Jeremy's Den

03/09/2019

Westminster Projection - Return of Commons Special

Eighty years ago today France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declared war on Germany, starting World War Two
Also 361st anniversary of Oliver Cromwell's death and Steve Jones' 64th birthday

Commons reconvened today, Hallowexit D-58, but with only 18 Commons working days at most left until then since Elizabeth Windsor gave Assent to Boris Johnson's coup and the only unknown is whether Parliament will be unplugged on the 9th or the 12th of this month, with the earlier being the likelier. And already we have the first upset of what may be a long series with Tory Remainer Philip Lee spectacularly defecting to the LibDems on live TV. So we have what might be the only true fun moment for a while, with Johnson totally losing it amidst cheers from the LibDem benches and John Bercow hoarsely shouting Oooordeeer!!! And of course the First Minister of England just lost his majority and worse will soon come his way. Too bad this overshadowed Nicola Sturgeon non-surprise announcement that she will definitely seek a Section 30 Order before the end of this year, to hold IndyRef2 some time next year. But this one will surely make headlines in the Scottish press tomorrow.

Of course you are totally entitled to unbelieve Jacob Rees-Mogg when he states this is standard practice, as standard pre-Queen's Speech prorogations last a week or two, not five. And there was ample time to get Elizabeth's Assent earlier and have prorogation cover only the first week of September with the Queen's Speech scheduled for the 9th or the 10th. Which would also have given John Bercow an opportunity to boost his popularity ratings by cancelling the Conference Recess and giving Parliament more time to take back control of the proceedings as they did in the spring, as you can trust the English Government to flood Commons with 'urgent' post-Queen's Speech legislation to avoid them debating anything else until the B-bomb blows up. Which might become irrelevant if the Scottish Court of Session upholds the currently pending case against prorogation and fast-tracks it to the Supreme Court, but don't hold your breath. Now only the dimmest of wit will believe prorogation has nothing to do with Brexit but only with the NHS and violent crime. If that was the case then it would make sense to have the shortest possible suspension and pass dedicated legislation as a matter of urgency, but never mind.

Prorogation should not have been a surprise to anyone as rumours about it abounded for weeks. But I have a hunch a number of opposition MPs thought that Johnson was more barky than bitey and was bluffing. He was not, and it is a clear warning of how far he is prepared to go to secure his Do-Or-Die Brexit. A lucky break for the oppositions could be prorogation annulled by a court ruling in any of the three ongoing cases, good luck with that. And then gathering enough support from 'moderate' Tories to force a vote on explicitely ruling out No Deal and forcing Government to seek another Brextension. Good luck with that too, and odds are Johnson would find a way around that anyway. Most obvious one being 'notwithstanding' the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) and calling a snap GE on Royal Prerogative, tentatively now for early November as he obviously hopes to ride the wave of recent polls predicting a Tory victory is indeed possible. But circumventing FTPA would be a coup within a coup, so might backfire and turn enough voters against him to jeopardize the Tories' electoral prospects, as prorogation is already highly unpopular. Anyway the sequence of polls conducted since the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election have significantly improved the odds of a Tory victory and possibly even a Tory majority at the snap GE, while both Change UK and UKIP have earned extinct species status, regularly bagging a stunning 0% of voting intentions.

There's one lesson Jeremy Corbyn should remember when he writes his Memoirs: in 2019's England, destructive bullshitting works better than constructive ambiguity. Of course only a minority consider a Trumpo-Bolsonaresque poundshop Enoch-Powell-cum-Twitter as the best possible PM, but an amazingly tinier minority consider a bicycle-riding tie-avoiding reformed Bennite would be. And when all the none-of-the-abovers and don't-knowers are counted out, Johnson leads 70-30, even better than May in her best days. Sad but that's what the polls say. Even when Johnson postures as Oliver Crowell Reincarnate, people still like him better than Corbyn and 10-12% would also consider either Jo Swinson or Nigel Farage fit for Number Ten. Seriously?

Prorogation might be a factor in the Conservatives' future electoral prospects as it definitely does not go down well with public opinion and even Conservative voters. YouGov polled it twice, first on an instant online poll on 28 August and it showed 47% opposed and 27% supporting with 27% of Conservative voters opposing it. It was then polled again along a regular voting intentions poll conducted on 28 and 29 August, which delivered 53% opposing it and 31% supporting with again 27% of Conservative voters opposing it. Unsurprisingly Scotland voiced the strongest opposition with 58% opposing and 17% supporting in the first poll, and then 67% opposing and 23% supporting in the second poll, and I guess this has a lot to do with Nicola Sturgeon's warning that the English Government could also shut down Holyrood if they saw any short-term political gain in doing so, pandering to the most extreme fundamentalists among their hardline Britnat supporters. Which uncoincidentally coincides with the SNP bagging 45% of voting intentions and a potential 55 seats according to YouGov's most recent Scottish subsample.

Of course all the polling and psephologysing make a modicum of sense only if the electorate move their asses out of the couch and get the fuck out to vote. Bear in mind the seemingly unalienable right to vote is a recent innovation as the UK became a fully functional democracy (if it actually is one with dark money and foreign influencers and Cambridge Analytica but let's say for now it is) only at the 1950 General Election, after the Representation Of The People Act of 1948 at long last abolished the last remnants of feudalism (university constituencies, multi-member constituencies and plural voting) and finally made 'one person, one vote' the Law of the Realm. Just bear that in mind and also that, if you can't be bothered to move your fucking fat ass out of the fucking couch and walk to the polling place, you totally forfeit your right to whine about anything any politician does, because this one is not unalienable. Today likelihood to vote is one of key components of pollsters' weighting mechanisms and some do publish their findings along with voting intentions. The most common practice is to rate likelihood to vote on a scale from 0 (definitely not voting) to 10 (definitely fucking sure to vote) which I have aggregated into four levels from Abstainers (ratings 0 to 3) to Solid Voters (ratings 9 and 10) for easier reading.

Based on the most recent published crosstabs, turnout at the next election should be somewhere between 70% and 75% UK-wide. Actual turnout was officially 69% in 2017 and 66% in 2015, quite lower than current surveys deliver. Some sources have expressed doubts about these figures because of multiple inaccuracies in the electoral register that might have overestimated the number of eligible voters and thus underestimated the turnout. I also have a hunch that polls overestimate the potential turnout as people are likely to say they will vote even if they won't, just to look better. Anyway what matters most are the differences between the different categories included in the crosstabs. Fist batch fits with common wisdom: the higher up on the food chain, the likelier to vote; and old farts are more likely to vote than young punks. Hint: right-wingers overall more likely to vote than left-wingers, so you know whom to target in GOTV drives.

The crosstabs by nation (Northern Ireland again not polled) and current voting intentions also deliver some counter-intuitive results. Note first that it is logical that crosstabs by voting intentions hint at higher turnouts than the average result. Obviously people who have already made the decision to vote for one of the major parties are more likely to show up at their polling place than undecideds or those planning to vote for smaller parties, whose voting intentions appear to be more volatile. Even so I have some doubts about the figures for Scotland and the SNP. Turnout in Scotland was 71% at the 2015 GE and 66% at the 2017 GE, and differential turnout works against the SNP more often than in their favour as the 2017 GE made painfully clear. Then there have been two significant counter-examples this year. First the European Parliament election when turnout in Scotland was 6% higher than in 2014 and 3% higher than the UK average, with some 90% of additional voters voting for the SNP and propelling them to three MEPs. Then the Shetland by-election just days ago with turnout up 4% on the 2016 election and the number of votes for the SNP up 50%, translating into a 9% increase of their vote share. Reasons for the SNP to wish these two elections are not outliers but signal a switch to more favourable voting patterns North Of The Wall.

