Kmflett's Blog

Sunak’s Chief Whip on Danny Kruger: ‘we need to alter our candidate selection programme’

Given that Farage claims is political business Reform UK appeals across the spectrum it does seem to attract a lot of Tories. The last is Shadow Minister Danny Kruger, son of Pru Leith and MP for the previously safe Tory seat of East Wiltshire.

Kruger once wrote speeches for Dave Cameron but since Brexit has been moving ever rightwards. He has been a fan of the anti-Semitic phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ not this is likely to concern Farage & Co.

The passage below relates to a discussion Simon Hart then Sunak’s Chief Whip has with a group of hard right Tory MPs led by Kruger about what laws should be retained after exit from the EU>

9^th May 2023

I took Kruger back to my office and explained in words of one syllable why I thought he was dicing with death…I’ve seldom seen a starker example of why we need to alter our candidate selection programme

Simon Hart, Sunak’s Chief Whip (Ungovernable 2025)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Kruger

Keir Starmer’s condemnation of far right thuggery on the ‘Unite for England’ rally in central London on 13^th September, a rejection of the politics of division and claim that the flag whether St George or the Union Jack is not the property of the far right, is a small step perhaps in the right direction. It is also a perspective that has been noted many times before without it must be said any sign that the far right is giving up its claim to the flag. A section on the march did prefer the Israeli flag but one suspect Starmer’s views on that are best left unsaid in this context.

Below is an extract from an interview the late Marxist theorist Stuart Hall gave to the New Statesman in 2012 where he touches on some of the issues with progressive patriotism, which is broadly what Starmer is on about, as he saw it.

What Thompson called the “peculiarities of the English” (and especially the peculiarities of English socialism) have been on Hall’s mind a good deal lately. He has been talking about the New Left and Englishness with, among others, Jonathan Rutherford, his colleague on the editorial board of the journal Soundings and a prime mover in “Blue Labour”, and Jon Cruddas, entrusted by Ed Miliband with responsibility for the Labour Party’s policy review.

Hall says he understands the impulse behind Rutherford’s and Cruddas’s attempt to find intellectual resources for a new politics of “common life” in ancient English radical traditions. Yet he insists that such traditions cannot be revived “at will”. “I talked to Cruddas about this,” he tells me. “I think I understand his preoccupations rather more than Maurice Glasman’s. In a constituency like Cruddas’s, where you’re fighting the far right, you have to think about those things [English identity, immigration]. But you have to be careful about how you recruit them. He came to talk to me about the New Left, which, of course, was interested in the popular language of the nation. But I had the feeling he was raiding the past, out of context, in a way.”

The above is an extract from a long piece in the Times by Prof Niall Ferguson about whether Donald Trump is a dictator or not. Ferguson thinks he isn’t and I agree but we come at it from different perspectives.

I’ve queried before, in respect of Ferguson, whether right-wing historians can write good history. They certainly can of course, even if conclusions might be disputed. The issue is when the right-wing politics takes precedence over any historical judgement.

Ferguson underlines a long history, mostly from the 1930s, of warnings that the US was becoming a fascist country. In the event as he notes this didn’t happen, which doesn’t mean that the warnings weren’t relevant.

Turning to the present day he suggests that fascism means the rounding up and imprisonment or murder of left and liberal opponents. It certainly does. He also suggests that under fascism there is no independent police force or judiciary, the State has absolute rule.

Ferguson is right here. While ICE is randomly rounding up people on its lists prominent leftists are not yet being imprisoned or killed. Equally despite Trump’s best efforts the Courts are still challenging many of his decisions sometime successfully.

This tells us in my view (but not Fergusons) that while Trump is not a dictator he would like to be. Its not yet too late to stop him just as fascism in Italy and Germany could have been stopped.

Looking at the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany, Ferguson looks to the later 1930s and sees no comparison with Kristallnacht, or concentration camps. He is right, so far. The comparison however is the earlier 1930s, say from 1930 to 1933 when the Nazis managed to subvert democracy and seize power.

The London Review Books has an interesting Diary piece by Patrick Cockburn (9th October) about the Times correspondent in Germany at this time. He saw what Hitlerism meant before the Nazis took power and correctly saw where it was heading. The Times was not hugely sympathetic to his reports being instead interested in what Hitler was doing. He was expelled from Germany in 1937

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n18/patrick-cockburn/diary

The paragraph I’ve extracted speaks to Michael Rosen’s well known poem Fascism arrives as your friend. It promises to clean things up, get rid of things that are not liked. By the time people realise what this actually means it can be too late.

Ferguson’s view of Trump and dictatorship might be described as best as complacent and that doesn’t make for good historical understanding.

The Ambridge Socialist

14^th September

Fear and Loathing in the Ambridge cricket team

The provocation by racist Lawrence really should have been despatched.. After all he clearly has no objection to paying amateur cricketers if appropriate. Instead it has led to an outbreak of fear and loathing in the Ambridge cricket team. Lynda called a special meeting where Lily revealed nearly all. This led to mindless militant Tom Archer claiming he had organised a boycott of the Ambridge cricket team. Its September, perhaps matters will look different in April 2026

Band of Warring brothers at Home Farm

Adam is still trying to run Home Farm a job from which he was previously sacked. Ruari who some probably unhelpful management experience thinks he could do the job. Both are however agreed that Brian needs to become a Farmer Emeritus

The Flower and Produce Show

Another Brian Rix farce has developed although to be fair the flower and produce show is like this every year

Brad and Amber

Amber getting her teeth done in Turkey is off the agenda apparently so it seems her Archers contract has been extended further.

Dog News

Stella has got a new dog. Pip for some reason is not sure about dogs and Rosie is ambivalent. What’s wrong with independent minded cats?

On 6th September 200,000 took place in the 30th Palestine demonstration in central London since October 2023. The police said 20,000 but as subsequent events underlined the Met are no good at counting.

A separate but related protest saw 892 people arrested in Parliament Square for peacefully holding pieces of paper containing words on Palestine that the Government doesnt like. Apparently those arrested are suspected terrorists.

On 13th September over 100,000 racists and fascists held a rally in Whitehall headed up by career criminal Stephen Yaxley Lennon. 20,000 Stand Up to Racism supporters held a counter rally. The Met said 5,000 but as above maths is not their strong point.

Scenes of violent disorder followed as they always do when drunken racists and fascists assemble in central London. So far there have been 25 arrests largely for attacking police officers.

Two Tier policing is a culture wars term. What we can observe here is that policing has priorities. Palestinian protests raise very awkward issues for the Government. Racist mobs rather less so. That needs to change and change quickly

After career criminal Stephen Yaxley Lennon’s march today in central London, Billy Bragg singing the Woody Guthrie song, All You Fascists Are Bound To Lose. As the lyrics say it takes organisation

The 30th demonstration for Palestine took place in central London on 6th September. Around 200,000 marched. While there has been a constant stream of criticism of the usually very large marches, arrests, often contested, have been few and violence and attacks on the police have been non-existent.

Enter career criminal Stephen Yaxley Lennon who promoted a ‘unite the kingdom’ march and rally in Whitehall on 13th September. The police estimate that over 100,000 attended, a worringly large number (there was a substantial Stand Up To Racism counter protest).

The police handling of the far right to fascist march seems to have been a shambles given the well known pattern of such affairs to descend into drunken violence. That of course is exactly what happened as far right thugs attacked the police.

The police graphic of the situation at 5pm is at the top of the post.

Ben Jamal one of the organisers of the Palestinian marches criticised the police’s “inability or unwillingness” to get them out of the blockage. He said: “It is a deeply depressing spectacle when there are many people marching in support of racist narratives. For 22 months I’ve been leading pro-Palestine marches which have been demonised by the police. But today, they seemed unable or unwilling to stop fascists effectively imprisoning fellow citizens for three to four hours.

“There need to be extremely important questions asked to Mark Rowley and the home secretary.”

Guardian 13th September 2025

E P Thompson in his collection Writing by Candlelight noted an historic interest in Times letter writers as representative of a certain kind of provincial opinion.

The tradition is still going as the above letter underlines. Banksy’s image posted on the Royal Courts of Justice in central London (since removed of course) is a comment (as the artist himself noted on Insta) on the right to protest and the authoritarian crack down on it.

Guy Morpuss however is concerned to point out that British judges don’t use a gavel.

An important detail although in the days when I chaired trade union conferences I was definitely in possession of an official gavel. Those were the days etc..

Mandelson, the Labour right & rights at work

Peter Mandelson was sacked as UK Ambassador in Washington this week, but he was there in the first place at least partly because of his long running role in right-wing Labour politics. He was centrally involved in Progress, a Labour right organisation, and is of course on record as being involved in the efforts to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Before that however in the first Blair Government he was a central figure in New Labour politics, one part of which was to water down plans to increase rights at work which had been part of the 1997 Labour Manifesto.

A reminder of his efforts is below but there is irony in that as Mandelson was sacked for a third time, the person responsible for promoting the current workers right legislation in Parliament, Angela Rayner, was also sacked, as Starmer moved his Cabinet yet further to the right.

As Marxists tend to say, everything is connected to everything else

An interesting insight into what he was doing as a Minister in the early post-May 1997 period can be found in official Government papers available at the National Archives

The 1997 Labour Government headed by Blair promised to address the years of Tory anti-union laws by reinstating what it claimed would be a level playing field at work. The bigger issue was the introduction of a National Minimum Wage. This was opposed by many business interests on the basis that it could not be afforded, (a strong echo is to be found in 2025) would not work and so on. However it was implemented and remains in force, albeit many would argue it should be higher.

The second was a Parliamentary Act on Employment Relations. Its notable that this did not become law until July 1999. It was not seen as a priority and there was a fair bit of time spent listening to business about it. It did not repeal any Tory anti-union law but instead gave legal force to trade union recognition and representation. It was a step forward from the Thatcher years but a very modest one.

Cabinet Papers available at the National Archives give an indication to what had been going on.

In the autumn of 1997 there is a file note of what is described as a ‘long and fractious discussion’ between Tony Blair and John Prescott on Fairness at Work. Prescott said that changes had been bought as a package by the TUC and if changes were planned this would need to be agreed by the Cabinet. Blair responded that the changes were practical ones because of what he claimed were genuine problems in how they would work. Blair wanted to allow a right of appeal to the measure, eventually implemented, which would mean that if 50% of workers voted for union recognition it would be automatically given. Prescott again argued that he did not think what the TUC had put forward was up for negotiation.

Employment rights were not part of Prescott’s Ministerial brief and the matter does not appear again until we find a file note from Peter Mandelson on 9th March 1998. It says ‘Union Recognition. Moving in the direction of the CBI. Ideal response for the TUC to be grumpy but not refuse to co-operate’.