of five seats, and are now predicted to snatch just two while Democrats would gain one. Even the two most heavily gerrymandered districts, TX-34 and TX-35, are predicted to stay with the Democrats, as the Latino vote is switching back to Blue in considerable numbers. This is typical of socially conservative minority voters, who deserted the Democrats in 2024 because of their perceived radical wokeism, and are now rejecting the Republicans because of the obvious racism of the Trump administration. The Democrats' more aggressive approach is also paying dividends in California, where they are predicted to gain four seats, some of them in erstwhile Republican strongholds in rural areas such as CA-1. This is quite a change in a state that has for very long chosen very cautious boundary changes to preserve both parties' seats, and has now massively approved counter-gerrymandering against Republicans trying to rig the elections in other states. No bad deed ever goes unpunished, or so they say.

Your own people don't even like you. And they're gonna speak loud and clear in the midterms. If I was allowed to, I'd be down there door-knocking.

(Doug Ford)

Donald Trump is the opposite of the man John Adams hoped would inhabit the White House. He’s a vulgar man consumed by grievance and vanity.

(Steve Schmidt)

There is now a widespread feeling that the Republican Party has transitioned to full panic mode. It is totally justified when you look at the state of the Senate battlegrounds. These elections have become far more competitive than the Republicans ever expected, so they are cornered into making more are more tough choices. After pulling the plug on the Senate race in North Carolina, they have now done the same in Georgia, which guarantees a safe re-election for Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff, whose previous election was a mail-biting knife-edge. The Republican National Committee has rerouted more resources to Nebraska and Kansas, two seats that looked totally impregnable just six months ago. The most recent batch of polls in these four states shows that the RNC's reasoning is actually sound. It may even work, as Nebraska has now switched back to Red, barely, though Kansas is still predicted to turn Blue by a hare's breadth. It would be a historic change and the perfect symbol of the Republican Party's decay. The last time Kansas was represented by a Democratic Senator, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President..

Republicans are also obviously in panic mode about Texas, where MAGA convicted felon Ken Paxton is vastly out-funded by his Democratic challenger James Talarico. Direct donations to Paxton's campaign were so low that the RNC has been forced to reallocate $140m from their national emergency stash to his campaign coffers, which could have been put to better use elsewhere and still haven't turned the tide. One salient feature of Talarico's campaign is that he is using his education as a Presbyterian seminarian to promote progressive politics inspired by Christian values. And it is working, in a state that is more accustomed to the furious Bible-thumping Christo-fascism of the MAGA mob. It is not going better in states that have been made competitive by the failures of Trumpism. The Republicans are still predicted to lose Alaska and Maine, two seats they have held since 2015 and 1997 respectively. Veteran Susan Collins has obviously chosen to fight the proverbial "election too many" after decades of cosplaying "moderate" to woo Democratic voters. More embarrassingly, and more symbolically significant, J.D. Vance's old seat in Ohio is also turning blue.

There is an interesting subplot now in Alaska, which has one of these odd electoral laws Americans love so much. First, all prospective candidates from all parties are pitted against each other in one jungle primary, which was held on 18 August. Then the top four candidates proceed to the general election, which is held under ranked-choice voting, or instant runoff. So now Alaskans have to choose between former Democratic Representative Mary Peltola, incumbent Republican Senator Daniel S. Sullivan and two lesser candidates who have absolutely fuck all chance of winning. And that's where the fun starts. The Department of Justice has pre-emptively initiated legal action to block the certification of the election if Peltola wins, as current polls predict. On the Orange Baboon's direct orders, because one of the lesser candidates is called Daniel J. Sullivan, and it may confuse voters and cost their official Sullivan votes. Turned out they were right for once, as it emerged that the Other Sullivan had been planted by the local Democrats to do just that, confuse voters. It's hard to tell how this will affect the election, as early voting was already underway when the news broke, and polls still show Peltola winning. But not the way you do it if you want to ride the moral high horse, and this one will end up in Court one way or the other.

He’s cruel where he should be compassionate, reckless where he should be prudent, dishonest where he should be truthful.

(Steve Schmidt)

The President is not well. He has tremendous difficulty staying awake on the job. He has repeatedly fallen asleep at Cabinet meetings, at White House events, at a Memorial Day ceremony, and most recently at a very loud NBA game last night.

(Ted Lieu, 9 June 2026)

The legal action in Alaska. which has now been quashed by a federal judge, is another sign that the Trump administration are terrified of the prospect of losing the Senate, and will stop at nothing to rig the elections ex post facto. This is the same state of mind that led them to the failed coup of 6 January 2021, amidst massive warnings that they will attempt another one after this year's elections. They are even arrogant enough, or more plausibly stupid enough, to have made their intentions loud and clear months ago already. The final quartet of this year's dozen hot seats is less damning for the Republicans, as even strong swings towards Democrats will fail to switch Florida, Marco Rubio's old seat, South Carolina, the late Lindsey Graham's seat for 23 years, now occupied by his far less flamboyant sister, or Iowa, despite earlier polls hinting it would flip. There are nevertheless good news for Democrats here too, as they are predicted to hold the Michigan seat, the only one of theirs that looked threatened at the beginning of the campaign. This one also validates the Democrats' swing to the left, as their nominee Abdul El-Sayed, though not affiliated with the Democratic Socialists, is campaigning on a "progressive populist" agenda with many similarities to theirs, which has enabled him to fight off a very racist Republican campaign, including totally fabricated innuendo from Trump himself, and the shameful last-minute betrayal by his former Democratic primary opponent.