My current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones fielded between the 21st and the 31st of August. Super-sample size is 10,945 with a theoretical 0.95% margin of error. Which might be somewhat significant as all six polls point in the same direction with a smaller spread than in previous projections. Three of these polls were conducted before prorogation and three after it. Though voters massively oppose prorogation, this oddly does not show in the voting intentions. Yet. The super-sample is admittedly YouGov-heavy as three out the six most recent polls were conducted by them. But YouGov's alleged pro-Tory bias, which is in fact more of a house effect coming from their weighting methodology, is irrelevant as other pollsters also have Tories in the lead and Labour a distant second. Anyway here is what the weighted average says:

On such numbers Labour would suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous incompetence. They should have remembered that actions speak much louder than words and inaction is the loudest of all. It's not like anybody shoved an AK-47 up their arse and forced them to procrasturbate on Brexit, tango on Scottish Independence and abstain on Torysterity. Two years on from their unexpected 2017 success story, Labour have become inaudible and undecipherable. Polls predicting their lowest share of the popular vote since 1918 are just the natural consequence of this. Conservatives would be wrong to rejoice too loudly though as their predicted 33.2% vote share would be their lowest since the days of Tony Blair, the lowest for any winning party since 1832, and the only the second time in reliably recorded Parliamentary history that any party would be called to form a government on less than one third of the popular vote, the one precedent being Ramsay McDonald's minority government in 1923 (Conservatives actually won the popular vote then on 38% and Labour finished second on 31%) and it did not really end well.

The breakdown of voting intentions by nation and English meta-region is even more distressing for Labour and in many cases also one massive fuck of an upset. This is based on the crosstabs from the six polls in the super-sample, which as usual do not cover Northern Ireland (more news from there just below). Labour down to second party in Wales and tied with the Tories in London is certainly not something anyone expected just months ago, yet the most recent Wales-only and London-only polls showed Labour already losing ground there massively as early as last May. The data for the historic heartland in the Northern Powerhouse are even more striking as they show voters who defected to the Brexit Party have come back home to the Tories but not to Labour, who also fail to gain back Europhile who switched to the Libdems. The worst of both worlds, and quite a recipe for disaster. And it just might get even worse. Of course the main point here is the SNP bagging more than 40% of the Scottish vote and on their way to a 2015ish result, which is also what James Kelly finds on slightly different voting intentions as he relies only on YouGov's Scottish subsamples that are, quite ironically, better for the SNP than other pollsters'.

English pollsters tend to forget Northern Ireland exists and that their MPs (at least some of them) can exert significant influence on UK politics. Last time an English pollster surveyed Northern Ireland was Survation in December 2018 and then only as a subset of a massive UK-wide poll sponsored by Channel 4. And the last before that was like…. uh…. never. Fortunately the Northern Irish press and Belfast-based pollster Lucid Talk fill the blanks. Lucid Talk conducted their last poll in early August and it has only been released now via Electoral Calculus. Disclaimer: Lucid Talk got the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election right but don't mention the 2017 GE or the 2019 European election to them as they got both massively wrong. Anyway their poll is the only one we have so far this year and it paints quite a different picture from what we had two years ago:

These results are likely to ruffle a few feathers in Belfast as they show all four main communitarian parties down on the 2017 GE results: Sinn Féin and SDLP by 4% each, UUP by 2% and DUP by 7%. The so called 'non-sectarian' (though non-communitarian or cross-community might be better descriptions) liberal Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) is the main beneficiary with their vote share up 13%, most likely coming from both sides in equal numbers. The hardline Unionist TUV are probably up too but the poll has them bundled with the far-left People Before Profit, the left-wing Unionist PUP, UKIP and the Northern Ireland Conservatives as 'Others'. What Lucid Talk found confirms what was seen at the 2019 local elections and the 2019 European election: voters challenging the 2017 duopoly of Sinn Féin and DUP, possibly in part in reaction to the breakdown of the power-sharing agreement at Stormont, with voters of all previous denominations switching to the APNI who did surprisingly well at the locals in Belfast and bagged their first ever MEP just weeks later. If the poll is accurate the APNI could now bag two MPs at the snap GE while they held only one seat briefly in 1973-1974 and then again only one for a full term in 2010-2015.

The projection from this poll and the variants factoring in marginals show that the DUP have the most to lose here. They are predicted to lose Belfast East and Belfast South to the APNI, which does sound about right considering the voting patterns there at the two 2019 elections, but could also lose Belfast North to Sinn Féin, which would be a major upset as this is DUP Commons Leader Nigel Dodds' seat since 2001, which he held by only 4.5% in 2017. Sinn Féin appear to be in a more comfortable position as they are threatened only in marginal Fermanagh and South Tyrone by the UUP, and Foyle by the SDLP. In their best case scenario Sinn Féin could even become the first party, keeping all their current seats and gaining Belfast North while the DUP could possibly also lose South Antrim to the UUP, who already held this seat from 2001 to 2005 and again from 2015 to 2017. Now let's just wait for the next poll to see if these trends hold.

More importantly in the current context, other questions in the same poll show that 58% of Northern Irish want the backstop with 40% opposed and only 2% undecided. Again the results are clearly split along the communitarian divide with 15% of Unionists and 91% of Nationalists supporting the backstop. So-called 'Neutrals' (cross-community parties) hold the key with 73% supporting the backstop. Also 83% of Northern Irish think the UK is handling Brexit badly and only 13% think they're doing well. Even 60% of DUP voters think the UK Government is making a pig's ear of Brexit. Numbers the First Minister of England should bear in mind next time he talks to EU leaders.

On current voting intentions, my seat projection is unsurprisingly disastrous for Labour who would go down to slightly below their number of seats after the 1983 GE, the year Jeremy Corbyn was first elected. That would be their worst result since World War Two and obviously the end of Corbyn's career. Doing worse than Michael Foot is certainly not how he would want to be remembered but that's what voters would choose as a parting gift, at least this week. Not that Johnson would have any reason to be overly festive as he would do no better than Theresa May and fall six seats short of a majority. Bear in mind that with Sinn Féin still sitting out the actual number of seats would be 644, so 323 needed for a majority. Which Johnson would get by bribing the DUP another £1bn and thus bagging a six-seat majority, narrower than May's in 2017 with the DUP having lost two seats. The obvious temptation then would be to strike a deal with the Brexit Party, getting a more comfortable eighteen-seat majority.

In such a configuration, Jo Swinson would surely first seek Nick Clegg's advice and then swamp Fiona Bruce with a truckload and a bucket of reasons why this is all Corbyn's fault and she was really ready to support a Labour minority government. Then she might want to come up with something more creative than 'I dislike him because he is an old Marxist' though I would not put it past her to argue just that and blame the defeat on Corbyn's unwillingness to morph into Tony Blair or give way to Tom Watson. But before pulling that sort of stunt, PM Jo should remember what the proverbial Irishman allegedly said: if I were you, I wouldn't start from here.

