Kmflett's Blog

Hustings are a feature of election campaigns. They are usually organised by an interest group, say environmentalists, churches, or as I did for many years in Tottenham trade unions.

As the Chair and then Secretary of Haringey TUC I organised election hustings for the late Bernie Grant. Things were different in those pre-2000 days and there was no requirement to invite all candidates. I usually asked the Green Party and on one memorable occasion a Liberal Democrat candidate pitched up well to the left of anything Bernie was saying (it did not help their vote)

More recently post 2000 I have been involved (until the pandemic) with organising hustings type events for left candidates, although the Trades Council continued to back Labour.

On Tuesday there was a Local Voices community hustings for the Gorton and Denton by-election held in a Gorton Church. I don’t know who the organisers were but the venue is a clue to the status of an event. A Church indicates respectability. Hence as far as I can tell from social media all the candidates except one turned up. Reform’s Matthew Goodwin did not appear.

In a statement on social media he noted that he only planned to attend events organised by the Manchester Evening News and BBC Manchester. There is a local hustings in Levenshulme on Thursday which presumably he is swerving too.

Does it matter? Hustings are part of the rough and tumble of election campaigns. Attendance may vary but word gets around. Do candidates have a grasp of the local area and issues (or at least have they been briefed on it)?

My experience in North London where a local base for Tory and right-wing candidates has long since withered is that if they either don’t appear at hustings or appear ill informed they will remain on the ballot but often disappear from view before election day. It will be interesting to see if Matt Goodwin lasts the distance.

On 9th February there was a Parliamentary debate on foreign interference in UK politics in Westminster Hall. The debate came after a public petition calling for it received 114,000 signatures (many from Wales). The threshold is 100,000

There was a focus on the ex-leader of Reform in Wales Nathan Gill who is serving a jail term for accepting Russian bribes and Reform’s position on Russia

No Reform MP was present. However both Farage and Tice did manage to appear at a book launch on money laundering later in the week. The author former Farage aide George Cottrell underlined that the book was not a guide on how to launder money

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/14/reform-uk-figures-attend-book-launch-how-to-launder-money?CMP=share_btn_url

Below is an extract from the speech made by LibDem MP Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury)

In November 2025, Nathan Gill, Reform UK’s erstwhile leader in Wales, was convicted of taking Russian bribes in return for favourable statements in the European Parliament. The hon. Member for Clacton, and leader of Reform UK, described his once close associate as a “bad apple”, but I suspect that the real rot is at the heart of the orchard.

The hon. Member for Clacton also made pro-Kremlin statements as a Member of the European Parliament, most notably in 2014, the year that Russia first invaded Ukraine, when he spoke of Europe poking

“the Russian bear with a stick”.

The previous year, he had met the Russian ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, at the Russian embassy in London. He later denied that that meeting took place, but a photograph of the pair betrays the falsehood.

Arron Banks also met Yakovenko on at least four occasions between 2015 and 2016, a period within which he donated at least £8 million to a campaign to leave the European Union. He has subsequently given conflicting accounts as to the origin of that donation. Banks is known to have explored the possibility of raising foreign donations through an email copied to Steve Bannon in 2015, and in 2025, Reform UK received a donation of £9 million from the co-owner of cryptocurrency Tether, Christopher Harborne. Tether is understood by the National Crime Agency to be used by the Kremlin to launder its money, evading international sanctions and keeping its war machine running.

The entire debate is here

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-02-09/debates/F9F28AFA-E1F3-449C-B18B-63DDCABC411E/RussianInfluenceOnUKPoliticsAndDemocracy

Nigel Farage has told a rally of Reform fans in Birmingham that working from home must end and so must work-life balance. Instead what is required is hard work in the office five days a week.

Its often said that Reform appeals to the boomer generation (1946-1964) and I am one (b1956). I have a good idea what Farage is on about because just as he was working in the City of London in the 1980s so was I. In those pre e-mail and mobile days you could slip out for a liquid lunch with appropriate colleagues from the office and not come back for, well, a while. It’s what Farage refers to as a Proper Fucking Lunch.

Of course the world of work has changed in the intervening 40 years although Farage hasnt.

In my jobs there is a long hours culture, with relentless work and little time for lunch. The impact of health is evident in Government figures which is why work-life balance is so important including a right to disconnect when not at work.

Clearly a Reform Government, which hopefully won’t happen, will be celebrating a long hours culture. As for the rest of us joining and getting active in a union is the best antidote to Farage. 9-15th is the TUC’s Heart Unions Week

https://www.tuc.org.uk/heartunions

I drank in the first Wetherspoons (Marlers Bar originally) in Muswell Hill in 1979. Once Tim Martin took over his ambitions were to open as many Wetherspoons in the North London Borough of Haringey as he could. None still survive as Spoons and just a handful are still pubs (Haringey as two Spoons currently). Then Martin expanded into the rest of North and East London and into South London. Wetherspoons now have around 800 pubs in the UK and Ireland.

Given that Martin was a Brexiteer the decision to open a Spoons at Alicante Airport in Spain represents the triumph of business over ideology.

The food menu is an amalgam of the breakfast and post-midday menus. It does not however feature steak or gammon which were dropped some while back to a continuing chorus of disapproval from the usual suspects. The reason for the change was of course the high price of meat but the complainers in the main are not it appears people who venture into shops to buy their own let alone cook it.

Heart Union Week 2026: learning to love the tradition of collective organisation & action

9-15th February 2026 is ‘heart’ unions week. Of course 14th February is Valentine’s Day but the week underlines that ‘love’, or perhaps fellowship, is collective as well as individual.

HeartUnions week 2026 | TUC

As they usually do, unions and workplace organising face some challenges

In terms of strikes the figures which until recently were amongst the lowest since the early 1890s when records began rose sharply from mid-2022 although they have dropped back a bit with some significant disputes winning real advances and new issues arising.  The density of union membership still leaves a lot to be desired but overall trade union membership is steady and rising in some sectors of the workforce. Trade unions and collective action, partly thanks to Government intransigence from 2010-2024, have become popular again.

The passage of the Employment Relations Act in December 2025 provides a framework for improving collective organisation at work and increased union membership. Time is of the essence. The far right political business Reform remains ahead in the polls and its ever changing cast of MPs consistently voted against the Act in the Commons.

Union membership still needs to be higher and industrial action in hospitality and by security guards shows that unions are quite capable of organising in less traditional areas of workplace strength.

This can change very quickly. You need only look at the 1889 London dock strike- previously unorganised workers with a strike wave across the London and other areas of the UK to underwrite matters- to understand that periods of apparent quiet can suddenly explode.

It’s important also to grasp a wider context.

The reality is that if you are not a trade union member your ability to do much about any issue at work is very limited indeed. And if you are then there is the perpetual work of making sure the union effectively represents people- that only comes from an active membership not a benign General Secretary! It will also help if you are actively politically. A change of Government that is broadly on the side of working people when it comes to the Employment Relations Act is a start but as Raymond Williams once noted it’s not just a question of kicking out the Tories, we have to keep on kicking. Bad bosses have not gone away.

Self-activity is the start. As the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm noted the world won’t change itself for the better on its own. People are required for that, and people organised in some form of collective activity, which is why being in a union is as important now as it was in the 1890s.

Farage has been going on about the need to be in the office 5 days a week (at least since he wants to abolish work-life balance). He has underlined again that he wants to end home working

The picture is of Farage in his Home Office, the Boisdale restaurant, Pimlico, central London

Simon Emeny

Fullers Chair pulls back from support for Reform’s pub ‘plan’ after social media campaign

The Executive Chair of pub group Fullers Simon Emeny backed Reform’s plan for pubs in an interview with the Daily Telegraph (7th February).

However The Times (9^th February) has reported that he has rowed back on the statement. The paper reports Emeny as saying ‘both I and Fullers are for pubs-not politics… we do not support a specific UK political party’

The Times note that the change of position came after a ‘backlash from some Reform critics on social media’

Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson announced the plan on Monday 2^nd February. It involved tax reductions paid for by re-imposing the two-child benefit cap.

Anderson was quite unable to explain or justify the dodgy financials behind the plan in an interview with the Today programme on Radio 4.

Emeny claimed Labour is not doing enough for pubs and Tory plans are not much better. While more could and should be done to help pubs (pub companies are perhaps another if related matter-Fullers is currently turning a decent profit)backing a party with the divisive policies of Reform would have sent an interesting message to customers and employees of Fullers pubs.

It’s good that while much needs to be done to support pubs, Fullers understands that supporting Reform’s plans is bad for business. I may well stop by for a pint of ESB as a result

I drank in the first Wetherspoons (Marlers Bar originally) in Muswell Hill in 1979. Once Tim Martin took over his ambitions were to open as many Wetherspoons in the North London Borough of Haringey as he could. None still survive as Spoons and just a handful are still pubs (Haringey as two Spoons currently). Then Martin expanded into the rest of North and East London and into South London. Wetherspoons now have around 800 pubs in the UK and Ireland.

Given that Martin was a Brexiteer the decision to open a Spoons at Alicante Airport in Spain represents the triumph of business over ideology.

The drinks list is above. Note there is no real ale, but 500ml cans of Greene King Abbott sell for around £5.20

Morgan McSweeney & electoral myths

The extract below is from a Guardian article assessing the electoral impact of Morgan McSweeney.

The 174 seat landslide in July 2024 was indeed welcome in the sense that the Tories were ejected from office. But as Prof Rob Ford quoted in the article notes the victory was on 33% of the vote. Marginal seats were indeed won but left leaning Labour seats were neglected with polling impacts that can be seen clearly in February 2026.

Labour got more votes in 2015 and 2019 than it did in 2024.  Of course under a FTP electoral system its seats that matter more than aggregate votes..

This paragraph has already been called out by Prof David Edgerton (Kings). The ‘unelectable’ hard left in fact deprived Theresa May of a majority in 2017. The authors of the article seem unaware that at the December 2019 Election Farage’s Brexit Party stood down its candidates in all 317 Tory held seats after a deal with Boris Johnson. No such decision was made by Farage in 2024.

Shortly before Christmas 2019, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour had suffered its worst election defeat since 1935. Voters in swathes of the party’s industrial heartlands in the north and the Midlands – from retired coalminers in County Durham to steelworkers in Scunthorpe – had battled the December elements to vote Tory for the first time. Labour seemed lost to the unelectable hard left and some predicted it would never win another general election.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/08/morgan-mcsweeney-brains-behind-labours-comeback-profile?CMP=share_btn_url