July 21st 1994. Blair elected Labour leader. Benn’s Diary reveals the Starmer template
Few readers of this blog will need reminding that when Keir Starmer was elected Labour leader in 2020 his platform was essentially Corbynism without Corbyn. Five years on not a trace is left.
A template can be found in Tony Blair’s election as Labour leader on 21st July 1994 and Tony Benn’s reaction as recorded in his Diary.
Benn writes of Blair’s speech:
It was really quite radical. He talked of ending quangos and ending hereditary peers, about right and wrong, and I think he drew on part on Caroline (Benn)’s Keir Hardie, which he had reviewed very sympathetically… I don’t know he’s going to do any of these things…but he did give people hope and vision.
Farage continues his pretence that Reform is a party for ordinary people but on 29th May he is due to speak at an event at Arundel Castle in Sussex.
The Financial Times (26th May) reported that event is organised by the 18th Duke of Norfolk Edward Fitzalan-Howard.
He was a crossbencher in the Lords and is not a Reform supporter. Rather than the FT. The Duke said that he was interested in any party that supported the protection of nature. That would appear to rule out Reform. However Farage’s attendance is clearly about making wealthy contacts amongst the British ruling class.
For those with long memories it recalls the discussion raised by the late Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson in New Left Review in the mid-1960s which suggested that Britain had not a full scale bourgeois revolution and the aristocracy retained an important position in the ruling circles of the country.
Whether Farage is attempting to raise money for Reform, which seems to have quite a lot as it is, or for his personal projects (of which Reform is actually one however) is another matter.
Tony Blair has made another of his rare interventions in politics.
Reported by The Guardian their story notes he wants to back Trump on Iran, scrap net zero and cut benefits.
There is nothing even slightly social democratic about it. Blair’s political journey has led him a long way from the left.
However context is all.
When first elected Blair’s perspective was for Labour to become the natural party of Government. In other words to replace the Tories. The idea, which didn’t happen, was to link up with the LibDems. Blair’s view repeated since was that a union focused Labour Party had done its time. His ideal was the Liberal progressivism of the late nineteenth century.
The matter was not straightforward. There was discussion that there were things Thatcher had done such as Council House sales and privatisations that could have been Labour policies. These ideas came from Peter Mandelson…
The context almost thirty years on is that global politics, with a few exceptions, is on the right. If Labour is to become the natural party of Government, its the political territory of the Tory Party more than the LibDems it needs to occupy. This could be one reading of Blair’s intervention.
One thing that has been added since 1997 Blair, is the idea that military intervention can somehow provide a fix where political negotiations cant or just take too long. It didn’t start with Iraq in 2003 but Blair is currently a member of Trump’s Board of Peace that has so far done nothing positive to sort the genocide in Gaza (and never will).
In historical context as a former Labour leader, Blair makes Ramsay MacDonald look, hardly good, but perhaps slightly less bad. He at least when joining the National Government in 1931 was clear that he was breaking definitively with the ideals, such as they were, of Labour.
I live currently between Cardiff and London and I note that both Capitals have managed the highest May temperature on record.
Of course high summer temperatures (plus also low ones- Lords cricket ground on some days in early June anyone?) are hardly unknown in London. I seem to recall going back quite a while one or two days when the temperature touched 100F (in old money).
Such temperatures in Cardiff are less usual. Its generally a few degrees cooler than London.
Of course I’m not a weatherman (not even a political one). I’ll leave that to the professionals at the Met Office.
Even so its clear that despite the well known variables of the UK weather hot days and heavy downpours are becoming more frequent and underlying that is the impact of climate change…
What is to be done? If your Nigel Farage, look for donations from fossil fuel companies.. There are alternatives
June 29th Westminster. Despite the benefits Brexit has bought us you still have to pay to attend
The speakers should be familiar with the possible exception of James Frayn who is at the right-wing ‘think tank’ the Centre for Policy Studies and ‘writes about working class politics for the Sunday Telegraph’
The jazz musician Miles Davis was born one hindred years ago on 26th May 1926 (he died 28th September 1991).
Writing in 2010 the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm noted: My admiration for Miles Davis was based on his records, not on any live performance I heard.
On the face it those unfamiliar with Hobsbawm’s life (see Richard J Evans excellent if perhaps partial biography) may wonder why it matters what a Marxist historian thought of Miles Davis.
The answer was that for ten years from the late 1950s to the 1960s Eric Hobsbawm was the jazz critic of the New Statesman. He wrote under the pseudonym Francis Newton (a Communist jazz player) and published a book of criticism, the Jazz Scene as a Penguin paperback.
Richard J Evans did a better job of bringing to mind what Hobsbawm, when he was Francis Newton, actually thought about Miles Davis.
Newton wrote that Miles Davis was a player of ‘surprisingly narrow technical and emotional range’ and ‘most of his records are not very good’ Miles Away, New Statesman, 21st May 1960.
Later lecturing at Stanford (as a Marxist historian) he explored the jazz clubs of San Francisco and having made the acquaintance of Paul A Baran one of the Editors of the Marxist Monthly Review, he took him to a Miles Davies concert. Richard J Evans notes that Hobsbawm found Baran to be unimpressed.
As a lifelong Spurs fan and someone who lives near the ground in central Tottenham (full disclosure I’m sometimes in central Cardiff for work and personal reasons) I of course paid close attention to the last Premiership game of the season on Sunday. Essentially it was either Spurs or near neighbours West Ham who were going to be relegated. The odds were on the Hammers and so it turned out.
I was interested to read a paragraph in Jonathan Wilson’s view of the game in the Guardian (25th May)which suggested that some Spurs fans preferred to avoid the stress of watching. I can understand that. I was around when Spurs were last relegated in 1977 and every season I look first of all to see of they have got enough points to avoid relegation more than a CL place. In 2026 only just- two more points in fact.
I could have watched the game on Sky but in fact I was at my local craft beer bar, PopnHops in Cardiff. My late partner Megan, also a Spurs fan, would have been watching on her phone. That was a bit much for me. I kept a close eye on the BBC Sport website for match updates. That includes stats and text commentary and usually gives a fairly good idea of how a game is going.
Anyway all is well that ends well, though I was conscious that the lengthy pieces in the Guardian and the Times about what has gone wrong at West Ham and what will happen now might very easily have been written about Spurs instead
Some Spurs fans had been doubtful about attending, or even following the game on television or the radio. There was a lot of talk of long walks or gardening, avoiding the anxiety until it was all done, but football is about emotion whether positive or negative; about moments of crisis such as this. The duty of a fan is to bear witness, the beauty of fandom is the common experience of emotion. Imagine if you were a regular who had not been there and they had gone down; to be absent for the lowest low would be just as bad as missing the highest high. Collective memory is the lifeblood of community.
Guardian 25th May
My Guardian Obituary of Megan Davies featuring our different approaches to watching Spurs
The quote is from Farage in the Telegraph (25th May). The party he has in mind is Rupert Lowe’s far right to fascist Restore. A small sample poll for the Makerfield By-Election suggests that Restore is polling at 7% potentially enough to split the far right vote and stop Reform from winning.
Whether it really is attracting that much support we shall see (Stand Up To Racism launched a campaign in the Constituency at the weekend) but Elon Musk is backing Lowe on Twitter so it is possible. However tweets and actual votes on polling day are two different things.
Meanwhile in respect of one man parties, one wonders what democratic process saw David Bull purged as Chair of Reform a few days ago and Lee 30p Anderson inserted in his place? Was it perhaps something Farage decided himself?
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