Kmflett's Blog

September 12th

Keir Hardie’s beard was a political trademark & hugely impactful. Time for his namesake to follow suit

Beard Liberation Front

12^th September

Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

2025 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season Suspended indefinitely

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the 2025 Official Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season has been suspended indefinitely due to inclement weather including heavy rain and high winds.

The official season runs until the end of August each year but is usually extended throughout September and sometimes into October. However weather conditions in the first two weeks of September mean that the difficult decision to indefinitely suspend the 2025 season

No Guidelines in 2025

The Beard Liberation Front, one of whose founding principles is that people should be able to dress and appear as they want is increasingly concerned about official diktats about how people should or should not appear.

However the BLF urges those participating in the 2025 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season to take care out there:

1 UV levels. It’s not just sun that can lead to sunburnt legs

2 Pogonophobia. Participants should beware beard haters

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, Shorts and Sandals season has been a major influence on summer fashions in recent times and the 2025 season has been no exception. However current and forecast weather conditions mean we have no choice but to indefinitely suspend the season.

Beard Liberation Front

12^th September

Inquiry into Morgan McSweeney’s beard & its influence on Government policy reopened

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has announced that it is reopening an inquiry into Morgan McSweeney’s beard and its influence on Government policy after reports that he played a role in the appointment of Lord Mandelson as US Ambassador.

Although representing a different strand of Labour right thinking McSweeney worked alongside Progress, another right-wing group strongly influenced by Mandelson in the 2010s.

The campaigners say that while McSweeney has not always worn a beard he appears to have done so during the Starmer era. The issue is not what McSweeney is trying to hide in or behind his beard- an age old pogonophobic prejudice- but what political purpose his beard serves as Keir Starmer’s right hand man given that the leader himself is a notorious clean shaven revisionist

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, beards in New Labour 25 years and more ago were controversial and this remains the case with the 2025 version of clean shaven revisionist politics. We are determine to get to the root of what McSweeney’s beard is all about and what influence it wields

The centrality of Peter Mandelson to New Labour & New New Labour

Peter Mandelson was the star speaker at an event to mark 25 years of New Labour in 2022 and remained, until his resignation from the Labour Party on 1st February 2026, central to the New New Labour project as well. A catalogue of errors (and some achievements after 1997 and before the Iraq debacle).

The below appeared on the Politico site (2^nd May 2022) and while I’m doubtful about using single source references it is anyway entertaining even if perhaps not entirely accurate (it may not report all who were there for example).

It was held on a Sunday in a Wetherspoons in Chancery Lane, which is normally closed at weekends (the area is very quiet at that time). There was an irony in one of Tim Martin’s pubs hosting such an event but at least David Miliband who apparently picked up the bar bill won’t have been much out of pocket.

A pub is an odd place to hold an inclusive event in the 2020s (not that most pubs don’t welcome all but some have religious, cultural and personal reasons for swerving places that sell alcohol) but it was marking an event in 1997 when things were perhaps seen differently.

I’m not an expert on the factions of New Labour but it does appear to be the Blairite core (as opposed to Brownites) and some of its more recent successors and enforcers. There are a couple of people who were at one point in some way associated with the left- Byers and Milburn- before they became New Labourised.

Anyway one hopes that at least some of them are at work on their memoirs so future historians can ponder what it was they thought they were doing and what the actual results were.

SPOTTED: At Labour’s 25 Years since 1997 celebrations at the Knight Templar Pub on Chancery Lane last night … Speeches by Peter Mandelson … Cherie Blair and Nicky Blair … Nicky read Tony’s message “we knew how to have fun” … Mandy hailed “the best team that ever came together for politics” and chanted: “Viva New Labour” … Pat and Marianna McFadden were first on the dance floor to “Things Can Only Get Better” … Closely followed by Roy and Alicia Kennedy … Stella Creasy and Dan Fox … David Evans and Aline Delawa … Stephen Byers … Alan Milburn … Hilary Armstrong … Organizers Jo Gibbons, Julie McAndrew, Adrian McMenamin … Sam White from LOTO … Ex-Labour advisers: Steve Bates, Razi Rahman, Faz Hakim, John Lehal, Iain McNichol, Andy Bagnall, Jo Milligan, Martin Angus, John Watts … David Miliband paid for the drinks … Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle from the Shadow Cabinet … plus Keir Starmer comms chief Matt Doyle fresh from the Blair PPB.

Charlie Kirk was a far right grifter so its no surprise that Nigel Farage claims he was a friend. Being a far right grifter suggests robust political opposition not murder btw.

It would appear however as the seasons change the plan is for the Farage Riots to go global..

Marx (Karlsbad) to Engels (in Ramsgate) 8th September 1875

As a second-year patient I have been promoted in the hierarchythe springs. Last year my sources of supply were Theresien-brunn (41° R), Marktbrunn (39°) and Mühlbrunn (43.6°), while I
only took a glass of Sprudel twice. This year, from the second week
on, they have been Felsenquelle (one glass a day) (45° R),
Bernardsbrunn (53.8°) (two glasses) and Sprudel (two glasses)
59°-60° R, making five glasses of hot every morning, on top of which
come one cold Schlossbrunn on rising and one at bedtime.
According to Prof. Ferdinand Ragsky’s analysis, Sprudel water
consists of:
In 16 ounces=7680 g.
Sulphate of potash 1.2564
Sulphate of soda 18.2160
Chloride of sodium 7.9156
Carbonate of soda 10.4593
Carbonate of lime 2.2870
Carbonate of magnesia 0.9523
Carbonate of strontium 0.0061
Carbonate of ferric oxide 0.0215
Carbonate of manganic oxide 0.0046
Phosphate of clay 0.0030
Phosphate of lime 0.0015
Fluoride of potassium 0.0276
Silica 0.5590
Total of fixed constituents 41.7099

Eric Hobsbawm on Political Violence. The Rules of Violence (1969)

Political violence is certainly not a new thing and while it may be deplored the important question that is raised is in which societies does it appear, at what moment and in what context. In other words studying specifics may or may not help wider generalisations.

The late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote a brief essay on political violence that is collected in the volume Revolutionaries. Hobsbawm however does not write mainly about revolutionary violence which has certainly existed. The Chartist slogan of the 1840s was peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.

‘older forms of violence may be increasing, because the established systems of maintaining public order, elaborated in the liberal era, are increasingly strained, and such forms of violence as direct physical action, terrorism are more common than in the past. The nervousness and disarray of of public authorities, the revival of private enterprise security guards and neo-vigilante movements are evidence enough…they have already led to a certain rediscovery of controlled violence, as in the return by so many police forces to a curious medievalism- helmets, shields, armour and all.

What is scarifying about modern American big cities is the combination of revived old and emerging new violence in situations of social tension and breakdown… nothing is more difficult for people brought up in a liberal culture, with its belief that all violence is worse than non-violence, other things being equal (which they are not).. but the worst kind is the violence that gets out of anyone’s control

Gary Lineker the presenter of BBC’s Match of the Day for 26 years has won the National TV Award. He was sacked by BBC Director General Tim Davie because he spoke out on Gaza on social media.

Commenting on why he might have won the Award Lineker noted

“It’s not lost on me why I might have won this award” “Aside from presenting Match of the Day..” “Also, I think it demonstrates that perhaps it’s ok sometimes to use our platform to speak up on behalf of those who have no voice”

The awards are chosen by viewers.

Peter Mandelson, the MAGA restaurant sofa & the ‘special relationship’

In May 2025 Peter Mandelson UK Ambassador to the US unveiled an Ambassador’s Sofa at Butterworths a favourite Washington restaurant and bar of the Trump MAGA faithful.

Presiding was Raheem Kassam, co-owner of the restaurant and far right figure who has been an advisor to Farage and is an ally of MAGA fascist Steve Bannon. Bannon is one of the named speakers at Stephen Yaxley Lennon’s far right gathering in central London on 13^th September.

The Times reported that the occasion was marked by glasses of Hambledon English sparkling wine but the restaurant serves British gastro pub type food and Guinness

Mandelson’s speech was reported as below

“I feel that over centuries now, British diplomats here in United States have been creating coalitions that support the special relationship,” he said. “I have my own classic New Labour experience of fishing for votes across the political spectrum and forging unlikely coalitions, so good luck to you.

“I just think what you have created here at Butterworth’s is fairly remarkable. You’ve brought the best of British gastro pub food and planted it down here on Capitol Hill. I feel you’ve brought the special relationship up to a new higher level.”

Subsequent events, although already in part known about but largely ignored by the UK media, give an interesting perspective to terms like ‘special relationship’ and ‘forging unlikely coalitions’.

• Antonio Gramsci’s view of what a crisis of capital leads to
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci