Ephologists claim Ed Miliband will lose his Parliamentary seat…in 2029
The Daily Telegraph currently does not have a permanent owner as discussions continue about much non-UK control might be allowable. The relevant Minister Lisa Nandy has declined to intervene. That is unfortunate because the Telegraph which used to be a decent paper news wise (the comment was another matter) has become addicted like other right-wing news media to just making stuff up.
Below is an example from the 15th May 2025 issue. Some pollsters have extrapolated from the May 1st local election results and worked out that Ed Miliband would lose his seat.
This suits the Telegraph because one of its culture war obsessions is net zero for which Miliband is the Minister responsible.
There are just a few problems. Firstly turn-out in local elections is much lower than a General Election and in the former no one is being asked to decide who should be in No.10 Downing St. Secondly while the next Election could come sooner, Starmer has a huge Parliamentary majority and doesn’t need to call one until 2029.
Hence the Telegraph article is less journalism or more Old Moore’s Almanack.
E P Thompson understood the technique well over 60 years ago and his view on Ephology is also below.
Daily Telegraph 15th May 2025
As the dust settled on the local election results two weeks ago, it was clear that Nigel Farage had had a very good night.
But a new analysis of the results by Electoral Calculus now shows the scale of Reform UK’s victory.
By taking ward-level voting data and mapping it against Westminster seats, we can see that of the 145 constituencies where local elections were held, Reform would win 81 if locals voted in the same way at a general election.
The biggest losses were from Labour, which would see all but three of its seats go to other parties.
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, would lose his seat in a “Portillo moment” that would shake Labour to its core.
The late socialist historian E P Thompson wrote the following on opinion polls in the New Reasoner in 1959 (the NR went on to be part of New Left Review from 1960)
A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the ‘Observer’ or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it
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