Kmflett's Blog

picture: The Guardian

As part of a new European tour Bruce Springsteen has played Manchester and robustly attacked Donald Trump’s administration. He made the speech below before playing City of Ruins. Given the authoritarian drift of the Trump regime one wonders if Springsteen is considering applying for asylum. If so he best hope that Keir Starmer is not familiar with his 1971 song Like a Stranger

There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.

They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society.

They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.

They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centres and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.

The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.

Guardian 15th May 2025

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/may/15/bruce-springsteen-trump-manchester-rogue-government-siding-with-dictators

Ephologists claim Ed Miliband will lose his Parliamentary seat…in 2029

The Daily Telegraph currently does not have a permanent owner as discussions continue about much non-UK control might be allowable. The relevant Minister Lisa Nandy has declined to intervene. That is unfortunate because the Telegraph which used to be a decent paper news wise (the comment was another matter) has become addicted like other right-wing news media to just making stuff up.

Below is an example from the 15^th May 2025 issue. Some pollsters have extrapolated from the May 1^st local election results and worked out that Ed Miliband would lose his seat.

This suits the Telegraph because one of its culture war obsessions is net zero for which Miliband is the Minister responsible.

There are just a few problems. Firstly turn-out in local elections is much lower than a General Election and in the former no one is being asked to decide who should be in No.10 Downing St. Secondly while the next Election could come sooner, Starmer has a huge Parliamentary majority and doesn’t need to call one until 2029.

Hence the Telegraph article is less journalism or more Old Moore’s Almanack.

E P Thompson understood the technique well over 60 years ago and his view on Ephology is also below.

Daily Telegraph 15^th May 2025

As the dust settled on the local election results two weeks ago, it was clear that Nigel Farage had had a very good night.

But a new analysis of the results by Electoral Calculus now shows the scale of Reform UK’s victory.

By taking ward-level voting data and mapping it against Westminster seats, we can see that of the 145 constituencies where local elections were held, Reform would win 81 if locals voted in the same way at a general election.

The biggest losses were from Labour, which would see all but three of its seats go to other parties.

Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, would lose his seat in a “Portillo moment” that would shake Labour to its core.

The late socialist historian E P Thompson wrote the following on opinion polls in the New Reasoner in 1959 (the NR went on to be part of New Left Review from 1960)

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

Perhaps unsurprisingly Rishi Sunak’s Chief Whip from 2022-24 Simon (now Lord) Hart is not impressed by Nigel Farage.

In his memoir of the Tory Governments from 2019-24 Hart says of Farage:

he is the sort of pub bore who stands at the bar shouting about foreigners and picks around 25% of the angriest voters and the opposition of everyone else..

Hart stood as an MP in 2024 and was made a Peer by Sunak. While his memoir has a range of Tory prejudices its also a reminder of a Tory Party that seems to have disappeared. One where criticising Farage was thought to be an appropriate thing to do.

In my view the cover of the first (1968) cover is the best one. It is historically inaccurate- Thompson doesn’t discuss Yorkshire mining which the cover depicts.

Thompson’s discussion of Peterloo is central to the book so the 1963 hardback cover plus the second paperback cover are truer to his perspective in that sense.

For reference reading from the top left, the 1963 hardback cover is first, then the 1968 (Pelican) paperback. The remaining four covers are when reprints took place, often with new introductions, although not of course from Thompson himself who died in 1993.

The 1968 cover is by far the best known

Marstons was a major brewer, now a pub company. Its half year results to the end of March 2025 don’t mention beer

Until quite recently Marstons was a major regional to national brewer in the UK, having accumulated a number of previously independent brewers. It sold its brewing business to Carlsberg-Britvic and now operates a 1,333 strong pub estate, with more pub openings planned.

Its half year results published on 13^th May reflect a reasonable £19.5m profit. Presumably Marstons wont be making too much of a fuss about increases to employers NI and the minimum wage. In fact given the pressures on hospitality the result is creditable.

Marstons when it brewed made some classic beers such as Pedigree (now brewed by Carlsberg). The half year results are notable for saying absolutely nothing about beer. A partnership with Paddington in Peru and darts tournament featuring leading player Luke Humphries is the focus.

As the late Alex Glasgow sang, as soon as this pub closes, the revolution starts

Interim Results – 13 May 2025

Hansard, House of Commons Monday 12th May

Lee Anderson 

(Ashfield) (Reform)

I thank the Minister for giving way; she is being most generous with her time. She will be aware that more than 600 illegal migrants have entered this country today. They could get up to all sorts of mischief, and commit crimes and maybe even acts of terrorism. Does she agree that these young men crossing the channel should be immediately detained and deported, along with the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)?

6.30pm

Dame Angela Eagle 

I certainly hope that that kind of comment might be a joke. I wonder whether that kind of arbitrary treatment of people who are in this country would become the norm for Reform, if we came out of the European convention on human rights, as the hon. Member wants. We are a law-abiding Government. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has a complete right to his opinions and a complete right to express them, from whichever side of the House he sits. I have personally worked with him and have a great deal of respect for him, so I am shocked that the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) thinks that an appropriate thing to say in this place.

With remarkable symmetry, 10 months after entering office, Harold Wilson’s government published an immigration white paper in 1965 reducing “vouchers” (or visas) for Commonwealth citizens from 20,800 a year to 8,500 and restricting them to skilled workers. “Without integration, limitation is inexcusable; without limitation, integration is impossible,” declared then-backbencher Roy Hattersley as he endorsed this approach. Cooper would argue no differently today.

George Eaton New Statesman 12^th May 2025

Paul Foot produced a socialist critique of the 1965 Labour Government’s Immigration Controls which was published as a paperback Penguin Special

Even if we accept all the capitalist premises, then, immigration control has nothing to do with ‘flooding the labour market’ or any such nonsense. Automatically, immigration corresponds to the needs of the economy. Similarly, in close capitalist logic, immigration does not in any way aggravate the shortage of social services, since the immigrant brings with him not only his body, which has to be housed, but also his work, which helps to build the house. Immigration control is not a creature of logic, even of capitalist logic. It has nothing to do with reason, even capitalist reason. It is a direct product of and capitulation to reason’s opposite, prejudice.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/foot-paul/1965/xx/immigration.htm

The graphic above (Guardian) is based on a Find Out Now poll.

I don’t regard FON as particularly reliable pollsters, more often it seems interested in shaping opinion than reporting it.

Even so the margins here for the Greens and LibDems (Independents and socialists are beyond the ken of FON) are so significant that the direction of travel is clear.

Meanwhile self styled tactical genius and 10 Downing St Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney has other ideas, hence Starmer’s ‘strangers’ speech on 12th May

Talking Heads, Road to Nowhere comes strongly to mind

This picture was taken opposite the RNLI station in Penarth, South Wales on 13th May 2025. The RNLI of course is focused on saving lives without fear or favour, and the Friendship bench represents that spirit. Something Sir Keir Starmer might keep in mind

From Birmingham 20^th April 1968 to London 12^th May 2025. Political Speeches on ‘strangers’

Keir Starmer’s speech on migration on 12^th May 2025 has been widely condemned for its reference to strangers an echo of Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech on 20^th April 1968.

The relevant passages are below with a link to Starmer’s speech. I have not linked to the Powell speech, but it can be Googled. Powell was sacked a Tory Shadow Minister by Tory leader Ted Heath for making it.

Whether Starmer was aware of the reference can be debated but it seems very likely that whoever inserted it in the speech was well aware and that aside from Powell it’s a sentiment previously associated with Farage.

The campaign to underline that refugees and migrants are welcome here, and indeed essential to our public services in a tolerant country at ease with itself needs to be pursued with even more vigour

For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

Enoch Powell 20^th April 1968, Conservative Association Meeting, Birmingham

we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.

Keir Starmer, 12^th May 2025 London

PM remarks at Immigration White Paper press conference: 12 May 2025 – GOV.UK