European Parliament Election - A Gamechanger?

Easter 🔊 Sunday also 2772th Anniversary of the Foundation of Rome, or so the story goes, and quite definitely James McAvoy's birthday

The Road So Far 🔊

Elections for the European Parliament are to be held in the UK on 23 May 2019 for the last time 🔊. Or not. Holding them is part of the UK's commitments in the latest Brextension deal but they could be cancelled at the last moment, if Commons miraculously pass Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement they have already rejected thrice. It would have to happen before 22 May anyway, which not coincidentally was the backstop deadline in the Brexit 2.0 arrangement. Otherwise the vote goes on come what May wants or doesn't.

Let's just see first who the current UK MEPs are. Which, believe it or not, is not the same as they were after the last election in 2014. And it changed again a few days ago when two former Tory MEPs switched to Change UK. Guess they wanted to play it safe and waited to be sure the TigChukers were actually registered as a real party by the Electoral Commission. The 73 MEPs are grouped by national party and by European Parliament group (which are somewhat different from, though mostly overlapping with, European parties but never mind as we're bordering on nerdy TMI here). Unlabelled denotes just one MEP to avoid cluttering the graph. One UK seat is currently vacant (formerly a Labour seat in Scotland held by Catherine Stihler).

I have tracked the changes in a 'where they were and where they are now' chart. Hope it's not too confusing. Same colour code as above and again unlabelled means one MEP in category. Note that the left-wing parties and the Northern Ireland representation have not changed either their national party or their parliamentary group affiliations. Only UKIP and the Conservatives have gone through some kind of more or less intense musical chairs.

And that's all the changes we'll see as the 2018-2019 season has come to an end. Right now MEPs no longer have the opportunity to carry on with the noise and confusion 🔊 as the European Parliament is in recess and will not reconvene until 2 July with the new intake of MEPs.

Can EU election polls be trusted?

British pollsters have become quite of a laughing stock since they failed so dismally to predict the results of the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 snap GE. Whatever the changes in their methodologies, there is still an ominous cloud of distrust hanging over their heads. But their performance back in 2014 was not that bad. I managed to retrieve six EU election polls from the pollsters' sites, all ten days or less away from the election. There were other polls fielded in that timeframe but they seem to have been woodchiporized into some cyber-bin since. Anyway here's what the six polls I have and their weighted average said, and it's not really far from the actual GB-wide results (Northern Ireland was not polled back then just as it is not right now).

Scottish polls on the other hand are a different kind of a strange beast. Contrary to popular belief they did not miss the Independence Referendum by much, with the trend over the last week being a steady 47-53 No victory despite a handful of outliers predicting a Yes victory. They weren't that bad either at the 2015 GE but that was the easy one when the only doubt was about SNP bagging 'only' 54 seats or going all the way to 59. Then they totally fucked up the 2016 Holyrood election, the 2017 Council elections and the 2017 snap GE, all the time wildly overestimating the SNP vote and the 2014 EU election was no exception. Below are the results of seven Scotland-only polls fielded back then and the weighted average of the last two fielded just before the election.

If these polls had been right the result would have been three SNP MEPs, two Labour and one Conservative with SNP snatching the sixth seat from UKIP by quite a wide margin. Marco Biagi (formerly the SNP MSP for Edinburgh Central) recently published a witty and informative article about the forthcoming EU election, warning everyone to 'be more wary of polls than normal'. And of course he is totally right and we should bear this in mind when assessing current polling.

So then what do current polls say?

Before you ask (again) all the polls I use are listed here with links to the source data on the pollsters' sites that include regional crosstabs. Nine polls have been fielded so far, starting in January when holding EU elections was nothing more than a fantasy scenario and until this week with three polls in close succession. There is little to no consistency in these polls and nothing so far looking like a reliable trend. The press will of course be looking for a winner in a context that could eventually deliver only losers. Only sure thing is that the Conservatives will not be the winners as their choice of options has narrowed down to walloping and clobbering, until voters go one step further and hand them a quartering. So here is what all these polls say:

Saying that there is some fluidity in EU election polling would be quite an understatement as volatility might indeed be the word we're looking for. So I have restricted my EU Poll'O'Polls to just the three most recent ones, all fielded less than a week ago. But even polls fielded literally on the same day show quite interesting discrepancies so the usual caveats strongly apply, and then to the power of 73. So here is the current weighted average of voting intentions, supposed to be as faithful a snapshot of public opinion as pollsterly possible. Followed by its breakdown by electoral regions, based on what regional crosstabs pollsters see fit to provide. Northern Ireland is excluded here as they have not been polled so far.

These numbers clearly demonstrate that nobody has any reason to feel safe in the current political climate. UKIP would be irrevocably replaced by the Brexit Party as the Poster Boys for the New Model Blackshirts. Though voters choosing borderline-batshit-crazy over terminally-batshit-crazy is not a sign of sanity from any perspective. Conservatives are predicted to take a massive bashing especially in the traditional Southern Little England heartlands. And it can only get worse as more and more Tory grassrooters refuse to campaign in the name of 'Brexit betrayal'. Labour have no reason to be feasting either as EU polls show the same symptoms as GE polls: Labour looking goodish only because Conservatives are nosediving into a crashlanding. Even their results in the Northern Powerhouse heartlands and in London are alarming, notwithstanding an unexpected resilience in the North East.

What kind of representation would this deliver?

The current 73 MEPs are elected via proportional representation (the famous/infamous d'Hondt method) in twelve electoral regions that overlap the European Union's NUTS-1 regions. These have been designed by the EU for statistical purposes only, not electoral ones, which explains why the number of MEPs per region varies wildly from three to ten. There is in fact no strong and convincing rationale for the UK using NUTS-1s as electoral regions. France also used regional constituencies three times for EU elections before reverting to a single national list, but their constituencies did not overlap their NUTS-1s in any way.

But enough useless trivia for now. Here is the projected representation of the UK on the evening of 23 May, or more probably the wee hours of 24 May, based on the aggregation of seat projections by region. There is an example of how d'Hondt works just below in my Scotland section and it works the same way for all regions, you just have to adjust the number of seats. I have included Northern Ireland here hypothesizing their representation would be the same as in 2014. Best that can be done without any available polls, and the only reasonably expectable change would be one seat switching from UUP to DUP, and this would have no impact on the overall picture.

The seat projections show that Labour are indeed in a dangerous position even if they're on their way to gain a couple of seats. They certainly walk on thin ice in London where some of the most dedicated Remain voters would switch to Change UK on top of those who have already switched to the LibDems. And their smallish gains in the North definitely have more to do with Conservatives crashlanding than Labour conclusively winning back C2DE Leave voters. Ambiguity never wins. 

And what about Scotland then?

Scottish polling so far is just as inconsistent and puzzling as the GB-wide results. Furthermore we don't have real Scotland-only polls now as we had in 2014 but only subsamples from the GB-wide polls, which adds another level of uncertainty and calls for extra caution. With these caveats duly registered, the SNP is doing significantly better than their 2014 result and this is supported by other non-EU polls so we can accept the trend as valid, even if the precise numbers have to be subjected to reasonable questioning. Here is what we have now from all nine available EU polls and the weighted average of the last three.

To make it clearer here is the current weighted average of voting intentions we have for Scotland. Not outlandishly good for the SNP as some earlier polls were, but still some 10% above the 2014 vote. Unionist parties are not doing that well and most probably below their most pessimistic expectations. Greens and Brexit Party breathing down the neck of the Ruth Davidson Party should ring an alarm bell if only they ever listened to the people. Which they don't. And won't. And then will come whining about the walloping they took.

The volatility of polls is reflected in the seat projections (more on how the sausage is made right after this). Let's just say it's safe to conclude that the SNP can (and will) bag three seats (Alyn Smith, Margaret Ferrier and Christian Allard if the conference votes the way I would) while the other three would be kind of marginals if you can picture such a thing under PR. Labour probably have a head start and should bag one unless some kind of upset happens, while the remaining two could be decided by just a few votes between Greens, Conservatives and the Brexit Party. So SNP brace yourselves for gaining only one seat 😅😇🐶. But don't give up on the fourth just yet.

With only six seats at stake Scotland really pushes the highest averages method to its limits. Remember first that 'average' here does not mean 'average' as in [ Votes / Seats ] but 'what if average' as in [Votes / Seats+1 ]. What we're trying to do here is not statistics about the actual distribution of seats but allocating the next seat in a way that represents voters' choices best. This can be done only by simulating how many voters would be represented if all parties were allocated an extra seat and then giving it to the party with the highest calculated average of votes per seat. Just watch what we have on current weighted average and hypothetical turnout same as 2014. Of course it works just the same whatever the number of votes cast, as only the vote shares actually matter. On Round 1 all parties are allocated one virtual seat, then on Round 2 the winner of Round 1 gets two virtuals and all others one again, and so on…. Simples.

Also bear in mind that d'Hondt (and for that matter any PR method whatever the way they allocate seats) sets a de facto threshold for representation that is closely linked to the number of seats but also to the distribution of the popular vote. Highest averages method is known for (and indeed designed to) favouring larger parties while the concurrent largest remainders method favours smaller parties. Marco Biagi rightly points out in his article that the SNP missed a third seat (the controversial one that went to UKIP only because of anti-SNP tactical voting) in 2014 only by some 30k votes or 2% of all votes cast. If the SNP had had these extra votes, hypothetically from actual non-voters, they would have bagged 50% of the seats on 31% of the vote, clearly a counter-intuitive result and closer to FPTP than to what you would expect from PR.

We have a pretty similar situation on current polling. Only the SNP and the three next contenders (Labour, Conservatives, Greens right now with Brexit Party also a contender in an earlier poll) would clear the de facto threshold which is about 10-11% for Scotland on six seats. So if you recalculate vote shares for the four finalists only on a 100% basis, what you get right now is 51% for the SNP and about 15-18% each for the other three, simply because non-SNP vote is highly fragmented on current polling. Put it another way and what you get is roughly a 3-1-1-1 distribution, precisely what the seat projection says, and that makes d'Hondt truly proportional eventually no matter how it looks like at first glance. QED.

But what if Scottish polls are totally off again?

Just rewind to the part about 'can polls be trusted?' and look again at the numbers for Scotland. So in 2014 pollsters overestimated the SNP by almost 8% and underestimated Tories by about 4%. All other parties except Labour were underestimated too but in all cases the error was within the usual margin of such polls. Which does not mean it would not have mattered in a close election. So here you have a reminder of what current Scottish polling says and what it would be if the polls were off the same way they were in 2014:

This might look like not much of a big deal at first glance. After all the SNP would still be comfortably ahead of all other parties and up from 2014. But just remember d'Hondt's de facto threshold is 10.5% in Scotland and look at the Brexit Party's corrected vote share. The recalculated allocations of seats says it all: SNP 2, Conservatives 1, Labour 1, Greens 1, Brexit 1. And the SNP would lose the sixth seat by barely 2k votes or 0.1% of votes cast. Quite frightening, isn't it?

What this tells us is not just that we should take all polls with a muckle smitch of salt, much more importantly this tells us strong campaigning and a massive GOTV drive are of the essence for this election even more than for previous ones. Bear in mind that this time Scotland is ONE constituency, not 59 or 73, so all votes have the exact same weight no matter where they're cast. The SNP definitely needs all these votes to be cast. And above all the SNP should not take anything for granted, especially not the people's votes. Not now. Not ever.

