Minor earthquake in SW1

There’s really only one story this weekend and it’s not about politicians but about the British people. The latest Opinum poll for the Observer gives the following;

The paper reports that Electoral Calculus estimate that this vote in a GE would give TBP 306 seats – short of an overall majority – and the Conservatives 26. This Thursday’s bye-election in Peterborough may give Farage his first MP and send shock waves throughout Europe. Without detracting from Nigel’s accomplishments – which are momentous – these figures are less about Farage than about the British people, and the direction in which the country is headed. Politicians are either acutely sensitive and adjust their policies to the path the voters are following, or they are history.

And here I have a message for my Parliamentary Party. Sweeties, you’re away with the fairies. You’re buggering about playing games with the Leadership contest, with Florence of Belgravia and every other hopeless idiot using it as an aid to self-love and a marker for aspiration to future ministerial preferment. You’re all on the verge of being swept away by a Teal tsunami. I hope you’ve got other careers on which to fall back (Florence can walk back to Afghanistan for all I care). 

Meanwhile dear Mr Trump is worth listening to; if you have a sensitive ear you will have detected a minor shift in tone. When speaking ad hoc and off piste, Donald is increasingly channelling his senior White House advisors. What we are hearing are the headlines lodged in his memory from secret Presidential briefings. Despite SW1 still trying desperately to pretend Nigel Farage doesn’t exist and everything’s still the same, the possibility that he may be the UK’s next PM but one is clearly one of the US government’s planned scenarios.