OPINION POLLING FOR JANUARY 2023

 

Across JANUARY there were 29 Westminster polls released during the month at various times by all the major polling agencies.  Polling average was (figures in brackets ahow movement from last month):-

Con 26.1% (-0.5)

Lab 47.1% (+0.6)
LDem 8.8% (+0.1)
Grn 5.2% (nc) 
Rfm 5.9% (-0.2)
Oth 6.9% (-0.1)
Ave Lab lead over Con for October:- 21.07% (+1.31)

The Tories swung between 22-31%, Labour between 45-51% and the LDems between 7-12%.  Labour managed to breach the magic 40% in all 29 polls and breached 50% four times and on one occasion showed a 27% lead ( PeoplePolling, 11 Jan).   Labour led in every poll with leads of between 14%-27%. Really the electorate are in 'polldrums' and the oly thing of any note is that Reform continue to out-poll the Greens.

If a General Election were conducted on these JANUARY figures and using the new boundaries, it would result in a Parliament of L442, C116, SNP53, LD16, PC3, G1, NI18, Speaker 1 with Labour having a majority of 234.

Polls remain fairly static which will give succour to both parties and equally also cause frustration as the political future of the country is now largely dictated by domestic banana skins yet to appear and international events over which we have no control as opposed to actual political activity. 

The resignation of Zahawi for 'Technical Breaches' (management speak for errors by underlings for which you as overall boss are ultimately responsible even if you had no knowledge) appears to have made no impact at all on the general picture.   Zahawi in reality had to go as his presence was a major distraction - the press were paying more attention to him than to the government, making it difficult for the government to get it's policy message across to the electorate at large and it's never good for a Minister to be attracting more media attention than the government are.

Next to be forced by the media to resign will be Dominic Raab - who is being accused of bullying a total of 40 Civil Sevants although only 24 of the claims are substantiated (by other civill servants also making accusations).  The most serious and heinous accusations (firing squad stuff) centre on Raab accused of throwing a cherry tomato at an office wall on one occasion.  This is a politically-inspired hatchet job pure and simple, by a Civil Service which now publicly says if it disagrees with government policy then it's staff don't have to do it  and that Ministers have no right to shout at, order, or criticise civil servants (people will recall the fiasco where a senior civil servant scuppered Patel because she shouted at him in front of others.  He was awarded an early retirement on stress grounds on a full pension, disability pension and a six figure compensation sum for 'emotional distress and humiliation'.  My heart pumps purple piss for him).  Quite how a dweeb like Raab 'bullied' 40 civil servants almost simultaneosly - allegedly causing some to vomit, lock themselves in toilets and burst into tears at the thought of a meeting when most of them work from home remains one of life's great mysteries. And quite why the civil service recruits so many obviously weak and incapable people is beyond a joke. As one senior 'traditionalist' Civil Servant who believes their role is to serve the government of the day  said in an anonymous interview to the BBC, "The Civil Service has become dangerously politicised".   Even Gina Millar of 'Remain' fame has joined the fray claiming she witnessed Raab bullying a member of his staff after a pre-referendum Radio 4 debate in 2016 in which she says he said "go and get me a fucking car" at an office 'runner'.  There is a lot of truth in the old adage that   “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”. We have had it relatively good for three decades. We have a lot of weak people as a result - and it shows.

Strikes remain on-going,  although away from the headlines and behind the scenes all are not that far off being settled for significantly less than the headline pay demands and most of the on-going talks - which are taking place despite everyone involved saying they aren't, are now in the main focused on work practices and contractural terms and conditions.  Public support - and indeed support amongst the striking workforces themselves, is slowly slipping away - faster than the unions like but slower than the government and employers would like.  Some strikers have now lost more in pay due to strikes than two years worth of the rise they are fighting for would have yielded.

Economically, we now appear to have turned the corner with inflation now forecast to fall faster than expected,  interest rates to start coming back down later in the year,  global energy price falls shortly to start filtering through to the consumer (and indeed petrol/diesel has already fallen over the past few months) and the much forecast 'severe recession' now going to be very shallow and very short, - if it happens at all.  There is even a growing belief that the proposed hike in Corporation Tax (from 19% to 25%) expected to be confirmed in this years budget, will either be reduced or scrapped altogether to give business more available funds for investment and expansion.

There was a major Brexit poll during the month - one of the largest conducted for several years, consisting of specific direct questions as opposed to being 'loaded' to get a pre-ordained answer, carried out by the polling company BMG.   It essentially boiled down to Leave 49.5%, Remain 50.5% - which is basically 50/50, just as the refrendum basically was and just as every proper in-depth sampling has been ever since.  Even Gina Millar (second mention n this page for the harridan) has abandoned the Rejoin campaign (along with Lord Adonis last month) saying forget about it for a generation.

The 'Ghost Of Boris' continues to haunt the corridors of power in the Tory party and in Westmnster as a whole.   A 'PeoplePolling' survey of the general electorate found that in a straight choice, 40.3% support the return of Boris and 59.7% oppose it.   This compares very closely with the actual 2019 General Election result, in which 43.6% voted Tory while 56.4% voted for other parties.  Research has shown that a return of Boris would see an immedaite 5% jump in tory support.

Comparisons

General Election 12 Dec 2019: 

UK TOTAL - Con 43.6%, Lab 32.2%, LDem 11.6%, Grn 2.7%, Oth 9.9%

GB ONLY - Con 44.7%, Lab 33.0%, LDem 11.8%, Grn 2.8%, Oth 7.7%

UK lead Con over Lab: 11.4%

GB lead Con over Lab: 11.7%

Polling figures for 2021 (256 polls)

Con 40.3%, Lab 35.2%, LDem 8.4%, Grn 5.7%, Rfm 5.7%, Oth 4.7%
Con lead over Lab 2021: 5.1%

Polling figures for 2022 (330 polls)

Con 30.9%, Lab 42.4%, LDem 10.4%, Grn 5.4%, Rfm 3.7%, Oth 7.2%

Lab lead over Con 2022: 11.38%

Polling figures for Jan (29 polls)

Con 26.1%, Lab 47.1%, LDem 8.8%, Grn 5.2%, Rfm 5.9%, Oth 6.9%

Lab lead over Con: 21.07%

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SCOTLAND

There were no Westminster polls released during the month.

There were two Holyrood polls released during Jan (figures in brackets show movement from last polling):-

SNP: 45.0/33.0% (-1.3/-5.3)
SCon: 16.5/16.5% (+1.5/+1.5)
SLab: 28.0/25.5% (+2.3/+2.5)
SLD: 8.0/8.5% (+0.7/+1.2)
SGP: 0.0/12.0% (-3.0/-0.3)
Oth: 2.5/5.0% (+1.9/+1.6)

There were two IndyRef polls released during the month as follows (figures in brackets show movement from last polling):-

Yes: 47.5% (-1.0),  No: 45.5% (+1.9) DK: 7.0% (-0.6)

(Yes: 51.1%, No: 48.9%)

(General Election 2019)
SNP: 45.0%
SCon: 25.1%
SLab: 18.6%
SLDem: 9.5%
Oth: 1.8%).

(Holyrood Election 2022)
SNP: 47.7/40.3%
SCon: 21.9/23.5%
SLab: 21.6/17.9%
SLD: 6.9/5.1%
SGP: 1.3/8.1%
Oth: 0.6/3.4%).

(IndyRef 2014)
Yes: 44.7%
No: 55.3% 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WALES

There no Westminster poll released during the month. 

There were no Senedd opinion polls released during the month.