The overall picture of gains and losses has changed a little over the last month, with Nebraska and Iowa switching back to Red on a knife-edge. My last prediction is thusly Democrats taking back the Senate with six gains and no losses. This would deliver a majority of six seats for the Democrats, 51 of their own plus 2 Independents caucusing with them, against 47 Republicans. The swing is in the same ballpark as the Conservative Revolution of 1994 or the Blue Wave of 2006, that both handed the Senate to the opposition party. The aftermath is likely to be quite different from 2006, when Democrats went rather soft on the lame-duck George W. Bush, and closer to 1994, when the triumphant Republicans were determined to make life very difficult for Bill Clinton. The main difference is that Clinton was not driven by an over-inflated ego, hate, insatiable greed and childish spite, as Trump already is even before such a resounding defeat. I guess the USA just have to brace themselves for a very aggressive Lame Duck à l'Orange, who will not shy away from a destructive trench war over the next two years, to protect his own and his cronies' financial interests.

This is not a good year for the Republican Senate wannabes, as data collected by the Federal Election Commission show that Democratic Senate candidates have raised twice the amount Republicans candidates have. So the difference has to be filled by dosh coming from the national party, which is neither registered nor tracked by the FEC as it has already been counted at the source, when it was raised by the national party, who can then spaff it up the walls any way they want. We thusly have no information on the exact amounts, but it is safe to assume that more than half a billion dollars has been siphoned off the RNC this year for the benefit of state campaigns. With two thirds of voters casting early votes, sometimes a whole month before Election Day, it is unlikely that even that much money can make a fucking difference. It may even come back to bite the Republican in the arse if they decide to challenge election results in court all across the country. That would cost them millions in legal fees, and plausibly in punitive damages if the Democrats strike back against malicious lawsuits, and Elon Muck may not be ready and willing to foot the bill this time. Trump has told you already, mates, nobody likes losers.

Likewise, an old-fashioned term that we use. Groceries. I used it on the campaign. It's such an old-fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Groceries. It sort of says a bag with different things in it.

(Donald Trump)

Republicans have had reason to worry about the 2026 midterm elections for a while now. But there are growing signs that their fears are spilling over into panic, and that the GOP, including President Donald Trump, senses things could get really bad.

(Aaron Blake, 6 October 2026)

At this year's gubernatorial elections, fifteen incumbents are standing down because they are term-limited, six Democrats and nine Republicans. Three are retiring, two Democrats and one Republican. And one Democratic incumbent has lost renomination at the primary, in Rhode Island. So we have 19 open seats out of 36 up for election, an unusually high proportion. In normal times, it would mean that the incumbency bonus is lost. But in these extremely polarised times, it may not work that way. The American mediataro-punditarial complex have identified only seven States as competitive, true hot Governor seats. Five are held by the Republicans, two by the Democrats, which totally reflects which way the battleground has shifted this year. Polls nevertheless point to different, and not always fully intuitive, outcomes.

One difference between this year's elections and previous midterms is that the focus is on Congress, and both parties' priorities too, much more significantly than usual. The make-up of Congress on the first Monday of January will determine the shape of the Orange Baboon's last two lame-duck years, and the contours of the Second Civil War. Who the Governors are will not. It's that simple. This does not mean that the national parties have totally lost interest in the gubernatorial contests. Just that, if tough choices have to be made, the Congressional races will take precedence, first of all the Senate races. If some Governor wannabes also benefit, it will be by ricochet and a very serendipitous fluke. Inevitably, both parties will have to deal with some disappointments when the results are announced.

Democrats will be less miffed than Republicans on The Day After, as they will bag three gains in Alaska, Iowa and Ohio, with one fully anticipated loss in Kansas. But they also had high hopes in Georgia and Nevada, which are both predicted to escape them by the weeest of margins. Likewise, the Republicans will not uncork the New Jersey Champagne if they gain only Kansas, as they also had Wisconsin in their crosshairs, and possibly Michigan too. Both are now predicted to follow the prevailing winds and stay with Team Blue, albeit on lesser margins than at the previous elections four years ago. At the end of the day, it will probably not matter much as the news cycles will deal only with Congress and the thirty dozen frivolous lawsuits filed jointly by the RNC and the DoJ to deny the people their rightful democratic choices. Which will only create confusion until all their motions are quashed in court, but there is no way anyone can deny the Orange Baboon his hissy tantrums and his transition into the Architect Of Chaos.

There are plenty of examples of parties overzealously slamming the panic button late in the campaign. But the Trump-era GOP has generally been a rather sanguine political party, and what we’ve seen in recent days and weeks is anything but.

(Aaron Blake, 6 October 2026)

If you like automobiles, how can you vote for a Democrat who all want to get rid of cars, as quickly as possible, especially if they are powered by gasoline. Remember also, no more than one car per family. I, on the other hand, have new plants being built all over Michigan. Plus!

(Donald Trump, 10 March 2020)

I will not bore you with the full details of what is expected in the elections for the State Legislatures this time, mostly because the overall picture has not changed over the last month. Democrats will score serious gains, but not enough to take control of a majority of State Houses and Senates; as the previous elections have been heavily stacked against them for many years. Democrats are nevertheless to gain the State House in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Plus the State Senate in Arizona, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Which is pretty good, all things considered, especially when the most significant gains are predicted to happen in swing states that went to Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. This is the kind of gains Democrats will want to confirm and amplify at the next two elections, to have more power over the next legal redistricting cycle, to be held after the 2030 census.

So now we have pretty much all the information we can gather from opinion polls for these elections; held quite early because of the way the astronomical cycles determine which day will be the first Tuesday of November. The last time the United States held elections on the 3rd of November was 2020, when Joe Biden kicked the Orange Baboon out of the White House before he had had time to desecrate it. So it's been six years now since the Trumpian Christo-fascists unleashed their conspiracy theories on the American public. They have had more than enough time to rehearse for a second performance, which they have already announced for The Day After, and has actually already begun in several states. But the overall picture is unequivocal. Trump has already lost two elections this year, in Hungary and Brazil, and now he is going to lose at home too. But he has also learned from Netanyahu that hyperbolic lies and fearmongering can save you from the complete disaster you so richly deserve. So it is fair to assume that the least surprising event of the elections' aftermath will be how many surprises Trump has in store.

So, here you have it, my last prediction of the overall picture for this year's elections, which is a very severe blow for the Republicans across the board. Electoral Calculus have also thrown their Last Day predictions in the broth, just for the House and Senate, and they agree it will be a serious kick in the baws for the Republicans. They failed to rig the elections, so their only prospect is to fight dirty to nullify them. If the courts let them do it, that is. What can, or will, Trump do on Wednesday morning their time, Wednesday afternoon our time? The oddity is that we will not know the actual results on The Day After, as is the case here, because of the time needed to count the postal votes. It may well take a whole month before all votes in all states are counted, which is quite ironic in the most technologically advanced nation of the allegedly civilised world. A massive amount of frivolous litigation from the Republican side won't help either, but that's the way it is. We can thusly expect a very tense period until the new Congress convenes on the first Monday of January, and very possibly after. By the way, there are now just 80 days left before J.D. Vance can have Trump deposed by the Cabinet without losing his constitutional right to two full terms of his own. Do not ask for whom the clock ticks, Donald, it ticks for thee. Even if self-awareness is definitely not JD's forte.

Gas prices skyrocketed in 1979, they skyrocketed in 2001, they skyrocketed in 2007. They skyrocket every time some tin pot dictator decides to throw a tantrum.

(J.D. Vance, 27 October 2026)

Even before this despicable motion was passed, Polanski and his cronies were guilty of fostering the growing anti-Semitism of new party members.

(Suzanne Moore, The Telegraph, 9 October 2026)

The Green Party of England and Wales is still reeling under the shockwave of their conference motion about Zionism and the future of Palestine. Interestingly, the Green Party's official press release tones down the actual content of the motion by quite a few notches. The most significant bit is the lie by omission. The press release mentions "the establishment of a single democratic state throughout historic Palestine", while the motion actually refers to "a single democratic Palestinian State". This is the heart of the matter. Not defining Zionism as ethnonationalism, which it is. Not supporting BDS, which is a perfectly legitimate policy choice. But voting for a motion that explicitly denies Israel's right to exist, calls for its destruction in terms Hamas would approve, and then trying to hide it from the public's eye. Opinium has polled us about it, asking whether the Greens were right or wrong to support it. A third pretend they have no opinion, which is highly suspect given the amount of media coverage, so I guess it is again just the cowardly reluctance to take sides on an explosive issue. But we still have one out of six British adults agreeing with it, eight fucking million wishing to erase Israel from the map. Even for those, like me, who strongly oppose Netanyahu's genocidal colonialism, this is deeply worrying.

The Green Party has also indulged in a lame attempt to cosplay party unity, with a bland generic statement that sounds like something a low-cost AI could have generated. Circling the wagons, on the smallest and most non-committal common ground, is futile when several of the five MPs have publicly denounced the motion. Surely the Greenies have forgotten this proverbial piece of African wisdom: the more the ostrich buries his head in the sand, the more the lion fucks him in the arse. It is quite flabbergasting that the Green leadership cannot see past the windows of their metropolitan middle-class bubble, and acknowledge the damage done by this shameful episode. Opinium has polled it too, and the results are unequivocal, though I doubt this will make the Greenies awaken to reality.

A third of us opine that the Zionism motion has made them less favourable to the Greens, and only one in ten that it has made them more favourable. The party leadership can't even find solace in four out of ten voting age Brits saying that their opinion of them has not changed. This says absolutely jack shit when the very same Opinium poll credits the Greens with fewer votes than the LibDems, far from the sunlit uplands where they were predicted to outvote Labour. It also proves very little when the party was clearly already damaged goods before this fateful Conference they now wish to erase from our collective memories. Opinium also surveyed us about our perception of the Green Party and it is not a pretty sight. They know what they stand for, but their problem is that some stuff they stand for is abhorrent. To give you the short version, they do not represent the people, can't be trusted with serious decisions and are not ready to be in government.

In many ways, this harsh judgement is good news and the harsher it gets, the better it is. Remember this is the party that did the most to desensitise its followers, especially among the illiterate and more malleable younger generations raised by social media, to the abominations of anti-Semitism. The party that made the most harm to the Palestinian cause when they welcomed and endorsed radicalised Hamas-huggers, and even made some Councillors. The party that made a farce of feminism when they decreed it should embrace men-in-womanface. The party that waged Stalinist witch-hunting against dissenters and wrongthinkers, hounding them down in the name of absolutist ideological purity. The party that want to disarm us because they are in denial of the true terrorist imperialist nature of the Russian Reich, and are complicit with the Fash in disseminating FSB propaganda. Hopefully, they will soon be gone, and they will not be missed.

Can Polanski really be daft enough not to realise that all of this was a Bat-signal to those who can now flaunt their Jew hate?

(Suzanne Moore, The Telegraph, 9 October 2026)

If you’re too stupid to see the wool being pulled over your eyes, you deserve what you get.

(April Troost, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, 2005)

One of the recurring criticisms against the Green Party of England and Wales is how they have handled the perceived anti-Semitism of some of their members. Bear in mind that there are several shades of anti-Semitism. First you had religious anti-Semitism, as peddled by the Catholic Church for centuries. Their dogma that Jews had to be ostracised because they were the murderers of Christ was not repealed until the Vatican II Council in 1965. Then you had racialist anti-Semitism, that culminated with the Nazis and the Holocaust. Then you had ideological anti-Semitism on the left, that predates the Israeli genocide of Palestinians by many generations. It was first rooted in the belief that Jews were part of the capitalist ruling class oppressing the proletariat, and was easily reframed by wokeism as Jews being part of the colonialist white West, which is stupid if you consider the whole of history since the Roman Empire, but became "legitimate" when we were enjoined to forget anything that happened before 1947, and focus only on the actions of successive Israeli governments. Opinium and YouGov have both polled our perception of anti-Semitism in politics during the Conference Season, and the results are quite alarming for the Greens.

The two polls did not use the same scale of ignominy, but their findings are nevertheless remarkably similar. Labour still haven't been cleared of the strong suspicion of anti-Semitism that plagued them under Corbyn. But the most striking result is obviously that the Greenies are considered to have a bigger problem with anti-Semitism than the Fash. Admittedly by a tiny margin in both polls, but it is still undeniably there. The Greens' more serious global challenge is that Che Polanski's turbocharged eco-populism, or whatever he calls it this week, does not convince voters; and voting intentions in freefall bear witness to that beyond reasonable doubt. The party is considered out of touch with real people, untrustworthy, weak, incompetent and intolerant. Which, totally uncoincidentally, is also how most of Great British Public see Reform UK. It is safe to assume that neither will be happy bunnies with that, but both brought it upon themselves, didn't they?

When you take a step back and look at the Big Picture, it is quite obvious that the Greenies' problems go a lot further than fashionable casual anti-Semitism. A whole vision of society, rooted in hyperbolic bullshitism, is the root cause, like when one of them blames "white capitalist heterocolonials" for all the Plagues of Britain. And that's an actual quote, I did not make that up. Scot's Honour, mates, that's what Bluesky is for. On top of it all, the Greens are in a clusterfucked goat rope because they go into anaphylactic PTSD at the sound of words like "authority" or "discipline". The party is actually older than me, but has never gone past the stage of student politics. For the older and wiser of them, that is, as the bulk of the youngsters who have joined under Polanski are still stuck in the kind of performative schoolyard politics that fits their Manichaean pre-pubescent Weltanschauung. Now that Che is personally questioned and challenged, and the whole party disgraced by vociferous extremists, the house of cards is crumbling faster than the House of Usher. Another Lou Reed reference, by the way.

When heroes fall, they take everyone down with them. Along with their life’s work.

(James Deakins, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, 2006)

I want him to speak now about what's happened, I want him to show the leadership that was frankly missing on Sunday.

(Caroline Lucas, Newsnight, 8 October 2026)

Back in 2024, two of the Greens' MPs were elected by privileged virtue-signalling woke white middle-class students wearing £400 designer keffiyehs, in Bristol and Brighton, and the other two by formerly Tory rural middle-aged conservationist nimbys, in Herefordshire and on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. Then came Che Polanski and the eco-populist conversion that got another one elected in Greater Manchester, thanks to Keir Starmer spitefully denying the King Of The North his birthright to stand there. It is fair to say that Che has reshaped the Green Party of 2026 in his own image, closet wokeism on top of opportunistic faux progressive metropolitan bubble politics. So you cannot dissociate one from the other now and, if you have to play the party, you have to play the man too. YouGov have gone down that road and their findings will not please either the party or the man.

Twice as many of us have a negative image of the Greens, and think Polanski has changed them for the worse, as have a positive image of them, and think he has changed them for the better. This is quite damning, and totally not unexpected. I have also tracked the favourability ratings of our main political leaders, that are surveyed weekly by a variety of pollsters. The interesting comparison is, as usual, between Polanski and Farage. Benito has been polled 317 times, has got a net positive rating in 14 of these polls, or 4.4%, and has a net average rating of -16.5. Che has been polled 196 times, has got a net positive rating in 4, or 2.0%, and has a net average rating of -17.2. Polanski is more unpopular than Farage, which totally fits with the Greens' downward spiral in voting intentions. Zack has actually never been popular, and it has got much worse after the infamous Conference. And he clearly deserve every little bit of our loathing, either for his asinine politics or for his deplorable lack of baws against radicalised extremists.

Quite amusingly, and absurdly too, Zack Polanski used a lengthy column in The Hipstershire Gazette to claim credit for the downfall of Starmer and Burnham's policies. In a word, echoing Shitweasel's former fairytale about The Left, that everything good that happened to British politics came from the Greens and their transformative agenda. That's just the kind of stunt Che should have avoided, because he then rambles on into a rather awkward debate with himself about the "Zionism is racism" motion. Nothing clear emerges from that self-serving performative gobbledygook, except that the Greens' sacred cow of "direct democracy" has to be barbecued urgently. So, instead of giving absolute power to a fringe of single-issue activists specialising in entryism, there would be a shift towards letting the party line be defined by the party leadership. The very same leadership that ran to Camden with its tail between its legs rather than putting its baws on the table at the Conference. The very same leadership that later doubled down on the infamous motion to appease vociferous extremists, and plainly told the world that Israel and Ukraine have no right to exist. Neither has the UK, by the way, according to Zack's logic. Not sure that will help restore the Greenies' credibility.

I have been very clear that I think it was a mistake not to show leadership on this and I think it was a mistake not to be there to vote.

(Caroline Lucas, Newsnight, 8 October 2026)

We should not turn our backs on this opportunity to explore closer relations with the European Union, and I hope all sides of this House will get behind the government’s efforts to land a positive outcome.

(Andy Burnham, 12 October 2026)

Andy Burnham has opened another can of worms he cannot run away from, Breturn. He can count with the resolute support of The Hipstershire Gazette, who have definitely got a hard-on just writing about it. Though they may just have been ecstatic at how smart they are, being able to mention Hegel's three first names, that most of us wouldn't remember even if we had looked him up on Wokopedia last night. And now we have a poll from More In Common, dangling the possibility of not just one, but two, referendums under our nose. Which is fucking ridiculous, as if the Prime Minister was a schoolboy who has to ask the teacher's permission to go pee. Even asking about just one referendum, again, only shows complete ignorance of our constitutional arrangements, or reckless disregard for them. The Government's prerogative powers include negotiating and signing international treaties, under the responsibility of the Foreign Office. Prerogative powers also allow the Government to ratify a treaty, unless it changes existing law or constitutional provisions, which a treaty of accession to the EU would. Only then does Parliament intervene, per the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, usually known as CRAG. So the clear constitutional path, in letter and spirit, is for the Government to do pretty much whatever they want, the option that gets only minute support because of a decade of referendumist brainwashing.

Even under CRAG, Parliament is not granted the power to ratify treaties, which remains with the Government. The House of Commons can nevertheless block the ratification, whatever the House of Lords says, for an indefinite length of time. Ore, more accurately, for an infinite length of time. Which has, of course, never happened. The sensible and adult approach is not to rant and ramble endlessly about referendums and referenda, but to identify the obstacles on our road to rejoining the EU. Or joining EFTA, as most stumbling blocks would exist in both options, What are our red lines? What could possibly be the EU's non-negotiable demands? More In Common has tested some, including a couple that exist only in Ed Davey's imagination. Interestingly, restoring the free movement of people is not a red line for us, which should embolden Burnham to go further than just a "honest discussion" with the EU. In a word, get it done and move on. Strike a deal at the next EU-UK Summit, that is three weeks away now, on the 20th of November. Bring that back from Brussels, and sell it as a major success to public opinion and Parliament, as the Summit is otherwise unlikely to be all milk and roses for us.

France may be tempted to cosplay Perfidious Gaul again, just like they did when they opposed the UK joining the European defence fund for Ukraine and the "Made In Europe" initiative about industrial products, before unvetoing it with more strings attached than the London Symphony Orchestra. France is in the middle of a very divisive election campaign, so may be opportunistically inclined to seize every opportunity to score cheap points on the international scene. Which may also include raising the hurdles to accession so high that they become unacceptable for Burnham right away. Oddly, the UK's future contribution to the EU may not be as big an obstacle as we think, since France have unintentionally offered us a strong negotiating position when they requested a discount on their own contribution. Goose and gander, mates. That still leaves the two most contentious and controversial issues to deal with, fishing rights and the Euro. Burnham could argue that fishing rights are not a one-way street, but reciprocal, but it is unlikely to mollify the most hard-line opponents. The Euro is a trickier issue. On one hand, opt-outs, such as the one we enjoyed before 2020, are no longer allowed. One the other hand, you can game the system, as Sweden has done for a generation, by deviously exploiting a massive loophole in the EU treaties. Adopting the Euro may be technically mandatory for all EU members, but joining ERM II, which is the transitional stage before adoption, is not. So just stay out of it and the problem disappears. Or not, as this would make us a bad faith player, which is not in our best interest.

I believe our chances of doing so will be enhanced by being open to a discussion about our relationship with the EU in the longer term. If we are serious about promoting growth, controlling immigration, upholding our values and security, it is a conversation we must have.

(Andy Burnham, 12 October 2026)

Sticking with the status quo is not good enough for Britain. Worse, it would be a major dereliction of duty to turn away. We need to take a calm, clear-eyed, rational look at the world as it is today to consider what is best for our country.

(Andy Burnham, 12 October 2026)

Now let's just forget all the red lines, prejudices and the blatant stupidity, both constitutionally and politically, of ever holding a Breturn referendum. More In Common also polled what we would do if such an unnecessary and asinine referendum was held, and their results confirm the strong return of Europhilia among the Great British Public. You do not see a majority here at first glance but, if you weed out the abstainers and undecideds, that's a clearcut 62-38 to rejoin. More In Common did not offer crosstabs with the 2016 vote, but they are unnecessary as the Rejoin vote is strongly favoured by the younger generations, those who were mostly too young to vote ten years ago, or not motivated enough to drag their asses out of the couch to the polling place. Only the older geezers, 65 and above, still want to stay out. The political divides are pretty much what we are seeing in real life, though the number of Conservative Europhobes is lower than I expected. This again supports my view that Burnham should build a temporary bespoke single-issue alliance with the other left-of-centre parties, as their electorates would certainly approve such a strategy for the greater good.

