Jeremy's Den: Putin

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

(Winston Churchill)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn, 1837)

This time we're going back in time to late 1975 and early 1976, with Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review. Most tracks come from the contemporary live album Hard Rain, used in its entirety, with a few meaningful additions from the later historic release The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue. This is not really Dylan Goes Punk, as punk proper had not landed at Plymouth Rock yet, but there is definitely a strong garage band feel to it. It is just the second time, after the 1974 comeback tour with The Band, that Dylan allowed himself the unalienable right to totally revamp his classics from the 1960s, some critics even said 'butcher', and it's fun. Trigger warning for the snowflakes: there is one word in "Hurricane" that the BBC would definitely bleep out today to protect your fragile brains, let's see if you can find it without fainting.

As you surely know, the images look better if you click on them for larger versions.

Never take anything for granted, they said. Always see the bright side of life, they said. And then came the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. Factum est. And now, Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse have joined Lexington and Sarajevo in the short list of towns who can claim, "it happened here, the fucking avalanche started here". It's safe to say it took the whole politicariat and punditariat on the backfoot as nobody, myself included, saw it coming. Then I must confess I felt gleeful at the sight of the overhyped John Curtice, again summoned from his lair by The Scottish Pravda, labouriously trying to mansplain us he told us so and that the SNP and Labour should heed his warning, when he didn't even notice that the polls did predict that Reform UK would overperform in Central Scotland. Survation's last regional crosstabs credited them with 26% there, exactly what they got at the by-election. No shit. And almost equally giggling at the sight of John Swinney, totally PTSDed at the thought that the Glasgow Mafia's choice had been rejected in favour of local hero and Alex Lifeson lookalike Davy Russell, who the SNP thought was toast after he skipped a debate on STV. But it emerged that chapping doors the old way was more useful. Here, you have to carry the salt of the Earth on the soles of your workboots, son. Or summat. Now Katy Loudon joins a long line of SNP candidates who lost all parliamentary elections they stood at, and she probably won't have a third time to charm. Then a look at the numbers says that they may not tell the story John Curtice tells us they tell.

The first obvious fact is that the result defies all polls, expert pontification and the third law of thermodynamics. The only thing the predictions got right was Reform UK nicking a quarter of the vote. But the real stunner, and the one that raises so many questions, is the combination of Labour holding their 2021 vote share while the SNP are tossed back to 2007. What the fuck happened here? The usual bants about by-elections being special and whatnot fails here, as the turnout was remarkably similar to 2011, when Christina McKelvie gained the seat, and 2016, when she held it with an increased majority. That makes it inconvenient, but legitimate, to wonder aloud how many of these Reform UK voters came straight from the SNP. Of course, everybody wants to hear they all deserted either Labour or the Conservatives, but the forensic eye says it may not be as simple and convenient as that. Compared to 2021, the SNP lost almost exactly as many votes as the three classic Unionist parties combined, 8,804 to 8,810. It sounds too good to be true that they all just stayed home, and that none of the yellow turned to turquoise. Could be food for thought for John Curtice, if he ever got the baws to ruffle some feathers within the political establishment bubble, and deliver more than rehashed pre-scripted platitudes. One can dream.

Shit happens and the world doesn't stop. It should, but it doesn't.

(George Rattery, The Beast Must Die, 2021)

The whole thing is a staggering puzzle, a mystery within a riddle, a conundrum within an onion.

(Alexis Restarick, They Do It With Mirrors, 1991)

Fucking hell! What happened to "3.5% of GDP for defence by the end of the next Parliament"? It looked so obvious that we would head that way that it was even used in polls, to test the British public's resolve, as late as last month. Little did we know it had already transitioned into 3% on the down low, so slyly that nobody noticed. And now, even that is no more than an "ambition", which means, in proper English, that it will never be reached and we will be stuck on 2.5%, which all sentient people know is abysmally too low. But there is sadly nothing new here, as successive governments have delivered a long line of botched Defence Reviews and White Papers that totally failed to address the real needs, because the focus was not on defence capabilities, but on budget cuts. I have a leftover from the Focaldata poll I mentioned in my previous article, that clearly illustrates how the British public feel. It's totally Fox Mulder. Trust No One. And Labour does not even get the worst marks here.

There was nevertheless a brief moment of comic relief in the comments about the review. Both The Independent and The Scottish Pravda spaffed a lot of brain juice on the twelve submarines, as if it was new news. Alas, poor journos, it wasn't and you fell for it just like for Boris Johnson's 40 new hospitals. Starmer's 12 subs are the SSNR, the British variant of the infamous AUKUS subs with which Biden and Johnson screwed the French. Foreshadowed in 2018, and then announced in 2021 in the previous Defence White Paper. There have even been a few contracts awarded already, but maybe the journotariat wasn't paying attention. They are going to be big beasts, half as big again as the current Astute class, and way more lethal with the capability to fire hypersonic long-range missiles and stuff. Everything but drones, though I'm sure the Ukrainians already have an underwater model they will gladly give us if we ask nicely. Such power will surely be milk to the British public's ears, who already have a rather positive image of the defence industry. The second best value for money after pensions, and ahead of the NHS, according to the aforementioned Focaldata poll.

But this is not an absolute vote of confidence, as a fair proportion worry about waste, albeit far fewer than about Councils spaffing taxpayers' dosh up the wall on vanity projects: Or discrimination suits from wrongthinkers, that the Councils always lose, especially if they have hired Jolyon Maugham to represent them. Just saying. Anyway, waste in military procurement is a very legitimate concern when you consider that the price tag of the new subs, extrapolated from that of the Astutes, is likely to be summat like £2.5bn per unit. Clearly, we shouldn't accept that overheads and delays become their main components, as has been the case way too often with various military programmes over the last 80 years. Nothing as bad as HS2 or an EPR power plant, surely, but the Great British Public have also told Focaldata they have very low tolerance for waste. Even the tired excuse of it being good for innovation doesn't hold water anymore. So you have to wonder if making two useless carriers a little less useless by cramming their decks full of missile launchers will pass as good value for money in the public's eyes.

If you ask me, watering down the only really ambitious target that could have been set by the Starmer Cabinet wasn't even the most cretinous part of this Strange Defence Review. Here, I'm even tempted to side with the pro-Soviet plants in the loony left, just not for the same reasons. It was the announcement that we would revive the airborne component of the nuclear deterrent, and consider US-built F-35s and US-produced B61 bombs as a valid option. Don't misread me, scrapping the airborne deterrent was one of the major mistakes of the Thatcher era. France never renounced it, and that's one of the reasons they have a vastly more credible nuclear deterrent. Starmer's announcement was daft because this was a golden opportunity on a silver platter to start from scratch and hit the reset button. By using French Rafale planes and ASMP missiles. Of course, it still wouldn't have been homegrown, as we have lost that capability generations ago, but it wouldn't have been American, which is all that matters right now. It would also have been a major political signal, that we had chosen to be fully part of the European Defence Policy, and no longer a subset of American defence with a Butcher's Apron stuck on it. Another sadly missed opportunity that almost makes Nicola Murray look more professional and proficient than the current Cabinet.

There’s no point going for a walk if you haven’t tied your shoelaces.

(Barry Clarke, Death Valley, 2025)

Keir Starmer has promised twelve nuclear subs. Ready to attack. Someone. I’m not sure who the enemy is now. It might be the United States.

