Kmflett's Blog

One of Farage’s houses in Lydd-on-Sea

The Tories and the Telegraph continue to obsess with where Angela Rayner does or does not live. It might be included given the gender and age of those involved that the actual obsession is with Ms Rayner rather than her properties.

A particular focus is on a property she has bought in Hove. She has admitted to an error in duty paid (or rather not paid)

Hove is a good place to watch cricket certainly and a favourite spot of both Marx and Engels. I’m not an expert in the Hove property market fortunately but I doubt the price paid was anything out of the ordinary. Whether this is a good look for a Labour Minister is a question, perhaps more particularly how many properties are actually required. Most people struggle to keep one.

Meanwhile another politician who owns lots of houses in one form or another is Nigel Farage

Joint research by the Mirror and the Good Law Project in 2024 and early 2025 revealed that the Reform UK owner has four houses in the South of England as well as the one in Clacton he eventually acquired being the local MP (which is owned by his partner, no doubt for prudent financial reasons).

Farage owns the house he shared with his ex-wife, two properties near Dungeness, one of which is reported to be rented out and another rental property in Surrey. The Dungeness houses are in fact officially owned by Farage’s Thorn in the Side company

Of course it is far from unique for both Tory and Labour MPs to be involved in property but Farage styles himself as a man of the people rather than a millionaire property owner. Farage said in 2024 that Britain has a housing crisis and given how busy he clearly is managing five properties must be a struggle

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-nigel-farages-3m-four-33575119

As the third anniversary of the start of her Premiership approaches, Liz Truss reminds us  of the existential threat Britain faces: The Blob

Liz Truss became Prime Minister on 5^th September 2022 and left office 49 days later.

She continues to blame all and sundry for her short lived tenure at 10 Downing St but media coverage in the UK is now limited.

In her latest intervention she has told Bloomberg that she backs Trump’s attempts to control the US Federal Bank. She has long blamed the Bank of England for her political demise. There is an important point to grasp here which Truss glosses over. Having the Bank of England under democratic political control would be positive. What Trump has in mind for the US is control minus the democratic bit.

Meanwhile Truss remains obsessed with The Blob which apparently runs Britain. Aside from the Bank, this includes The Times, the BBC and the Financial Times.

Is it time to make 5^th September Liz Truss Day and a national holiday

August & September jobs in Victorian London. Sacked workers, harvesting & hop picking(the well off went on holiday). In 2025 precarious and seasonal work continues to be a significant issue.

As Raphael Samuel notes in his long essay Comers and Goers during August the well off went on holiday and that meant less work for a range of occupations. He notes that the ‘indoor trades’ that provided goods for the world of rank and fashion found little business in August while women workers were particularly badly hit as those who used the services of hairdressers and laundresses went on holiday to the UK seaside. Factory work was also hard to come by. Samuel notes that at one of the East End’s biggest employers Allen and Hanbury in Bethnal Green 25% of women workers were sacked every summer.

Work was to be had instead not in urban but rural areas with then labour intensive work such as harvesting (August) and hop picking (September) requiring large numbers of casual workers. Sometimes the change from urban to rural was seen as a form of (hard) working holiday.

Neither harvesting or hop picking are significant sources of employment in 2025- both being mechanised. However the seasonal, short term nature of employment certainly is. Official society and the MSM hardly notices but it’s a daily reality for many

Co-Op to sell Palestinian solidarity lager

After a member led decision for the Co-Op to stop selling produce from Israel, the chain’s 1600 stores will sell a Palestinian lager from September 10^th.

Its brewed by Scottish brewer Brewgooder in collaboration with the Palestinian microbrewery Taybeh. The beer will be produced at zero profit with proceeds going to the Taybeh community and the Disasters Emergency Committee

The full story is here:

The beer can already be purchased directly from Brewgooder

Taybeh Brewing Co. x Brewgooder – Sun & Stone Lager

Beard Liberation Front

August 29th

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Boris Johnson’s latest holiday facial hair growth does not qualify as a beard.

The campaigners say that while there is a relaxed attitude to what does and does not constitute a beard it does apply a basic test. This is known as the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western stubble test, which divides even a proto beard from a simple failure to shave for several days.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, if Boris Johnson ever does manage to grow a beard we’d say that he would be bringing the hirsute into disrepute but his regular holiday stubble has never required that sanction.

What’s in a name? The name of ‘your party’ a few historical perspectives

Those many hundreds of thousands who have signed up for Your Party led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn received an e-mail a few days asking for suggestions for a name for the organisation.

