Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that England’s struggle to overcome Andorra in a 2026 World Cup qualifier reflects the lack of beard power exhibited by new England manager Thomas Tuchel.
England beat Andorra 1-0 with a goal on 50 minutes from the award winning beard of Harry Kane. However with Andorra ranked 173rd in the world England’s overall performance was below par.
The campaigners say that while Tuchel has a beard it lacks the influential gravitas of previous manager Gareth Southgate.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Thomas Tuchel needs to do some follicle work to inspire the England team to more decisive results
Reform & Local Councils: no one likes us, we don’t care*
On May 1st the far right political business Reform, owned by Nigel Farage, won over 600 local Council seats in England. This gave them the control of some Councils and enough seats on some others to have a role in determining who should control them.
The BBC story below shows how this working out. It’s a good piece of reporting underlining that beneath the agenda driven household names of BBC political journalism there are actual journalists diligently reporting (not attempting to shape or promote) what is going on.
Its quite usual for local Councils to be NOC- No Overall Control- where different parties work together on things that need doing locally. Coalitions that would not occur at Westminster- Tory-Green for example- happen on this pragmatic level.
The problem for Reform here is twofold. Firstly it’s not a democratic political party, it’s a business. Secondly if, as events quite often make clear, anyone in Reform does something the owner doesn’t like they are given the boot.
Hence as the report notes Reform Councils have no local policies. Stopping the boats the mantra of the far right, is not something Town Halls can do, unless they have a municipal boating lake anyway.
Nor are Reform minded to seek to work with others because they need the agreement of the owner who has other matters on his mind (where the nearest wine bar is for example).
It’s a subset of the quote from the Great Gatsby. Reform UK are breaking things locally and they are careless people. Moving fast however is not on the agenda. As Fitzgerald writes in the book eventually other people will have to clear up the mess.
All this is the kind of really useful political knowledge that those who write the headlines about the inexorable rise of Reform aren’t interested in. It does however remain the reality
50 years on from the 1975 EU Referendum how socialist historian E P Thompson saw a genuinely socialist Europe
On 27th April 1975 the late socialist historian E P Thompson wrote an article in the pre-Murdoch Sunday Times on the forthcoming Referendum on confirming Britain’s membership of the then EEC (now the extended EU). The Referendum was held in June 1975 and won decisively by what would now be called ‘remain’.
Thompson joined other figures on the left including Tony Benn in supporting ‘leave’.
50 years on the world has changed (though not in its fundamentals) and we can’t know how Thompson would have viewed the 2016 Referendum on Europe
Below is most of the article that Thompson wrote (one or two sentences are edited out by the transcriber for some unknown reason). He makes a passionate defence of genuine European socialist internationalism and of British radical traditions that might lead towards it.
The entire article is contained in a collection of Thompson’s writings, Writing by Candlelight which unfortunately is out of print
It needs in 2025 to be read as a piece of its time which can perhaps inform current debates but not replace them
Going into Europe
The first person who enthused to me, some years ago, about ‘going into Europe’ went on to enthuse about green peppers. This gave a clue as to what the great British middle class thinks ‘Europe’ is about.
It is about the belly. A market is about consumption. The Common Market is conceived of as a distended stomach: a large organ with various traps, digestive chambers and fiscal acids, assimilating a rich diet of consumer goods. It has no mind, no direction, no other identity: it is imagined as either digesting or as in a replete, post-prandial states easily confused with benevolence of idealism.
The images vegetate in the British middle-class subconscious. This Market has no head, eyes, or moral sense. If you ask where it is going, or why, no-one knows; they give an anticipatory post-prandial burp (‘it will make us viable’) and talk about bureaucratic procedures in Brussels. It has no historical itinerary. It lies in a chair, hands on its tummy, digesting a pasta of Fiats, a washing-up machine meunière and (burp!) that excellent concorde thermidor which may not have been as fresh as it should have been.
This Eurostomach is the logical extension of the existing eating-out habits of Oxford and North London. Particular arrangements convenient to West European capitalism blur into a haze of remembered vacations, beaches, bougainvillaea, business jaunts, and vintage wines. At the referendum the sky will darken with charter flights from the Dordogne, each passenger’s mouth puckered into a oui.
At a poor second, the middle class thinks the Market is about Culture. Bob of the Likely Lads has long been taking Thelma earnestly to Fellini and Godard. The academic and television Bobs and Thelmas, after their long and abject mid-Atlantic enchantment, have entered a no less abject enchantment with ‘Europe’. But it is the same image. Culture is what we consume; it is bestowed, without participation, engagement, dialogue – a common cultural stomach.