Now just think for a while that on Snap Election Night we might actually be in that alternate timeline where the National Unity Front survived all the internal bickering and kicked out Boris Johnson, with Keir Starmer then becoming the caretaker PM just days ahead of Brexitocalypse and managing to secure an extension just long enough to hold the snap GE and reboot the whole clusterbùrach. Labour members and even the NEC might then remember hypothetical polls fielded before the summer break that predicted Starmer on an unambiguously Europhile manifesto would have much better odds at winning an election than Corbyn and say "now we have Keir already so let's keep him", which would leave Swinson no choice but to support Labour, or could even possibly make her choice irrelevant if Labour got a majority with just the SNP aboard. But of course this is just an alternate universe that will never materialize. Unless….

For completeness' sake, other prediction models deliver different results as usual. You know the technical reasons why already. Interestingly the only thing all have in common is the SNP bagging 51 seats. Then just go back to the seat projections just before the 2017 GE and how almost everybody missed the hung Parliament and predicted a solid majority for Theresa May. Of course the main reason was polls were totally off and predicted a 7% Conservative lead when they actually won by just 2%. But there were also some faults in the models used then, which is why I altered mine to include a small amount of proportional swing. And also why Martin Baxter switched to the current Electoral Calculus Advanced Regression Model. With vastly different results but I guess we will not have to wait too long now to know who was right and who was wrong. Interestingly The National's own prediction is closer to mine and also points to a hung Parliament though they differ on the number of Labour and LibDem seats.

In this projection 110 sitting MPs would be sent packing, including eleven Scottish Tories who surely never expected their parliamentary careers to be over so soon. The number of changes would roughly match the 1880 and 2015 GEs, the former being a decisive Conservative defeat that ended Benjamin Disraeli's last term as PM and the latter a temporary reprieve for David Cameron, and don't say 'David who?'. This year the summary of gains and losses and the full cartography make it look like an indecisive battle that does not make future prospects clearer. Tories would just balance serious losses to the LibDems with serious gains from Labour. So the Boris Bounce would deliver no better than the May Splat two years ago. Karma, bro, karma.

The Conservative Government payroll would lose just one Cabinet member (Oor Alister Union Jack), plus six Junior Ministers, one Whip and two newly-appointed Parliamentary Private Secretaries, all to the LibDems except Oor Colin Clark to the SNP. Which incidentally shows that none of the other eleven Team Ruth MPs found their way into the unpaid payroll, and not even to the mysterious Ministerial Team than once hosted Moray's Absentee Referee Dougie Ross. New Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Paul Scully would also lose his London seat to the LibDems. An unexpected upset would be Oliver Letwin also losing his seat to the LibDems but in the current climate he might have defected to them anyway before the snap GE, so maybe we should call it a half-loss then. Or whatever.

The Labour frontbench would lose one Shadow Secretary, Oor Paul Sweeney, and four Shadow Ministers including Oor Second Scottish Shadow Lesley Laird. Madeleine Moon, President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, would lose her Bridgend seat to the Conservatives, highlighting that Welsh Labour might in just as bad a shape as Scottish Labour right now. Some iconic upset Labour gains from the 2017 GE (Battersea, Kensington, Canterbury, Peterborough,...) would also switch back to the Conservatives. Definitely Nightmare on Victoria Street on Election Night.

Current polling would deliver 67 marginal seats, a rather low number compared to most previous elections. This time Labour and Conservatives would have as much to lose from a smallish swing in voting intentions, having roughly the same number of projected marginals.

The possible alternate election results after reshuffling the marginals also offer some interesting perspectives. An additional slump of the Labour vote would give Johnson his much awaited majority and he would not need anyone to hold his dick while he pees. Unless of course the rest of the week before Commons' Shutdown sees other defections from the Tory benches that would reshuffle the electoral math in an unpredictable way.

The other alternate scenario with Tories doing poorly would be a dilemmatic one for Jo Swinson. Just do the math. 290 Tories + 53 LibDems = 343, so quite a majority. But 225 Labour + 53 LibDems + 53 SNP = 331, a slimmer majority but still enough to propel Jeremy Corbyn to Number Ten. And Jo would still get her hard-earned ministerial car. But of course would have to swallow Corbyn granting a Section 30 Order to hold a second Scottish Independence referendum. So where would Jo's red line be? Quite a momentous choice to make.

Recent events should have been a wake-up call for the electorate, but the signals they send through polls are far from unambiguous, including the Tories still leading in voting intentions after prorogation. We already know the First Minister of England is a pathological liar of intergalactic proportions who made a career fabricating fake news when he was the Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Brussels, where he quickly became the other correspondents' and true journalists' laughing stock, and again during the Nasty Party leadership campaign when he totally made up the story about the EU-regulated kipper-on-ice from the Isle of Man. Yet enough people seem ready to vote for him to secure a Conservative victory at the snap GE. Meanwhile qualitative polling sheds an interesting light on what people actually think about Brexit and what their priorities are, which is often oddly at odds with the semblance of Tory manifesto that they make up as they go. Kantar recently polled their sample on a number of issues besides voting intentions, and despite predicting Conservatives leading by 14%, the findings from the other questions are much less in line with current Tory strategy. Here are the people's favorite options according to both the Kantar poll and later YouGov that returned only slightly different results and definitely led to the same conclusions.

Again Theresa May's thrice-aborted Withdrawal Agreement is less popular than No Deal and would probably be less popular than the return of the Black Plague if that was an option. Les than a third of respondents supporting the No Deal Crashout again show the English Government has absolutely no mandate to follow their preferred option and are the ones actually betraying the people. Only half of the 2017 Tory voters support No Deal, which is also a clear sign as a lot of them have since switched to the Brexit Party, mostly from the most fundamentalist Brexit-crazy faction. So it's fair to assume that Johnson has now the support of much less than half of his potential voters. Which would also be a warning sign if the Brexit hardliners had any modicum of awareness of what is happening in the real world. Sadly now we're way past the point where they totally lost touch and became totally intoxicated by their own lies and cheap talking points. A strong plurality choosing to remain in the EU whatever the means (Commons revoking Article 50 or a second referendum) also confirms other polls that predict Remain would win if another referendum was held and No Deal was the other option on the ballot. Which won't happen as long as the lunatics hold the keys to the asylum but you never know what might happen just two months from now, as any post-Cummings government would most likely acknowledge the people's unalienable right to change their minds and would act accordingly.

Boris: Gotcha, ye punks. Angela: Really? I despair.

Emmanuel: Enough with that, Boris and up to your room NOW.

Kantar also surveyed what would be the people's priorities if a new withdrawal agreement was negotiated. Which the EU has made perfectly clear is not currently happening as the English Government was again caught shamelessly lying about progress being made. But if there ever were real negotiations the people's majority choices would look a huge fucking lot like Single Market and Customs Union. With a Backstop Plus for Ireland and some modicum of Freedom Of Movement. Which is the fun part here as people are OK with Brits in Benidorm but not really with Frogs in Kent. Not that Frogs would want to invade Kent anyway after it has become the biggest fucking lorry parking lot this side of Pluto. Of course no contribution to the EU budget but you surely don't expect those £350mil a week to come back to the NHS, or do you? And then the UK holds the unalienable right to devise their own rule and regulations, so let's go on with the Kipper-On-Ice from the Isle of Man that the First Minister of England loves so much. Now if Cummings is serious about respecting the people's will he know what to write in to Johnson's next standing orders. And that is definitely not hard borders and ration books after Halloween. But as Bob Dylan once (almost) said, something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you Mister Johnson?

