Donald Trump does it and now a leading member of his fan club Nigel Farage has too.
Dexy’s Come On Eileen was used to introduce Nigel Farage as his Birmingham NEC rally on Saturday. Permission was not asked anymore than Trump bothers when he does it.
Watching the livestream I did wonder if the assembled Reform mob would be singing along if they knew what politics Kevin Rowland has. He has duly made the point on social media
I, Kevin Rowland (the son of Irish immigrants) and the main songwriter of ‘Come On Eileen,’ am disgusted to learn that Nigel Farage has used our song to make his entrance for his party conference. Myself, and all of Dexys are passionately against Farage’s politics.
Liz Truss, Elected Tory leader 5th Sept 2022; from CND Activist, Trotskyist & LibDem to Remainer, right-wing Tory PM and Conspiracy Theorist.
Liz Truss was elected Tory leader on 5th September 2022 beating Rishi Sunak. In 2026 she remains a member of the Tory Party and this week praised the new Tory Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith who helped to write her 2022 Mini-Budget.
As a youth in Leeds in the 1980s Truss was involved with CND, going on demos and so on. Partly this was family influenced but no amount of cajoling can get someone on a demo they are not interested on being on.
At Oxford the historian and barrister David Renton reports (see @livesrunning) that she was recruited to the Socialist Worker Student Society after a long chat with himself. However she stayed only a couple of weeks before de-camping and becoming a leading LibDem, campaigning for the legalisation of cannabis (it must be presumed that she did inhale), but also a way of standing out from Tory ex-public schoolboys. Johnson did something similar although more with the SDP.
Renton notes that like himself Truss was elected to the student council but over two years did not distinguish herself in debate. Given that she is a lacklustre public speaker this seems like a missed opportunity to learn the skill of oratory (I did the same myself- I only mumble in private- though obviously not at Oxford)
Truss entered the world of work at the moment New Labour won a landslide in 1997. At that point she joined the Tories. Why? The pragmatic chameleon had worked out that the time had passed for her to make her way in Labour or the LibDems(whose MP numbers only went one way after 1997/2001 until 2019) but the Tories at a low ebb presented the ideal opportunity for someone to make their way when few others were keen.
for those who wondered LBC’s Bethany Dawson on Twitter ‘A Reform UK spokesperson earlier told us that Nigel Farage’s speech was delayed because counter terrorism police advised them of a threat. Now West Midlands police say that they gave no such advice – assert it was a purely Reform UK decision’.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said a chinstrap beard currently being worn by BBC political correspondent Chris Mason is bringing the hirsute into disrepute.
Mason is normally clean shaven, and the campaigners say that while they generally welcome people coming out as hirsute, he is a controversial figure who often divides opinion on social media.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we are about promoting positive images of the hirsute in the public eye and I’m afraid Chris Mason does not reach the gold standard here,
The Spectator a weekly magazine of the right which has been published since 1828 is currently edited by Michael Gove.
It seems unable to work out whether it backs the Tories or Reform or both but its comment from Political Editor Tim Shipman on the latest Farage farrago is to the point:
[Nigel] Farage should also be cognisant that the mood in the bars around Birmingham last night was utterly mutinous. Those who are putting themselves forward as Reform candidates confided their despair. ‘We are giving up our businesses and putting family lives on hold to fight for Reform and this is going on behind the scenes,’ one said …
The overwhelming reaction in my WhatsApp groups from operatives in the other main parties was incredulity at the recklessness of it all. ‘If this is how they talk to people they don’t know, imagine what they are saying to people they trust,’ observed one former Downing Street Tory …
So why did they do it? It is the experience of everyone I have ever known near the summit of politics that political operations take their character and operating logic from the person at the apex of the triangle. Leaders set culture. The worrying thing for Farage admirers is that if [Dan] Jukes and [James] Orr behaved like this it is because they believed it to be okay by the boss. Both boasted on camera of their closeness to the leader. In the meeting at the pub with the fake donor, Farage seemed both au fait with how the money would be transferred to Reform, and grateful for it.
The scrappy, sod the rules, bugger the establishment vibe comes from him. This is another reminder of the timeless rule that every major politician’s greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Farage’s insurgent image has put him in a place where he might win power but made his operation demonstrably less suitable to exercise it.
A moment for those who want to stop the racist politics of Reform to mobilise
Reform’s conference is taking place at the Birmingham NEC from 4-5th September. Only 40 minutes are allowed for motions, lunch breaks last two hours and nearly half of the five and half hours of speeches is taken up with Farage.
Meanwhile the former leader of Reform in Wales Nathan Gill has been back in Court. He was jailed for ten and half years in November 2025 for taking Russian bribes while an MEP.
While Gill did not attend Court in person on this occasion its clear that investigations into what he had been up have been continuing. The Government is to confiscate £22,000 from Gill and the Judge has given him six months to sell a property in Anglesey he owns or face an extra nine months in jail.
John Merrick has written an interesting piece on Eric Hobsbawm as a new political biography of the late Marxist historian from Emile Chabal is published.
I did know to varying degrees many of those who had been involved with the CP Historians Group, Dorothy and E P Thompson, Christopher Hill, John Saville (who called me Young Flett an analysis that has not stood the test of time) but while I heard Hobsbawm speak, and he wrote some nice words about a book I co-edited, I didn’t know him personally.
Merrick’s piece focuses on the grand historical narratives that Hobsbawm produced. While I consult these occasionally I think Merrick is right that they were written mostly for an academic and educational market. As a school student my North London School was effectively run by the CP and I recall well the Deputy Head advising me to read Hill and Hobsbawm to understand history.
I’ve always been interested in his more specific historical works, Captain Swing and The Invention of Tradition for example. These were far from the dogmatic efforts that one might have associated with the then CPGB.
Merrick raises the question of what Hobsbawm was doing staying in the CPGB and its never been obvious to me (may be I have missed accounts) of what he was actually doing. Was he selling the Daily Worker and the Morning Star, attending CP branch meetings and organising in what was then the AUT? I’m not so sure.
Merrick while rightly critical of what in shorthand, we can call Stalinism (I’m a heterodox Trotskyist of course) seems somewhat dismissive about the historical project of the left. I doubt that the ideas of Stalinism, are one way or another, exactly all in the past and nor do I think a wider left has somehow ended up defeated. Granted the current picture is not great, but that is often the case.
Perhaps Merrick’s point, which I might be inclined to agree with, is that Hobsbawm’s work while continuing to be important probably won’t inspire future generations of the left.
I always thought that Hobsbawm’s historical work was much better than his political analysis and contributions to, for example Marxism Today. I was never a great fan of the Forward March of Labour, which in itself is now an historical piece. The working class today is as likely to be a young black female union militant as it is an old bloke white with a beard like me (I remain an active trade unionist) and I’m not sure Hobsbawm was quite on that page
Anyway Merrick’s piece is well worth a read.
I still haven’t done a long overdue analysis of Hobsbawm’s apparent obsession with and dislike of jeans, although E P Thompson was no fan of beards and long hair (not that he ever mentioned that to me…)
The above is a Times Editorial, 3rd September 2026. It makes a good point on former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan, and is also a reminder, despite what the paper sometimes claims, that sport and politics are related