For ‘going into Europe’ is also a Magic. It is the Necessary Miracle. Utterly without self-confidence, hemmed in at every side by the defensive organizations of a humane working class (the ‘English disease’), the British bourgeoisie prepares, as its last hope of survival, to surrender its identity to the larger rapacity of the European bourgeoisie. It may not survive itself: but at least it will make sure that Money does.
What is sick about this is that, in national as in personal matters, only an individual with a firm identity can make effective relationships. This ‘going into Europe’ will not turn out to be the thrilling mutual exchange supposed. It is more like nine middle-aged couples with failing marriages meeting in a darkened bedroom in a Brussels hotel for a Group Grope. The gruppensex will rejuvenate no one. But in the recriminations of the bitchy afterglower we can expect a resurgence of bourgeois nationalist rancour of sensational intensity.
The offence of the ‘going into Europe’ humbug is fourfold. First, we are there already. Second, Europe is not that set of nations but also includes Warsaw, Belgrade, Prague. Third, the Market defines the diversity of European cultures as its crassest level as a group of fat, rich nations feeding each other goodies. Fourth, it defines this introversial white bourgeois nationalism as ‘internationalism’.
It will not, of course, work. But the spoof about internationalism remains offensive. And dangerous. For when an altruistic glint gets into the bourgeois eye one can be sure that someone is about the catch it. Once replete, the eurostomach will want to euronate. The present idea is to do it on the British working class. ‘Going into Europe’ will mean ‘rationalization’, ‘winds of competition’, getting rid of ‘restrictive practices’ (i.e. humane safeguards and self-protection), ‘facing up to things’. We can be sure that the things faced up to will be very different through the open shutter of the Dordogne and a bedroom window in Bolton.
These arrangements of capitalist convenience have nothing whatsoever to do with internationalism, political or cultural. What they will do is distance decision-making from its subject and mystify what remains a democratic process. They provide no opportunities for common fraternal action or intellectual exchange which could not be conducted better without them. And have been, for some hundreds of years. Surely Hugh Thomas knows that his “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants have been happily absorbing ‘a few doses of latinity’ periodically for centuries, without any license from a Treaty of Rome?
Some sillies in the labour movements suppose the Market will facilitate socialist and trade union activity. It will do the opposite. It will put the bourgeoisie twenty years ahead at one throw. Luigi and Kurt and George and Gaston, with their secretaries, their linguistic skills, their massed telephones, their expense-account weekends, their inter-locking euro-directorships, their manipulation of the rules and of the Brussels spouters, will always be smiling at the table, with the agenda cooked, the day before the workers get there. And British labour will cast away its one incomparable historical asset (a united movement) in anxious negotiations with its fragmented and ideologically embittered counterparts.
Meanwhile the Dutch elm disease (Europe’s most viable export to England in the past decade) is nothing to the beetles being bred by the bureaucrats in Brussels to blight what remains of our active democratic traditions. True, there are plenty of people high in the British state who would like to do the same. But that’s the point. The enemies, as well as the friends, of democratic process are everywhere and anywhere: internationalism falls along the line of that horizontal fracture, not within a set of vertical alliances.
There is a more momentous point. As British capitalism dies above and about us, one can glimpse, as an outside chance, the possibility that we could effect here a peaceful transition – for the first time in the world – to a democratic socialist society.
It would be an odd, illogical socialism, quite unacceptable to any grand theorist. That is perhaps why most British Marxists have long ceased to attend to British actualities and, at a time of unparalleled socialist opportunity, play to each other their amateur revolutionary theatricals.
But the opportunity is there, within the logic of our past itinerary. The lines of British culture still run vigorously to that point of change where our traditions and organizations cease to be defensive and become affirmative forces: the country becomes our own. To make that leap, from a market to a society, requires that our people maintain, for a little longer, their own sense of identity, and understanding of the democratic procedures available to them. It requires also the holding open of every international option: for trade with the developing world, for dialogue with the Communist world, for informal intellectual exchange.
It is fear of this transition – of Money toppled from power – which makes our good bourgeois contort his face into an unlikely expression of internationalism. And, equally, the effecting of this transition is the most substantial contribution to internationalism which our people could make.
That is what we could offer to the European dialogue. And to a Europe which includes Oslo and Belgrade. Long, very long after that, a true idea of ‘Europe’ might return: as a cautious federation of socialist states. It will develop slowly, tetchily, with jealous regard for individual identities. And so it should.
