Johnstone: Midterm Polls Wrong, and He Stays Speaker Anyway

Speaker Mikel Johnstone told the realm this week that the midterm elections will go the Red Oliphants' way, that the polls saying otherwise are wrong, and that if they lose the Chamber of Commons he intends to stay on as their leader regardless. He delivered the first claim to the Foxfire Tidings and the second to the Cauldron Broadcasting Society. Both were described as confident.

Readers of the minutes will recall that Johnstone previously mused about returning to Shrievesport to start a lawn business should the majority slip. He has since called the remark "tongue in cheek." I have checked the transcript. The tongue is not visible, but the cheek is.

The procedure here deserves explanation, because the gentleman from the Bayou is counting on it. A party that loses the Commons does not automatically lose its leader. It loses the gavel, the committee chairs, the good office with the window, and the power to schedule anything. The leader keeps his title, which is now a title for a man who sits in the minority and objects. Johnstone calls this "stay and serve." The Chamber's rulebook calls it Tuesday.

His case against the polls is historical. A rival crier house, he noted, has conceded that the Oliphants were undercounted in the autumn polls in fourteen of the last sixteen elections. That is accurate as far as it goes. It does not mention the two elections in which they were counted correctly and the Oliphants lost, which is where the lawn business came from.

Meanwhile the Speaker is touring forty districts across twenty-two provinces, having raised "millions" for the cause. He reminds listeners that he defended High Lord Donwald of the Golden Towers through two impeachment trials, which he offers as a qualification. The war in Calimshan, the price of lamp oil, and the High Lord's own standing in the provinces he is visiting go unmentioned.

A courtier who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to be awake told me the Oliphants' internal count is "better than the public one, and the public one is a cliff." Asked what the internal count says, the courtier said it was "a rumor with a spreadsheet."

For the record, the Promises Made / Promises Kept tally stands at: Made, "I will be Speaker for at least two more years," "the polling is wrong," and "heaven forbid." Kept: the one about touring, which is going ahead. The tally is not close.

The Commons will be decided on the third of next month. Until then the Speaker remains optimistic, the polls remain wrong, and the lawn business remains, in his words, a joke. The motion carried. Nobody read it.

— O.V., from the gallery