'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

Today's surprise news is Dominic Cummings has left Number 10. And by "left", it appears the correct term is "booted out".

The news this morning was full of rumours that he'd be resigning at the end of the year, but it was all presented in a "oh, and Cummings might resign in December. And now, the weather" style almost as though it wasn't even newsworthy. As the day went on he disappeared from the news... only to reappear in front of Number 10, carrying the classic cardboard box containing the contents of a cleared-out desk.

This does have a bit of a feel of waiting for the other shoe to drop, after the amount of political capital that was spent propping him up in the wake of Cummingsgate back in May. Perhaps there will be more politics hilarity over the weekend?

...but let me address the argument made by some Members that if a Member is not able to vote, they will be entirely disenfranchised. I do not accept that. There are many other ways in which MPs represent their constituents in Parliament...
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg), Proceedings During the Pandemic, 2/6/2020

disenfranchised
adjective
not having the right to vote, or a similar right, or having had that right taken away
Definition of disenfranchised, Cambridge English Dictionary

Well, the exit poll for today's election has been announced, and the prediction is...

Landslide Tory victory

Conservatives: 368 (+50)
Labour: 191 (-71)
Lib Dem: 13 (+1)
SNP: 55 (+20)
Plaid Cymru: 3 (-1)
Green: 1 (no change)
Brexit Party: 0 (no change)
Other: 19 (+1)

That's an absolute majority of about 50 for the Tories (the magic number for victory is around 320), along with the SNP taking pretty much all of Scotland, and Labour getting thoroughly trounced.

We're all doomed.

So there was a Corbyn vs Johnson TV debate this evening. I've not watched it yet - might look for it on catchup later (though if The Guardian's liveblog is remotely accurate then Boris Johnson's contribution was a continuous loop of "Brexit! Brexit! Brexit!").

But the part that needs mentioning is that during the debate the Tory party rebranded their @CCHQPress Twitter press account as "factcheckUK" and used it to post blatant lies as facts.

I... there are no words for this. Other than to hope it backfires spectacularly on them.

Bonus propaganda time! This Thursday it's the MEP elections that the Tories have failed to avoid!

I must confess, normally I've paid little attention to MEP elections. They've usually ended up happening at the same time as local elections and there's been almost no campaigning material specifically for them - I always got the impression that the main UK parties didn't try particularly hard with MEP elections. I've still voted of course, but that's not due to any effort on the part of the political parties.

This time, however, it's all different because of Brexit and has almost morphed into another Brexit referendum. All the parties have Opinions on Brexit (some may as well be single-policy parties!), and roughly summed up they are:

• If you want to be in, vote Lib Dems, Change UK, or Green.
• If you want to be out, vote The Brexit Party or UKIP.
• If you want to shake it all about, vote Labour or Conservative.

Anyway, on to the Party Political Broadcasts and snark! Since last time (a whole three weeks ago), the BBC have changed their website and it's no longer alphabetically sorted, because why do a useful thing when one can do an unhelpful thing? Sigh. Full-text search it is! Oh, and you can't filter the results to just available programmes because again that would be a Useful Thing and we can't have Useful Things.


The Conservatives get to go first because that's the order the results came in. A collection of totally unbiased talking heads try to justify the chaos by saying it's everyone else's fault for playing politics. Oh, and the Maybot turns up to point out how voting Tory is in the national interest.

Next up, Greens! They're trying to convince everyone that the MEP elections do matter, really, honestly. Look, we even outnumber the Lib Dems! And we're green!

Labour on the other hand have a new film trailer full of gratuitous slow-mo. Showing in cinemas 23rd May, only Labour can save you from Theresa May's deal! We're not sure how, but we'll think of something!

According to UKIP it's all so simple: we voted to leave, and therefore we must leave. And by "leave" we mean "rage quit". Now. Or else.

Now for the Lib Dems. This time they get sidetracked by the glory days of the coalition, before realising that it is indeed MEP election time. Only the Lib Dems can stop Brexit! Oh, and we'll improve the economy and stuff.

Plaid Cymru have dug through their toy chest to put their clip together. The conclusion: everything is Westminster's fault.

New party on the block, Change UK, want to shake up politics with change! Change all the parties! We'll even let you change your mind on Brexit! Bring it on, Brexit Party!

Finally it's the turn of the SNP's latest film, A Tale of Two Cities. Or Two Parliaments. Or something. We'll let you know once Westminster stops ignoring us.


I wrote that list at the top before watching those clips, but looking back on it... yeah, that about sums it up. Labour haven't a clue what they want, and the Tories appear to have a clue except they're merrily self-destructing. The Greens, bizarrely, have moved from being another joke party to actually making a serious effort now - compare the current clips with earlier instalments (such as the Race to Number 10 board game from 2017 or their boy band music video of 2015).

It's local election time for some here in Blighty, which means it's time for another collection of Party Political Broadcasts for me to snark at! This is a bit late as I forgot about them because the local council isn't up for election.

The BBC's making them increasingly awkward to find but I think I've managed to track them down by puzzling through the iPlayer filters - at the time of posting they're listed in the middle of this page. At least the BBC actually understand that "A-Z" is a useful sort order! Anyway, on with the nonsense...


This time I started with the Conservatives... and predictably it's all about how terrible Labour and the Lib Dems are at running local councils and how awesome Tory councils are at building ALL THE THINGS. With a bonus cameo from the Maybot telling everyone how clear the choice is.

Labour are using a charity donation advert to point out that austerity isn't over, and only Labour has the courage to fix things by spending money. Oh, and Labour will build ALL THE THINGS as well (with a notable lack of Corbyn).

The Liberal Democrats are no longer the 3rd biggest at Parliament (they're what, 4th or 5th these days), and so start by taking the opportunity to reminisce about their glory days before getting sidetracked with Brexit. Eventually they realise that the MEP elections aren't for another month.

UKIP only have a regional clip this time, for Northern Ireland of all places. They use a management presentation to rant about NI politics and say how they'll make everything a priority.

The Greens, unusually, have a serious broadcast about changing ALL THE THINGS. Hopefully.

Nothing from Plaid Cymru or the SNP, and it's probably too soon to expect anything from Change UK (the new Lib Dems?) or The Brexit Party (Nigel Farage's comeback tour).


It's an unusual pile of clips. Local elections are always different here - it's much more about local issues and much less about central government, and historically parties beyond the main two (Labour/Tory) do a lot better in local elections. It's common for a local council to end up with no overall control and no-one really has a problem with it (unlike the coalition government of 2010 which confused everyone). Even so, there were surprises - Lib Dems have gone all-in on stopping Brexit, while the Greens actually pointed that they were taking things seriously for a change. Labour and the Tories didn't disappoint though with their traditional mutual blaming of each other for everything.


Well the polls closed half an hour ago and with it only being local elections there's no posses of students frantically counting votes to be first to declare, so it'll be tomorrow before we get any idea how the votes have swung. It could make for an interesting preview of the upcoming MEP elections...

And I thought the 2010 result was going to make things complicated...

With 1 seat left (Kensington, and it'll probably go to Labour given that the Tories are the ones demanding the recounts - but it won't affect the possible groupings) there's now enough numbers to work out what governments, if any, are possible. The magic number for control of the Commons this time is 322 (based on 650 seats minus the 7 Sinn Fein MPs and the Speaker) and no-one has enough for a majority.

The Tories get first go as largest party but with their 318 seats they need to find 4 more from somewhere. Based on the numbers they've got a few options, but in reality they only have the one - the DUP is the only party that'll touch them with the proverbial bargepole and with 10 seats that gives a total of 328 and a 6-seat majority. So that's what the Tories have announced they'll do with a surprising amount of optimism. Theresa May's speech in particular was incredibly arrogant - how has any of this resulted in "a government that can provide certainty" or given "the largest number of votes" to the "Conservative & Unionist Party" (that pairing may have the most seats but only 43.3% of the vote - Lab+LD got 47.4%)?

On the Labour side, their 261 seats mean they need quite a few other parties. In fact they need all of the other parties - Lab+SNP+LD+PC+Green only gives 261+35+12+4+1=313, not enough to beat the Tories let alone gain control. To wrest control they need another 9 on top of that and the only way they can achieve that is by pulling the DUP in as well. Which is unlikely as the DUP are right up there with UKIP and the Tories in political position.

It all comes down to the DUP now - they're the very unexpected kingmakers of the election and can make or break the Tory party. The challenge for the Tories now is if they can somehow come up with a Queen's Speech that both gets the DUP's support while not alienating their own party... and given the DUP's policies I don't think that's possible.

My prediction is that the Queen's Speech will have too much of what the DUP wants in it and end up being rejected by rebelling Tories who think it's going too far. This then gives Labour a crack at forming a government, but with the numbers the way they are they'll be easily defeated by the Tories (with or without the DUP) and at that point it's election time again.

I've voted, and not for you!

And you know what? I might even have not voted for the same party as you. I might have voted for the Tories while opposing their NHS plans. I might have voted for Labour while disagreeing with their transport policies. I might have voted Lib Dem while opposing their political reforms. I could even have voted Green while disagreeing with their energy proposals.

I looked at the options and considered the policies. I voted based on what I agreed with and what I disagreed with.

And most importantly, not based on how my Facebook feed was screaming at me about how I absolutely must vote a particular way because anyone who doesn't vote that way is obviously an evil person who obviously hates the poor/rich/healthy/ill/young/old/homeless/homeowners/privatisation/nationalisation/community/companies/locals/immigrants/dolphins/foxes.

This whole EU referendum thing has opened up a right can of worms. The leadership challenge for Tories was more-or-less expected (the referendum was as much as anything else a vote for the next Tory leader), the Labour schism was less expected... and Boris choosing not to run for PM is a complete surprise to pretty much everyone (including, quite possibly, Boris himself).

Anyway I was mulling it over and I have a solution to both leadership contests! The problem is both Labour and Tories have been simultaneously trying to convert the opposition while not abandoning their core supporters and in the process failing miserably. So the solution is simple: we need new parties. Specifically:

Old Tories: right-wing Tories. The pro-Leave chunk of the party that keeps threatening to defect to UKIP.
New Tories: left-wing Tories (in as much as such a thing exists). The pro-Remain chunk that merely tries to privatise everything.
New New Labour: right-wing Labourites (again, in as much as such a thing exists). Labour minus the unions.
and finally, New Old Labour: left-wing Labourites. Labour minus everything else.

Jeremy Corbyn gets New Old Labour and his challenger (probably Angela Eagle, whoever she is) gets New New Labour, while for Tories I think Michael Gove for Old and Theresa May for New is the most likely lineup (in the absence of Boris and David Cameron).

There you go, problem sorted! Each party now only has to please one chunk of voters and as a bonus the crazy is neatly corralled into the two Old parties.

So for anyone living underneath the proverbial rock, on Thursday the UK is holding a referendum to decide if we leave or stay in the EU. I really hope we stay in the EU.

A large chunk of this is I think that as a country the UK is better off within the EU - the common market is very useful when buying stuff from the EU, the various bits of harmonisation help with manufacturing, the ECHR is a Good Thing (once you get past people using it for petty things, like complaining that a footpath being temporarily closed is a breach of their human rights), and so on. There's chunks that could do with reform and bits that don't work so well (I don't think the UK should adopt the Euro, but that's another rant), but overall I'm in favour of the EU.

Another part of why I hope we stay is the leave campaign are a bunch of liars. The "£350 million a week" that they claim the UK would save is a lie, as once you take the rebate into account the UK only contributes about £250m a week. Oh, and we get a chunk of that back through subsidies and funding for all sorts of things so the net figure is somewhere around £170m (source). They're also lying about the UK having to fund potential future Euro bailouts (nope, unless the current agreements change), and are also claiming that remaining will lead to untold immigration. Basically, "leave the EU or immigrants will come over and take the jobs that won't exist".

This isn't to say remain have been much better - they've been flinging their own FUD around (with a general theme of "leaving the EU will destroy the economy") but they don't seem to have been anywhere near as nasty as the leave campaigns. This is important as to some extent this referendum will decide who is PM: if leave wins, then David Cameron will likely step down and Boris Johnson is almost certain to be PM. Which to be fair would be hilarious... but best watched from a minimum safe distance. Like Australia.


It reminds me quite a bit of the Scottish independence referendum from a couple of years ago, where the yes group were claiming all sorts of things would happen which blatantly had no chance (equal control of Sterling? Future UK warships built in an independent Scotland? Joining Schengen without adding border controls with the rUK? LOLNOPE), the no group were being much more realistic about the prospects of a split UK, and both sides ratcheted up the FUD as the date approached. My personal view was an independent Scotland would have been significantly worse off while rUK would do alright, and I think it'd be much the same if the UK left the EU - the UK would suffer, and there wouldn't be a significant impact on the EU.


There was one bit of hilarity a colleague spotted the other day: Nigel Farage was on BBC News spouting some nonsense, and the BBC's automatic subtitles flashed up "Nigel far right". Which I think rather sums up the current state of UKIP - after all, they are full of fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists.