Kmflett's Blog

EP Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class discussed the ‘Freeborn Englishman’ the archetypal British patriot. He was referring to the early nineteenth century and the ‘man’ is related to historical evidence and documentation. Even so work on the ‘Freeborn Englishwoman’ is long overdue.

Thompson makes the point that the English patriot can be on the political left or the political right depending on the specific times and context.

He identified some key characteristics. The first he noted is ‘freedom from foreign domination’ which in a modern context was a feature of the  EU Referendum campaign, whether genuinely so or not.

Many others relate not to economic or social liberty but political liberty. These included, freedom from arbitrary arrest, trial by jury, equality before the law and freedom from the home being arbitrarily entered by the authorities.

Thompson also indicated the notion of some specific political freedoms around elections, free thought and speech and Parliamentary opposition.

The bottom line however was what Thompson called a ‘moral consensus’ of limits beyond which the patriotic Englishman would not be pushed. In short the Freeborn Englishman wanted the right to be ‘left alone’.

Yvette Cooper’s so far successful attempt to call and ban Palestinian protest activism as terrorism shifts the emphasis from people who are actively involved in planning a terrorist attack to a wider layer of people who may, for example, have strong views about British foreign policy, but have no idea of taking that further than making a peaceful political point.

The plan is in short not to leave people alone, free to speak out.

As The Guardian amongst others have underlined criminalising dissent hinders rather than helps the vital effort to stop terrorist attacks.

The FT’s US correspondent Edward Luce has had lunch with Steve Bannon, leader of the MAGA movement, often regarded as a fascist and sworn enemy of Elon Musk.

It was of course at Butterworths, the MAGA French bistro style restaurant in Washington. Its part owned by former Farage acolyte Raheem Kassam and Bannon claims he has a special place in the restaurant known as Bannon’s Nook.

Luce tries to pin Bannon down on his view of Trump, the bombing of Iraq, and Israel.

However what really matters at a lunch, a ‘proper’ lunch as Farage has it, is the food. The duck hash comes with fried egg on top and the fries are cooked in beef tallow. Luce and Bannon share these.

For mains the Merguez sandwich is Luce’s choice while Bannon goes for steak and eggs. Luce reports that he barely touches it, and tries to persuade Luce to have some (he declines). Bannon claims that he became a vegetarian while serving a four month jail sentence over the January 6th 2020 events and has only recently started eating meat again.

No alcohol is consumed just water and diet coke, although Musk claims Bannon is a drunk.

Edward Luce is a good US reporter, well worth reading. Bannon being a long time associate of Musk is not to be taken at face value, aside from being someone who needs to be politically defeated

Reform candidate vetting: Farage throws Tice under the bus

Nigel Farage has addressed the issue of how Reform candidates were vetted before the July 4^th 2024 Election. It has arisen again as Reform MP James McMurdock has lost the whip following reports about financial irregularities during the pandemic period (which he denies). Previously Reform MP Rupert Lowe was purged after a fall out with Farage.

Speaking on 7^th July Farage claimed that the vetting or otherwise of General Election candidates was nothing to do with him but was the responsibility of Dicky Tice who was leader at the time. Tice is the MP for Boston, Skegness and Dubai Central.

At the time (June 2024) Farage blamed the fact that there were Reform Election candidates who thought Hitler was a good bloke on failures by a ‘reputable vetting company’.

Presumably the reputable company’s lawyers have since had a word so Farage is now blaming Tice who given Farage’s known penchant for falling out with people may soon be spending even more time in Dubai with his partner Isabel Oakeshitt.

Anyone who follows the travails of Reform will know that Farage’s statement that there have been no issues with Reform Council candidates who stood on May 1^st 2025 will know this is a lie, another of Farage’s trademarks.

Later on Monday 7^th July because consistency is everything for Reform, it announced that it will now have a lighter touch vetting process. Presumably its now ok to like Hitler a bit as long as you don’t mention invading Poland.

Guardian Report 7^th July 2025

I came in, I inherited this situation where hundreds of candidates who stood in the last general election had not gone through a vetting process.

I said on 5 July, the day after the election last year, that we would now professionalise.

We put 1,630 candidates into the field on 1 May, more than any other party with very, very few rows or arguments – so the vetting process worked for this year, I can’t apologise for what happened before.

The Times is a leading member of the Benjamin Netanyahu fan club so its slightly surprising to find an Editorial (7th July) arguing that the ban on Palestine Action is something of an overreach on the Government’s part.

Perhaps the Editor Tony Gallagher (ex-Sun) is on holiday.

Nevertheless the support for the Freeborn Englishman is welcome and Yvette Cooper should know (but clearly does not) that the pursuance of rights in the 1820s and 1830s laid a framework which eventually allowed the Labour Party to come into existence (for comparison in the final quarter of the nineteenth century the German SPD was largely banned)

Below are what the Freeborn Englishman of the first decades of the nineteenth century thought were his rights (and with which Governments before the 1832 Reform Act tended to acquiesce)

Thompson notes them in the Making of the English Working Class (1963, 1968)

Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest

Equality before the Law

Trial by Jury

Limited liberty of thought, speech and conscience

Freedom to travel, trade and sell one’s labour

There were a series of football matches in Clacton on Sunday July 6th with the aim of raising money for the British Heart Foundation and Mind.

So far, so good. Not so good was that Nigel Farage, self styled Clacton MP, claims to manage one of the sides. Farage is a cricket fan (expect to see him at the Third Test at Lords this week when he should be in the Commons). His knowledge of football (no doubt beyond banning taking the knee) is unknown.

Farage posted a picture of ‘his’ team on social media which showed them all wearing Farage 10 shirts. Whether Farage was actually there has not yet been reported. He could easily have been photoshopped into the picture.

Either way while it was a day to raise funds for charity, Farage was of course promoting himself

depending on interest you may have seen publicity for M&S’s latest culinary adventure the whipped creme and strawberry sandwich.

It is not compulsory to try one but as a relatively rare example of a dessert sandwich I did, eventually give it a go. The whipped creme is slightly sweet but balanced by the tangy strawberries. The slices of white bread are quite thick presumably to stop the sandwich from falling apart.

Finding one proved to be easier said than done. I tried M&S food stores in Dalston and central Hackney usually reliable outlets for whatever is new in M&S land but the shelves were bare. I eventually tracked down one at Paddington Station at 7.30am on Saturday.

From this I deduce the sandwich is both niche and on trend. I can confirm that it is also beard friendly.

I did make my own version last week. I used Sainsbury’s strawberries. M&S Red Diamond strawberries which are advertised on TV by Tom Kerridge are not when I’ve tried them particularly good. I replaced the creme with Sinodun Hill goats cheese, a mature example of the genre. I’m not sure it was any cheaper than the M&S sandwich (£3.20)to put together- the goats cheese is expensive- but it shifted it from sweet towards savoury.

Zarah Sultana quits Labour to form a new left party. Historically a rare departure

Zarah Sultana who has been suspended as a Labour MP for a year has quit the Party and announced the intention to form a new left party with Jeremy Corbyn and others. Of course there is already a debate about whether this is a good idea and whether it can work.

This post however looks at some Labour Party history, What Sultana has done is historically both unusual and significant.

There have been significant and less significant splits from Labour in the 50 years. The SDP departed in 1981, made a big impact in the 1983 Election- primarily to ensure the return of Margaret Thatcher to No.10- and dissolved itself into the Liberal Democrats in 1988. In 2019 Change UK, which also comprised a few Tory MPs split from Labour and promptly disappeared from view.

On the left matters have developed, in most cases, a bit differently

Nye Bevan and several other MPs were expelled in March 1939 for advocating a popular front against Hitler and working with the Communist Party and others. He was re-admitted in December 1939 after agreeing not to do this. However he remained a left-wing critic of the Government (when not a Minister himself) and came close to expulsion again on several occasions in the 1950s.

His biographer and successor to his Parliamentary seat in Ebbw Vale Michael Foot had the Labour Whip withdrawn by right-wing leader Hugh Gaitskell for voting against military spending estimates in 1961. It was not restored until Harold Wilson became leader in 1963.

In this period 1930s to 1960s leading left Labour figures had a rocky relationship with the Labour leadership but remained mostly within the party.

In the more recent past the Labour Broad Church has become significantly less broad.

Dave Nellist and Terry Fields, supporters of the then Militant were expelled from Labour in the Kinnock purge in 1991. They lost their seats at the 1992 Election and subsequently became supporters of the Socialist Party, essentially a rebadge of the Militant outside of Labour.

More recently in 2003 George Galloway then the Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin was booted out by Tony Blair for opposing the war in Iraq. Galloway subsequently became an MP for the short lived left of Labour party, Respect in 2005.

Moving closer still to the present day former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was eventually expelled from Labour, essentially on the grounds his left-wing politics were no longer welcome. It is in stark contrast to how Nye Bevan and Michael Foot fared in earlier periods. Corbyn subsequently stood as an independent at the 2024 Election and retained his seat.

All of this underlines the historically significant nature of Zarah Sultana’s decision. The only other example I can find is that of Eddie Milne. Milne was Labour MP for Blyth from 1960 to 1974. An USDAW official he was not particularly identified with the left. However he became increasingly concerned about corruption in north-east Labour politics. The story is fictionalised in Our Friends in the North. Milne was deselected just before the February 1974 Election but stood and won the seat as an independent. However at the October 1974 Election he lost. He had a group of supporters who won Council seats for a period in the later 1970s.

One might argue that while Milne departed due to financial corruption, Sultana has left because of political corruption in terms of how Labour is currently run, de-selection and suspension coming from similar parts of the rule book as it were.

Sultana’s decision does underline the historical specificity of Starmer’s Labour. In a first past the post electoral system a party that can’t bring together a broad range of opinion may struggle, as the Tories found out in 2024.

As much to the point a new party developing from a direct split to the left from Labour is, in the last 125 years, a rare and very nearly a unique event. The era of Parliamentary Socialism where as Ralph Miliband noted (1961) Labour was almost the most dogmatic of parties not about socialism but about Parliamentary processes may be drawing to a conclusion

Lest we forget: the 2024 Election Portillo moment. Liz Truss loses

Liz Truss had a majority of 26,000 in her South West Norfolk seat. She said (Sunday Times 2nd June 2024) that she was focused on winning the seat at the Election on local issues and had no ambition to return to Downing St. That didn’t  quite fit with the extensive publicity her political memoir received where she styled herself as the saviour of Western civilisation.

There were also two other right-wing candidates James Bagge a former Tory standing on an anti-Truss platform, who usually described himself as the ‘Turnip Taliban’ and Toby McKenzie for Reform. With the potential for a split vote on the right there was a, very welcome, Labour surprise. Labour’s Terry Jermy won by 640 votes