And now what comes next?

As usual what happens next is anybody's guess and yours is as good as mine. The only thing I'm certain of is that EU elections are not predictors of what might happen at the next GE as results over the last twenty years show. Past elections show that EU elections are the perfect outlet for venting frustrations and casting a protest vote, whatever the protest is actually about. And don't think it's just a UK thing, it works pretty much the same way all over the EU. Quite simply because most people don't have the slightest clue about what the European Parliament does and the EU election results don't change the national balance of power in any way.

Which does not mean we should all abide by common popular wisdom especially when it is plainly and demonstrably wrong. Even the strongest believer in democracy must admit it: yes the people can be wrong especially when the people's vote turns into mob's vote. Which has been a constant factor in past EU elections and goes a long way explaining why far-right and narrow-brained nationalism are so heavily represented in the European Parliament.

But closer to home our main concern should probably be that the likely result of next month's EU election will project the worst possible image of the UK in the current context. Just look at who the two most likely front-runners are. Labour who haven't yet sorted out what species of Brexit, not-totally-Brexit or almost-Brexit-but-not-quite they actually support and are ready to send Remainer MEPs to Strasbourg/Brussels while still fantasizing about some incarnation of 'progressive Brexit' in London. And Brexit Party who's only clear goal is to get elected to destroy the institution from the inside while still cashing in lofty expenses.

Once again Scotland will have to set the tone. I obviously wish for us returning four SNP MEPs but three SNP and one Green would be the second best option and I could live with that. As long as the message is clear: a majority of pro-Independence MEPs and a strong commitment to having Scotland's voice heard loud and clear both in the UK and abroad. We can do it so let's do this. A month left to win. Fingers crossed.

We have helped to write European history and Europe has helped write ours (David Cameron)

© Jean-Jacques Burnel, 1979

Westminster Projection - Next To Last Pre-Brexit Update

Brexit B-23 also 35th anniversary of the Cortonwood Colliery Walkout and 62th anniversary of Ghana's Declaration of Independence

Welcome To My Nightmare 🔊

Rewind to 1983. We all know why Labour lost that year's GE. Three factors: Michael Foot, SDP, Falklands. And there you go: we have Jeremy Corbyn and TIG. So could Brexit be, against all logic and all odds, morph into Theresa May's Falklands? Before you laugh your ass out at how far-fetched this is, have a look at the polls. Without and with the 'TIG Option'.

Of course this is not 1983 all over again yet. But things can change fast. The week before the Falklands War started polls credited the Conservatives with a 2% lead. When the war ended it had risen to 16% and would remain up there, give or take a few points, until the 1983 GE that Tories won with a 15% lead over Labour. This year's trend shows the gap between Tories and Labour is widening quickly and at such a pace you can't really know where it will end.

Even a MayDeal Brexit, which can only happen in the unlikely star alignment where both Toryxiters and Labour support it, would not save the day for Jeremy Corbyn. Because in that case Theresa May would get all the credit for making the best of the lousy hand she was dealt and saving the UK from a no-deal scenario that has only minority support among voters. Her Falklands.

A Runaway Train 🔊

The Prime Minister of England at first did all she could to delay a Meaningful Vote she knew she would lose. Now she has been force-pledged to hold three in as many days by 502 votes to 20. Her current Plan Z seems to be smokeandmirroring a gullible Labour leadership into supporting some not-that-much-of-a-deal MayDeal in return for a fuzzy promise to hold a second referendum that would anyway not have Remain on the ballot. In the unlikely event this works the PM could then say 'Sorry it was just an advisory vote so I will take it under advisement. Simples'. My best educated guess is that Starmer will see through the stunt even if Corbyn does not or pretends it's a good deal only to save himself from further embarrassment at the hands of his own MPs.

Corbyn might in fact be dragged out of embarrassment against his will as right now Theresa May's latest stunts seem to have only triggered some Midas In Reverse 🔊 effect. Labour MPs from Leave-voting constituencies have already dismissed the Northern Potemkin Villages scheme as 'too little too late'. And Tory MPs went ballistic because not enough bribes would go to already affluent towns in their Little England constituencies. Unions have also been quick to see through the gaping loopholes in May's newly-made-up commitment to protecting workers' rights and will have none of it. So with Labour refusing to be part of a fake deal over a fake deal, the MayBot's only option would be to brace herself for yet another Commons defeat of Titanic-on-Iceberg scale.

Unless of course Mogglodytes principledly wuss out on the first vote and principledly support the Maydeal that was principledly unacceptable just last week, which would make the other two votes irrelevant. Treeza was right, it was always about taking back control and now she's taking back control of you, Jake. Because this is the only way the PMofE can save her sorry ass now after weeks of making it up as she walked us up the garden path over the cliff edge and into the frying pan. Otherwise futile pretendy efforts at delaying No-Deal-Crashxit are likely to be as efficient as tocolyticking Rosemary's Baby. Extending Article 50 is no longer an option now that France and Spain ruled it out unless there is Meaningful Change on England's side. So the runaway Brexit train is now on a straight course to the inevitable and predicted accidental crash-landing into the Brexiceberg.

Working Up A Sweat 🔊

Right now Conservatives devote all their energies to snatching the Most Incompetent Minister Of The Week from Chris Clusterfuck Grayling but he has too much of a head start for others to stand a sporting chance. Though Karen Bradley now has a clean shot at the Most Vile Award. Meanwhile it's back to I'm-All-Right-Jack mode in Brextrigger-happy Little England where recent polling project Tories leading by 9%, 1.3% up from 2017. Of course Labour being predicted 5% down from 2017 in Scotland, 8% down in London and a massive 10% down in Wales does not really help them either. My current Poll-of-Polls includes the six most recent ones fielded between 18th of February and 1st of March. Super-sample size is 9,539 (theoretical margin of error 0.97%) and it points to a 7% Conservative lead overall.

It is definitely a no-win situation for Labour with a sizeable chunk of their Scottish voters switching to the SNP, and quite a few switching to UKIP in the Northern Powerhouse heartlands where Labour would fall below 50% of the popular vote when they bagged 55% in both North East and North West in 2017. Worse for Jeremy Corbyn, Labour would also fall from 55% to below 50% in his own backyard in London, this time with Europhile ABC1s switching to the LibDems. And this does not even factor in how many would switch to TIG if they manage to get a significant number of candidates standing there.

Incidentally YouGov just released the findings of their latest 'Best Party on Issues' poll. On ten major issues which party do people feel would handle them best? This one is also not good for Labour. Note though that, depending on the issue, None or Don't Know get 36% to 44% and other parties combined 9% to 21%. Major outliers being Immigration (UKIP third best on 13%) and Brexit (None third best on 15%). And if you strip down the results to just the Tory-Labour one-on-one here is what you get, which goes a long way to help figure out why Tories are still ahead in GE polling after all these years: 

Labour are considered the best party to handle the issue on just three out of ten. Though you might consider the list of issues a wee smitch biased as it does not include Welfare/Benefits on which Labour would certainly have done better than the Conservatives. But even so Labour are weaker on most of what will probably be the main battleground issues in the next campaign. And there is no doubt MSM will manage to make Tory favourites like immigration, law and order or defence appear more important than they truly are in the public's mind. Nothing beats a revamped Project Fear to make sure votes will go 'the right way'.

Elected 🔊

Based on current rolling average here is what Commons would look like on the current 650 seats and on the infamous 600-seat Great Gerrymander. With Sinn Féin still not taking their seats, Conservatives get a 34-seat majority on current boundaries and a 53-seat majority on proposed new boundaries. This would be slightly better for the Conservatives than a return to 2015, mostly because the SNP would not gain back all the seats lost in 2017, theoretically leaving Scottish Tories with 11 seats unless special local factors say otherwise. Just think Ross Thomson or Kirstene Hair.

But there is some version of the Law of Diminishing Returns at work with the Great Gerrymander, as counter-intuitive it may look at face value. Martin Baxter at Electoral Calculus made this case in his analysis of the 2018 Boundary Review. Notional 2017 results say Tories would have bagged a 20ish-seat Gerrymander Bonus and current polling says it's down to 10ish. Because a 7% lead allows them to go deeper into Lab-Con-Marginals territory and already bag easy gains there. Just what the Gerrymander was designed to achieve. Simples.

Lay Down And Die, Goodbye 🔊

If the Snap GE was held tomorrow 41 seats would change hands. Including a net loss of 32 (technically 33) for Labour and a net gain of 25 for the Conservatives. And there are many reasons why the results could be even worse for Labour. TIG is only one of the factors here and might not even be the most destructive one. Voters switching to UKIP or LibDems might be less visible but might have more impact by depriving Labour of key votes in marginals. Voter apathy in the face of certain defeat should not be brushed aside either.

Ironically ex-Labour MP Fiona Onasanya is now predicted to lose the Peterborough seat she gained by just over 600 votes in 2017. Odds are she will actually lose it earlier than next GE and that Conservatives would gain back the seat in a hypothetical by-election. Also predicted to go is Angela Smith in Penistone and Stocksbridge. Technically that would be a Conservative gain from Labour but I could not resist the pleasure of highlighting this as the first projected TIG loss this year. Surely more to come.

Changing Arranging 🔊

This batch of polls would deliver 51 marginal seats, two thirds of them in England. Oddly Conservatives would be in a weaker position now despite doing better on the popular vote, with 29 marginals at risk and only 16 prospective gains. Labour would do better with 16 marginals at risk and 22 prospective gains. And for the first time in a long while UKIP, or whatever they call themselves now like Brexit Party or Friends Of Tommy, could stage a comeback in Thurrock, once a Labour stronghold turned three-way marginal over the years.

From a wider perspective than just the classic definition of marginals, 137 seats overall can be considered competitive to some degree, about the same proportion as in 2017 (21% now and 23% then). Fewer seats would now rate as safe but a massive 63% still fit the definition.

In many ways this situation says a lot about the age-old powerplay between the two main English parties and the implicit deal not to hurt each other too much in successive boundary reviews as both Conservatives and Labour enjoy a higher than average proportion of safe seats (68% for both). Something that would come to an end when the Great Gerrymander is implemented.

Reflected 🔊

Even alternate scenarios factoring in the reallocation of marginals are highly favourable to the Conservatives. Worst situation for them would be the Tory-DUP coalition just three seats short of a majority. Which would be uncomfortable but still manageable with a defeated Labour torn apart by a renewed civil war and the choice of Corbyn's successor. In that case sustained Labstain would be one of the keys to survival for the next Tory government. But it is far from the most likely outcome.

My best educated guess though is that current Labour infighting and the TIG factor would swing the pendulum even more in Tories' direction than the math says. And even if they don't, back to a slightly 'improved" 2015 result would end the need for DUP support anyway and give the next Tory PM a free hand on basically everything. With Soubrynistas gone and Mogglodytes pushed back into irrelevance, Little England's One-Nationers would rule again and the worst could be expected. Like the Invasion of the Chlorinated Chicken just days ahead of NHS being franchised to American HMOs. You've been warned.