The world’s first working class party, the National Charter Association, was formed in Manchester in July 1840. The name was unproblematic. No one said, yeah, but which charter do you mean? It referred to the six points of the People’s Charter demanding the vote.

After the demise of the Chartists by the early 1860s there was a break before new working class parties appeared. The Reform League in the 1860s was not an earlier version of Faragism but trade unionists and middle class radicals determined to win the extension of the vote the Chartists had not. They, in part, succeeded in 1867. The use of the term ‘League’ is worth noting. It appeared again from around 1870 with the Land and Labour League, supported to an extent by Marx and Engels, that prefigured the Bolshevik link between peasants and workers (The LLL were not early Bolsheviks btw)

With the rise of new working class unions in the 1880s the Democratic Federation morphed into the Social Democratic Federation, a Marxist organisation, which did not meet with the approval of Engels. The name suggested two new ideas ‘social-democratic’ and ‘federation’.

In 1893 the Independent Labour Party was formed in Bradford. Its founding conference made deliberate choices. It was not a federation but a national party and it used the name ‘labour’ not socialist.

The Labour Party was the creation of the Webbs 1918 Constitution. Clause 4 is well known but in terms of name and organisation Clause 1 is key.

The First World War provoked a further reconfiguration of left politics not least on the key issue of imperialism. In 1920 the Communist Party of GB was formed, and following on a significant number of names for left-wing campaigns and structures.

Beyond this I note People’s Party has some popularity. Raymond Williams in Keywords notes a late nineteenth century US radical party of this name which had union links. The name however is widely used.

We are 185 years on from the formation of the NCA in Manchester (in a pub of course though temperance advocates complained) and its very unlikely that any name thought of hasn’t already been used, and often not always in the most positive way. A key point for organisers for Your Party given that one of the aims is to stand in elections is to find a name that the Electoral Commission will agree (i.e not already existing).

Personally I have a different criteria, one expressed by Tom Maguire a Leeds trade unionist who played a role in the founding of the ILP. He wrote to Edward Carpenter in November 1882: This new party lifts its head all over the North. It has caught the people as I imagine the Chartists did. And it is of the people-such will be the secret of its success

Amorim’s beard not directly to blame for Man Utd defeat at Grimsby

Beard Liberation Front

28^th August

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that a special investigation by its Football Beards Unit has found that Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim’s beard was not directly to blame for the club’s defeat by Grimsby in the League Cup on Wednesday.

The investigation showed that during the game there was a persistent and very heavy downpour of rain. This meant that Amorim’s beard became water logged  resulting in a failure of beard power.

In practice because his follicles were water logged Amorim could not effectively send tactical messages to his players by stroking, pulling or positioning his beard as he would normally have done.

The Guardian has discovered artisan water- drawn from springs- and sampled some with the help of a water sommelier.

Personally I prefer to imbibe water via a glass of beer but while the Guardian seems surprised that there are artisan waters Karl Marx often partook. This was sometimes in England, at Buxton, Malvern or Ventnor but more often elsewhere in Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/28/water-sommeliers-rival-wine-terroir

He wrote to Engels on 18th September 1874 from Karlsbad:

Although you drink only in the morning (evenings, before going
to bed , we have a cold glass from a special spring brought into the
house ) , the fact is that the whole day you find yourself caught up
in a sort of machine that hardly leaves you a minute .
There follows a change of toilette; puis” luncheon in a local
hotel.
Sleeping after meals is strictly forbidden (it is allowed before
meals) and rightly so, as I have become convinced after a single
attempt. So, another tour, alternating with an excursion. Return to
Karlsbad 6-8 in the evening, a light snack, and — to bed. This
programme is varied by visits to the theatre (which always closes at
9, like all other ENTERTAINMENTS), concerts and reading room.

The effect of the waters is to make my head very IRRITABLE

League Two Grimsby have knocked out Premiership team Manchester United in the League Cup. Football trumps millionaire owners

The Independent Labour Party was formed in Bradford on 14th January 1893. On 18th January Engels wrote to Sorge about it. He was positive about the formation of the ILP- he did not think the SDF or the Fabians were on the right lines. He was concerned however that the new party should steer clear of London influences…

since the bulk of its members are undoubtedly first class, since its centre of
gravity lies in the provinces rather than in that hive of intrigue, London, and
its programme is substantially the same as our own, Aveling did right in
joining it and in accepting a position on the Executive. If the petty private
ambitions and intrigues of the London panjandrums can be kept under some
control, and its tactics are not too misguided, the Independent Labour Party
may succeed in enticing away the masses, not only from the Social
Democratic Federation but, in the provinces, also from the Fabians, and thus
enforcing unity.