(Ian Hislop, Have I Got News For You?, 6 June 2025)

Just after the public outing of the Defence Review, YouGov instantly went into speed-polling mode to test where we stand now on defence spending. I won't say it's a mixed bag, it's actually pretty pathetic. We have reference points in previous polls for the three questions YouGov asked, so you can see for yourselves how the Great British Public has evolved over the last few months. And it's not a pretty sight, mark my words. I have included only the global result of the earlier polls, and the crosstabs are all from the new batch of YouGov polls. First came the obvious baseline question, about the level of defence spending. Of course, we are ready to ask for more, much more than we were just three weeks earlier. It's like the Dreadnought Craze of 1908 all over again. It is even pretty consensual, as even Scots and Labour voters are slowly swinging towards increased defence spending. But wait until you see the next episodes.

If you sensed a fishy rat and a smelly cat in there, you are totally right. Increased spending has to be funded, and there are not many options. Stopping scammers from defrauding HMRC is not one of them. Yet. And it wouldn't bring enough anyway. Fighting tax evasion isn't either, sadly, as our usually inventive Chancellor doesn't seem to be motivated by it, though the amount is summat like £40bn a year. Then, if we fail to go after tax fraudsters, one of only two remaining options is to tax the honest citizens more. Who may not be that honest, actually, just unable to afford creative tax lawyers. But, as soon as you mention that, the cobra of British taxphobia rears its ugly head again. Statistically, the British public's view has not changed since February, the last time YouGov asked. It's a massive No to more taxation, which YouGov has again cunningly framed as tax hikes for "people like you", as making it personal obviously maximises rejection. That's how we gat half of Brits wanting to spend more on defence and just a quarter willing to pay more tax to make it happen.

If you wipe tax hikes off the table, which the Chancellor will probably not be able to do for much longer now, all you have left is spending cuts, which have already been done in the Autumn Statement for the most part, but the British public are not happy bunnies with that either. Earlier polls had a binary Yes-or-No question, which is actually ternary as you are allowed to not have an opinion, and the last YouGov poll uses the familiar five-stage scale instead. Which just adds a wee smitch of colouring to a very similar picture. We don't want cuts, less than ever. Of course, YouGov massaged this one a bit too, adding precisions about the cuts that mentioned sectors of public interest like welfare, healthcare and infrastructure. That's fair enough, actually, as you never get the truth if you stick to generic principles. You really have to make it fucking up close and personal if you want people to share their true feelings. So, more defence spending without tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere. I won't even try to figure out how this can work, because it fucking can't. Even if that's what the Great British Public want. Maybe it's time to call Liz Truss for advice.

But will the 3.5% come back by a simple twist of fate, at the NATO Summit on the Summer Solstice, to bite Starmer in the arse? Well, The Torygraph thinks so, and sells it as a given to their readers. But is it really? The 3.5% target. which is 5% when you add the fine print, is actually a demand from, you guessed it, Donald Trump. But, as The Independent rightly points out, it would be more like the overzealous Mark Rutte again playing teacher's pet. Which includes twisting words and concepts to tell the Orange Baboon that he has extorted a commitment to 5% of GDP from the member countries, and is a good boy who fully deserves a treat. But it would mean fuck all, as NATO targets do not have the force of law in any country, never have and never will, and it's a target for 2032 anyway. Seven fucking years away. By then, Rutte won't be Secretary General of NATO, Trump won't be President and we can plausibly assume that Starmer won't be Prime Minister either. So rest easy, my friends, The Torygraph is telling porkies. Well, when don't they? Nobody will get a 4 pence tax hike to appease NATO, not when a wealth tax would do the trick. No shit, Sherlock.

It’s not unknown for a Prime Minister to change his mind. Though we’re not often privileged to see him doing it in public. Well, it will all blow over, I dare say.

(Francis Urquhart, House Of Cards, 1990)

Sometimes the safe thing is just too safe and sensible. Some games are just too interesting to resist.

(Francis Urquhart, The Final Cut, 1995)

More In Common also offered their perspective on our current or future defence, starting with the usual well-oiled questions about levels of funding and budgetary "tough choices", which I will skip because they didn't reveal anything we didn't know already. Thank Dog they then decided to switch to a broader approach, including what should be our priorities over the remainder of this Parliamentary term. This focused on two complementary dimensions. Which of the Forces should get priority in funding? Which technologies, old or new, should be most invested in? They included nine branches and eight technologies, but I shrunk that to the five top choices, which are obviously the most significant, and also to avoid cluttering the chart. On the technology side, the British public are aware that times have changed. It is quite obvious by now that wars needn't be fought on the ancestral battlefield forever, so long as we have the means to fight remotely. That's what drones are for and, if we are lucky, we could get shitloads of really good ones from Ukraine at bargain prices.

On the Services' side, I am surprised that the Navy only comes fourth in the public's priorities, and also that the Defence Review overlooks whole parts of our naval capability. Not a word is said about our amphibious warfare capability, the key to a successful power projection policy, when it has been run down by the Conservative governments. First HMS Ocean, our most capable amphibious ship, was sold at bargain price to Brazil. Then HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark were left to rot at the far side of Portsmouth Harbour, until they were earmarked for scrapping. Then saved by the bell as the New Model Labour government agreed to sell them to Brazil too, a very odd decision when you consider that they were our last two genuine amphibious ships left and no replacement is planned. All we have left now are the three Bay-class ships, which are not even operated by the Royal Navy, but by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. This is a very symbolic sign of the subsidiary status assigned to our amphibious capability, unlike France, Australia, Italy and even Spain, who have maintained a strong amphibious component within their navies proper. This neglect goes totally against another priority identified by the More In Common poll, the importance of keeping an ability for overseas operations.

This is exactly the kind of operations for which we need the amphibious force we no longer have, while Brazil have now got one they don't need, unless they plan on invading Argentina. The poll's exact wording was about the ability to "fight a war on foreign soil", which had all the potential to elicit negative answers for all the wrong reasons, but fortunately didn't. The Great British Public are clearly no longer influenced by the spectre of the disastrous and illegitimate Iraq War, or intimidated by the deconstructivist narrative about imperialism and colonialism. Even Green voters convincingly opine that preserving our power projection capability is important, which will leave the performative faux pacifists Carla and Adrian livid. Their vision of defence was clearly outlined by their recent convert Talcum X more than a year ago, and perfectly reflects the ancestral narrative of the far-left appeasers. "Defence is offence", in Shitweasel's own Orwellian words, and intrinsically immoral in the eyes of the loony fringe who love nothing more than getting on their moral high horse. But the British public don't fall for that, and another YouGov speed-poll found them having a rather favourable opinion of our Armed Forces.

There is a visible generational divide here, but no generation is openly antimilitaristic, which would probably have been the case in the mid-60s. Scotland is less enamoured with the military than the rest of the Realm, though many Scots have served with distinction over many generations, and it's fairly easy to guess where the historic roots for this are, from 1745 to 1919. There is also a classic left-right divide here, but Labour voters have got over the feeling that A Very British Coup was a documentary, while the party itself have reframed their Iraq Trauma by adopting quite an Augustinian perspective on the concept of "just war". The Forces themselves have made significant efforts, and spent a lot on PR to improve their image, and it's only fair that it has borne fruit. You really have to admit that even the "I could tell you but I would have to kill you" variant is quite nicely crafted. Using a character from Teesside was brilliant subtext too, as many youngsters from there may have genuinely felt they had better leave if all they could hope for was being led by that Mayor.