Long Way To Go 🔊

When the Tiggers broke free the purpose of the stunt was quite clear: snatch away enough post-Blairite votes to corner Labour into an humiliating 1983ish defeat and have them throw Jeremy Corbyn overboard. Then the last Opinium poll for The Guardian shows it is not going quite according to plan. The previous Opinium poll included only the TIG-in option while the new one has both TIG-out and TIG-in and here is what they say:

So Opinium find both Conservatives and TIG slightly down while Labour and LibDems are both slightly up. More important they now find more potential TIG votes coming from the Conservatives than from Labour, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole scheme. To be honest the Opinium poll might be something of an outlier as we now have a pool of seven polls testing TIG on the ballot and the average of these sends quite a different message with half of TIG's potential voters coming from Labour. Guess we will have to wait for another batch for a better understanding of the situation.

Point is that Guardian-Observer come out as the main propagandists of English Macronism and their own regular pollster says it's not really working, while other pollsters are not sending a clearer message with TIG anywhere between 8% and 18%. As I already pointed out it is quite challenging to include TIG into the algorithms of a seat projection model as we have no idea where they would actually stand and who the actual candidates would be (more Labour defectors or some new blood). Best educated guess is that three of the current Tiggers would make it on the own merits (Umunna, Soubry and Gapes). The other six ex-Labouristas would almost certainly go down as they would have faced deselection anyway and a really good result would probably add no more than 3 to 6 seats, possibly with the other two ex-Tories biting the dust too.

Chris Leslie might boast that Tiggers are here to create 'something new that the majority in the mainstream of British public opinion can support', they're not quite there yet as mainstream public opinion does not seem to see them as the visionaries who will shape A New England 🔊. Around the time the SDP and then the Alliance were formed in 1983 polls credited them with 19% to 33% of voting intentions, significantly more than today's polling credits Tiggers with. And they ended up with 25% at the 1983 GE, third party breathing down Labour's neck but even then that made them only a distant third in number of seats. The run-up and aftermath of the 1983 GE also tell a lot about what might happen to the junior partner in a hastily-crafted alliance, if Tiggers ever think some sort of pooling of resources with LibDems might be a good idea.

Years Ago 🔊

Tiggers should definitely take some time off to sit back and reflect on what happened to the SDP. At its peak SDP had 31 MPs after Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins gained seats from the Conservatives in by-elections, and that fell to 30 when Bruce Douglas-Mann lost Mitcham and Morden in a self-inflicted by-election. The only time the governing party won a by-election since 1960, a feat that wouldn't be repeated until Tories accidentally gained Copeland in 2017. And a good reason why Tiggers won't seek a renewed mandate through by-elections: the only SDPer who had the honesty to risk it lost by double digits and a 10% swing against him.

Now look at the 1983 GE stats. Where the 30 SDP MPs came from and what happened to them. Two chose to retire because their seats had been abolished in the Third Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. Also because of boundary changes seven of them stood in a different constituency from the one they represented before dissolution. Which did not prevent a major disaster as only five of the 28 incumbents who stood again were returned to Commons. A sixth seat was added when newcomer Charles Kennedy gained the newly established Ross, Cromarty and Skye from notional Conservative incumbent Hamish Gray in one of few upsets that year and became Baby of the House at 23.

I guess that puts to rest the old common wisdom that the Alliance did spectacularly well at the 1983 GE, more than doubling their number of seats from the 1979 Liberal intake. In fact, thanks to defections and by-election gains, the Alliance had 43 MPs on dissolution (13 Liberals and 30 SDPers) and lost almost half of them when they returned only 23 MPs. Fucking good reason why Tiggers should avoid a LibTig pact: the Alliance benefited brain-dead Liberals (rising from a notional 11 or an actual 13 to 17 seats) and not the SDP who lost 80% of their seats.

Let me tell you about a story now, a tale of glory and power 🔊. A Tale Of Three MPs. Rewind to 1974. Back then the London Borough Of Islington had three Commons seats: North, Central, South and Finsbury. All three elected Labour MPs with outright majorities and double-digit margins. Fast forward to 1981. All three (North's Michael O'Halloran, Central's John Grant, South's George Cunningham) defected to the SDP. For the record Dunfermline-raised Cunningham is the one who introduced the infamous '40% amendment' to the Scotland Act 1978 that would eventually lead to James Callaghan's demise and propel Margaret Thatcher to Number 10. Then forget Islington South as it does not play any part in the rest of the story. 

Fast forward to the 1983 GE and Islington Central is abolished by Boundary Review so John Grant finds himself without a seat. Chooses the easy way out and moves to Islington North to challenge sitting MP and fellow SDPer Michael O'Halloran. Against all logic SDP deselects O'Halloran, who leaves the party and goes on to stand as 'Independent Labour', and anoints Grant for the upcoming GE. Guess what happened: both bite the dust and a high-profile far-left newcomer, imported from neighbouring Haringey on his impeccable Bennite credentials, gains the seat back for Labour just two weeks after his 34th birthday.

Aye you guessed right: Jeremy Corbyn. And the rest is history. Whether it's truly a tale of glory and power or just a tale of power is up to you to decide. No doubt though Young Jezza ticked all the right boxes to become a Bennite Wunderkind. Just sayin' and now back to the business at hand.

Hello Hooray 🔊

Some day the show will begin and they've all been ready for ages. When exactly is anybody's guess. Rumours about the long-awaited Snap Election Of 2019 come and go. Even the recently predicted date of 6 June does not look like a plausible option anymore. The English Government will find itself entangled in the post-Brexit fallout no matter what form it takes. Urgent problems will certainly be of the same magnitude, if not the same nature, in a no-deal or in a bad-deal situation and running down the clock will no longer be an option then even if Theresa May has definitely honed her skills at it. So the snap GE would have to be put on the backburner for a while.

Main reason Theresa May would have to call a snap GE anyway is that she never pledged anything but standing down before 2022 and this would not apply if a snap GE was called. And a snap GE victory would give her grounds for reneging on the pledge, or even cause the 1922 Committee to eat humble pie and ask her to stay. Favourable polling is also an obvious incentive to go down that road and cash in on Labour's sorry state. The gamble might pay off even more if further MPs jump ship to TIG and if the snap GE happens in a few months, when most of the instant Brexit fallout will have died down after people realize there is no turning back and Little England Brexiteers revelling in their 'success' boosts the Tory vote.

So brace yourselves for more uncertain times ahead and stay tuned for further upsets.

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley 
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain for promis'd joy

© Neil Slorance, The National, 2019

© Alice Cooper, Neal Smith 1973

Westminster Projection - February 2019 Update

Brexit B-35 also House of Stuart Anniversary

Strange Days 🔊

Just picture this: one country has the worst government in living history and a couple of generations before that, knowingly colliding head-on with the consequences of the worst policies of the last seventy years and what is the country's choice? Ready to give that very same government a fourth chance at the next election. Can't happen you say? Think twice it's happening here and now as latest UK polls show. Every time a poll pops up showing Labour in a less desperate situation another one follows that contradicts it. Strange days indeed.

Of course we all know the reason. This rare moment in time when the stars align to gift the UK that unique combination of the worst government since 1945 and the worst opposition ever, the ones who would manage to abstain if asked if rain is wet. The trend has again turned against Labour. But the influx of new regular polls was on the slow side until the Independent Group announcement (more on this later) so maybe a new batch will shed a different light. Or not. Though not necessarily the way you might expect if the latest YouGov is any hint.

We also had the first YouGov poll of the year using their Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification model (MRP) which Wikipedia now has filed under a section of its own. Bear in mind though that, for all its alleged sophistication, MRP remains a statistical approach and relies on uniform swing just as other models do. First instalment of 2019 has a 40k sample UK-wide which means it weighs heavily on the current rolling average and any prediction is likely to deliver results quite close to those published by YouGov.

Then the Weekly Westminster Circus goes on. Even John Bercow seems to have lost his grip on it some days but he also is a gifted comedian so you never know….

Theresa May suffered another humiliating defeat on Brexit at the hands of her own party last week. Meanwhile 42 Labour MPs (technically 41 plus John Woodcock) including 3 Scottish ones (Killen, Murray, Whitfield) threw the Bain Principle overboard and voted for an SNP amendement that would have requested the English Government to seek a three-month extension of Article 50. But MSM seemed to have bigger fishy fish to fry than this at the time. Nothing better than a good old Churchill controversy all over media to distract oiks from what's really important especially when one of Labour's Finest triggers it this time.

People Are Strange 🔊

Current Poll-O'Polls includes the six most recent fielded between 2 and 19 February including two after the Tory-Labour mini-merger known as The Independent Group. Super-sample size is 47,656 with a theoretical margin of error of 0.43%. Of course it is hugely dominated by YouGov's Mega-MRPoll and delivers pretty similar results with Conservatives 5.1% ahead on average to YouGov's predicted 5.2% Tory lead. But of course other polls carry a much more mixed-baggy message and we'll certainly have to reassess the situation once the YouGov MRPoll has been purged out of the system.

This paints a rather distressing picture of the electorate's state of mind. Even classic 'class divide' is blurred. What crosstabs from different polls show is that C2DEs are more likely to vote Labour not because they are significantly less likely to vote Tory but mostly because they are massively less likely to vote LibDem or Green. But they are also more likely than ABC1s to vote UKIP which will come as a surprise only to those who never bothered to understand the true mechanics of nationalistic populism within the working class. Exhibit A: how UKIP's collapse in 2017 benefited Labour as much as and sometimes more than Tories in Labour's Northern Powerhouse heartlands.

Obviously leaders' approval ratings have a lot to do with this. This fortnight's Opinium poll for The Observer has Theresa May on -21% net and Jeremy Corbyn on -27%. Interestingly Nicola Sturgeon does better than both on -15% overall including English and Welsh voters. Then of course nobody gives a rat's fuck how Surrey or Monmouthshire rates Nicola, only Scotland matters and here she gets a +3% net approval (40% approve, 37% disapprove, 23% neutral). These ratings are also reflected in the 'preferred PM' polling:

Again 'None of the above' is the first choice but then May still leads over Corbyn roughly 60-40. Both Labour and the Conservatives should also worry about some other results from the early February Opinium poll that was fielded before the Umunna Split. 27% of people feel represented by Labour and 25% by Conservatives, significantly lower than either's vote share. 38% feel than neither Lab nor Tories represent them and 40% think some new party would be a better option to represent them. What shape that then-hypothetical new party should take is carefully avoided so don't jump to the conclusion it should be the now-revealed English Macronism even if this is what Observer-Guardian clearly imply and support. That it could be some sort of true English Socialist Party sounds just as credible to me. Just sayin. And the first polls including The Independent Group do not contradict my view (teaser as I will deal with this a bit later).

The Soft Parade 🔊

Here is what current polling would deliver on the current 650 seats and on the infamous 600-seat gerrymander. Not quite fitting a predictable pattern as you would expect something closer to a repeat 2015. But the LibDems surgelet probably deprives Conservatives of the handful of seats that would give them a majority and paradoxically also helps Labour in a number of marginals.

I fed the polling average data into Electoral Calculus and Election Polling to see what they make of them. As usual their projections are quite close to mine as can be expected with models working on variants of uniform swing. The noticeable difference is that my model is slightly more favourable to the LibDems probably because of the weight of the proportional swing component. But here a handful seats make the difference between Tories a few seats shy of a majority and them enjoying a majority even it's the weest and most fragile.

For good measure I also added YouGov's own projection from their Mega-MRPoll. YouGov's voting intentions results are pretty close to the current rolling average as their sample makes up 84% of the current super-sample, so the comparison is valid. Their projection is really close to what uniform swing variants deliver so maybe the YouGov Model is not that harrypotterishy magicwandy thing they claim it to be. Right now we have no hard evidence it does better than the classic projections based on uniform swing, especially if you factor in the limitations even a massive 40k sample is bound to have.

A GB-wide sample of 40,119 amounts to 63 per constituency. When Ashcroft polled individual constituencies in the run-up to the 2015 GE their samples were usually 1,000 yet they still missed quite a few. So YouGov's claim that their model 'allows to produce a fairly accurate estimate of the number of voters in each constituency intending to vote for a party on each day' sounds like a smitch of an exaggeration. And while they always remind you they were the only ones to predict a hung Parliament in 2017, they fail to mention they got the number of seats right only for the LibDems and Greens. Their biggest miss was predicting the SNP on 44 seats, which is roughly what a standard uniform swing model would have predicted with what Scottish polls were available in the last week before the election. For the record my own model said 43 seats then.

When The Music's Over 🔊

On current polling a mere 27 seats are projected to change hands which is a rather low point in reliably recorded parliamentary history and explains the quasi status quo result. Recent trends are confirmed that showed only LibDems and SNP having some reasons to celebrate though their gains are well below what would have constituted a political earthquake. Only the distinct possibility of Nigel Dodds losing to Sinn Féin by a hair would make good headlines the day after.

The summary of gains and losses and the transfer matrix do not show any obvious and consistent pattern. Rather it goes in many directions at once with only Labour likely to be an overall loser and a mixed bag for Conservatives ending with a net loss of one seat. It's not event 100% satisfactory for the SNP this time as they're projected to lose North East Fife, the closest 2017 result UK-wide, to LibDems.

27 seats changing hands would be the lowest since 2001. Only in 1951 before that did such a low number of seats change hands and this was the only time when so few switching seats were enough to bring on a change of government.

Riders On The Storm 🔊

48 seats would be in the danger zone with only a minor swing needed to change the result. 27 Conservative seats would be concerned versus only 13 Labour seats. At opposing ends of the spectrum Conservatives could bag an extra 15 seats and Labour an extra 21.

Interestingly two of the new Independent Group would find themselves in the danger zone: Anna Soubry in Broxtowe, Angela Smith in Penistone and Stocksbridge. I fully expect Soubry would make it thanks to even a minimal transfer from 'moderate' Labour voters and a few LibDems. But Smith would certainly go down as the 2017 result was already close and core Labour voters would undoubtedly turn against her even at the risk of switching the seat to Tories, and the 'funny tinge' gaffe wouldn't help.

Take It As It Comes 🔊

The alternate Commons you get after reallocating marginal seats to the runner-up are not really more satisfactory than the direct projection. What current polling says is basically status quo, as what matters is not really the exact make-up of the oppositions, but how well the governing party does, or doesn't. So right now the likely outcome would be a Conservative minority Government propped up by DUP. Old boss, new boss, new tricks, old tricks.

A small swing (1-2% depending on the region) towards Tories would give us the 'Back To 2015' Commons we have seen many times already in recent projections. While a similar swing to Labour would once again deliver the kind of unmanageable 1910ish situation that was the norm for a while in last year's projections. Even the Unicorn Coalition of Labour and SNP would fall short of a majority.

Ship Of Fools 🔊

At Last They Are Free 🔊. After months of posturing and unbearable suspense the announcement of The Independent Group splitting from the English Labour Party came as a massive surprise. But only because more than four of them were involved. Or were there actually only six? As Luciana Berger definitely won the Political Comic Award Of The Year with her introduction as 'I am the Labour and.. (silence)…. oops…. (laughs)… uh…. (more laughs) I am the MP for Liverpool Wavertree'. This lot certainly are a 'funny tinge' of centrism especially now that pro-austerity Tory reinforcements have cranked then Up To Eleven. Will TIG become the Spinal Tap of UK politics? My tenner says they will sooner than later. Because of course kicking off English Macronism is a sure winner seeing how well the original version works in France.

Back to the original Seven Dwarves' motivations, their obsessive pounding at 'far left taking over Labour' just made me wonder which side they would have chosen in the days of Attlee and Bevan when far left ideology shaped the UK's future. Of course their sudden urge to secede from Labour had nothing to do with four of them (Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker) having already lost votes of no-confidence by their own CLPs. While Luciana Berger escaped one only by shamelessly playing both the pregnancy and antisemitism cards, and Leslie faced almost certain deselection. Just as Soubry's decision to pander to centrist voters had nothing to do with self-preservation when facing strong odds of being unseated at the next GE.

May right now has far more reasons to rejoice than Corbyn, all things considered. Westminster Grapevine has it that the odds of a snap GE being called in the near future have increased. May could gamble triggering it either by choice (capitalizing on Labour's weaknesses) or under duress (for fear other Tories might cross the aisle). Only detail is that dissolution needs 434 votes, so Labour support which I think they are highly unlikely to grant in the current climate. Or May could resort to the Schroeder Manoeuvre, a self-orchestrated vote of no-confidence as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder tried in 2005. Of course his SPD lost the snap GE that followed to Angela Merkel's CDU. But history does not always repeat itself, or does it?

Finally I will walk the dug on thin ice about the Gang Of Seven's fixation on Labour's alleged antisemitism which at face value you'd believe was the chief reason for the breakaway. Unless it wasn't and they used it only as an attention-grabber to hide the vacuity of the rest of their statement. Luciana Berger certainly went one stunt too far when describing Labour as 'institutionally antisemitic'. People easily see through that kind of overkill and the immediate backlash was to remind them that exaggerated allegations of antisemitism are usually just cover stories to demonize anyone who criticizes Israel's expansionist policies and negation of Palestinians' rights. Ironically Berger herself was targeted early in her parliamentary career for not being supportive enough of Israel.