Just as important are the geographical divides, because the usual argument of the Labour Brexiteers is that their constituency voted for Brexit, Ten fucking years ago, mates, with more than enough time to change their minds. And this is just what the poll shows. Support for rejoining the EU may be lower in some regions, but it is the favourite option everywhere, even in the regions with the strongest Leave vote in 2016. On top of that, the once Brexit-leaning Red Wall regions are also the most likely to abstain at a rematch, which strongly weakens their MPs' case for ruling out deeper discussions with the EU. But, beyond the data from the poll, the Labour Brexiteers have another, very practical and very political, solid motive to be careful what they wish for. Burnham has every reason to resist pressure for another referendum and stick to the letter of our current constitutional best practice, letting Parliament decide. On a craftily worded pro-EU motion, the government could expect broad support from the Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and a few independents. If all behaved as adults and dropped performative student politics, that is. This makes for a baseline of 490 to 495 votes, meaning Burnham could lose 170 to 175 Labour votes and still get a pro-EU motion passed with a majority of the PLP behind him. Lexiters be warned.

Of course, it will never come to such a dramatic epilogue, as it is in nobody's best interest. It just shows that Burnham could tell the vestigial Lexiteers to fuck off, and get us back into the EU without conceding anything to them. He could even threaten them with deselection, just as Starmer would have done to tame dissent. Bear in mind too that. apart from the obviously unconstitutional and un-British nature of a referendum, we now have a stronger reason to never ever go down that road again. Russian interference, which everybody with a functioning brain knows has happened in 2016, and has now been confirmed by our Prime Minister. He probably got that assessment from the Head Of Spooks, who is now trying to downplay it. But Burnham is right, whether or not the interference succeeded is irrelevant, what matters is that it did happen, and will happen again. Next time, it is hugely likely to be much stronger and come from two sources, Russia and the USA, who are both openly supporting far-right takeovers in Europe and undermining the EU. The Orange Baboon and Nosferatu both have a vested interest in keeping Europe weak and divided, and keeping the UK isolated from the EU is just another brick in that wall where all bricks are inextricably interlocked. More reasons for Burnham to be bold and firm, and never show the weeest inclination to compromise.

Our immediate priority is securing a successful outcome at the Summit, and I believe we should then set up a serious dialogue about the different options for our relationship in the long term.

(Andy Burnham, 12 October 2026)

You can’t say the Tories haven’t put a lot of thought into their party Conference. It takes some programming skill to make every day even more dismal than the last. You come expecting very little and get even less.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 6 October 2026)

I must confess I am filled with gleeful Schadenfreude when I see the Greens, once competing with Labour for second place behind the Fash and first place on the left, now struggling to hold fourth place against the LibDems. I sincerely hope there comes a time when they will be battling the SNP for fifth place, and lose. But the Greens having buried themselves deep down a rabbit hole does not mean Labour is safe, as we have also witnessed an unexpected Conference benefit: Badenoch (Slight Return). IYKYK. The Tories too have been granted a Conference Bounce in the polls, mostly at the expense of Reform, who are also threatened on their batshit-crazy flank by Restore Britain. This is bad for Labour as the Tories definitely benefit from an evenly split vote on the right, thanks to their stronger existing local party base, and could plausibly end up bagging more seats on fewer votes than at the last general, thanks to the wizardry of first-past-the-post. The trendlines are nevertheless again quite good for Labour, who have bounced, flatlined, bounced again, debounced and rebounced again. Looks like the Burnham Magic is still working, even though he doesn't have much to brag about so far.

These days, Nigel Farage surely wishes he was a Catholic because, if he were, he would qualify for canonisation. Benito has achieved an unprecedented miracle in his own lifetime, exorcising Owen Jones out of his pathologically obsessive fixation on the Labour Party. It has taken two years, but Shitweasel at last remembered two weeks ago that the real enemy is the Fash, not some nondescript Starmerite bogeyman that only ever existed in his feverish imagination, but has still dwelt rent-free in his head since the aestas horribilis of 2024. But the current snapshot of polls is not that kind for the Fash, who are now tied for second place with the Rump Tories. This is the aggregate of the last six polls, fielded by Deltapoll, More In Common, YouGov, BMG Research; Find Out Now and Opinium over the last eight days, both before and after the Budget Statement. That's a super-sample of 14;268, or roughly the weight of 220 adult Golden Retrievers in Imperial pounds. Labour are now leading by 7% on their closest rivals, and predicted to bag a 40-seat majority, in a way that would make the proportional representation zealots squeal at the moon like mad. Labour do not reach that majority just because the Fash are collapsing, but also because the LibDems are too now, which is definitely quite an unexpected twist of fate.

The amazing part of this last batch of polls is that John Healey's first budget, the one John Crace called the Martin Lewis Budget, but you could also call the No-Budget Budget, seems to have had fuck all impact on the Great British Public's mood. Either the Tories and Reform have become so toxic nobody wants to give them a chance. Or we agree that Burnham has found the proper magic recipe for change, which is to change barely anything at all. Keep welfare spending spiralling, so you won't have to fight off rebellious backbenchers. Let Chancellor Healey handle defence spending in the same way that made Defence Secretary Healey resign in anger, and that's it. There must be a touch of genius in there, surely. But what will voters make of Wes Streeting advising us to stockpile essentials, which do include dog food, so we're prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse, or summat? Or of Angela Rayner's suggestion to hoard Sauvignon Blanc, though you may get better money for loo rolls on the black market when shortages strike? Or will we be more influenced by the sight of Burnham munching Twiglets on Gogglebox? Don't pay attention to what Badenoch had to say about that one, she was just jealous and miffed Channel 4 had not invited her too. Guess the BBC has to offer her a slot on The Traitors now.

Sure, Kemi is short-tempered and can’t tolerate dissent. But she’s actually a supremely gifted entertainer. A comedy genius. A woman whose one-liners often get mistaken for serious comment. A female Jack Dee.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 6 October 2026)

Meanwhile, Nige just sits back and pockets the money. Seemingly unable to stop his party collapsing around him.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 October 2026)

The most important feature of the Burnham Resurrection is that you can witness it all across the Realm. With a triad of notable exceptions, two of which can be seen in Scotland, where Labour are predicted to lose 18 seats on their 2024 intake, and Wales; where they would lose eleven. But it is obviously far better than what we got during the Starmerdämmerung, when the SNP were cruising back to 45 seats or more; and Wales had become a two-way battleground between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. It did not catch instantly, but now the Burnham Bounce has reached the Celtic Nations too. More importantly for Burnham personally, La Reconquista Del Norte is well underway, just like Starmer achieved Rebuilding The Red Wall in 2024. Admittedly, Reform UK would bag a quarter of their seats in the North, but it looks like a vestigial presence, far away from the Turquoise Wave of 2022-2023.

The other notable exception to the Burnham Bounce is, quite oddly, London. Labour are predicted to lose 10 seats in the Imperial Capital, but not because of the Greens, whose fortunes have significantly ebbed since the Council elections six months ago. The duplication of these results, though highly hypothetical and unlikely, would have delivered 21 Green MPs and shrunk Labour to 28. But gone are these days, and the main challenge to Labour's dominance is now coming from the Conservatives. It may even be here to stay, as the Conservative surge in London predated Kemi Badenoch's Conference Bounce by many months, and they were never challenged by Reform as meaningfully as in the other regions of England. On the far side of the M25, the Leafy South is a sore sight for the Liberal Democrats, who are predicted to lose nine seats down there, all back to the Conservatives from whom they snatched them in 2024. Could this be a career-ender for Mister Ed?

But what will happen next? There is an eerie feeling of déjà vu all over again from 2007. You may remember this was when Gordon Brown inherited the Throne of Games from a very reluctant predecessor two years into the term, had a short window of opportunity when he could have called a snap election and won it to secure a personal mandate for a full term, but totally fucked it up. Earlier snapshots of polls were also reminiscent of the infamous 2010 election, that delivered a hung Parliament and prompted futile attempts to assemble an unlikely Rainbow Coalition of everyone to the left of the Conservatives. It failed because Nick Clegg had already decided, before the election was held, that he would embrace a bromance with Call Me Dave Cameron. Today, Ed Davey is cultivating some ambiguity about what he would do in a hung Parliament, but should Burnham bet on Mister Ed anyway, when some LibDem grandees are already plotting his demise? Of course, Labour's defeat in 2010 had its roots in the financial crisis, an international cataclysmic event that started in the USA, far beyond Brown's control, but aren't we right now facing the prospect of a dozen international cataclysmic events likely to start in Trumpistan, far beyond Burnham's control, that could totally reshape our political landscape?

Everyone in Reform appears hell-bent on being the worst versions of themselves as the party loses support by tacking ever further to the right.

(John Crace, The Guardian, 16 October 2026)

Friends, we are winning. One by one, the stars are aligning in our favour.

(John Swinney, SNP Conference, 17 October 2026)

Our voting intentions at the very hypothetical Second Independence Referendum have been surveyed thirty times this year, ten since the last Scotti Parliament election that returned another nominally pro-Independence majority, and five times in October alone. That's plenty of new datapoints to feed the trendlines, which again show Yes on top, albeit not in a totally conclusive way. I guess we can thank the SNP for that, who have made more to demonstrate their managerial proficiency within the shackles of the yoke of devolution, than to prove how much better off we would be in the sunlit uplands of independence. Criticising Andy Burnham for the re-opening of Jackdaw, which will not even benefit English consumers, certainly makes political sense, but it does not advance The Cause even one picometer. The re-opening of Rosebank, which will inevitably follow soon as Burnham can argue it will not break any Labour Manifesto pledge, will be another convenient soapbox, but with the same net zero effect on our appetite for independence.

If we single out only the most recent snapshots of our mood, the five polls fielded in October, the big picture is not as rosy as John Swinney or The Scottish Pravda's columnists want us to think. Of course, The National tends to ramble on for days about all polls with a Yes majority, and quickly sweep under the rug those with a No majority, so you get quite a distorted view of the situation if this is your only source of information. The weighted average of the last five polls, from a super-sample of 6,137 voting-age Scots, is a knife-edge. A statistical tie. Well within the margin of error. Too close to call, like a Senate election in Texas. A second referendum, even if is highly desirable, is therefore hugely risky. You don't need to be a professional gambler to see that even odds are just not good enough, especially as the UK government could then deny another vote forever. Remember the Québec Precedent, where the independence question has been frozen in limbo for thirty years now, after their second Indyref was lost by 54,000 votes out of 4.8 million cast.

Now, if you are looking for whatever reason to say No to Independence, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow may have offered you one on a silver platter. Their shenanigans made headlines all over the media, and even got a dishonourable mention on Have I Got News For You?, who deservedly ridiculed them. To cut to the chase, they withdrew a 4,000-years old Egyptian mummy from public viewing because of "absence of consent from the deceased individual or their descendants". I am not making that up, mates. This is how Glasgow Life, the Glasgow City Council's quango that oversees art and culture, justified the decision in a very official press release. They even blatantly and knowingly misrepresented the latest Code of Ethics from the International Council of Museums, who never said that mummies should be removed from exhibitions. This is definitely wokeism gone asininely mad, and lying to cover their arse, in the name of alleged "progression from colonial regimes of exploitation". This other gem of sanctimonious virtue-signalling comes from The Scottish Pravda, who obviously supported the decision and tried to reframe opponents as abhorrent right-wingers, because this is what the Woke always do when their stupidity is exposed and mocked. Can't wait now for Glasgow Life sending back the mummy to Egypt, who can be considered the rightful descendants of the mummified person, even if it is highly unlikely that the Pharaonic bloodlines survived the predatory Arab military colonisation, the only one the Woke never mention because it is at odds with their revisionist Weltanschauung. And find out that a dozen museums in Egypt do display mummies and see nothing wrong with that.

2026 has been a turning point in Scotland’s journey towards statehood, and there is no turning back.

(John Swinney, SNP Conference, 17 October 2026)

If we had lost the election this year, if we were out of power, then the independence cause would have been set back decades. That’s why our opponents threw absolutely everything at us.

(John Swinney, SNP Conference, 17 October 2026)

We have had six polls of voting intentions for the next Scottish Parliament election since the last Scottish Parliament election. Three of them were fielded in October, and after Michael Marra became the new Branch Office Manager in charge of the Labour Party's interests in Caledonia. Not that it was a game-changing event, but it is a convenient excuse to focus on just those last three polls. More In Common, Survation and Norstat probed us, literally just days apart, and still managed to come up with highly contrasting, and even contradictory, results. Nothing new under the black hole sun here, we have even become totally accustomed to this, which does not mean we should be happy bunnies with it. There is nevertheless a common trait, as all three credit the SNP with a smaller share of the vote than at the last election.

There is also no real sign of a Burnham Bounce for Labour, unlike what we are seeing in the Westminster voting intentions. All three polls do predict Labour gaining seats at Holyrood too, but this is more a case of serendipity than symptoms of a genuine rebirth. Part of if is that Reform UK is, just like in England, weakened by Restore Britain, who have been polled separately only by Norstat so far. Reaching almost 5% nationally could be enough for a list seat in any region, but Norstat does not provide the regional crosstabs that would validate this, or not. Note too that two out of these three polls also predict that the pro-independence majority would be lost. This is not as meaningful as it seems, as the road to independence is paved with landmines already, but it would be a fucking PR disaster. Just imagine the jubilant headlines in the English papers, and some Scottish ones too. Bear in mind, though, that the next Scottish Parliament election is still five years away, after the next general election or the Russian invasion, whichever happens first. So polls definitely should be handled with a grain of salt for now.

Honestly, there was a twinkle of hope in my eyes when the More In Common poll had the Greenies down to their worst results in ten years, with their representation confined to just Edinburgh and Glasgow. I fucking loved the thought of Che Polanski taking the Green Party of England and Wales down with him, who in turn would take the Scottish Greens down with them by serendipitous ricochet. Imagine getting rid of Beaker Greer and Mad Mags Chapman on the same day thanks to vox populi. Alas, later polls did not confirm this, crediting the Greens with results quite similar to their last election result. Norstat even credits them with enough constituency votes to snatch two more constituencies off the SNP (Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith, Glasgow Kelvin and Maryhill). The dark side is that prospects like these could embolden the Greenies, and incentivise them to field a lot more candidates at the next election, instead of just a select half-dozen.

I have to end on a personal note again, and it is of course about a dog. Again. When my precious beloved Bosco died, two months ago, I told you there would soon be another sweet wee dog in my life. Another gentle and innocent soul who was betrayed, and deserves a better future and a good life. And here he is now, since last Friday. Meet Chase, the New Boss, definitely not the same as the Old Boss. He is of course a rescue, who had a home and humans of his own until last June. Then he was dumped. His real birth date is even on record in his file, not an estimated one as is often the case with rescues, so I know he came with me to his forever home exactly two days after his third birthday. He is of an unspecified mix of breeds, with probably Dachshund and Jack Russell DNA in him. He is adjusting quietly to his new life, and is still a little shy and cautious, but he is definitely a sweet boy who has a lot of love to give. Life at the shelter was certainly not good for him, as he has lost weight while he was there, so he is on the skinny side right now. Nothing that love, trust, feeling safe and good food can't cure. I think he was also stressed by the other dogs at the shelter, most of them bigger than him, barking all the time. That's one problem already solved. He will not replace Bosco, who will always have a special place in my heart, and that was never the point anyway. Chase is his own dog, and will have his own unique place and life story, filled with all the love he deserves.

The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

(Samuel Butler)

Jeremy's Den

02/11/2026

Everybody's Queen For A Day

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Everybody's Queen For A Day