(General Election 2019)
Lab: 40.9%
Con: 36.1%
PC: 9.9%
LDem: 6.0%
Grn: 1.0%
BXP: 5.4%
Oth: 0.7%)

(Senedd Election 2021)
Lab: 39.9/36.2%
Con: 26.1/25.1%
Plaid: 20.3/20.7%
LDem: 4.9/4.3%
Grn: 1.6/3.6%
AWA*: 1.5/3.7%
Ref: 1.5/1.1%
UKIP: 0.8/1.6%
Propel: 0.6/0.9%

(*AWA - Abolish Welsh Assembly)

(The Senedd voting system will change for the next Senedd election in 2026.  Currently it uses a hybrid system of first past the post Constituencies and PR-based regional top-up lists.   The proposal is that this is scrapped, the Senedd enlarged from the current 60 seats to 96 and the voting system replaced by a  PR-based party closed list system, centred on 16 'super-constituencies' each consisting of 6 seats.  Voters will only be allowed to vote for a party - not a named candidate and a D'Hondt-type method used to allocate seats within each super-constituency, with the parties then allocating people to the seats they win. Party appointed delegates as opposed to people appointed representatives.  The slow death of democracy and directly elected accountable representatives.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NORTHERN IRELAND

The Northern Ireland Assembly remains in deadlock, is zombified and is only not dissolved because of Westmisnter and Whitehall's total failure to accept reality.  The current dead-lock remains,  with DUP's steadfast opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol (which effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the EU Single Market despite it being an integral element of the UK). The DUP will not accept the Protocol and will not allow the Assembly to sit until AFTER it is scrapped and while the DUP is the largest Unionist party that is all there is to it. That position will not change no matter what anyone in London stupidly deludes themself into thinking contrary. Paralysis in the Assembly is nothing new though.  For example from 2017 it didn't sit for over 1,000 days when Sinn Fein boycotted it and only resumed just as Covid was about to hit, closing it again.   

There has been some movement over the Protocol by the EU - largely at the insistance of the government of the Republic in Dublin who are now also suffering as a result of it.  However, the DUP in the North along with the wider unionist community are not interested in a revised Protocol, only it's scrapping - and to further make things difficult Sinn Fein in the north are opposed to any changes to it, whereas their sister - Sinn Fein in the south, has a different position.   An election in the North won't actually solve anything, rather it will just confirm that making decisions regarding the North, without the overwhelming support of both communities,  is a remarkably stupid thing to do.  Even Starmer - never one to miss an opportunity to pretend he's a statesmen,  after his one attempt with the parties in the North, has abandoned any further involvement and is probably praying that it's sorted before the next UK election or it will automatically then become his problem - and he clearly wants nothing to do with it.

There were no Westmister polls released during Jan.

There was one  Assembly poll released during Jan. (figures in brackets show movement from last polling):-

SF: 31% (-1.0)
DUP: 25% (-2.0)
APNI: 15% (nc)
UUP: 10% (+1.0)
SDLP: 7% (nc)
TUV: 7% (+2.0)
S-PBP: 1% (nc)
Oth: 5% (+1.0)

(General Election 2019)
SF: 22.8%
DUP: 30.6%
APNI: 16.8%
UUP: 11.7%
SDLP: 14.9%
Oth: 3.2%

(Assembly Election 2022)
SF: 29.0%
DUP: 21.3%
APNI: 13.5%
UUP: 11.2%
SDLP: 9.1%, 
TUV: 7.6%
S-PBP: 1.2%
Oth 7.1%

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

I include the Republic because they are the only foreign country with a common land border with the UK and also share a common heritage and language. In addition, what goes on in Dublin also has an effect in Belfast and in London and vice-versa all round.

There were three polls released during the month. (figures in brackets show movement from last polling):-

SF: 33.0% (nc)

FF: 18.7% (-0.3)

FG: 21.7% (-1.3)

GP: 4.3% (+0.3)

LP: 3.7% (+0.7)

SD: 3.7% (+0.7)

S-PBP: 3.0% (+1.0) 

AÚ: 2.0% (-2.0)

Oth/Ind: 9.9% (+1.9)

(General Election 2020)

SF: 24.5%

FF: 22.2%

FG: 20.9%

GP: 7.1%

LP: 4.4%

SD: 2.9%

S-PBP: 2.6%

AÚ: 1.9%

Oth: 13.5%

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~