The Independent Group are right on one thing: the Westminster System is broken and needs fixing. They're wrong on the conclusion: they are not the solution.

Break On Through 🔊

The real question now is how much real electoral potential TIG have. There is no easy or obvious answer to this. Between themselves Umunna's Eleven bagged 337,441 votes at the 2017 GE, 1% of the UK-wide vote and more to the point 1.2% of the English vote as TIG for now is an England-only thing. The only way to know their real influence would be if they all resigned to trigger by-elections, an option they instantly ruled out minutes after their initial announcement. Level One of irony is that they demand a People's Vote on Brexit but won't submit themselves to one in their own constituencies. Level Two is that now-forgotten Tories-turned-Kippers Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless hold the moral high ground here as they at least had the dignity to submit themselves to popular verdict by by-election.

Truth is Tiggers have every reason to fear by-elections as most of them would end up woodchipped and quartered. My best educated guess is that Umunna, Soubry and Gapes would make it on their own merits, if this is the appropriate term. Berger, Coffey, Leslie, Ryan, Shuker and Smith would be lyed down the pipes. Allen and Wollaston would probably face even odds with a fair chance of surviving if LibDems didn't stand in the hypothetical by-election. Just remember what happened to the SDP. When Commons disbanded prior to the 1983 GE they had 30 MPs and only 6 came back despite them being in the Alliance with the Liberals.

Opinium were the first to test TIG's electoral viability in their mid-February fortnightly poll for the Observer, actually fielded the week before the Tiggers broke free. Observer-Guardian were quick to headline about '59% of Brits ready to vote for new centrist party'. Not a big surprise as they are the main propagandists of English Macronism but of the course things are a bit more complex than this. Only 15% of respondents said they were definitely ready to vote for the new party, closer to what later polls found.

Interestingly SNP voters were the least likely to listen to the centrist sirens probably because they already have the party they need and who adequately represents them. Unsurprisingly the greatest support came from LibDem voters who probably had not thought it through as the intention is not for TIG to replace LibDems but to supplement them. Strong UKIP support is more surprising unless you count it as willingness to disrupt the Westminster Powerplay no matter how.

Later polls by YouGov, Survation and Sky Data then asked about actual voting intentions. YouGov and Survation tested both TIG-in and TIG-out scenarios while Sky Data tested only TIG-in which makes it impossible to quantify transfers from other parties, and is why I will only use the YouGov and Survation data here. For the record Sky Data found TIG on 10% which is consistent with the other two polls. On average TIG would bag 11% with 5% coming from Labour, 3% from LibDems and 2% from Conservatives.

It must be stressed though that the two polls differ wildly with YouGov seeing Labour as the major contributor to TIG while Survation's results are more of a mixed bag with LibDems likely to lose the most to TIG. But all three polls confirm TIG having just limited appeal in Scotland (2% for Sky Data, 8% for YouGov, 3% for Survation) with Scottish Conservative voters identified as the main contributors to the potential Scottish TIG vote.

Sad truth is that, whatever polls say, it is actually impossible to predict how many Tigger MPs would be returned at the next GE. We have absolutely no idea what a 'notional TIG vote' would have been in 2017, and no idea either where TIG would field candidates at the next GE. So it is quite a challenge to find the proper algorithms to process them in a uniform swing model, even a slightly tweaked and improved one. Their theoretical vote share also hints at fuck all actually as 13% UKIP in 2015 meant just one seat while 7% LibDems in 2017 meant twelve seats. Besides TIG are not yet organized as a proper political party and probably would lack the necessary electoral machine except in a few select seats.

Unless of course Tiggers finally decide to eat their hats and negotiate their own brand of the Auld Alliance with LibDems they are currently ruling out. Thus they could benefit from LibDems' electoral machine, however weak it is in most parts of the UK, and also from LibDems sitting out a select number of constituencies. Based on current and provisional polling LibTig could bag 5 to 10 more seats than LibDems on their own. Let's say this is for now the best assessment of Tiggers' real weight until we have means to project a more precise number. Definitely not a game changer of epic proportions.

Waiting For The Sun 🔊

Speculation again abounds about a possible Snap Election of 2019, with 6 June even mentioned as the date it might happen. Which is as close to 'two years to the day' after the 2017 GE as the convention of holding elections on a Thursday will allow. If this is to actually happen the dissolution vote in Commons would have to be scheduled in the second half of April. Technically the deadline would be 30 April as the Fixed-Term Parliament Act requires 25 working days between dissolution and the election. But acting on it a wee smitch earlier wouldn't hurt.

Though why would anybody actually want a snap GE is open to debate. The No-Deal-Brexit fallout would make it extremely risky for the Conservatives and it could be even more of a setback than 2017. Labour would be hurt too not just by TIG, but probably also by some of their pro-EU voters switching to LibDems and Greens, and major losses in Scotland also predicted by recent polls. Though there is no way to predict how voting intentions would be actually impacted by TIG or change during the campaign, as James Kelly pointed out at the end of his recent article on the YouGov mega-poll. So maybe even the SNP should be careful what they wish for.

I will seriously believe a snap election is in sight when DUP publicly and unambiguously announce they stop propping up a failed English Government. But so far all they have done is obfuscating with their 'the-dug-did-it' talking points blaming everything and the kitchen sink leaking on the European Union and the Republic of Ireland. There is a sure way though to know if Tories really have plans for a snap GE. Will they rush their massive gerrymandering through Privy Council and Commons? If they do, get ready for the snap GE as the atrocious gerrymander is their only way to stay in power while losing the election.

What's past is prologue and the hour is getting late so stay tuned for the unexpected.

History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake