House Of Confusion

We’re a nation that’s gone so far up its own arse it can’t move from the crap everywhere

(Peter Boyd, Waking The Dead: Anger Management, 2004)

© Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Michael Rutherford, 1986

You can’t understand the picture if you’re inside the frame

(Peter Boyd, Waking The Dead: Final Cut, 2003)

There is an interesting paradox in current voting trends, and one that is quite counter-intuitive even for me. It might well prove easier for Labour to form a government in a hung Parliament than for the Conservatives. Bear in mind that, whatever the exact voting intentions and with Sinn Féin excluded for the usual reason, there will always be a bloc of 80-85 MPs who would be neither Labour nor Conservatives, and could exert massive influence on the post-election events. Of these only the DUP could be expected to support a Tory government, or perhaps not. So the likely scenario is that the Conservatives would indeed need an outright majority, or else they might face a Coalition Of The Unwilling ready to vote down each and every bill. While Labour could count on support from the SDLP and some sort of agreement with Plaid Cymru, the Greens, the LibDems and the Alliance Party, who have de facto become the local branch of the LibDems in Northern Ireland. Meaning Labour could count on an additional 15-20 votes and form a viable minority government with as few as 280-290 MPs of their own, as in this case the Conservatives would be down to 275-285. Of course, all these scenarios can happen only if Labour and the Conservatives are really close in the popular vote, somewhere between a tie and Labour leading by a couple of points. Which has happened at the end of last year in many polls, so let's just see first what the trends look like now, two months into the Year Of The Snoek, shall we?

What the 2021 polls tell us is that we're back to the situation we had in midsummer, which is definitely more of a trogglehumper than a night's dream for Labour. Personal image matters too and people seem to have forgotten what a flushbunking blatherskite Boris has been over the last twelve months. Next thing you know, we're gonna have a statue of Saint Boris Slaying The Virus in the middle of Parliament Square. Just the kind of narrative that definitely works in Leafy Eastern Surrey, though admittedly less so in the Red-To-Blue-To-Red Wall counties. But even there, you can see signs that lingering doubt has given way to benefit of the doubt. Interestingly The Guardian, never short on contradictions, now advise Labour to devote more efforts to South England, pretty much repeating my earlier arguments that New New Labour will win the next election if they crawl back to the same level of support New Labour enjoyed in the Home Counties, even at their low point in 2005. Which is definitely not what the last batch of polls predict, as Labour is left bopmuggered by the number of voters who have whiffswiddled back to the Tories since the world-beating Snoek Deal, and even more so since the First Minister of England is rollicking in his deepfreeze-ready Pfizer Honeymoon. And that's the moment Keir Starmer chooses to go natterboxing rommytot about how giganticus weapons of mass destruction are, which will probably not really help either in Hampstead or Glasgow. If he was really paying attention, Sly Keir should feel scrotty over where public opinion stands now, based on the weighted average of the last four published polls, conducted between 19 and 26 February. Super-sample size is 6,307 with a highly theoretical 1.23% margin of error.

Before we proceed any further, there's a necessary and long-overdue caveat, about the SNP's vote share in GB-wide or UK-wide polls. Which is, believe it or not, overestimated, or rather represented above its actual level because of the pollsters' weighting mechanisms. According to ONS data, Scotland accounts for 8.2% of the UK's population, or 8.4% of Great Britain's. But higher voter registration means Scotland accounts for 8.5% of the UK's electorate, or 8.7% of Great Britain's. Then higher turnout at the 2019 election meant that Scotland accounted for 8.6% of all votes cast in the UK, or 8.8% of all those cast in Great Britain. And now our problems start. Based on the four main pollsters' published data for their most recent survey, here is the share of Scotland in their original sample, and then after excluding undecideds and weighting by likelihood to vote. I included only each's last poll here, but you can trust me it's all the same in past polls, and sometimes even worse, depending on the relative weight of undecideds that are scratched from the final 'headline result'.

YouGov publish only one set of numbers, which I assume represent the original makeup of their sample, without any hint on how weighting might alter that. So the makeup of the original samples is something of a mixed bag, but more or less accurate or inaccurate depending on your mood. But the post-weighting share of Scotland is definitely and conclusively overestimated by three of our main pollsters, and quite possibly also by the fourth one even if we don't have the smoking gun here. Which is why you see the SNP vote skyrocket from 3.98% in 2019 to fantastically implausible levels like 5-6%, while low-to-mid 50ish% of Scottish vote is more like 4.2-4.4% of the GB-wide vote. And this also gets you biffsquiggled and wondering why the SNP don't systematically bag all 59 fucking seats when their vote share is so razztwizzlery high. Fortunately, real Scotland-only polls are here to remind us that the SNP really do better than in 2019, though it might not always be such a landslide as you might think at first glance. For example, this week's full Scottish poll from Survation has the SNP on 48% of Commons voting intentions, which would be something like 4.1% GB-wide, and yet my current Poll'O'Polls says 4.2%, which would be some 51% of the Scottish vote. Just saying, so that you don't get your hopes too wildly high, especially when the trend sees the SNP slowly losing votes.

If you want the high life, you have to embrace some serious lowlife

(Claudia Baxter, Silent Witness: River's Edge, 2016) 

© Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, Michael Rutherford, 1976

It strikes me that the human race is supposed to be more evolved

If you look at all this, you've gotta ask yourself if, as a species, we are on the right track

(Peter Boyd, Waking The Dead: The Hardest Word, 2004)

What polls tell us now is that the Conservative lead over Labour would be cut by almost half compared to 2019 and back to a 2015ish level. My model says it would take Boris just a few seats shy of a majority, but far from what is needed to pull a bonking stonker this time. Such an outcome would definitely not mean that Britain's Got Less Talent, as most of the fatalities here would be pibbling notmuchers from the 2019 intake, whose main contribution to the political debate has been the perfect triangulation of arse-licking incompetence. The only really noticeable Tory fatality here would be Graham Brady, Chair of the 1922 Committee of unruly backbenchers and a born-again Covidiot trying to outfox Nigel Farage on his turf. As it stands, Conservatives would gain only four seats: Alyn and Deeside, Dagenham and Rainham, Canterbury from Labour; Westmoreland and Lonsdale from the LibDems. The latter if they find a candidate who can outbigot Tim Farron on Christian values and homophobia, which shouldn't be too difficult when you think of it. Of course there are also even odds on Tories snatching Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock from the SNP. Just don't tell Douglas Ross and Andrew Bowie as they would drool at the prospect of a three-seat gain.

Odds are Bozo could even bribe the DUP back into some shade of supportivish neutrality, if he has enough pocket change left after spaffing so much on contracts awarded unlawfully to cronies and the publican next door. All it would take is reneging on the world-beating Christmas Gift To Britain Deal, which wouldn't matter anyway as nobody remembers what was in it, and most Ministers never even knew. Or he could try and convince Arlene Foster that duplicating the Swindon Roundabout under the Isle of Man is not such a plexicated idea as it looks, and could even be quite a ringbeller as long as it totally squishes Irish Reunification by not having any subaquatic connection to Dublin. The alternate scenarios, once I reallocate the marginals to the runner-up, are again quite interesting. The Conservatives' best case scenario would still see them lose two dozen seats, which proves that duplicating the 2019 upset is not that easy, even with some help from Astra-Zeneca. Labour's best case scenario would again trigger lots of speculation in the few days before Not-So-Hardy Keir decides not to extend an olive branch to the SNP after all. This is far from the 'get the popcorn out' scenario I mentioned earlier, where Keir could gamble a minority government without the Pesky Jocks. On these numbers, Keir would have to show his baws, and listen to Clive Lewis instead of Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar. But of course we already know Keir will never go that far, don't we? Better to never be First Minister of England that to make any concession to the Nats. Aye, right.

For your complete information, I have now re-engineered all my models, not just the Scottish one, to accommodate regional crosstabs when the pollsters provide them. When we have them, they're based on the Senedd and Holyrood electoral regions in Wales and Scotland. London is split between Outer and Inner, which has some taste of Middlesex vs Labourgravia, by Redfield and Wilton, who happen to be the only ones conducting London-specific polls since the 2019 election. Redfield and Wilton also crosstab their polling data from the rest of England with the eight ONS regions, while other pollsters stick to the cruder North-Midlands-South divide. I won't claim this is perfect and faultless, but is does look like an interesting approach to different changes in voting patterns all over the UK since the last election. As I mentioned earlier, factoring in the regional crosstabs helps the Conservatives against the SNP in Scotland, which could help SNP HQ realise that not all landslides do happen. It's fairly neutral in Wales, though in can help Plaid Cymru in some cases. In London, the Middlesex Effect helps the Conservatives against Labour. There's a strong opposite pattern in the rest of England, with the Conservatives only getting entrenched deeper in the Leafy South, while Labour come back with a meaner vengeance in the North and part of the Midlands. You can see below how my tweaked model compares with the untweaked version, and also with what my competitors predict with the same current set of voting intentions data.

What we have this time is the unlikely and seldom seen alignment of the polls, when all projections more or less based on uniform swing deliver a very similar number of seats, give or take la handful. I know from several other simulations that it is way more likely that my three competitors will deliver results quite different from mine, and then the regional tweaks make the gap even bigger, sometimes up to 25ish seats mostly switching from the Conservatives to Labour. The differences in algorithms and underlying data might not make a massive difference with some aggregates of polls, but it is not always true when relying on individual polls. As I said earlier about my Scottish seat projections, larger samples tend to level out the outliers. All you need is one outlier in one direction and another one going the opposite way, and it all folds back neatly into regression to the mean. On top of that I still need to assess more precisely whether the differences in the algorithms (using a mix of proportional swing and uniform swing instead of just uniform swing) matter more that the tweaks to the underlying data. Might make for some interesting case studies with various combinations of polls, though I have a hunch this might be conclusive only if we have a murder of polls going in the same direction, rather that the often contradictory results we have had so often in the past.  

If you're a lion with a degree of moral sensitivity, then you just stopped being a lion

(Doctor Greta Simpson, Waking The Dead: The Hardest Word, 2004)

© Steve Hackett, Phil Collins, 1977

Enjoy Gary O'Toole doing something Phil Collins never ever did

Singing and drumming at the same time, which is quite a feat

So, making mistakes can make you popular? Who knew?

(Clarissa Mullery, Silent Witness: Betrayal, 2019)

Polls don't only show better electoral prospects for the Conservatives as a whole. Boris Johnson's personal ratings have also improved over the last two months, as well as his standing in Preferred Prime Minister polling. It's like people are sending the message that they don't mind eating snoek and no longer buying books from France for the next three years, as long as they all get their jags and then can go to the game and sling tins at the linesman again. Which might be uncomfortably closer to the truth than you might want to believe, for Englanders at least. According to the aggregate of all polls, the First Minister of England's net approval rating has improved from -11% in November, -8% in December when we had some of the first hints of 'Fucking Brexit Getting Fucking Done', -7% in January after the not-so-convincing Bozo Deal with the EU, -1% in February after twelve weeks of vaccine rollout. Boris Johnson has also skyrocketed back to a convincing lead over Keir Starmer in the Preferred Prime Minister polls, which definitely look bad for Sly Keir. There's a double whammy in there, with both a number of Starmeristas switching to undecided, and a number of undecideds rallying around Boris. I won't even lecture you on the importance of cuddling undecideds, in England just as in Scotland, as I have made that point repeatedly already, haven't I?

The next question is whether there will be a Very Tory Coup against Boris Johnson, something along the lines of November 1990 déjà vu all over again. Though you have to understand most Tory MPs would think twice before becoming part of that. They all know that Boris is an evil ruthless vindictive bastard. If you staged a coup against him, you'd have to win or be relegated to the Ninth Circle, so standing orders would have to be "shoot to kill and take no prisoners". A number of Tory MPs from the 2019 intake never thought they would be elected, even in their wettest dreams. They think they owe it to Bozo, so they're ready to be his cannon fodder, and wouldn't even try and explain their support by anything more intellectual than "because it's Boris". Never mind this lot are mostly complete shitwanks like Ben Bradley, and pretty much the Trashcan Men to Johnson's Randall Flagg. Numbers matter here, not brains, and these and other Boris Cultists probably make up about a third of the Conservative Parliamentary Party. Then another third have already challenged Boris from the right, broadly on the basis of libertarian and traditional English values, including painting the closing of the pubs as an unacceptable breach of civil liberties. This lot, hardly more intellectual than the first one, would probably have supported Michael Gove before he got his wings and claws clipped, though they probably dispunge Sleekit in private, but now they know better than to fuck with Boris. And finally, the last third are more like traditional One-Nationers still believing that conservatism has a compassionate side, but are also business-friendly. Since their natural leader, who would be Theresa May, has pretty much burnt herself out already, they would be the logical fanbase for PR-savvy Rishi Sunak. Though a divided Tory party might have some more surprises in store, including the unlikely return of Jeremy-In-The-Box Hunt. Or the much more likely scenario where the Covidiots dump the burnt-out vermicious Gove and switch allegiance to Rishi "Let's Open Everything Wide" Sunak, which would be one fucking fuck of a problem for Boris.

Now there is also a lot of ambiguity and contradictions in Rishi's levels of approval in recent polls. The most recent favourability survey by YouGov has him on a +13% net rating, which makes him the only Cabinet member with a net positive and a shitload of leagues ahead of the others: Priti Patel on -37%, Dominic Raab on -19%, Matt Hancock on -23% and even Boris himself on -12%. But YouGov is definitely the least Boris-friendly of all pollsters, so don't read too much into that one poll. Rishi is also doing a lot better here than Keir Starmer, who is on a net -10%. Oddly this 23-point lead does not translate into a massive advantage in Prime Minister polling, though there are multiple caveats here. You can't compare these directly with the Johnson-Starmer chart above as only one pollster, Redfield and Wilton, has tested the Sunak-Starmer option. While six pollsters test the Johnson-Starmer option regularly with somewhat different results, so the signal from Redfield tends to be lost in all the noise. Redfield and Wilton are also the most consistently Johnson-friendly in this niche polling, so I wouldn't rule out Starmer actually doing better than Sunak if any other pollster asked the same question, which would indeed be quite counter-intuitive if you take the favourability ratings at face value. But then Rishi hasn't had the same wealth of opportunities as Boris to outfox Keir in Commons, has he? Perhaps Lindsay Hoyle should now make Chancellor's Questions a regular feature, like every other week instead of the highly predictable and borderline boring PMQs, and we would see what happens.

You probably remember I said two months ago that Boris wouldn't last till the end of this year. Which was based on polls predicting a hung Parliament where Labour would be tied with the Conservatives on the number of seats, and might even end up as the first party. Now the last batch of polls says we are very far from that, because hopscotchy Boris is basking in the spotlights of a world-beating Covid vaccination scheme, and people have pretty much immunised themselves against all his poppyrot. So Oor Feisty Bozo has got himself a stay of execution, and he'd better make the most of it while it lasts, like awarding the next English school meals contract to Wetherspoons while everyone is watching the squirrels who survived Jo Swinson. Then the litmus test might come sooner that Boris wants or expects, when he has to take a principled stand and say something intelligible in the incoming debate about 'Covid passports', and I definitely can't think of any answer that wouldn't leave him crodsquinkled and at odds with one half of his own party or the other. Then Boris might try and make the point moot by sending Matt Hancock on a fact-finding mission about Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina-scented cure for Long Covid. Not available in Northern Ireland. Terms and conditions apply. Or he might take a leaf from Theresa May's playbook and kick that can of worms down the road, until the vaccine rollout is completed and public opinion agrees that segregation is the right thing to do. Which might not be as far-fetched as we would like to think. Never underestimate the genetically-inherited propensity of Englanders for discrimination and erecting barriers where none exist. Sunlit uplands are great as long as you don't let everybody in, aren't they?

These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. 

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

(Prospero, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene I)

© Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Michael Rutherford, 1974

A Scottish Play Special: Waiting For Big Eck

© Alec Dalglish, 2012

Nobody has a problem with the Celtic race

Probably because it’s a myth, there is no such thing as a Celt

Don’t idealize the Scots

They were the most brutal and enthusiastic of empire-builders

Some of them are still at it

(Harry Pearce, Spooks: The School, 2007)

Scottish polls are wild beasts and full of surprises indeed. The last time I wrote about future Scottish elections, the most recent polls seemed to vindicate my view that the situation had become less predictable and more risky. Back then Yes to Independence was stuck in the low-to-mid 50s, the SNP lost ground in Holyrood polling so that an outright SNP-only majority had become less likely, Scottish Labour no longer looked as dead as earlier polls suggested and an upset rebirth could even propel them back to second party status again. Two months and eight polls later we have quite the same picture, except on one very specific and limited point. But we'll burn that bridge when we come to it, won't we? The trend of IndyRef polling since that fateful day in 2014 is highly encouraging. Soon it's gonna be like the BBC's 2015 Election night all over again, and we'll blow the fucking swingometer out of its axis. But today, just like a month ago and just like a year ago, the only No vote that matters is Boris Johnson's, unless courts find a legally super-solid way to hold a second referendum without a Section 30 Order, which I still think has about even odds of happening, and the local Tories would still say it doesn't count. But Bozo's pigheaded denial of Scotland's real state of mind can't last for very long when faced with overwhelming evidence that Yes is now firmly the default option. Boris should also remember what happened to Margaret Thatcher just days after she delivered her infamous 'No! No! No!' speech in Commons. But for now let's just have a look at the evolution of IndyRef voting intentions, up to and including the very last Survation poll that was conducted from 4 to 9 December, but released only on Monday, probably so they could refine the announcement on their site. Data points reflect the 'headline result' once undecideds and non-voters have been removed.

A lot of the support for Independence is rooted in deep distrust in the UK Government, which is not a specifically Scottish trait. It's also quite widespread in Wales and London's Labourgravia, and now also in many areas in the North of England, who have some buyer's remorse over repainting the Red Wall blue. Which can only make you wonder which kind of legitimacy the UK Government really has when their power base is restricted to the Midlands and the rural South. Interestingly this distrust also extends to Sly Keir's New New Labour in some counties of the Realm, who are following in Scotland's footsteps. So not only do we have a stronger movement for Welsh Independence, but we also have the brand new Northern Independence Party, who are trying to attract disgruntled Labour voters by making a left-wing working class case for an Independent North, free of Westminster's London-centric rule. Not that they can be expected to succeed, but it's still fun to watch while New New Labour are still struggling with putting some flesh on their 'progressive federalism' that nobody really wants or understands. Meanwhile Boris Johnson has again established himself as the Yes Camp's main asset with his remarks about devolution that drew flak even from within his own party. It's definitely a sign of the times when even The Guardian realise that arch-unionism does not work and Severin Carrell ends up relaying Nicola Sturgeon's tweets and the SNP's talking points about Johnson. But Scotland is definitely very fortunate to have John Curtice and other entitled luminaries enlightening us about something even Oor Doogie Ross-For-Moray has known for the last six months, aren't we? For now let's just have a closer look at the most recent IndyRef polling, what the weighted average of the two most recent polls says, both of them conducted within the last month.

Even if this instant snapshot is not entirely satisfactory, besides and beyond the redundant phrasing, the Yes camp will find several reasons to be cheerful in the full data tables for the last Scottish survey conducted by Ipsos MORI, the one that had the best Yes result in six weeks. Part one is that the raw data, before any weighting, have Yes ahead 51% to 41% with 8% undecided. Right now, only seven of the last sixteen polls predict an outright majority for Yes at that stage. Part two is that the result becomes 53% Yes to 41% No with 6% undecided when it is weighted by likelihood to vote. Meaning that there is a stronger motivation to get the fuck oot of the couch to vote on the Yes side, something that was not a foregone conclusion in older polls, but should be easy to encourage and build on with the proper campaigning. Part three (and I bet you didn't see THAT video coming) is that the new voters, those who weren't there in September 2014, are predicted to go for Yes 66% to 26% with 8% undecided. That's how we get to the published headline result with undecideds discarded: Yes winning 56-44 overall, with the new voters spectacularly choosing Yes 72-28. So it's safe to guess that every passing week, bringing more and more new voters into the fold, increases the Yes vote. To sum it up, I wouldn't mind waiting just a little bit longer if that means a stronger and safer Yes victory. Would you?

I don’t know that dreams are bad

Just the people who promise to make them come true

(Calleigh Duquesne, CSI Miami: Darkroom, 2006)

© Billy Sherwood, Chris Squire, 1997

Computer models are no different from fashion models

Seductive, unreliable, easily corrupted

And they lead sensible people to make fools of themselves

(Jim Hacker, Yes, Prime Minister: The Poisoned Chalice, 2013)

Some say Scottish polls for the next general election are irrelevant because, ye ken, we will of course be an independent country by then. Don't be so sure of that, lads. First I certainly won't rule out another snap election happening before 2024. Boris Johnson has already extended feelers about repealing the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, or even the possibility to call a general election without a Commons vote, just as if he already plans just that. A sure sign that something is in the air would be Boris fast-tracking the now approved 2023 Boundary Review, which would gerrymander whole swathes of UK even more than they already are, under the pretext of a fair representation of all regions across England. Then Boris might still be deposed by his own backbenchers in a replay of the 1990 coup against Margaret Thatcher, with the new First Minister of England seeking a personal mandate through a snap election. Finally, and perhaps more conclusively, the master plan in 2014 provided for full Independence only 18 months after a successful referendum. So there is still the prospect of some sort of 'rump election' happening in 2024, pretty much on the same pattern as the unnecessary and costly European Parliament election of 2019, with Scottish MPs sitting only for the time needed to wrap up the divorce settlement. So here is the snapshot I get from all polls conducted over the last four weeks, including three Scotland-only polls as well as the aggregate of UK-wide polls' Scottish subsamples. 

You can see here that my seat projections err on the cautious side, even with the SNP back to a 2015ish level of support and the three English parties in disarray. For most recent polls, the pure math projects 58 SNP seats with one Red Island left in Edinburgh South. I think this is obviously the best case scenario for the SNP and I don't completely rule it out. It just looks a wee smitch extreme when other factors than poll results are taken into account. I fully anticipate Conservatives and Liberal Democrats being more resilient in a few seats than the polls imply, even if they have once again to rely on strong Unionist tactical voting. Which is why I credit the Conservatives with holding Banff and Buchan, Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk and possibly Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale. But that still means both Alister Jack and Douglas Ross would be wiped out, which is in itself reason to celebrate. Similarly I don't see the Liberal Democrats losing Orkney and Shetland, and possibly Edinburgh West on tactical voting and a bad day for the SNP. Then I will closely watch the results in the overlapping Holyrood constituencies next May. Even if the two votes follow different logics and patterns, I have no doubt the Holyrood results in these areas will be enlightening. Just wait and see. 

I don't know if it's true, I'm just telling you what we're putting in the paper

That will irritate the shit out of people

(Benjamin Headless, House Of Cards, 1990)

© Peter Gabriel, 1977

Next to a small war, there's nothing quite like a general election

To stiffen up the sinews and summon up the blood

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards: To Play The King, 1993)

Of course the most important part in all this polling is what they have to say about the next Scottish Parliament election. First of all, the approximation of a trend, as given by seat projections from all polls conducted since Oor Doogie Ross from Elgin became Branch Office Manager for the Conservatives. There is something of a pile up now in this chart, so I guess I will have to find another Poll Zero next time. Of course we all know Doogie has been quite lame at the job, as standing up against both Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, while approving both Boris Johnson's and Nicola Sturgeon's decisions in statements just days apart, is definitely not the path to a resounding success. There's even a solid case to be made about Labour proving more resilient than the Tories in the prospect of a SNP landslide, which definitely belongs under 'unintended consequences'. Though the unfolding Labour Civil War may also change that again in future polls. Let's just say the idea of reviving the plot to depose Richard Leonard does sound weird when most of the polls hint that Labour would lose fewer seats than the Tories. Some within Labour seem to forget that a mediocre showing in nationwide voting intentions is only part of the equation. Labour still have a strong base in a few regions, mostly in their former heartlands in the Auld Strathclyde, where they regularly bag more list seats than uniform swing based on the national trend predicts, and the way AMS works protects them from total extinction.

Clearly we are past the point where the SNP were dangerously close to 65 seats, and the trend looks quite good, with poll after poll predicting better results than in 2011, despite the many fuckups we make fun of on Twitter. I find there are similarities here with BBC Scotland's game-show "Impossible", which I've been binge-watching in a very specific and limited way recently, for some unfathomable reasons that are best left unexplored, but might have something to do with Level 3 boredom. Just imagine the question is "Why does nothing that happens on Twitter have any impact on Scottish voting intentions?". And your answers are: A) Because nobody gives a fuck about what happens on Twitter, B) Because nobody even knows what happens on Twitter, C) Because the SNP never do a fucking stupid thing. Of course here C) is your impossible answer and A) would be the right answer. Now the SNP have avoided the worst own goals when only two out of nineteen Woko candidates for selection actually made it (incumbent MSP Shirley-Anne Sommerville in Dunfermline, twice loser Toni Giugliano in Dumbarton). The funniest moment of the selection process was of course when 'he-him no-to-yes' candidate Michael Sturrock was forced out of the race in Edinburgh Southern as he hadn't bothered to check if he had been vetted by the party's NEC, and it turned out he hadn't despite loud support from Woko-compliant MPs Stewart McDonald and John Nicolson. And the best result was when Rhiannon Spear failed in her bid to succeed Michael Russell in Argyll and Bute, an outcome that was to be expected for a Women's Convener who sided with extremists willing to undermine women's rights. Bully for her. Now let's have a closer look at the Holyrood part of the last Survation poll. As usual my projection of the lists seats is based on the regional crosstabs provided in the poll, not uniform national swing. And thusly we have the third best result for the SNP and the second best for the pro-Independence parties overall since August. And also the second best for Labour and the second worst for the Conservatives.

The results projected from this poll are impressive, and also quite enlightening in many ways. First we have the SNP bagging more votes on the constituencies than all other parties combined. Of course we have seen it before, but it still makes good PR, doesn't it? The SNP bagging more votes on the regional lists than Labour and the Conservatives combined doesn't sound half as good, does it? Of course the best part is something we have seen only once before: Labour beating the Conservatives on both votes and coming back as the second party. Which is quite spectacular but probably not as good for the SNP as you might think at first glance. There is massive evidence from past polls that a significant fraction of the electorate, possibly 5%, are definitely an SNP-Lab battleground and could go either way depending on who has the most convincing campaign. Think of them as 'soft Yes' voters who could choose the SNP on 'managerial competence' but have voted Labour previously and could be convinced to just stay where they are. Earlier polls mostly hint that the SNP have won over these voters, but a few have sent the opposite message, so you never know. The SNP should not feel everything's in the bag just yet. We have had elections before where polls made everything look fine until the real campaign started, and then it all went tits up. You can also compare the projection from this poll with the results of the previous elections, and there are several firsts and records here too (see the chart below). Based on the last poll, the SNP would not only bag more seats than any party, including themselves, ever did. They would also bag more seats than either of the Lab-Lib coalitions in the olden days. Which would of course deliver the strongest pro-Independence majority ever. Finally it's great to see the Conservatives kicked back in time, almost to where they were in the early years of devolution. Evidence again that they have become irrelevant again in Scotland, after benefiting from a PR-savvy leader for a few years, and that Oor Doogie is definitely the worst casting error the SNP could hope for.

 

The fun part in reactions to every Scottish poll is that, whatever the poll says, supporters of alt-Yes regional lists always find it vindicates their views. If the SNP do (relatively) poorly, then it's further proof that Scotland does need alt-Yes MSPs to strengthen the next mandate for Independence. If the SNP do well enough to bag a sizeable majority on the constituencies only, it's further proof that the SNP list votes are wasted and voting for alt-Yes lists is a better choice to hold the SNP to account over the next mandate for Independence. Scotland, the only place on Earth were you can have it both ways and nobody will bat a fucking eye. Their only problem is that, even when some brand of alt-Yes list is explicitly included in the poll's prompts, they fail to register even on Mariana-Trench-grade sonars. Now the next big issue, and a controversial one too, is bound to be postal voting for the incoming Holyrood election, to circumvent the Covid-related problems. The USA's omnishambolic response to a world-beating unprecedented influx of postal votes is a clear sign of what can happen when a whole country is ill-prepared to handle a totally predictable situation. Of course the key to the problem is that the US Constitution devolves that part of the electoral process to the states, so there is no unifying doctrine and pretty much every very specific situation can be used to support any very specific point of view, even in a limited way. 

Which would not happen in Scotland as someone in high places is definitely thinking in terms of a 'postal vote only election' and the Electoral Commission has had YouGov survey Scots about the possible options. As you might expect, the answers are not that clear-cut in any specific direction. People are not supportive of a 'postal vote only election', even if twice as many as before are willing to cast a postal vote. And, at face value, the preferred option seems to be a 'socially distanced' election with special precautions during the count, even if that means getting the final results only a few days later. Which sounds like reasonable middle ground and a way to avoid unnecessary controversies, as we know now that the YouGov poll had in fact been commissioned by the Scottish Government and clearly influenced the proposed Scottish General Election (Coronavirus) Bill that passed Stage 1 in Scottish Parliament last week. Of course Stage 1 is more a technical than political decision, and we will soon have more substantial debates on this matter. What seems carved in stone right now is that dissolution will be postponed to 5 May, the day before the election, so that any contingency plan can be approved up to the last minute. Which could include postponing the election itself by no more than six months, or allowing it to take place over several days, possibly from 6 to 13 May if I decoded Minister for Parliamentary Business Graeme Dey's position right. 

Now is of course just the right moment for Vladimir MacAskill to subliminally remind us how much grander life was under Alex Salmond, and Estragon Kerevan to tell us how much Alex can still contribute to the Scottish political debate. While the English 'progressive' press are busy speculating and salivating over Alex's return being Nicola's demise. All of which kind of makes sense if you look at the current SNP Civil War from a different angle than just GRA vs women's rights. Of course the Scottish Parliament passing Johann Lamont's 'sex not gender' amendment to the Forensic Medical Services Bill, by a totally unexpected 113-9, was fought along those lines and indicated something of a tectonic shift within the SNP. My educated guess just after the vote was that SNP HQ had had a headcount and realised the amendment would pass, despite the Scottish Government's opposition, with the help of a significant number of rebel SNP MSPs. We had confirmation later, from reliable sources, that it is exactly what happened. The SNP votes splitting would have been an unambiguous PR disaster that SNP HQ couldn't allow. So they had no choice but to U-turn and support the amendment, and the genderist MSPs, within both the SNP and Labour, had to suck it up and vote as whipped. Except Nicola Sturgeon, who seems to have done a Johnson and sneaked out of the Chamber after FMQs, so she had no vote recorded. The SNP rebels were undoubtedly emboldened by the earlier crushing defeat of Woko Haram at the SNP's NEC election, which I think is also explained by the uneasy coexistence of two distinct ideological lines that go back decades. 

A social-liberal one favoured by the current party leadership, that you could call Scottish Macronism without it being a cheap shot. And a social-democratic one in the direct tradition of Alex Salmond's 79 Group, who were kicked out of the SNP by a more traditionalist leadership before coming back with a vengeance and taking over the party. This faction within the SNP is today roughly synonymous with the Common Weal Group, who unsurprisingly endorsed Joanna Cherry and like-minded figures on the left of the party, many of them also endorsed but the SNP Women's Pledge. Unsurprisingly too, the divide between identity politics and class politics matches the one between social liberalism and social democracy. So it's easy to see that the fault lines run much deeper than the Wokos vs Terfs brawl, and are actually all about the country's direction after Independence: somewhat Macronish or somewhat Corbynish? Oddly similar to the fault lines within Keir Starmer's New New Labour, and I guess you know which side I'm on here. Not that I really believe Big Eck's hypothetical return would be like the dawning of a new era (and I bet you did not see that one coming either) for the SNP and Scotland, but you never know what can happen in the last mile before the election, between the release of the Scottish Parliament's report on the botched handling of the Salmond sexual assault case by the Scottish Government, and the publication of Salmond's Book Of Revelations about the same events. Neither of which will look good for Nicola Sturgeon. To end on a lighter note, the fun part of the Salmonite arguments is the analogy between Big Eck and Charles de Gaulle, who came back to power in France at 68, which definitely makes 65yr-old Salmond a Young Un.

But remember, in the play, where famously "nothing happens... twice", they waited and waited.... 

And Godot never came.

This is us versus the establishment! Our truth versus their lies! Yes!

(Alexis Meynell, Spooks: On The Brink, 2008)

© Martin Gillespie, 2019

House Of Cards: To Play The People

There are a few of us who are unwilling to just troop along
A few of us who are clever enough to see that there is more to be done
Than just live the small complacent lives of the great masses, the moron millions
A few of us who desire a more profitable type of government
When you think of it, the competence of totalitarian nations is much higher than ours
They get things done
(Charles Tobin, Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur, 1942)

© Ben Jennings, The Guardian, 2020

The few are those men of such intellectual and cultural superiority
That they’re above the traditional moral concepts
Good and evil, right and wrong, were invented for the ordinary average man
The inferior man, because he needs them and what is called “civilisation” is hypocrisy
The lives of inferior beings are unimportant
Moral concepts of good and evil and right and wrong don’t hold for the intellectually superior
I’d hang all incompetents and fools, there are far too many in the world
(Brandon Shaw, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, 1948)

There's definitely a continuity in general election polls these days, inasmuch as they're continuously contradicting one another, and thusly we ain't none the wiser after scrolling through the latest batch that says the Conservatives could win the popular vote on anything from fuck all, which would be a considerable setback, to a 6% margin, which would still deliver a slimmed-down majority. Meanwhile Boris has come up with the brilliant idea that the best way to respect the people's will is to make breaking the law the Law Of The Realm. Which will pass Commons no matter how loud the outrage. Let's pause the polls for a wee while and do some basic math. When divisions are called in Commons, 637 votes are counted (650 MPs minus Sinn Féin, the Speaker, Deputy Speakers and Tellers), meaning the actual magic number is 319. The Conservatives account for 362 of these 637, so you would need at least 44 Tory MPs not just grumbling and moaning at the Strangers Bar, but actually voting with the opposition, and all opposition MPs also present and voting en masse against the Government. And we all know the probability of that actually happening is somewhere south of fuck all, as the second reading of the Internal Market Bill has shown, so any bills will pass, even the most fucked up ones. But don't think it won't leave lasting stains even if people are more concerned with the incoming second wave of Covid-19 right now, the one Johnson saw coming two weeks after everybody in Europe started mentioning it. One thing on top of the other certainly lays the groundwork for Winter Of Discontent 2.0. Polls are not quite there yet, even with two recent ones predicting a tie between Conservatives and Labour on 40% each, as the overall trend still has the Conservatives leading by a wee nose.

Some of us had great hopes after Bernard 'Mark-Francois-By-Proxy' Jenkin confessed the European Research Group voted for the Withdrawal Agreement only because Boris Johnson promised them he would renege on it, and minutes later soon-to-be-sacked Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis admitted the English Government would not shy away from breaking international law in a 'specific and limited way', if not in a sensible and convincing way. Then the next day's sensation at PMQs was not Steer Calmer, as Diane Abbott had called him the Sunday before on live TV, grilling Boris Johnson about it, but Keir not grilling Boris about it. Which came as no surprise to those who paid attention and noticed Sly Keir rebranding himself as 'the competent Leaver' in an artfully timed interview with Sky News. So a Classic American TV reference still works, but we've shifted from 'Keirry Mason' to 'Leave It To Leaver'. Perhaps Keir thought it was a good idea not to mention Northern Ireland at PMQs, as it would have opened the door to Boris waffling about the IRA, but it was definitely a letdown as it allowed Lindsay Hoyle, of all people, to steal the show with his crucifixion of Tigger Matty Hancock, who had the sad puppy face of the lad who already knows he's going to be sacked for failing at things he never imagined were his responsibility, like... err... uuh... managing public health operations in England. Instead of devolving them to the Jockey Club. Too bad for Keir he then had to self-isolate, as it was up to Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner to shred Johnson to mincemeat, though one could argue Angela needs one more rehearsal before being fully up to the task. But the looks of despair on Johnson's face when Ed delivered blow after blow were pure gold. Notwithstanding, Keir's performance in the Preferred Prime Minister polling has improved as the penis-shaped trendlines show. Though they are a wee smitch misleading as only YouGov and Opinium have Starmer steadily in the lead, but being the two most frequent pollsters, they definitely set the tone.

Now one of Not-Too-Hardy Keir's problems, and there are many, might be that a lot of voters in The Area Formerly Known As The Red Wall may have detected that Boris is a fucking chancer, but are still willing to give him a second chance at proving he's not the worst First Minister of England ever but just the second worst after Chamberlain. Besides, even the ambiguously Starmer-friendly Guardian has some doubts about what the stripped-down Labour Conference can possibly deliver. Another likely stumbling block is Keir's obsession with sounding more Unionist than the Conservatives, and his unchallenged decision to filter all policy proposals at the Labour Conference on three criteria, the second one being how they contribute to strengthening the Precious Union. The United Kingdom now is beyond dysfunctional and broken, it's somewhere between unfunctional and afunctional, and definitely falling apart. The big question about Scottish Independence, Irish Reunification and Welsh Independence is no longer 'if?' but 'when?', and Scotland will most probably be the first to go her own way. And, to paraphrase Rent Boy, all the huff and puff in the world won't make a fucking difference. That's something Keir will definitely fail to realise as long as he thinks Ian Murray is a reliable source about Scotland's mood and part of the solution, instead of being the problem all by himself. Aye, THE Ian Murray who dropped out of Change UK minutes after the last rehearsal of their Big Announcement on 18 February 2019, the one where Luciana Berger made Chuka Umunna's jaw drop to the floor when she introduced herself as a 'Labour MP'. Of course the antics of the Honourable Member for Morningside Polo Club might be Keir's least worry when Johnson again resorts to his oven-ready populist rhetoric, playing the people against whatever elite he made up over breakfast, and making the oiks believe the world-leading empire can strike back. It might work again and help the Conservatives rebound in polls, or it might not when people will take the full measure of the double whammy of a second major health emergency the English Government is unprepared to deal with, and the most massive economic downturn since the UK defaulted on its foreign debt in 1932. Quite a gamble but I have a wee hunch it will actually be up to the next First Minister of England to deal with all the incoming bùrach. More on this later.

No Tory MP wants to go back and face the local sharks saying he voted with his social conscience
(Patrick Woolton, House Of Cards, 1990)

© Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 2020

We do seem to be learning by trial and error, mostly error
(Doctor Lee Rosen, Alphas: Blind Spot, 2011)

Since my last post we have had another London poll, coupling Westminster voting intentions with those for the mayoral race, and another Scotland poll. Neither was a big surprise and neither shed any new light on the situation as both are roughly duplicates of the ones we had a month ago. Voting intentions and seat projections below, with London on top and Scotland next. In London we still have Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Felicity Buchan unseated by Labour. But Stephen Hammond and Elliot Colburn could save their asses against under-performing LibDems, though just barely. But of course the best part for Labour is the one about the mayoral election. Sadiq Khan would shred Conservative born-again nyaff Shaun Bailey to mincemeat and is predicted just inches away from winning his second term on first preferences only, a feat no directly elected Mayor of London ever achieved. The Scotland poll is again bad news for Oor Doogie Ross as the Conservatives would again be wiped out for the first time since 1997. But last month they had a marginal chance at holding three seats, though not Doogie's own, and now they're down to two at best and again just by the skin of their teeth on a bad day for the SNP. And the worst part for Doogie is of course the Conservatives being relegated to third place in the popular vote by an unexpected Labour resurgence. Though of course Labour are so far behind in their target seats that it would again get them just the Tory-sponsored seat for the People's Republic of Morningside, the one Ian Murray loves so much, at least for the expenses, he wouldn't leave Labour in 2019, though he was really tempted, as he knew he wouldn't have stood any chance as a Change UK or LibDem candidate against an official Labour candidate. Of course Ian did not stay with Labour out of principle as he has none, but you already knew that.

Then we also have had some real new news with a Full Welsh poll by YouGov. Oddly it was conducted between 28 August and 4 September but released for public consumption only on 15 September. Quite possibly YouGov's Conservative shareholders needed all that time to let the true meaning of their findings sink in, and asked nicely for it to be released at an appropriate time, when it would be drowned in all the noise from other quarters. Miss. The paradox here is that the results are actually not that good for Labour who would crawl back to just their 2019 vote share, which was a serious setback compared to 2017 and well below the level of support they enjoyed in Wales during the Blair years. Anyway this is one of these situations where Labour shouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth as it would allow them to reclaim Bridgend and Delyn, two of the six Welsh Red Wall seats they lost to the Conservatives last December. The poll's results are more convincingly bad for the Liberal Democrats, who find themselves too far down the drain to entertain any hope of gaining back a Welsh seat in the foreseeable future. And also for the Conservatives, who would not only lose two seats, but find themselves squarely in the danger zone in another five (Aberconwy, Clwyd South, Vale of Clwyd, Vale of Glamorgan, Wrexham). The results are also encouraging for Plaid Cymru, who would skyrocket from 10% to 15% of the popular vote. But the oddities of Welsh electoral geography mean they would bag just one extra seat, Ynys Môn, once a solidly Red seat though Outside The Wall, and now a three-way marginal. Unfortunately even this excellent result would still leave Plaid Cymru's next two target seats, Caerphilly and Llanelli, well outwith reach.

Interestingly, the Senedd part of the YouGov poll is far better for Plaid Cymru who would bag 24% of the constituency vote and 23% of the list vote. Which is also quite close to the level of support for Welsh Independence, which an earlier poll had on 25%. Bear with me for just a wee moment as I digress from the article's main purpose of discussing mostly the Westminster polls. But I just want to stress the situation in Wales, as described by recent polls, has some striking similarities with the situation in Scotland fifteenish years ago. The SNP's surge also started with major gains at the devolved Parliament's elections and a weak support for Independence, and the rest is history. So there is definitely hope for Plaid Cymru to progress first from Labour's only possible choice for a coalition government to second party status, and then to first party and Wales' government while taking the support for Welsh Independence beyond 50%. Don't dismiss this as "can't happen there" just yet. Just consider how many Scots in 2005 would have wagered a fiver on the SNP becoming the governing party two years later and Independence the majority choice fifteen years later. Just sayin'.

My theory is the best so far because it is the only one we have
(Gary Bell, Alphas: The Devil Will Drag You Under, 2012)

© Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 2020

Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed
(Captain Albert Wiles, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry, 1955)

Despite their predicted successes in London and Wales, the big picture remains unsatisfactory for Labour. With the English Government displaying just the finely tuned mix of incompetence, arrogance and corruption you usually expect to find only in third-rate banana republics or in Washington, D.C. but not in a moderately civilised country, you would have thunk it's Red Carpet on the Stairway to Heaven for Labour. But it isn't. Admittedly it took England 18 years to get rid of the Tories last time aboot, just as it took Chile 17 years to get rid of Thatcher's protégé Pinochet, but what we have now is Starmer doing a pretty good Kinnock 2.0 when what he needs is upgrade to Blair 2.0. I'm not trying to say today's politics are not complex. It would be easier for everyone if it was a clear-cut choice between Ashes and Paradise, but there are more shades of grey here than meet the eye. Unfortunately for Labour, it means public opinion is moving slow and drifting towards them in baby steps. So my Poll'O'Polls for this month includes the last six fielded between the 1st and the 17th of September. Which is quite a long timespan and not really an instant snapshot of public opinion, but blame that on the pollsters who have gone into some sort of part-time activity recently. The super-sample size is 10.667 with a highly theoretical 0.95% margin of error. Most important result is that it shows the Conservatives leading by just a measly 3% UK-wide, and by a not-really-much-better 5.5% in England outside London. Which means the Conservative vote has gone down faster in England than on average since December, and that might open new prospects for Labour, once they come to terms with the basic fact that the battleground is in England and not in the vain search for Scottish seats.

As usual, the models beg to differ somewhat as different algorithms imply different ways to process marginal seats. This is usually more visible when the projected shares of the popular vote are close, as we have here. But this time we are spared the rather confusing situation where some say Johnson would lose his majority by a few seats, while others say he would hold it by an equally wee number of seats. This time every model predicts he would lose it after totally losing it. The alternate extreme scenarios factoring in the marginals should also ring an alarm within the Tory ranks. Their best case scenario is pretty much a repeat 2015 and I guess they all remember how that one ended. More interesting is Labour's best case scenario where there would be a tie in seats. It becomes even more interesting if you do some math on top of that. An hypothetical Conservatives-DUP coalition, if that can still happen now, would bag 286 seats. While a Rainbow Coalition around Labour would bag 299 seats with the SDLP, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Alliance Party on board. Sly Keir could even argue that just Labour and SDLP together would bag four more seats than the Conservatives and that he should be granted the first shot at forming a government. And just don't rule out just yet Keir actually getting the broader coalition up and running. The key point here is that Labour would not need support from the SNP, as the headcount would still be 298 to 286 in Labour's favour if Scotland was independent by then. Which rules out any Project Fear involving the "Keir in Nicola's pocket" narrative, And again makes the point that the winning strategy for Labour is going after weak Tory seats in England and Wales, not tilting at Scottish windmills. Just a friendly advice.   

Of course things might change in the near future as public opinion is highly volatile, and a lot might depend on what happens with the Power Grab Bill, aka the Internal Market Bill, before it comes back to Commons for the third and final reading at the end of November. The English Government have not just driven the thin edge of the wedge between them and legality, them and the international community. They have shoved a king-size crowbar into the crack. The massive irony here is of course that the unelected House of Lords might be the best protection of the rule of law, even with Johnson invoking the Salisbury Convention that probably doesn't even apply here. Of course the Lords' votes don't matter technically as Commons will overturn all their amendments and restore the ideological purity of the original bill. But the main challenge for Johnson, and the most serious threat to his Presidency... oops... sorry.... Premiership, might come from a wholly different direction: massive popular disobedience to further Covid-linked regulations. Not because of a bunch of pound-shop libertarians whining that protection against a contagious and potentially lethal disease is an unacceptable breach of civil liberties. But because of massive loss of confidence in the English Government and all those associated with it, including the scientists who are definitely not immune to criticism over their contradictory and confusing messages over time. So bad PR over resistance in the Lords could be the least of Johnson's worries if he faced resistance from the people all across England and from the devolved governments protecting their constitutional prerogatives. This could only make matters worst at a point where the Conservatives are already predicted to bag their worst performance since the last election. They are projected 63 seats down on the election result and a massive 103 down on their peak performance during Johnson's 'Covid Honeymoon' earlier this year, when millions rallied around the flag without having the fuckiest scoobie about the incoming clusterfucked disaster.

So, with the Conservatives' predicted performance at an even lower point than in the immediate aftermath of Dominic's trip to Durham, we might have reached the moment of truth sooner than expected, when Tory backbenchers decide it's as good a time as any to kick Johnson out of the lifeboat, rather than waiting for him to paddle away after Getting Brexit Overdone. I have a hunch some kind of Withdrawal Agreement for Boris is imminent, if not quite impending, and that it would be more of an injunction that an actual agreement. For a lot of Tory MPs, this would go beyond loyalty, this would be about survival when even Tory devotees in the billionaire-owned fishwrappers can't miss an opportunity to go after Boris. And that might also be the reason why some 'sources at Number Ten' have leaked that Boris intends to stand down anyway early next year, in the vain hope it could soften some of the wannabe Bruti. Or should that be Brutuses? Anyway time is not on Johnson's side here and he will probably have to face a reboot of The Night Of The Long Knives sooner than later. Here enters the New Kid In Town, Wunderkind Rishi Sunak The People's Chancellor, dancing to his own song of ice and fire.

© Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2020

Unlike Boris Johnson, who is the Daenerys Targaryen of Prime Ministers, riding Drogon Cummings to wreak havoc on Queen's Landing, Sunak is more like Westminster's Petyr Baelish (minus the throat-slit-with-his-own-dagger bit), good at using the truth to tell lies. And of course the Conservative PR squad could have a field day for all of eternity bragging that the Conservatives are world-leading at promoting diversity as the first Asian PM would be a Conservative just as the first, and so far only, Jewish PM was a Conservative. You might and probably will argue that Michael Gove is just as likely and credible a candidate, but I think Sleekit is more of an ageing Joffrey Baratheon than the man for all seasons, and especially not fit for the post-Brexit season. Gove is too closely associated with the twists and turns of the Brexit omnishambles and definitely part of the Old World Order, when the Conservatives will need to put on a Brave New Face with enough visibility and popularity. Besides, Sunak is much better armed to take on New New Labour on their own turf, and could become Disraeli 2.0 with the proper balance of modernisation and tradition to revive the Conservatives' chances with the centrist electorate both parties need for a landslide. And I definitely can't see him playing the long game, allowing Gove to prevail and lead the party to an humiliating trainwreck at the next election, and then coming back as the salvator ex machina. Rishi is young enough he can afford to wait, but old enough to know missed opportunities never come back, so he won't wait. Mark my words.

There’s no such thing as a lie, there’s only expedient exaggeration, you should know that

(Roger Thornhill, Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, 1959)

© Ben Jennings, The Guardian, 2020

Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a straight line

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
(Jason Bull and Hanlon’s Razor, Bull: Split Hairs, 2019)

Knowledge is a deadly friend if no one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind I see is in the hands of fools
When every man is torn apart with nightmares and with dreams
Will no one lay the laurel wreath when silence drowns the screams?
Confusion will be my epitaph as I crawl a cracked and broken path

If we make it we can all sit back and laugh but I fear tomorrow I'll be crying
© Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald, Greg Lake, Michael Giles, Peter Sinfield, 1969
This version recorded live on 20 November 2015 at Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Toronto