One important factor is that Johnson's Tour of Europe and G7's performance have not been the unmitigated success the Tory-friendly press is spinning. He has been forced to back down on his threat to refuse meetings with EU heads of state unless they scrapped the backstop, and has had to concede the burden of proof is now on the English Government to provide workable solutions to the Irish Border impasse. Not that anyone expects much from him as he is not actually negotiating in good faith. Which Dominic Cummings readily admitted when he described the pretendy negotiations as a sham, which is not a smart move. If your game is to gaslight the other party then don't say it aloud before any semblance of talks have started, or else you lend credibility to the widely held belief that Johnson also gaslighted Elizabeth Windsor into granting Assent to prorogation. Even Angela Merkel's infamous '30 days' remark is nothing like media made it to be as the 'blistering timetable' would have been there anyway if final decisions are to be made at the next EU summit in October. Odds still are the EU's 'rhetorical shift' is just that, nothing new will come out of Johnson's gesturing and posturing, and No Deal Crashout will happen, just the outcome 7 in 10 voters don't want. And the EU will be happy to see the last of Johnson as they let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house.

On an unrelated note, some ten days ago The Guardian published a piece basically praising Jeremy Corbyn for being divisive, which was quite amusing as Guardian darlings English Macronistas are the ones most likely to lambast Corbyn as divisive thrice a day and then again after last call. Coincidentally it was published just a few days before a strongly-worded piece by Owen Jones denouncing 'both-sideism' that The Guardian would surely have dismissed as divisive if they hadn't published it themselves. Then the case against divisiveness is absurd on so many levels I lost count on the way. Politics are divisive and it's indeed their raison d'être because people are divided, sorry to state the obvious. Elections are divisive so maybe we should cancel them altogether and go back to the days of Charles II's Restoration, I guess Jacob Rees-Mogg would support that as a return to the natural order.

Now if you're looking around for who's pointing fingers at whom, what you see is 'moderates' of every shade painting Corbyn as divisive, Leavers calling Remainers divisive or Unionists calling the SNP divisive. Quite a pattern here: the right calling the left divisive because obviously there is nothing divisive in an ERG coup engineered by an unelected Prime Buffoon, denying people their right to change their minds over time, planning to sell the whole country to American Big Business or demonizing everything and everyone who challenges immobilism. We should all embrace divisiveness as it is and as always been the surest path to democratic progress. The only alternative is sanitized and spineless compromise which is consensus in word only because the self-entitled overlords always have their way and fuck the useful idiots and collaborators. This goes hand in hand with my personal core belief that authority should always be challenged and questioned instead of being blindly obeyed. Just look at the last very public example of brainless submission: Sajid Javid's abject self-humiliation sucking both Johnson's and Cummings' dicks after one of his spads was fired for no reason other than instilling a culture of fear in Government circles.

Obviously proneness to challenge authority on a regular basis is not a British trait, let alone an English one. Blame that on centuries of potty-training in believing that society is actually split between The Betters and The Oiks, that 'Upstairs, Downstairs' was a faithful representation of what the order of the universe is meant to be for all of eternity and Jacob Rees-Mogg is a real human being, so that The Betters are genetically entitled to hold positions of authority and abuse them whenever they see fit. As in "we did it for your own good" which truly means "we did it for our own good because we are the overlords and don't give a rat's fuck about you". Boris Johnson is the prime example of this, and how the 'boys will be boys' attitude that goes hand in hand with blind subservience to authority, took him from being a mediocre journalist fabricating fake news to score cheap political points to becoming the First Minister of England. People had been warned, too bad they chose not to listen. Note too that Scots are known to be guided mostly by obedience to the rule of law (exhibits: Nicola Sturgeon's approach to holding IndyRef2, Joanna Cherry's rationale for challenging prorogation in the Court of Session), which is a far far cry from submission to authority, both in its philosophical tenets and its consequences, so there's definitely still hope for us.

Events move fast and time is running out but now we have reached the stage where protracted trench warfare is more likely than nuclear holocaust. The First Minister of England and his spad-sacking spad are definitely better at this game than his opponents so far, because though this be madness, yet there is method in't. Tactics here are abundantly transparent: light as many fires as possible even if they sens conflicting messages and let the oppositions find out which counter-fires of their own they should light. Which delivers a steady influx of news that might be real or might be fake, so what is considered true as I type this might not be true anymore when you read it, let alone tomorrow morning. But there are still moments of comic relief amidst the chaos and I still haven't decided which one was yesterday's best. Could be Jacob Rees-Mogg being called a muppet on live radio. Or a rebel Tory backbencher calling Tory Brexiteers 'English nationalists' (scroll right to the end). He remains unnamed so far but I have a hunch this could very well be Oor Wee Paulie Masterton, the one Scottish Tory MP who defied the whip repeatedly about Brexit, though others say it definitely was the now world-famous Philip Lee.

Part of the English Government's master plan to fuel confusion is Sleekit Gove's Sunday talking point that they could simply ignore legislation passed by Commons that they don't like. Which was a wee smitch heavy-handed, though he probably got Commings' seal of approval, as there are subtler ways to achieve this without bluntly saying this is the actual goal, All the First Minister of England has to do is ask some Armageddon-friendly Hermined Unelecteds to stage a filibuster in the House of Hermined Unelecteds. This is typically a no-experience-needed assignment as the only requirement is being able to talk and talk and talk. And the ability to resist the urge to pee until Pink Gin Break on the afternoon of the 9th when the Prorogation Bell tolls. Then it's damnatio memoriae for all unfinished Parliamentary business. For all intents and purposes it never existed and has to be restarted from scratch after the debate on the Queen's Speech, which by ritual would last six sitting days, that is until 22 October if the House sits on a Friday or 23 October if they don't. Time definitely flies.

For a short while it looked like the oppositions had hit the reset button after wasting valuable time with the National Unity Government unicorn, agreeing that legislation to avoid No Deal was the priority and any no confidence vote will be tabled later. But the best-laid schemes…. you know the rest and prorogation achieved just that. Only silver lining being than we did not have to listen to Jo Swinson bitching about it anyway as Divisive Corbyn had not yet agreed to let backbenchers lead the dance. Now a vote of no confidence has become the likely Plan A again, though there is still some confusion about what Plan A and Plan B would be, with the distinct possibility of Plan A1 (no confidence vote) and Plan A2 (blocking No Deal) being pursued simultaneously. What is painfully clear is that the oppositions' intentions are unclear. Even Labour Grandees don't agree on whether it's A1 and A2 in parallel, or A before B, or B before A. So far. Which is not exactly a recipe for success.

The First Minister of England should nevertheless worry about his coup backfiring for 'tis the sport to have the enginer hoist with his own petard. First obvious opportunity being to vote down the Queen's Speech, which could definitely happen as Johnson has now officially lost his majority after Philip Lee defected to the LibDems with theatrics specifically designed as a slap to Johnson's face. So now Johnson starts with a two-vote deficit on 316 (309 official Tories minus Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Antoinette Sandbach and Guto Bebb, 10 DUP, plus repeat sex-offender Charlie Elphicke) to the oppositions' 318 (320 non-Conservatives minus Charlie Elphicke and Nick Boles). Odds are a handful of Independents and possibly some Labour MPs will abstain so in the end it might be up to Philip Hammond and his Gaukeward Squad of Merry Men to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them, thus turning Johnson's Do-Or-Die bluff into 'Thus Diest Thou'.

A lot now rests on the Tory Rebel Alliance's resolve to go through this though it might be safer not to impone too much on all of them actually going all the way down that road. What might actually convince them to take the plunge is Johnson's threat to bar them from standing for election ever again. Which of course is typical Bullingdon posturing as Johnson certainly has the means to strongarm Conservative Associations into deselecting their sitting MPs but even that could fail to be 100% successful. Then there is no way even Dominic Cummings can bar sitting MPs from calling Johnson's bluff and standing again as Independents or even as candidates for another party. I guess even a career psychopath would balk at the prospect of another two dozen LibDem MPs and two dozen fewer Tory MPs after the snap GE. Which would effectively kill all hopes of a Cumminist majority and enhance the chances for an alternative Government, which would also become more of a realistic option if Corbyn stands down after a walloping and a less divisive leader takes over. Keir Starmer, anyone? Don't dismiss the possibility just yet.

The future ain't what it used to be so stay tuned for further broadcasts

Reality is just a matter of perception, both subjective and malleable
If you can dream a better world, you can make a better world
(Fringe, episode Bad Dream, 2009)

20/08/2019

Westminster Projection and then some - 20 August 2019 Update

Hallowexit Doomsday-72 and 51st Anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies
Also Nigel Dodds' 61st birthday and Robert Plant's 71st

General election polling remains quite confusing. Pollsters agree there has been a 'Boris Bounce' coupled with a 'Nigel Slump'. But there is also circumstantial evidence of a 'Jeremy Bounce' with Labour skyrocketing to 25% or more in some polls, coupled with a 'Jo Slump' with LibDems plummeting below 20%. But the Boris Bounce is not as high and strong as Tories expected when they morphed into the Cumminist Party of Little England to promote a Crash Out Brexit. Then everybody is currently focusing on something else as Jo Swinson, Dominic Grieve and the mainstream media have successfully diverted the public's attention from the ends to the means, the variously implausible incarnations of a National Unity Government that nobody even considered a serious option before Commons' Summer Break. But two things have become clear because of this: LibDems and rebel Tories dislike Jeremy Corbyn more than they despise Boris Johnson; both would rather let Johnson have his way with a hard Brexit than put country first and unite behind Labour's leadership. Only the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens have been consistent and responsible during all the stages of the Summer Recess Circus. Don't be surprised then when polls again send mixed messages though certainly not predicting a Borisunami at the Poppy Season Snap GE.

The twelve polls fielded since Johnson's Accession to the Despatch Box (aye, that's the correct spelling in Commons' Auld Englishe) show the Tory voting intentions flatlining and even slightly down from Peak Boris three weeks ago. This is certainly not the sign of a convincing and sustainable bounce, especially as the extra Tory voters come from the Brexit Party and Labour remain in relatively good shape despite all the Europhile votes lost to the LibDems. Of course polls might very well take yet another turn now that the First Minister of England is busy preparing to set the country on a wartime footing in peacetime while getting ready for an immediate snap GE. I think Jeremy Corbyn should be happy about the latter as Johnson bringing back Lynton Crosby is in fact good news if you remember he was the brains behind Theresa May's 2017 GE campaign and Labour should definitely welcome the help. It will all be about Brexit anyway and YouGov conducted an interesting poll just days ago.

YouGov polled four different outcomes, regardless of their likelihood to happen: UK leaves EU without a deal, which looks like Johnson's official policy now; UK leaves EU on the terms of the negotiated deal, which would have to be Thresa May's thrice woodchipped Withdrawal Agreement Bill; UK leaves with a freshly negotiated deal including remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union; UK holds a second EU referendum and Remain wins. Respondents were asked to rank the four options from 'very bad outcome' to 'very good outcome' with 'acceptable compromise' thrown in the middle for the faint of heart. The results (as usual after undecideds removed) are quite enlightening and basically not good news for Johnson and only moderately good for Corbyn.

Unsurprisingly May's Deal is still less popular than No Deal, though a third of the electorate have resigned themselves to describe it as acceptable for lack of a better option currently on the table. It is a clear warning to Johnson and probably Corbyn too that a second referendum delivering a Remain victory is the strong first choice of all opponents to a crash-out, with the renegotiated deal a second choice but also the preferred option for two thirds of the electorate when 'acceptable compromise' is added. Johnson is thus made painfully aware that he no longer has any mandate as people have an unalienable right to reconsider in the light of new information, and his gesturing and posturing is of little effect. Clearly his trips to Paris and Berlin ahead of his first G7 Summit now look more like a walk to Canossa than a victory lap, as Macron and Merkel must surely be aware of the shifts in British public opinion and that Johnson is in no position to demand anything from anyone. Unfortunately for Jeremy Corbyn YouGov also tested two hypotheticals: UK leaves EU with no deal and Jezza never becomes PM; Jezza becomes PM and holds a second referendum with Remain on the ballot. And the results are quite devastating for Corbyn.

In a major contradiction to their choices on the four earlier options, a significant majority would accept the crash-out if it also keeps Corbyn out of Downing Street. Even more than a quarter of Labour voters and Remainers would take No Deal over a Corbyn Premiership. This is surely the result of Labour's sticking to 'constructive ambiguity' for far too long and lacking credibility as Born Again Remainers, but also the expected outcome of lingering doubts on Corbyn's fitness for the job and ability to deliver any positive outcome to the current shambles. More on this and even worse somewhere below. Corbyn is obviously right to hit hard at Johnson as it may convince doubters to back him after all, but should be careful what he wishes for as a snap GE might no longer be Johnson's to win but could still be Labour's to lose.

The current weighted average of voting intentions shows only minimal and statistically insignificant change from what we had ten days ago. Current Poll'O'Polls includes the six most recent ones, conducted between 29 July and 15 August. Super-sample size is 11,278 with a theoretical 0.89% margin of error. Bear in mind though that the spread of voting intentions from poll to poll is much higher than this, at 4% for the Conservatives, 6% for Labour and a massive 8% for the LibDems. Only the SNP's voting intentions remain relatively steady around 40% of the Scottish electorate.

No party should feel secure on such results. The electorate has taken wild turns one way or the other repeatedly in the past so nothing is set in stone. The trends of voting intentions since the 2017 GE show an almost stably normal situation for about 18 months with the two traditionally main parties still strongly in the lead despite a slow rise of the LibDem vote, then all hell broke loose and froze over in the run-up to the European Parliament election. The one that was and should never have been but sent pollsters and voters alike spinning into disarray. What happened since the beginning of this year is the most remarkable part with the foreplay and aftershock of the European election moving the goalposts again and again. Then Brexit PTSD (pre-traumatic in this case rather than post-traumatic) reshuffled the deck again and made any definitive prediction quite risky.

Even with Labour and the Conservatives gaining back a fair share of previously lost votes, they are both in a rather precarious position. Voters have already sent the message that even the best laid schemes of Lab and Con can go askew, and might feel empowered to do so again in the near future. Traditional party loyalties have been ripped apart by the European election and the countdown to Brexitocalypse is still unlikely to fully restore them. The predicted breakdown of voting intentions by nation and region, as per the latest Comres poll, again supports this.

The British political landscape as we knew it in 2017 after UKIP's terminal meltdown has vanished out of sight and what we have is now more reminiscent of something 2015ish when the New Model Blackshirts still scored in the double digits, only made worse by lingering doubts about the two main parties' actual abilities to govern properly, exacerbated by a feeling of insecurity fuelled by the realization that self-destruct is incoming and major shortages of basic goods are no longer a fantasy. None of the historic Red and Blue heartlands have been restored to their former glory and both parties will certainly soon find the next campaign to be more of an ordeal than anticipated.

Current polling would again deliver a hung Parliament as the alleged Boris Bounce would fail to deliver a Conservative majority. In this awkward outcome where both Labour and the Conservatives would lose seats, again only the SNP and the LibDems would have reasons to celebrate. Though the LibDems might choose to go easy on the pink champagne as 40-50ish seats is far from a spectacular success for a party who only recently bragged about bagging 100 or so. Then dancing days would be here again though you have to wonder who would lead the dance. Boris Johnson fighting the election on a Pure Brexit manifesto and flunking it would inevitably lead to his demise, and a similar fate would certainly befall Jeremy Corbyn for delivering the worst Labour result since 1983, coincidentally or not the very year Jezza was first elected for Islington North. So all political business would come to a grinding halt unless some interim leaders emerge overnight from the Red and Blue ruins. Philip Hammond and Keir Starmer anyone?

Whoever leads the two prospective government parties, getting a strong and stable majority would be more of a challenge than ever before. No stairway to heaven for anyone here as the Con-DUP alliance would fall ten seats shy of a majority, or four if they managed to get the Brexit Party MPs on board too, provided no still sane Tory MPs defect to kill such a hard-Brexit pact. At the other end a Labour-led Rainbow Min coalition would fall fifty seats short with the LibDems sitting on the fence, which is the likely outcome at least for the first few days after the election. That's where an hypothetical PM Starmer would come in handy as he would deprive the LibDems of their main talking point: no deal with Marxist Corbyn. Of course PM Hammond would also fit the profile as he would deprive the LibDems of their second talking point: no deal with Buffoon Johnson. But both parties might also opt out of the emergency leader option and go on with Bozo and Jezza, and then all bets are off and Oor Lass Jo ends up the kingmaker, a once-in-a-generation opportunity she would relish.

Whatever the configuration and her close circle's best advice, there is still the distinct possibility that Jo Swinson would be clegging (Wiktionary: gaslighting your own bandmates and negotiating in bad faith by putting impossible demands on the table that will ensure the negotiation fails and you still can shift the blame on the other party's intransigeance while getting what you always aimed for in the first place but dared not tell out loud for fear even the most gullible would see through your stunts, also recently known as johnsoning in European Union circles). Then PM Jo might also want to think it through thrice and wonder how voters would react to her putting personal dislike over country and crutching an ERG War Cabinet, and they might even regret kicking Jared O'Mara the fuck out of Sheffield and Oliver Letwin out of Dorset, as current polling predicts. Unlike felines, LibDems are not entitled to nine lives and making the wrong choice here might be their one and final Day of Reckoning. Not that many would shed but a crocodile tear about the LibDems becoming an extinct species by their own shenanigans.

Now a quick aside on what other projection methods make of current polling, for completeness' sake. Pure PNS (Proportional National Swing) is a theoretical construct as no general election has ever matched the results it predicts. But there is always an outlier, think Scotland 2015 when the SNP multiplied their vote share by 2.5 nationally and this was pretty much duplicated across all constituencies with double-digit swings. UNS (Uniform National Swing) is generally accepted as the less unreliable method but there are also some outliers. For example in 1997 UNS from the 1992 GE would have delivered 401 Labour, 212 Conservatives and 11 LibDems instead of the actual 418-165-46. Remember you should never underestimate the LibDems. Finally Electoral Calculus' Advanced Regression Model has an in-built 15-seat bonus for the Conservatives but still remains quite close to UNS and is probably just as technically good when you bear in mind that the polls' usual margin of error can easily displace two or three dozen seats one way or the other.

Current projection says 105 seats would change hands, which is close to what happened in 2015 with 111 changes and 1880 with 113. But while 1880 and 2015 qualify as realigning or at least readjusting elections, this one would only muddy the waters a smitch further. The summary and cartography of gains and losses illustrate the ambiguity of the projected results. Labour's seven gains would in fact be only retaking seats they won in 2017 and whose MPs later defected and they would even lose John Woodcock's and Angela Smith's seats. Likewise LibDems would lose only Streatham and Totnes who would come back home to Labour and Conservatives respectively, who won them in 2017. Then I guess LibDem HQ would have moved Chuka Umunna and Sarah Wollaston to friendlier neighbouring constituencies. Just think Richmond Park or Twickenham for him and Torbay for her.

Here only ten members of the English Government would lose their seats. No genuine Portillo Moments as the Muckle Dugs like Rudd, Raab, Buckland or Sharma, who were once not so long ago seriously threatened, would now survive. Only a Mini-Portillo with Alister Union Jack going down and having all the time he wants to spend on his 486-hectare (that's 1,200 acres in ERG Measurement Units) farm near Lockerbie, though I doubt Fiona Bruce would grant him a special mention in the middle of the massive SNP gains on Election Night. Unfortunately the full updated list of the 45ish Private Parliamentary Secretaries is still covered by the Official Secrets Act so a few names are missing from the fatality list, and would surely have included a couple more Scottish Tories as the bag-carrier-cum-rat slot is the only trinket left for Wee Andy Bowie, Absentee Referee Dougie Ross and Boaby Snatcher Ross Thomson, the three Scottish Boristas who did not make it to the frontbench. Then Johnson might possibly discourage his Cabinet Ministers from putting Fanboy Thomson in such a position as he might misunderstand the true meaning of 'feel the mood of your fellow Members'. Better safe than sorry.

Ironically former Tory Grandee Oliver Letwin, who could have been a credible substitute (oops, sorry, not Led Zep) Swinson-approved PM after a mediocre election result leading to Johnson's resignation, would also lose his West Dorset seat to the LibDems by a hair. Which would also be a parachuting opportunity for Sarah Wollaston if she agreed to cross county boundaries to hang on to a seat.

There would still be a modicum of hope left for the projected losers who might be able to sneak back in through the out door as 74 seats would qualify as marginals, including 27 of those predicted to change hands. Most of them would be the traditional Red-Orange-Blue battlegrounds with the Brexit Party now almost out of the picture. On current polling the Conservatives would be deeper in the danger zone than Labour with almost twice the number of marginals.

The alternate scenarios after reallocating the marginals to the runner up would not really deliver better outcomes than the direct projection. The basic result being something of a lose-lose situation for both Labour and Tories, reshuffling the marginals could do little to improve it significantly for either side, though some combinations could deliver a number of quality moments for the smaller parties during coalition negotiations.

The best case scenario for the Conservatives would deliver just a ten-seat majority. At first glance this might look safe enough, but John Major in 1992 started the 51st Parliament with a 21-seat majority and ended his term as a minority PM relying on UUP support to get legislation passed. What happened once can happen again and probably earlier in the term, and wreck Johnson's premiership. At the other end of the spectrum Labour's best case scenario would turn out to be quite nightmarish for everyone involved. Even a deal with the LibDems would leave the Tories one seat short of a majority, which is just the kind of tricky situation the LibDem leadership might want to avoid, especially if a mediocre Labour result led to Corbyn's resignation and a more Swinson-compatible leader being elected. A Labour-led Rainbow Max Pact could then rely on 350+ seats, depending on which smaller parties would join it. Not totally bulletproof as internal tensions might implode it sooner than later, but that's the best we could get.

This week Deltapoll polled Boris Johnson's and Jeremy Corbyn's leadership valence, which is the assessment of their attractiveness vs averseness (rocks vs sucks to make it simpler) on various criteria related to their perceived leadership abilities, and then some more personal stuff. This 'the people as character witnesses' exercise is definitely bad for both but arguably even worse for Corbyn. First both are perceived as untrustworthy and out of touch, definitely a bad start for an aspiring PM. Even the 'principles' item is not as good as it seems as the precise wording hints that the true meaning is 'opinionated' rather than actually 'principled' and both get roughly the same result anyway so this is a tie rather than giving either an advantage. I'd say the first half says BOZ 0-0 JEZ.

The next items on Deltapoll's laundry list are even worse for Corbyn. Of course you might question Johnson's judgment when his cherrypicked Foreign Secretary only recently learned about the English Channel, and even argue that the crises he handles best are the ones of his own making. But the respondents have spoken and Corbyn does not even do that well on 'fairness and equality', to quote the full wording of the item. So I say the second half is BOZ 2-0 JEZ. Bully for you, comrade.

Then Deltapoll treads on more personal ground with questions about kindness and baws. I fail to see how kindness can be even remotely considered an asset in the shark-infested Westminster swamp but then it's their questions, not mine, and anyway it's a draw with slim majorities concluding that both Bozo and Jezza are actually mean. Then the last two items are devastating blows for Corbyn. Though I again feel quite flabbergasted by Johnson's ratings. In my book Do-Or-Die is more akin to watching a dead dog floating down the Thames (hint: scroll down to the end of Chapter XIII) on a summer day than to actually making any kind of decision, tough or not. I also question the assessment of Johnson's ability to get the job done as he actually has got fuck all done so far and when he does it will be more like Timothy McVeigh getting the job done in Oklahoma City than Winston Churchill getting the job done in World War Two. But Deltapoll's respondents are merciless and the third half is definitely BOZ 2-0 JEZ. And we have game, set and match for Johnson on an overall BOZ 4-0 JEZ. Holy fuck.

For your complete information 38% would enjoy spending buddy time with Johnson and 48% wouldn't, while 21% would enjoy it with Corbyn and 61% wouldn't. Guess the feisty buffoon image has some perks that the long-faced dogmatist image hasn't. On to more practical concerns, 32% would trust Johnson to drive them home after a party while 49% wouldn't, but only 31% would trust Corbyn while 53% wouldn't. Which sounds a bit odd as I would trust Johnson to have one too many at a party while teetotaller Corbyn would have stayed on Diet Malvern. But then Corbyn admitted he does not own a car so that may be a factor here. Also 25% would trust Johnson to look after their children while 56% wouldn't, and here Corbyn fares just as badly with 25% who would trust him and 55% who wouldn't. Remember one of them will have to be trusted with the future of our children, not just occasional daycare. Just sayin. The only major piece of information lacking here is which one people would trust most to safely walk their dog. Guess we can trust Deltapoll to ask about it next time.

The now world-famous Lord Ashcroft poll about Scottish Independence seems to have been the spark that broke the camel's back. It surely has lifted some inhibitions and opened the gate to a flood of good feelings towards Scottish Independence, or at the very least the Scottish people's inalienable right to have the final say on this. Of course the loudest outraged shrieks and howls came for the usual suspects right here in Scotland, who are delusional enough to think their opinion matters beyond their small circle of cronies. I give you Ian Murray and Jackie Baillie. Don't bother searching for Jackie's ulterior motives as she's too thick to have any and it's transparently clear the post-Blairite MSPs were not actually targeting John McDonnell but just wanted to undermine Richard Leonard. Crosstabs from the Ashcroft poll offer some interesting perspective on the three stages on the road to Independence. All results here with undecideds and non-voters removed, first on support for holding IndyRef2 in the first place, broken down by past votes.

There is only a slim majority in favour of holding IndyRef2, which is quite surprising when compared to previous polls and the other findings of this one. Oddly Ashcroft did not include LibDem voters in the crosstabs, probably because their 7% vote share in 2017 does not give them that much of an influence on the overall results. Of course there is also some ambiguity and margin for interpretation in these results. Though it makes sense for some Yes supporters to oppose IndyRef2 if they fear Yes might lose it, or for some No supporters to support it because they hope Yes would lose it and make it a one-in-many-generations event. The crosstabs of voting intentions add some information, beyond the 52% for Yes that made headlines.

The most surprising part is 12% of 2014 Yes voters now switching to No. Possibly this has to do with Brexit and unwillingness to add 'chaos to chaos', as the Unionists talking points describe it. It should be noted too that the combined Yes-to-No and No-to-Yes switches would deliver roughly a 50-50 split. Yes winning in the headline question comes from people who did not vote in 2014 and for the most part they must be younger voters as this category is massively pro-Independence (72% of the 18-24yr olds according to this poll). Surely Ashcroft will poll 16-17yr olds too next time to get a more accurate snapshot. Then the final stage is which outcome people see as the most likely: would the Union prevail? or would it be Independence? A massive majority think Independence would win, a significant result as it confirms momentum is on the side of Yes, with Yes voters showing much more confidence in their cause than No voters. Though one in six Yes voters doubt the outcome, probably the same ones who would not hold IndyRef2 in the first place.

Just a few days after the Ashcroft poll was published, Opinium added a question about IndyRef2 to their standard voting intentions poll. They polled respondents on whether the UK government should 'allow' or 'prevent' holding IndyRef2 (their wording, not mine) but this time UK-wide and not just in Scotland. Oddly they included a 'Neither' option to their prompts, an unlikely answer for what is basically a Yes-Or-No question (pun fully intended). Even so the results, with undecideds and neitherers removed, are quite impressive. Support in Scotland is a significant 6% higher than in the Ashcroft poll and majority support across all English regions is also quite an upset. Though of course I don't rule out some ulterior motives like BritNats supporting IndyRef2 to make sure the Sweaty Socks Subsidy Junkies are kicked out of Our Precious Union and the Barnett dosh is channelled to Surrey where it belongs. Though of course there would be no Barnett dosh of Scottish origin left after Independence, but we shouldn't let minor facts get in the way of a good fantasy scenario. Or should we?

Opinium's crosstabs with current voting intentions, not the 2017 vote this time, are equally impressive if not even more. Massive support from Labour and LibDem voters is obviously the most important and unexpected result and I'm ready to count it as genuine support for Scotland's unalienable right to decide our own fate. Some 40% overall of right-wing voters supporting IndyRef2 is more ambiguous as they are the ones most likely to entertain 'Kick Out The Jocks' ulterior motives. But you know what they say about a gift horse…. even when you have every reason to beware of Brits carrying gifts. Ultimately what matter most here is the solid majority UK-wide supporting holding IndyRef2 even it would be foolish to believe all do it genuinely out of the goodness of their hearts.

All these results show that Scottish Labour and Scottish LibDems are definitely and dramatically at odds with their fellow party members Sooth Of The Wall, which should convince Jo Swinson, Willie Rennie and Richard Leonard (or whoever sits as Branch Office Manager at 290 Bath Street G2 4RE come next week) to take a deep breath and think it through. But will they? Even if they don't they will have to face the harsh and simple reality someday soon. The United Kingdom is falling apart thanks to Boris Johnson and all the Queen's corgis couldn't put it together again.

Meanwhile the trends from recent polls point to really good times for the SNP and really bad times for the Unionist parties. Unfortunately we don't have a post-Boris full Scottish poll yet, but only subsamples from GB-wide polls that we know are volatile and possibly unreliable. With all the usual caveats, these look quite consistent over the last six weeks and have the SNP up to about 40% on average, Conservatives down below 20%, Labour and LibDems tied on about 15%. While it is always fun to see John Curtice once more stating the obvious for the benefit of an Edinburgh Fringe audience, he remains oddly noncommittal about the number of SNP seats to be expected, while predicting a number of LibDem MPs GB-wide that a ten-year old would have easily got from Electoral Calculus. Then I will say it: the last full Scottish poll, conducted in late June, predicted 50 SNP seats and the current trend is likely to deliver 51 to 53, with only the LibDems holding their ground while both Labour and the Conservatives are on a downward spiral.

Of course Scottish Labour very publicly imploding does help the SNP as it hammers home their utter irrelevancy in today's Scotland. John McDonnell's conversion to IndyRef2 was but one more nail in Scottish Labour's coffin as some soon started questioning his ulterior motives: sincere belief in Scotland's unalienable right to decide our own future, or just a stunt to get SNP support to a minority Labour government? Whatever the explanation it shows that Labour have not learned from their recent mistakes. After their shambolic twists and turns about Brexit, a self-engineered cats-in-bag brawl about Scottish Independence will do nothing to restore trust in their policies. Sad and lonely days indeed for Richard Leonard when El Lider Maximo himself hangs him out to dry out in the cold under the bus, a position most awkward, and endorses IndyRef2. An interesting side effect is that the Guardian have toned down their usual anti-SNP stance quite a few notches, with arch-Unionist Scottish correspondent Severin Carrell often giving way to more neutral commentariat lately. The Guardian publishing a piece acknowledging that Independence is inevitable is quite a sign of the times but don't read too much into it just yet. We've already seen the Guardian's conversion from LibDemism to Corbynism to English Macronism to whatever it is these days, so they still might change their stance on this depending on which way the wind blows next month.

The Scottish Twig Office of the English Conservative Party too is in complete disarray. Not that David Mundell saying the exact opposite of what he said before being sacked by the First Minister of England is anything of a surprise. And of course it has a lot more to do with pissing off Johnson than actually acknowledging Scotland's right to democratically decide our fate. It just strengthens my case that the SNP should fight every forthcoming election on a strongly worded pro-Independence manifesto and make it the core issue of their campaigns. Even threatening UDI sounds like a good idea these days, just to see what the Minister for the Union would come up with to call the SNP's bluff. I guess even the promise of SuperDevoMax, Federalism in a word, would not quite cut it as the dominant feeling these days is not just 'Yes to Indy', it's also 'Break away from England's post-Brexit self-destruct' whatever way it is achieved. Never mind what condescending arch-Unionist journos say, Johnson is indeed the gift that keeps on giving and the end is near. For the Union. And a new beginning for Scotland.

1,153 days on from the EU Membership Referendum that left the whole British political establishment dazed and confused, and six dozen before the Great Leap Backward, the song remains the same. The Conservatives have kept all options on the table, except seeking another Brextension, revoking Article 50 and passing a Withdrawal Agreement Bill, while still claiming it's everybody's fault but theirs and hoping enough gullible voters will fall for it and vote for them. Of course when the First Minister of England has nothing to offer but 'Drink The Kool-Aid, Oiks', it will work only with those daft enough to buy that high levels of expertise in procrastinating, obfuscating, blame-shifting, fabricating, fearmongering and grandstanding are also proof of fitness to govern. Like a third of the English electorate, give or take, and a disturbing fifth of the Scottish electorate. Saddest part is that the oppositions look like having quite run out of options too when 72 calendar days before Halloween actually mean only 22 Commons working days left to defuse the B-Bomb. Unless you count The Guardian's latest fantasy scenario of a Lucas-Swinson ticket excluding 'separatist' SNP and Plaid Cymru as a viable option.

At first it looked like Jeremy Corbyn (or rather Labour's legal advisers) might have hit the motherlode when he asked Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, the Head of the Civil Service, to spell out the rules regarding purdah. By convention purdah starts six weeks before Election Day. But the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) stipulates that dissolution happens 25 working days before the scheduled Election Day, which is also six weeks, give or take a couple of Bank holidays. In the one example we have so far dissolution was effective on 19 April 2017 and purdah started on 22 April to achieve six full weeks as the election was scheduled for 8 June. So whatever the scheduled date for the election, purdah starts on the day of dissolution. Which means that, whichever date Johnson chooses for the snap election, all Government activity basically stops as soon as dissolution is announced. Unless if it does not as constitutional experts beg to differ and are not willing to offer a definite opinion. So it might be up to the courts to decide whether strict observance of purdah means that only passing new controversial policies through Commons is strengstens verboten, or if implementing ones that have already been passed is also off-limits. The tricky part here being of course that No Deal Brexit has technically never been passed by Commons and has become the default option only by default, as the name implies, because May's botched Deal failed thrice and revoking Article 50 was never on the table. Now Sedwill's refusal to clarify the rules and 'make it up as we go' attitude makes it likely this would have to be settled in court, with no indication whatsoever of how long it might take or which way it might go. Note to Comrade Corbyn: whatever you choose to do, act quickly if you want a ruling before Halloween as courts ruling in your favour retrospectively would not look that good. Just sayin.

Then it looks like Westminster is bracing itself for an all-out nuclear constitutional war, and Elizabeth Windsor could very well be the Mother Of All ICBMs in this conflagration. The irony here is that Remainer MPs' amendments to the Northern Ireland Bill, originally designed to make prorogation impossible, now backfire as no business other than the Northern Ireland Bill can be addressed until 9 September, almost a week after Commons reconvene. Silver lining is that it allows the Scottish Court of Session time to rule on the case against prorogation fast-tracked to them, though it would still have to go through the Supreme Court afterwards. Sad part of the news coverage is that media are all over the place with the cats-in-baggery between the National Unity People's Vote Front and the People's Vote Front of National Unity and that some of them have managed to make Jeremy Corbyn the problem while he is part of the solution, and quite possibly The Solution for the few weeks needed to properly organize a snap GE, whether Jo Swinson and Dominic Grieve like it or not. But now we have reached this irony-filled point in the storyline where Boris Johnson's Nemesis might very well not be Jeremy Corbyn but Philip Hammond, provided of course his nineteenish partners in crime agree to put their baws on the table and go all the way. Because a good coup is like a good fuck, half of it is worse than none at all.

The plot thickens so stay tuned for further broadcasts

There is great chaos under heaven, the situation is excellent
Mao Zedong

03/09/2019

Westminster Projection - Return of Commons Special

20/08/2019

Westminster Projection and then some - 20 August 2019 Update

The Smile Signals Emptiness