Peter Mandelson UK Ambassador to the US has 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.
The Times reports 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 is 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.”
Despite hype & bluster Reform did not win Hamilton, they came third
Much of the media expected Reform to win the Hamilton By-Election on 5th June. It fitted the narrative of the inexorable rise of Farage. In fact the voters ignored the hype and Reform came third.
That didn’t stop, for example, the BBC from writing that Reform had been one of the real winners. In fact elections have only one winner and on this occasion it was Labour
What many polls and news media are doing is not to report opinion but to try and shape it. Currently that means promoting Farage because that gets them publicity.
As E P Thompson noted as far back as 1959
A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the ‘Observer’ or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it
New Reasoner, Autumn 1959
That does not mean that the Reform vote is anything but one of concern. Farage and Co ran an openly racist campaign in Hamilton and still got thousands of votes. As commentators have pointed out far from all those votes would have been from racists. But they were from people who were not overly concerned about the racism.
There is work to do in opposing Reform, assuming it does not implode as UKIP did ten years ago. Incessant hyping of Farage’s political business vehicle needs to be challenged as part of that.
There is also work to do in challenging media narratives that Farage is on the way to win the next Election. That work needs to be done in workplaces, cafes, community hubs and pubs, the kind of places where the national media rarely ventures
Historians back Peoples Assembly protest on 7th June. Austerity has a history
The London Socialist Historians Group which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London has backed the People’s Assembly demonstration on Saturday 7th June.
The demonstration assembles at noon at Portland Place in central London and is focused on calling the Government to account for its Austerity 2.0 policies
The People’s Assembly came from a meeting at Westminster Central Hall in 2013 and has organised regular demonstrations since then. It has a broad focus which coalesces around welfare not warfare
The historians say they are particularly concerned that the austerity politics which arose after the financial crash in 2008/9 are still called out in 2025 with a sense that whatever Government is in office Tory/Liberal Democrat (2010-15) Tory (2015-2024) and Labour (2024-) an economic orthodoxy that promotes the interests of the few not the many persists
LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, many might have hoped that with the Election of a Labour Government austerity policies would have been consigned to the dustbin of history. While there are changes there is no decisive break from the past. A reminder that while Governments come and go the importance of protest maintains- it’s a central part of democratic politics.
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
Follicle Free Spurs owner Daniel Levy sacks another hirsute manager
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that following Daniel Levy’s decision to sack Europa League winning manager Ange Postecoglou, there is growing evidence that he is prejudiced against managers with beards.
Another well known hirsute manager Nuno lasted only 5 months at Spurs in 2021.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, its increasingly clear that follicle free Levy does not understand the importance of Beard Power in football management
Kemi Badenoch doesn’t know if Liz Truss is still a Tory member
BBC political correspondent Chris Mason interviewed Kemi Badenoch on 6th June primarily about a speech Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride had given on 5th June. A central focus of Stride’s speech was that the Tories would never again repeat the Liz Truss experiment of 2022.
Mason asked Badenoch why she didn’t boot Truss out of the Party as Keir Starmer had done with Jeremy Corbyn. In response Badenoch asked Mason if Truss was in fact still a member. He suggested that as Tory leader she should know…
Shadow Tory Chancellor’s list of what makes Britain great includes Nelson & Punk Rock but is firmly mono-cultural
The Shadow Tory Chancellor (Mel Stride in case you were wondering) made a speech at the RSA in London on 5th June. In it he included a list of things- people and inventions- that have made Britain the country it is today.
Its quite an eclectic list in some ways from Nelson to the Pistols Anarchy in the UK but aside from ignoring anyone and everything on the left it’s also monocultural. No William Cuffay or Bernie Grant.
The Tories once aspired to be the party of One Nation, which nation in 2025 its perhaps either not clear or rather too clear..
That this is the country of Shakespeare, Nelson, Newton, Turing, Wolf, Nightingale, Austen, Lennon, Crick, punk rock, the jet engine, the internet, graphene and the splitting of the atom. That we will always have within ourselves what it takes to succeed. To build a country that is alive and whole.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has noted reports that David Beckham’s beard is to receive a Knighthood in the King’s Birthday Honours List next week.
The campaigners say that while Beckham’s beard is high profile and arguably presents a positive image of the hirsute patronage is not the most appropriate way to recognise facial hair.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we run an annual Beard of the Year vote each December, open to all and with on-line voting strictly monitored. David Beckham has never made the shortlist for Beard of the Year but perhaps 2025 is his year.