To be alive is to know ghosts. Pay attention to the patterns and we can presage what comes next. To be alive is to know ghosts. We hear their whispers if we listen.

(Gaal Dornick, Foundation: The Mathematician’s Ghost, 2021)

We have grasped the nettle and we’ve taken it on board, if not all has been the most comfortable way. But one thing I do know and time will prove it, it’s the right way.

(Harold Earle, House Of Cards, 1990)

But liking someone does not mean you are oblivious to their flaws, and the More In Common poll definitely acts as a brutal reality check. Qui aime bien châtie bien, as they say in the country of my birth, and that is not a euphemism for BDSM. That was quite vividly illustrated by More In Common probing their panel on how they assess our military's ability to stand their ground in a war. Which will of course never happen, just as it was bound to never happen in 1938 because, ye ken, appeasing genocidal fascists always works, doesn't it? Anyway, the British public are no idiots, and the really think that we aren't ready for any kind of serious action. Overwhelmingly, even, be it on far distant shores or upon England's mountains green. Which would be really bad, by the way, as it would have to be in the Pennines, and that's a fucking long way from the White Piers of Brighton. Our problem is that the actual level of readiness is pretty much an Official Secrets Act matter here, so we can only guess it would be pretty similar to France's and only slightly better than Germany's. Fucking awful. Just like the majority of Brits think.

But More In Common had the instant remedy, people volunteering to serve in the Forces. But the replies show really little enthusiasm for that, even among the "patriotic" voters on the right. Don't be too impressed by the rather small proportion of people who would volunteer to enlist, though. Think instead of the actual numbers. The age brackets likely to be eligible account for about a third of the UK's population, or 23 million people. So 2 million would be very likely to enlist if the UK was invaded, or 1.3 million is the UK was at war but not invaded. If you extend that to people who would be somewhat likely to enlist, you reach 4 million and 3.2 million respectively. Even if you get all patriarchal and take only men, so half of that, it is still a considerable force. Just consider that the total size of the Forces was 681,000 in August 1939, rising to 1,325,000 in December 1939 and 4,981,000 in June 1945, but of course they had also taken those who weren't really willing to spontaneously volunteer. Today's situation is not that bad, as even the worst case scenario you can infer from this poll would kickstart military vocations in more people than we actually had three months after Russia invaded Poland the last time around. That's Vlad The Butcher telt.

Then, if all else fails, we still have conscription, bringing back the National Service. Which is supported by Harry Markle and Michael Caine, just so you know how fucking shit it is. It was even in the Conservative Manifesto for the 2024 general, who weren't aware that Rishi Sunak had said earlier that "the British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force and there is absolutely no suggestion of a return to conscription", and their own junior Defence Minister Andrew Murrison strongly stated that reinstating National Service would have a negative effect on morale in the Forces. Communication breakdown, I guess, or maybe the FSB fucking with Wi-Fi at CCHQ. Now, let's say it bluntly, as it is always the best way to get the message through. From where I'm sat, bringing back National Service and conscription is not just a very bad idea, it is also a very stupid one. You get large numbers of Brits favouring it only because it has never been properly debated, and is just thrown into the arena for fun, like throwing a rabbit into the tiger pen at the zoo to see what happens next. Therefore, nobody has ever studied the consequences, cost and impact on the rest of the military.

Fortunately a relevant assessment has been made, across the road from the Pleasant Pastures Of Dover, in the country of my birth. France had National Service until 1997, 40 years later than us, and it still has some mythical aura down there. Emmanuel Macron, always eager to find ways to reboot his falling popularity, seriously suggested reinstating it just three months ago. A poll showed that 61% of the French public support it, similar to what we have here if you exclude undecideds. Then the impact has been studied, with devastating results. It would requite doubling the size of the French Army, but not for any operational purpose, just to manage and train the conscripts. The cost is estimated at €14.5bn, roughly £12.2bn at today's rate, per annum. Not by loony faux pacifists, but by the French Government itself. For no effect on the overall capability of the French military, as conscripts were, and would be again, legally banned from involvement in overseas military interventions. So all you get is a Dad's Army of 20yr-olds. You can expect pretty much the same conclusions here, which validates a totally different solution. Boosting recruitment by a significant increase of military pay and bonuses for operations outwith the UK. Extrapolating from public data published by the MoD, increasing military pay by 15% would cost £1.8bn a year. If that boosted the headcount from the current 136k (British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force regular forces combined), which is below the government's target and decreasing, to 180k, which is probably the most the Forces could absorb within this Parliamentary term, the cost would rise to £6.2bn a year. Half the cost of the return to conscription, with an obviously better and quicker return on investment, and a much better fit with the strategic goals. QED.

As the cat’s eyelids flicker, some parts of us must stay awake, always ready as a coiled spring is ready.

(Francis Urquhart, To Play The King, 1993)

I mean, you've got to love this country, haven't you? You can throw a family of ten out on the street and no one gives a shit, but bats!

(George Rattery, The Beast Must Die, 2021)

One of the many other issues raised in Parliament and in the media is that of child poverty. To shed some light on the underlying issues, Survation polled school-age kids, 11 to 18, on behalf of the Child Poverty Action Group. To be honest, I had my doubts about this at first but, whatever they intended to prove, they definitely have found the data to support it. Of course it doesn't paint a return to Victorian Age abominations, but it is definitely quite concerning about what is happening right under our noses in the sixth or tenth richest country in the world, depending on how you measure it. I guess tenth is more accurate, as it is based on actual purchasing power caeteris paribus, not nominal wealth. The poll's basic premise is to focus only on stuff that happens at school, or is directly related to school, and not on the other parts of the kids' lives. Would we have got darker results if they had widened the scope? I have a hunch we would have. But we would need another poll, or a scientific study, to prove it. First, the kids were asked how easy or difficult it is for them to afford an array of school-related items or activities, from basics to less essential.

Unfortunately we don't have trackers for this, so we don't know how it has changed over the last twenty years, or since our grandparents heard Tony Blair campaigning on education, education, education! Now, to contextualise, as we are always urged to do, the latest population statistics say that there are about 6.5 million school-age kids in the UK, in the age bracket targeted by the poll. So, as numbers speak louder than percentages, the poll says that 1 million find it difficult to afford school meals, school clubs or subject-related items. 1.5 million find it difficult to afford items for homework or their uniform, and 2 million school trips. There is more than deprivation here, there is also desocialisation resulting from deprivation, which is probably the biggest threat that successive governments totally failed to tackle. And all the benevolent do-gooder speeches about kids' mental health don't make a fucking difference, when the root cause is lack of dosh. This is confirmed by the follow-up question, on the impact wealth, or lack thereof, has on the kids' life.

About 1 million identify negative impacts on their relationships, happiness and mental health. About 1.5 million think it limits their ability to take part in communal activities and also their future life options. That's a fucking massive time-bomb left behind by a long period of ineffective government action. It only confirms that all the resources and energy spaffed on teaching kids about the 219 genders, wrasse and unconscious bias would have definitely been better spent addressing real issues. I can think of a few to start with, like an obligation to provide free lunches and essential school supplies to all, means-tested subsidies for school trips and extra-curricular activities, or eliminating the highway robbery on school uniforms. Survation targeted some very specific items of school life, and the kids' answers are merciless.

Let's talk school uniforms first. Remember I was born and raised in a very alien nation, 35 kilometres South East of Dover, where they don't exist, and I have always found the British obsession with them really bizarre. The classic argument that they erase class differences falls flat on its face when two thirds of the kids consider them expensive, too expensive probably, and two thirds of schools demand they be branded. Which can only lead to extravagant costs when the school grants one supplier a monopoly, so they feel free to overcharge because, ye ken, that's how free-market capitalism works, Maybe the kids won't be singled-out because they can't afford designer jeans, but they will when they are seen wearing their elder sibling's uniform and PE kit because the parents can't afford two. It gets even more serious when you have about 1 million kids admitting that lack of dosh made them skip school for lack of some basic supplies, or prevented them from choosing some subjects. Spin it as you like, but that definitely sounds like class-based exclusion to me, one the successive governments wouldn't touch because the doxa of "fiscal responsibility" meant the never had the resources to tackle it. Shame on them, one and all.

Living with a teenage boy is like living with a barn animal. Only, cows make better conversations.

(Tony Gates, ER: Heal Thyself, 2008)

A lot of those people in the Parliamentary Labour Party, I'm just going to say it, are jumped-up thugs. Vicious, horrible people. I really don't know what they are driven by.

(Owen Jones, The Guardian, 17 September 2020)

The two-child benefit cap has become Starmer's Achilles heel that's stabbing him in the buttcheek. It could have been the perfect anti-Tory weapon in his early days, proving that a change had really come, and could still be a potent anti-Farage asset now. Now that Rachel Reeves has decided that it isn't good value for money after all to have pensioners eat their kittens before freezing to death, the two-child benefit cap is the best line of attack for the Labour Left, the Tory hypocrites, the British Union of Putinists and Owen Jones, once he has finished whining faux outrage about the Israeli Border Force giving Greta Thunberg a non-vegan sandwich wrapped in plastic while she was recording her pre-scripted cry of outrage for her Insta. Opinium have polled their panel about the two-child benefit cap, and you will not like what they found. Hold on to your seat, mates, the Great British Public are actually for it. All except the Green voters, who are for once on the right side of the tracks. Supporters even outnumber opponents in Scotland.

If you think that's bad, it gets even worse in Lord Ashcroft's latest omnibus poll. Mikey, or rather his hired hands from YouGov, split their panel in three to probe them about the two-child benefit cap with three different wordings. But the swingometer barely moved. Whichever way they spun it, 60 to 63% opined that "it is right to limit child-related benefits to two children per family", and only 22 to 24% that "the two-child benefits cap should be lifted so bigger families can claim benefits for all their children". Their wordings, not mine. And you ain't seen nothing yet, mates, as Opinium managed to make it even worse with a question about the "morality" of the benefit cap. Which is strange way to assess it, unless your poll was conceived by very disturbed Evangelical preacher. There's really a massively smelling rat in here, when you have a majority if you add those who think it is morally right to make life harder for large families, and those who think it's morally wrong but we have to live with it because the rest of us would have to pay higher taxes to avoid forcing kids to starve.

Now we're back to Full Victorian Mode. Let them rot at the workhouse, they asked for it. Or summat. Or it might be that epic scene from The Meaning Of Life where working class Catholics have to sell some of their 300ish children for vivisection while posh Protestants praise contraception. It is not really surprising that a big share of Conservative and Reform voters agree on the morality of benefit slashing, but more disturbing that one out of seven Green voters also do. Sadly, even Scots don't stray far away from the average. Results such as these were really an incentive for Rachell Reeves to keep the cap, which she dutifully did, because it looks like we desperately need some dosh to subsidise additional nuclear power plants, which YouGov found are quite popular. Especially when you massage the polling with a binary choice between nuclear and coal-fired. After all this serious stuff, Opinium had to offer sone comic relief, and they did. Sort of. With a question about exams and how they affect kids.

Basically it's "Let's protect our porcelain snowflakes against anything that happens in the real world" vs "Shit happens, so just man the fuck up". Or summat. I was of exam age not so long ago... err, 15-ish years ago actually, and I never felt that exams and assessments were some sort of cisheteronormative patriarchal colonialist micro-aggression, or whatever. I fucking loved it, actually. So I really don't give a fucking shit about the hurt feelings of a permaoffended permawhining illiterate basement wanker who failed his A-level because he answered that Stonehenge was built by black transwomen, or whatever cretinous stuff he found on TikTok, the cyber variant of the bloke at the pub. Interestingly, only the TikTok Generation and Green voters, the two demographics most likely to be terminally immersed in the woke doxa, believe that kids should be shielded from the real world. Everybody else opines that they just have to get a fucking life and suck it up. And if, on the way, somebody tells you that you are thick as three blind mice, it's not because they want to oppress you, it's because it's true.

Tripe has become popular amongst Gen Z. Apparently the stomach lining, whatever it is, apparently tripe tastes great when cooked in an air fryer.

(Roy Wood Jr, Have I Got News For You?, 30 May 2025)

In some ways, they’re shouting in an empty pub, when all the customers moved down to The Farage Arms months ago.

(Robert Ford)

Something is becoming excruciatingly obvious bs the day, even to those who were ready to cut New Model Labour some slack after a dog's lifespan of Tory omnishambles. Keir Starmer has the same problem with Labour's 2024 intake as Boris Johnson had with the Conservatives' 2019 intake. There are a lots of chancers in there, who never expected to get elected, haven't a fucking clue what the job actually entails, and are remote-controlled by the Starmer-compliant whips. But Johnson had to deal with, like, four dozen of that lot, and Starmer has burdened himself with four times as many. It is pointlessly futile to warn that a full intake of Reform UK MPs would be even more shit at the job, as their early record as Councillors already shows, more focused on removing Ukrainian flags from public buildings than on managing bin collections properly. The New Model British Union of Fascists have the same problem with their 2025 intake of Councillors. An unforeseenly large electoral victory bringing in hordes of vacuous fly-by-nights, which Nigel Fromage would have to acknowledge if he could be arsed to spend some time on British soil. Sadly, that doesn't seem to deter the Great British Public, and Reform UK are still riding high in the trends of voting intentions polls, even if there are signs of some Reform fatigue already, and maybe an incoming return to sanity.

The Conservatives must feel some sort of odd relief that Reform UK are saying all the quiet parts out loud, and their political discourse can be reduced to "What he said, Mister Speaker". On days when Farage actually shows up to do his day job, that is. But the most grotesque take on the fascists' surge came from Marina Hyde, who is generally better inspired, toeing The Islington Gazette's party line and taking us for cretins, by making the flimsy excuse that the metropolitan journotariat are not overhyping and overplatforming Reform UK of their own free will, but because the Great British Public love their show, while overhyping and overplatforming Reform UK. Aye, richt. I still haven't figured out how the pieces fit together with the same paper's long-winded case that wokeism has to go on spewing the same bullshit, just one notch quieter, to become the barrage against Farage. Dog help us with 'progressives' like that. Even the fucking BBC platforms fascists as often as drag queens now. YouGov put their finger on it with a speed-poll about "which party is doing the most to set the political agenda". Of course, Reform UK comes on top by a wide margin.

There is quite a wide consensus here among most demographics. Except in Scotland, where some think that the SNP sets the tone, which gets filed under "Others" as only English parties were offered in the poll's prompts. But it wasn't the right question, which of course YouGov couldn't and wouldn't ask, as they are part of the metropolitan bubble that allows it to happen, and mostly makes it happen. It usually starts with some tepid talk about inclusion, and the will to not stigmatise and ostracise misguided voters just expressing their frustration. But we are way past this stage in the UK now. Other countries have seen that movie too, and we have fast-forwarded it in a matter of months from the scene about mere discontent to the scene about complete adherence to the party line, which took years in most other countries. The pretendy-progressive mediatariat have been of great help since they transmogrified into a full-blown prostitutariat, as the sound of millions of clicks cover their whimpers of faux horror at the sight of the monster they have frankensteined. And that's how we reached the dismal state of voting intentions and projected seats in this week's snapshot, based on the last four polls, fielded between the D-Day Anniversary and my birthday, with a supersample of 8,169.

Clearly, the sanctimoniously cretinous metropolitan faux progressives would love nothing more than seeing such a scenario come true, even more so if Reform UK bagged a majority seats as Electoral Calculus predicts, buy my model doesn't. Just because it would self-fulfil their self-fulfilling prophecy that there is nothing left on the political spectrum between wokeism and fascism. Which is fine for them as they wouldn't have to suffer the consequences of an incompetent lunatic fascist government. Only the working class and the already deprived areas would be hit hard by Reform UK's asinine policies, while the entitled metropolitan middle-class would be shielded from them, just as they have been protected from the effects of Osborne's austerity and the Brexit catastrophe. But they're alright, Jack, so long as they can lecture the plebs from their twin accounts on Twitter and Bluesky, and again ride their moral high horse on the streets of Coventry after the Blitz.

Starmer is Labour's version of Theresa May, who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.

(Owen Jones, The Guardian, 30 September 2021)

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

(Boris Johnson, 30 October 2005)

The breakdown of votes say it again. The numbers may change but the song remains the same. Which does not mean that The Rise Of The Nutters has forever given way to The Resistible Rise Of Nigelo Ui. Because you may remember that the next election is legally still 50 months away. Aye, mates, the deadline is the 15th of August 2029, and I can see no reason why Keir Starmer would be in any hurry to hold it any earlier. It means we have more than enough time to recover from the turquoise infection, but with two prerequisites. That the metropolitan punditariat stop squealing a fake moral panic that makes the Islington hipstertariat shiver, and focus on the real root causes of the far-right's surge, which are clearly documented by the "lived experience" of many foreign countries. That New Model Labour stop copycatting the New Model British Union Of Fascists in discourse and deeds, and shift to solid social-democratic policies. Or the numbers will not move and the next movie will be How The North Was Lost.

There is an interesting subplot to this in Scotland, where John Swinney has boleyned himself a lot closer to the chopping board after the disastrous Hamilton by-election. People who were already there find some glee in pointing out that Honest John's first stint as SNP leader brought only electoral defeat and watering down of the party's messaging. So is it out of touch to expect a return to shape for Labour in Scotland, when GB-wide polls show they are no longer falling down the abyss? But Labour have to fight on a two-pronged front, as Reform UK are finding extremely fertile ground not just in the North, but as visibly in the Midlands too. Labour are also on very shaky ground in the South, despite their unexpectedly good showing doon there at the general. The Liberal Democrats are still faring well, though something odd is visible here. Some of their voter base seems to have moved from the South to the Midlands. Not moved moved, literally, but you get the gist. Oddly, Labour are also in disarray in Starmer's back garden in London, but the threat there could come more from the radicalised corbyno-jonesian far-left than from the Faragists.

This also seems like the right moment to keep an eye on what is happening in the United States. Don't forget to shame again all the lobotomised cretins who clapped for Trump because "he knows what a woman is"™. Hitler knew too, mates. But the point is what we can learn about Farage from Trump. Nigel may have tried to put some distance between himself and the MAGA mob, but he remains a Trumpist at heart. Ready to increase the deficit end the national debt to gift the wealthiest 1% totally undeserved tax cuts, when they should be forced to pay more. Ready to betray all alliances for opportunities of juicy business with the Russian Reich. Ready to break the rule of law to enforce unhinged authoritarianism against all the wrongthinkers. Ready to put climate change denial and performative xenophobia at the heart of government. Nigel can try and paint himself as a working class hero all he wants, his whole true self is an enemy of the people, a con artist and a profiteer.

If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?

(Boris Johnson, 30 July 2010)

The Battle of Surbiton sounds like the most kind of suburban battle that’s ever been. Sounds like a dispute over a garden fence.

(Josh Widdicombe)

You probably guessed it already, today's seat projections are merciless, even if there has been a very wee reflux of the turquoise patches in the last two weeks. Mind you, this is still far far away from a reversal of fortunes, and quite a lot of Labour grandees are still destined to end up crashlanding in a ditch. And, before you ask, there will be no battle of Surbiton in 2029, as Ed Davey has it totally secured by now. He first bagged it when he was 31, he is 59 now and has been its MP continuously, save for a brief two-year hiatus in the aftermath of the Coalition fiasco. But not all incumbents are as lucky as Mister Ed, especially the Labour ones. And, despite a slight swing back from Reform UK to Labour, we can still expect summat of a blood bath in Scotland, Wales and the English North.

We still find wide splotches of turquoise in the Midlands, though they are retreating a bit this time, from where they were one or two months ago. Oddly, this is where they have scored their most iconic gains at the locals, so are we seeing buyer's remorse already? The Liberal Democrats are losing a lot of their 2024 gains in the South West, and not fully making for that with surprise predicted gains in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the South East. But they still prove the most resilient of all three English legacy parties, losing only three seats overall. That's the party the punditariat had written off, because they never seemed to have what it took to get back on the horse, and they defied all odds a year ago. And the way they came back makes them the most immune of the three Big English Parties to the rise of the turquoise nutters. In the right climate, they are still able to sneak through the cracks and rip their pound of flesh off the Conservatives. Who'd have thunk?

But London also has some nasty surprises in store for Labour. Keir Starmer's back garden is the only region where the Conservatives are expected to gain back a seat. Not on their own merits, but they are helped by candidates from the broad tent of the far-left, who are also likely to pick up a couple of seats of their own in the name of ideological purity. The Thunberg-Jones Left, basically, totally immersed in their parallel fantasy world, where wokeism wasn't the root cause of Trump's return and Russia is the friend of the working class. To be honest, Talcum X fuelling the fake moral panic in terms that describe the loony woke left far better than the Faragists is quite fun, and that's why I dug up the gem below. But, more than this, it is mostly fucking pathetic, as it reveals the cretinous decay of "thought" in that corner of the political spectrum. If Labour continue to sit on the fence, too feart of the predictable whining to tell the loony fanatics to fuck off, they might as well say goodbye forever to all the common-sensical people who have had enough of their pandering to the bourgeois luxury beliefs of the entitled metropolitan middle-class fringe. And they will lose more that the Inner Hisptershire of London.

If the Left is overtaken by a loud minority who are, increasingly, bound by utter hatred towards anyone deemed to deviate from their sanctity of their cause, then there is no future.

(Owen Jones, 11 February 2017)

Events. The politicians’ greatest enemy, they say. Plan till you’re blue in the face, then things just happen, the events take over. Every disaster is a photo opportunity in disguise.

(Francis Urquhart, To Play The King, 1993)

We have had a new Full Scottish from Norstat, the pollster formerly known as Panelbase, on behalf of The Times. Obviously, The Scottish Pravda couldn't have enough of it, mostly the Independence referendum part, that shows Nigel Farage being a far better motivator for a Yes vote than John Swinney. This is not as odd as you might think, coming just hours after Farage came out in favour of scrapping the Barnett Formula. Which, as any sentient Scot knows, works perfectly well if Scotland is granted Full Fiscal Autonomy, a historic demand of the SNP. Then I guess Nige didn't really think that one through, did he? Then there is a flaw with this poll. It was fielded a week before the dramatically fateful by-election in You-Know-Where. So now we are left wanting for a new one that will feel the pulse of the Great Scottish Public after the asteroid hit. Who will go first? Just wait another week or two, though, until everyone has fully digested the impact of the upset, and reframed their trauma. Unless it has already happened, as the trendlines of IndyRef polling clearly show a recent surge of the Yes vote.

There is just one caveat here. IndyRef polls conducted in 2025 were fielded by just four pollsters. Two, YouGov and Survation, always found No leading. The other two, Find Out Now and Norstat, always found Yes in the lead. So it has clearly become a case of choosing the right pollster to get the "right" result, which is definitely not how opinion polling should work. There have been 18 IndyRef polls since the general election eleven months ago, and only two have been fielded by a pollster outwith this quartet. More In Common once, Opinium once. I guess it's time now to bring back either of them, and preferably both, in the game to see what they find and which way the wing actually blows. Of course, that would be challenging house effect by introducing another house effect, but what other option do we have? Just don't retort, "a referendum", no matter how tempting it sounds. Because it won't happen. You know that, don't you? Let's examine instead something else revealed by the Norstat poll, the Farage Effect.

The weighted average of the last six IndyRef polls, conducted two each in March, April and May, is a tie. Which is obviously what you can expect with the "pollster divide" I mentioned earlier. Then we have the Norstat House Effect, that moves this to 54-46, and I can't help feeling that's a wee smitch optimistic. Add the Farage Effect on top, and we get 58-42. Let's forget the numbers now, and focus on just the swing from one scenario to the other. Could a Farage Premiership actually swing 4% of Scots from No to Yes? The truth is that we don't know, as we only have one pollster asking that specific question. Either we get others to ask it too, or we just forget it, as its only purpose so far has been providing juicy headlines for the fearmongers on the SNP side. It is just a cheap game of smoke and mirrors, that exonerates them from providing real positive reasons to vote for Independence. Because they have lost track of any, haven't they? Or they would come up with something better than "Stonewall are the bedrock of Civilisation-As-We-Know-It™". It is so fucking obvious that even The Scottish Pravda have had an epiphany and are saying out loud that the SNP have no fucking strategy for independence. OK, mates, devolution it is, then. Forever.

I was born on the Highlands of Scotland. There, one could stand on a rock, see ten miles in any direction, and not another living soul.

(Francis Urquhart, The Final Cut, 1995)

Hamilton should not be mistaken for a bellwether constituency. That said, it's also important to consider the question of the dog that didn't bark.

(James Kelly, The National, 6 June 2025)

Surely the most terrifying take on the Lin-Manuel Miranda by-election came from the ever cretinous Talcum X in The Islington Gazette, mansplaining us that Labour's gain means that we are facing a bigger than ever fascist threat. Which, if Shitweasel is allowed to repeat it often enough, will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is obviously what the deranged far-left want, so they can pose as the saviours of democracy on a neo-McCarthyist über-woke platform, under the banner of the Pink-And-Blue Party. May Dog protect us from these mendacious demented wankers. They remind me of nothing more than the Communist Party of Germany in 1932, spending more energy on harassing the Social-Democrats than on fighting the Nazi militias. Until Hitler sent them all to Dachau without discrimination, where they had all the time in the world to resolve contradictions and debate doctrine. All in the name of ideological purity, and also on direct orders from Moscow. Quite the familiar pattern, innit? But, more to the point, what does the Norstat poll tell us about the next Holyrood election? Nothing new, I say.

There is a subtle tiny change in the trendlines, nevertheless, as Labour and the SNP are both flatlining now. A trained haruspex would surely have seen a sign here, without needing to read the entrails of a black goat. Of course, it's definitely not a full reversal of fortunes, whatever Labour may wager on now, and Reform UK's rise has not stopped. Tiny changes in voting intentions do not mean significant changes in the seat projections, but we have definitely seen Labour slowly recovering and the SNP stagnating poll after poll. The most recent polls have also shown an interesting side-effect of the AMS system. With more parties eligible to the distribution of list seats, the Greens are no longer disproportionately benefiting from the system, and may even lose seats while gaining votes. The Norstat poll also shows Reform UK slightly down, now finishing third. So the fascist tsunami may not be as certain as the far-left fearmongers want us to believe. The seat projection from the Norstat poll also confirms the now familiar conclusion, that the smartest and strongest post-election choice would be an SNP-Lab coalition, as they could certainly agree on a serious agenda to protect Scotland's assets without gratuitously poking Westminster or indulging in vacuous preschool politics.

But does the upset at the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election mean that we should all reframe our prognostications? That's really tempting, but could be premature. Only a second by-election, in a constituency with a similar profile, could enlighten us, but that's fortunately very unlikely to happen. Unless somebody resigns, but I can't think of a likely candidate for that right now. What I know, though, is that Anas Sarwar is too quick to claim this by-election alone has redefined the 2026 election as another one-on-one between the SNP and Labour. Just as John Swinney was totally wrong writing off Labour before the Hamilton fiasco because it suited the moronic "fascists vs true progressives" narrative, Anas Sarwar is wrong to write off Reform on the day after they bagged their biggest vote share ever in Scotland, in a constituency where the reservoir of Tory votes was quite small. In a way, Swinney's shell-shocked denial is a better assessment of the situation than Sarwar's bout of euphoria. He is probably right to stress the people's discontent with the SNP, but totally wrong to dismiss the appeal of tactical voting for Reform UK, to kill two turds with one scone. Getting the SNP out without getting Labour in. You know something is happening, but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mister Sarwar?

The people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse have made clear that we still have work to do. Over the next few days we will take time to consider the result fully.

(John Swinney, 6 June 2025)

Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a Global Left.

(Judith Butler, 3 November 2023)

I usually avoid discussing Israel and Palestine, or the situation in Gaza, as it is typically what the Americans call a "third rail issue". Or a minefield in quicksand, if you like. To sum it up, my view of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu is basically the same as my view of Russia and Vladimir Putin. War criminals at the helm of rogue terrorist states that keep deliberately and knowingly violating international law. Because, unlike the bulk of the loony far-left, I don't have double standards. At least the far-right are consistent, they support both Israel and Russia because they love nothing more than unhinged authoritarian imperialists. YouGov have dedicated one of their periodic Eurotrack Surveys to Israel and Palestine, so we have a fresh view of where public opinions stand now in the UK and five assorted EU countries. YouGov polled the same countries with the same questions eleven months ago, so we have also a view of how the events have influenced public opinions one way or the other. Starting with which side they "sympathise with more". YouGov's words, not mine.

The overall picture is quite clear. Except Spain, which is statistically the same as in 2024, public opinions have moved away from Israel and closer to the Palestinians. This is totally logical when you consider the timeline, and the growing evidence of massive and deliberate Israeli war crimes. Oddly, we still have a sizeable proportion, in all countries, claiming that they support both sides equally, though I totally fail to see how you can achieve that. I imagine this could work in a Care Bears World of pure abstract concepts, but not in real life where one side is dominated by war criminals and the other by terrorists. Don't get me wrong here, I do support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and denounce Netanyahu's criminal imperialism, but I will never fall into the same trap as the loony left and idolise Hamas as freedom fighters or whatever. Or that other trap where anti-Zionism, a legitimate political option, morphs into unhinged anti-Semitism. Now the YouGov poll also offers an interesting snapshot of how public opinions consider Hamas' pogrom on 7 October 2023, and the oversized Israeli retaliation to it. The answers were very similar in 2024, and it makes more sense if you have the current views on both questions side by side.

Only Italians are consistent here, rejecting both actions in the same proportions. Sadly the other nations have a higher level of tolerance for the Israeli war crimes, which should be condemned with the same vigour as the mass murder of civilians by an Iran-backed terrorist militia. There has been a lot of controversy about Israel's actions being labelled 'genocide', as the word has often been thrown around performatively by the far-left. We mustn't rely on any dictionary definition here, but only on the terms of the United Nations' Genocide Convention of 1948. Its main merit is that, despite being written in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, it is neither simplistic nor emotional, but rather quite coldly forensic. Any honest person will tell you that Israel's actions in Gaza, and also on the West Bank, fit the Convention's five criteria for genocide. And so do Russia's actions in Ukraine, by the way. YouGov obviously avoided using the word, which is like the time-bomb in the middle of the minefield, but asked in a more convoluted way about the public's assessment of Israel's retaliatory actions after the 7 October pogrom.

There is obvious ambiguity in there. The proportion of people supporting Israel's actions as proportionate, which they obviously never were, has gone down but so has the proportion of people thinking that Israel was wrong all along and should never have used brute force in Gaza, which is the inconvenient truth most Western governments do not want to hear because it would force them to admit that Netanyahu has a personal interest in keeping the war as long and as bloody as possible. Just like Putin, again not at all coincidentally as these two are cul et chemise, ass and shirt, which is French for "joined at the hip", for the sole purpose of self-preservation. So we are left with increased support for the asinine "middle ground" option, that Israel were right in principle, but have gone too far. Now this is what our political establishment love to hear, because it justifies their very slow reaction to the atrocities, and the still present procrastination about how to sanction Israel, who deserve it as much as Russia and for the exact same reasons. Sadly, this is exactly the kind of attitude that fuels the loony woke left's endorsement of rabidly anti-Semitic, homophobic and woman-hating terrorists who never were a force for good, and never will be.

In the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support.

(Craig Murray, 15 October 2023)

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt.

(Mahatma Gandhi)

We have had another perspective on Israel and Gaza, with another poll conducted by Opinium on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. They are of course neither neutral nor unbiased on these issues, though they are less extremist than my still revered and beloved Roger Waters, who has aged with the grace of a demijohn of sour milk dancing to the FSB's Orchestra And Choir's tune. The PSC are among the main supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns in the UK, and have also been involved in protests since October 2023, some of which have proved controversial because Hamas and Al-Qaeda flags were waved and chants of "From the river to the sea" were heard. Of course, this one is unambiguous in its motivations and meaning, and clearly on the most radical side of the Palestinian Liberation movement. It has taken a new meaning recently, as Benjamin Netanyahu revealed his own version of it, toying with the annexation of the West Bank by Israel the same way Vladimir Putin is toying with threats of nuclear strikes. The PSC remain, for the most part, more of a pressure group relying on various modes of grassroots action, and had Opinium probe the popularity of five of them, starting with the two that are most likely to achieve a serious level of support.

Stopping the sale of British military equipment to Israel looks like a no-brainer, especially when some of it has been identified as components for F-35 planes that are used in strikes against Gaza. But the two successive governments, Rishi Sunak's and Keir Starmer's, have shown clear reluctance to act decisively. 30 arms export licences to Israel were suspended in September 2024, but eleven times as many remain active to appease the United States. Solid popular support for suspending all is therefore expected and legitimate, when you consider the volume of nature of strikes against Gaza, in the same league as Russian strikes against Ukraine's civilian population. I am far less convinced by the second action, the B part of the BDS triptych, as its real practical value is very doubtful. Israel in not even mentioned in the summary visuals published by the UK government, meaning that their share in the UK's trade is less than 1%. Imports from Israel were valued at £1.3bn in 2024, half of what they were in 2022. You can take that as evidence that the boycott works, but it accounts for only 0.2% of Israel's GDP, so that's hardly a massive blow. It's far less effective than the sanctions against South Africa, or even the current sanctions against Russia, but still makes us feel good, so why not? Opinium then tested the D and S branches of the BDS trident, which are also quite popular.

The divestment item here comes from several local authorities' pension schemes having investments in companies linked to Israel, and sone of them toying with the idea of divesting from them. This one has an interesting Parliamentary and Court history. Commons voted to make it illegal in 2023, with Starmer courageously whipping his MPs to abstain, but it never went past its second reading and is now buried deep down the abyss of defunct bills. The specific case of public pension funds has been targeted by the PSC since 2017, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Local Government Pension Schemes were allowed to divest or boycott. Jolyon Maugham did not stand up against that one. Of course, there is absolutely no law banning private companies or individuals from divesting, and there never will be. The question about sanctions directly refers to a statement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, doubling down on Donald Trump's plan to "cleanse" Gaza and expel the remaining Palestinian population, and inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank's occupied territories. International outrage was enough to convince the UK government they had to act on this one. The interesting point is that sanctions were announced jointly by the UK, Australia and Canada, possibly another sign of a United Front of Commonwealth going against the USA, who have obviously done fuck all. Opinium finally tested the most controversial option of all, which I will let you discover in the legend of the chart.

Now, let's face it, this is wandering fairly close to the slippery slope into the thin edge of the wedge. It is so far-fetched it is amazing it has such high support, even among Conservative and Reform UK voters. No nation has ever been expelled from the United Nations, not even South Africa over apartheid, not even Russia over the genocide of Ukraine. And, even if the General Assembly voted for it, the United States and Russia would veto it, so the chances are zilch. Then, even if it happened, beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. Netanyahu already feels he is unaccountable to anyone except himself and an imaginary entity in a book, not Harry Potter, as protection from the United States and the Russian Reich grants him total immunity for his crimes. He will, just like Putin, do everything and anything to keep the war and the atrocities going on, as this is his only chance to stay in power. Being ejected from the UN would make Bibisrael even more of a rogue terrorist state than it already is, totally unhinged in attempts to paint any aggression as self defence, and that's the last thing we want, innit? And I hope that Gaza will be spared being used again in the infamy of Greta Thunberg's self-serving performative antics, which never involved any aid but were of course endorsed by Shitweasel.

Procrastination in peril is the mother of ensuing misery, and delays often times bring to pass that he who should have died kills him which should have lived.

(The Moderate, January 1649)

I’m at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right, have fun.

(Keanu Reeves)

Let's take some time now to dig deeper into all findings of Lord Ashcroft's recent poll of the USA, which I already mentioned partly in my previous article. There is an interesting innovation in this poll, as the crosstabs with the 2024 Presidential vote are no longer limited to just Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Now Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate, are also included. We can thusly see what motivates people in these fringes of the American electorate, and which of the pair of dominant parties they more closely align with. As you might expect, the main interest is that if often doesn't match what you expected. It becomes interesting because Oliver is a true classic libertarian, not the Musk-like brand of privileged faux-libertarian authoritarianism. While Stein fits almost to a T all the clichés of the elderly cat lady who gradually shifted from genuine Green grassroot activism to the woke middle-class luxury beliefs of the Pink-And-Blue bourgeois fad. Something odd comes to light instantly, about what the USA's stance should be, basically isolationism vs internationalism.

Nobody will be surprised that a majority of the US public are isolationists, Trump voters massively so. But it totally defies our intuition that Green voters are too, and even more than Trumpists, while Libertarian voters are more internationalists, halfway between Democrats and Republicans on that scale. What we see is that Greens and Republicans both endorse the narrative about "money better spent at home", a cornerstone of all shades of populism. But I suspect the foundations of this belief are quite different. Trumpist endorse isolationism per se, as they believe that what happens abroad is of no concern for the USA, which is of course wrong. Greens, on the other hand, are more likely to support the view that American influence is a force for evil, which was certainly broadly true until the end of the Cold War, when the CIA orchestrated fascists coups. But there have been truckloads of bad blood under the bridge since, and today's reality is more diverse and ambiguous. Which is reflected in the replies to the next question about values and interests.

There is an obvious flaw in the chosen wording of the options, as values and interests are definitely two different realities that usually don't overlap. But let's just admit this is a valid shortcut to assessing the global relationship between Trumpistan and Europe, and that it is safe to stipulate that our values and interests really do diverge at the moment. This is quite consensual among the Great American Public, with Trump voters surprisingly less likely to accept it. This is odd after their President repeatedly accused Europe of being just vultures staging highway robberies of American wealth. It can hardly be based on values either, unless the MAGAs genuinely believe that Trump's pet Viktor Orban speaks for Europe. Libertarian voters, with their muck bleaker view of the relationship, are certainly closer to the truth. But how do Americans actually feel about the current Continental Drift?

There is a whole array of options here, as Lord Mikey again mixed two variables, about the fact and the perception of the fact. It certainly covers all bases, but does not make it easier to read their minds, especially as these replies do not fully fit with the earlier question. Clearly Americans are in a sort of mixed up confusion about the true nature of their relationship with Europe. It is really weird that a majority of Trump voters think that the USA and Europe are still close and that's a good thing, and another quarter think that we're drifting apart and it is bad, when the Orange Baboon's every effort is aiming at widening the rift and destroying what makes Europe unique, their ability to build the most powerful Union in human history. Then you can easily understand why Trump's followers are disorientated, when he appears totally deranged and contradicts himself every other day. Everybody would be confused when the only clear direction is a determination to crash into a wall at flank speed.

Some people seem to think Trump's playing chess, when most of the time the staff are just trying to stop him from eating the pieces.

(Anonymous White House insider)

If Ukraine is forced to surrender its sovereign territory to Russia, it will be the greatest betrayal of a European ally since Poland in 1945.

(Ed Davey)

What matters most, from where I'm sat, is obviously how the Great American Public see the current relationship between the USA and Ukraine. Can it influence the White House when it is becoming clearer by the day that the real strategy is to retreat from Europe, and let us deal with the Russian Reich by ourselves? I don't think it matters in any way, as the Orange Baboon is stuck in his ways and determined to crush any attempt at Congress passing really meaningful sanctions. What doesn't help is that a lot of Americans seem to have a hard time making up their minds about who are the good guys and who are the baddies. Revealingly again, the breakdown by 2024 vote confirms that Green voters are pretty close to MAGA voters, and very far from Democratic voters, in their views on Russia and Ukraine. This is just more evidence supporting what we already knew, and also see in the UK and continental Europe, the persistence of a significant Russophile and Ukrophobe contingent in the ranks of the far-left and the relativist woke left, both of which are at the core of the Green vote.

There is confirmation of this in Lord Ashcroft's question about the level of US aid to Ukraine. Green voters come pretty close to MAGA voters in considering too much has been done for Ukraine, totally at odds with Harris voters. While it comes from isolationism on the MAGA side, a similar position from Green voters betrays the effects of well-oiled Russian propaganda, that helping a democracy in peril is escalation and puts us at rick of nuclear annihilation. That's the most successful, and therefore most replayed, of Putin's Greatest Hits, clearly targeting the faux-pacifist woke snowflakes, and it fucking works. Then the most surprising part is that Libertarian voters are the closest to the average, the most representative of Average Joe, which again shows the clear rift between genuine Libertarians and performative faux-libertarian oligarchs like Elton Muck. I'm only stressing this because I love to self-identify as a socialist libertarian, and I'm more and more convinced as I grow older that it is not an oxymoron. This one is just the second brick in the wall of the Greens' total inability to perceive the reality of situation.

The third and final brick, without the final sip of Amontillado, comes with a question about hypothetical involvement of the USA in a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. We know it will never happen, but testing the option is still usefully revealing. Here, the replies of Green voters are as close to a carbon copy of MAGA voters as on the "Is Russia our friend?" question. The Greenies are even more opposed to peacekeeping efforts, and less supportive than the MAGAs by a few percentage points. I definitely hear some mumbo-jumbo of word salad about patriarchal neo-colonialism here, mixed with considerations about a fascist power with weapons of mass destruction in the Arctic being the ally and protector of the progressive Global South, and assorted doses of deconstructivist relativist sanctimonious bollocks. Which totally fits with the hyperbolic denigration of every effort to defend ourselves, also found among the woke journotariat on our shores, echoing the CND-era hit "Better Red Than Dead". In the end, resistance was not futile, the Soviet Union is gone, and we are neither red nor dead. If you ever doubted that the far-left and the far-right are joined at the hip in their support for the worst threat to democracy and peace since Adolf Hitler, here you have it.

We have now found out how Ukraine's brilliant Operation Spiderweb will impact American and Russian attitudes. Of course the Orange Baboon is livid that Zelenskyy kept him out of the loop, thusly denying him the opportunity to sabotage the operation and leak it to the Russian Reich. Of course Vlad The Butcher is livid and heads will roll, unless he switches to the Russian version of assisted dying that involves open windows in high buildings, but he can still rely on his FSB-bribed flying monkeys, like Gorge Galloway calling the destruction of 41 planes a terrorist war crime while ignoring the murder of 209 Ukrainian civilians by Russia in one month. It was not totally unexpected that Donald Trump would preemptively excuse Russia's retaliatory strikes, and even find them justified, as we are now used to him appeasing genocidal fascism. Then we reached a level of pure abjection rarely reached before when the Orange Baboon likened the Ukraine war to two kids fighting in a park, at the same moment the Russian Reich was again murdering children and first responders in Kyiv. You just have to wonder what kind of kompromat the KGB and the FSB have amassed on Trump over the years, or if it is just a copy of the Epstein Files that Elon Musk sent them after he broke up with the man he had bought the last elections for. Now Trump should be happy and grateful that Ukraine has eliminated a third of Russia's nuclear strike capability in one day, more than any US administration has achieved trough disarmament negotiations in 25 years. It was a masterstroke, even Trump had to admit it. Ze Is Da Man!

The Russian delegation, as I was told, behaved a little calmer, but the arrogance, you know, is what it is. Let's see, maybe we need a couple more measures and they'll try to behave like people.

(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 2 June 2025)

Слава Україні! Героям слава!

Jeremy's Den

13/06/2025

Wild Wolves All Around

White Man Blues