Kmflett's Blog

Socialist Alternatives May/June 1987

Keir Starmer putting forward new restrictions on legal immigration on 12th May argued that Britain was becoming an ‘island of strangers’. It sounded rather like Nigel Farage, although, the kind of restrictions Starmer was proposing, have a solid Labour pedigree (lest we forget). Harold Wilson’s Governments in the 1960s did similar things.

Even so for Starmer the MP for Holborn and St Pancras, where Reform came fifth in July 2024 with 6.1% of the vote, the language was, in my view deplorable.

Starmer has been a North Londoner since the later 1980s when he lived in a flat on the Archway Rd near Highgate tube. He eventually ended up in Kentish Town. It might be argued that North London then and now is place of strangers, and actually a place where (despite issues of housing, poverty etc) people from a large number of countries get along fairly well. The economy and public services in North London depend to a considerable extent on migrants, who are mostly here because Britain at some point was in the country they come from.

Has Keir Starmer not noticed any of this in the last 40 years?

He certainly did when he was on the Editorial Board of Socialist Alternatives in the later 1980s. He first came across those who ran it when he was doing postgrad study at Oxford but was still involved when he lived on the Archway Rd (opposite Jacksons Lane Community Centre, a welcoming and very diverse place).

Judging by the extract from an interview he did with Tony Benn and Hilary Wainright in 1987 he did understand then (extract above). He writes of an alternative left that is fighting, racism, sexism, heterosexism.

This was hardly a unique Starmer insight but a fairly commonplace perspective in North London in the 1980s and 40 years on it still is.

Somewhere along the line Starmer moved from being part of North London to someone who was just in it…

This is on a bus shelter at Manor House, North London (11th May 2025, Junction of Green Lanes & Seven Sisters Rd)

h/t @sashasimic.bsky.social

Sunak’s Chief Whip 2022-24 on Ex-Tory MP Lee Anderson: ‘no manners, no nerve, no loyalty

Simon (now Lord) Hart has published his memoir of the Tory Governments from 2019, Ungovernable (2025)

Below is one reference to former Tory now Reform MP Lee Anderson

Monday March 11 2024

Lee Anderson defects to Reform- despite personal assurances that he would not. I have tried hard to avoid the conclusion that he is a total knob, he has made it nearly impossible. No manners, no nerve, no loyalty…

I’ve been an active socialist for over 50 years and for nearly all of that time there has been talk of a new party of the left being needed.

The foundation text was probably Ralph Miliband’s Parliamentary Socialism (1961) which surveyed the first six decades of the Labour Party’s history and concluded that while it was very interested in Parliamentary processes it was much less interested in socialism.

Ralph Miliband himself never quite made up his mind whether to be a socialist in the Labour Party or outside it was the way ahead.

There have been two periods when many saw the possibility of a left-ish Labour Party. The ascendancy of Tony Benn and those around him in the 1980s, and, related, the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn from 2015-19

In 2025 there is a clamour for a new party on the left, primarily initially from the hundreds of thousands who have left Labour in the Starmer period. More recently from those- I am one- who have participated in various electoral alliances over the last 25 years- the Socialist Alliance, Respect, TUSC etc-who see the need for an electoral alternative to Reform which Labour’s Great Moving Right Show is not providing. Interestingly some right-wing commentators have long seen a gap for a new party to Labour’s left (they of course think this will split a left vote in a first past the post electoral system)

There has now been a significant development, in the sense that Jeremy Corbyn speaking in Huddersfield on 10th May 2025 has suggested that a new left formation will be in place for the local elections in May 2026 (also the 100th anniversary of the General Strike)

This post doesn’t summarise my thoughts on a range of issues on this subject- electoral politics, how change comes about and where from and so on. Its simply noting that the discussion is moving on

What Jeremy Corbyn said 

“Now I hear the call for a new political party. I fully understand that and that political party needs to be well informed and effective, one that gives our central message of peace, of justice, of equality, of diversity within our society. 

“That means that anyone that we support who’s elected to a local authority or to parliament is going to be accountable to their community. It’s going to behave in a democratic way and above all is pledged to redress the grotesque levels of inequality and imbalance that are there within our society.

“A lot of us are working very hard, supporting each other as independents. This whole cause is coming together so that by next year’s local elections, long before that, we’re going to have something in place that is very clear, that everyone will want to be part of and support.

“It’s never hard to find differences of opinion on the left. But look at the reality of people’s lives and what the issues are that have to be faced. 

“Hope can be a very powerful development in politics. Reform only offers despair. 

The Ambridge Socialist

11^th May

The Archers Dynasty in Conclave to elect a new Peggy

So, farewell then Peggy Woolley veteran Matriarch of the Archer Dynasty. Her alter ago June Spencer died in November 2024 aged 105. Perhaps it was symbolic that Peggy departed on VE Day, the end of era. That does however mean that the Archers Dynasty must meet in Conclave to elect a new Peggy.

Will it be the radical choice of Pat Archer, or the more conservative Elizabeth, or will a generation be skipped and Helen be appointed…

VE Day, Lawrence and racism

There are two special 1940s Archers programmes but the VE Day celebrations were handled surprisingly well. There was little for the Telegraph to savour. Lynda again called out the racism of Lawrence, and reminded him that thousands of BAME service men and women had fought on the British side in World War Two

Animal Rights & Rochelle

After fairly dismal BBC reporting of the animal rights protest at the abattoir, this week saw some improvement with Rochelle allowed to explain why she protested and also make clear that she was not on board with the unwarranted violence that had taken place. Rochelle’s bail conditions see her located outside of Borsetshire so presumably she’s off to a role in Coronation St for a bit. In a quid pro quo an incoming Corrie actress is about to cause something of a stir in Ambridge it appears..

The above is from Britain Elect’s Ben Walker and is on-line with his analysis at the New Statesman.

Readers of this blog (if there are any) will know that I am sceptical about pollsters (psephologists). I tend to think they too often produce what the late socialist historian E P Thompson called Ephology. That is not reflecting opinion but trying to shape it, often to get headlines and promote their polling business.

Walker is at the more political end, in the sense of trying to understand in detail what polls and results mean for the future.

His headline point from the above is that, obviously, Reform did far better than predicted (and the Tories and Labour did worse). A suggestion is that because Reform got people who don’t normally vote out to vote for them. Reform doesnt have much of a ground operation so this probably means people turning up in person more than postal votes. However in order to vote in person you of course have to be registered to vote and have ID. So these were not people who were totally disengaged.

Post May 1st the most rightly wing-media have been bigging up Reform. However at Walker shows both the LibDems and the Greens out performed predictions. That is important for the centre/left and left vote I suspect

Beard Liberation Front

11^th May

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Beard Liberation Front sends 76^th Birthday Greetings to Jeremy Paxman. He broke the mould for hirsute TV news presenters

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has sent birthday greetings to Jeremy Paxman as he marks his 76^th birthday

He hosted University Challenge for 29 years before stepping down in May 2023. In recent times he has been an indefatigable campaigner for those living with Parkinsons.

On August 12^th 2013, over ten years ago, Paxman presented Newsnight with a beard he had grown during a break. The clean shaven and Pogonophobic BBC hierarchy had previously banned news and current affairs presenters from wearing beards.

Paxman defied them but appeared clean shaven when presenting Newsnight on 6^th January 2014

It is not thought that he ever presented University Challenge while wearing a beard but was frequently to be seen wearing one off-air.

The campaigners say that Paxman’s action broke the clean shaven mould at the BBC and since then hirsute presenter have become a relatively familiar feature

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Jeremy Paxman said in 2013 that he had become a ‘poster boy’ for the Beard Liberation Front. As he marks his 76^th birthday we say long live Jeremy Paxman and his mould breaking beard

After the Unite for England rally and attempted riot Michael Rosen’s poem remains a powerful warning not to normalise racism & far right politics

Fascism: I sometimes fear…

I sometimes fear that

people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress

worn by grotesques and monsters

as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.

It will restore your honour,

make you feel proud,

protect your house,

give you a job,

clean up the neighbourhood,

remind you of how great you once were,

clear out the venal and the corrupt,

remove anything you feel is unlike you…

It doesn’t walk in saying,

“Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.”

Michael Rosen

The May 2020 10 Downing St Cheese and Wine ‘meeting’, 5 Years On

The illegal cheese and wine ‘meeting’ in the 10 Downing St garden in mid-May 2020 also marked another shift in the Tory Culture Wars. Any self-respecting anti-Tory knows that in the 2020s the pairing is cheese and craft beer.

The gathering also underlined what we saw with Dominic Cummings and indeed Professor Neil Ferguson of a sense of their lockdowns and ours. They could continue to go about their business at will. No doubt others with large gardens away from public view were doing the same. Meanwhile those many, sometimes with small children, in City flats without access to outside space were being harassed and sometimes arrested by the police in parks and public gardens.

Still others will have been hospitalised with COVID or seen friends and relatives sadly die

It reflected the culture of an arrogant political grouping believing they do not and should not be held accountable to the same standards as others, in a sense the pre-democratic culture that William Cobbett referred to as Old Corruption.

Given the Tories current standing in the polls it seems many voters have not forgotten the events of May in Downing St 5 years ago

What the Papal Conclave ate

A new Pope has been elected but it took the collected Cardinals a couple of days. The Times (9^th May) has revealed what they had to eat.

The menu was set to avoid the risk of choking or hiding secret messages in the food

Lunch: white meat or fish with vegetables

Dinner: vegetable soup, pasta and fish, fruit, jam tart & a glass of wine

Some foods were off the agenda including asparagus which is reportedly a diuretic, an issue for senior cardinals who were meant to be sitting in conclave not the toilet Ravioli was off the menu due to concerns that messages could be hidden in it as was chicken on the bone due to the possibility of choking.