Kmflett's Blog

Suspended Reform MP wants to meet Nigel for dinner. Does a visit to Farage’s favourite whine bar Boisdale beckon (or not)?

Suspended Reform MP Rupert Lowe wants to meet Farage for dinner to sort matters out. A dinner date with the Reform owner seems unlikely but if it did happen it would almost certainly be at Boisdale.

Farage held his 60th birthday party at the Canary Wharf branch of the Scots themed restaurant Boisdale in 2024. The original and one he appears to frequent is near Victoria Station.

Perhaps needless to say I havent been or intend to. However the Times sent its right-wing restaurant critic Charlotte Ivers (arguably not as right-wing as its other restaurant critic Giles Coren) who took along right-wing TalkTalk operative Mike Graham for company.

The restaurant she reported is decorated in tartan with the feel of a gentleman’s club. It has a separate pub like bar and a smoking terrace. It describes itself as a British restaurant with the menu printed on a Union Jack but the food appears relentlessly Scottish (a variant of).

Food includes Cullen skink, pickled Orkney herring, Isle of Uist scallop, smoked eel, smoked salmon etc.

3 oysters cost £14, Shetland mussels in white wine sauce £25, haggis with neeps & tatties £24.50.

I’m Scottish and it looks good to me and for central London not excessively priced. It’s not exactly fine dining and there some Scottish restaurants around that do that well.

The clue as to why Farage likes it comes elsewhere I think. Ivers and Graham admit to two bottles of wine, one priced at £69.50 and one at £59. And of course there is the smoking terrace. Drinking and smoking being more of the Reform Ltd’s owner’s thing than the food one suspects.

Beard Liberation Front

8^th March

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

British Pie Week: Pork Pie voted most Beard Friendly Pie 2025

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued advice on pie eating and Beard Friendly Pies as part of British Pie Week 2025 which runs from March 3^rd to March 9^th.

It has also ran an on-line poll to find the most Beard Friendly Pie. The humble pork pie triumphed with 80% of the 1,000 votes cast. Butter Pie, Mushroom and Ale Pie and Beef and London Porter were also rans in the poll.

The hirsute campaign group say that as with many prepared foods the requirements of people with beards are often overlooked when it comes to pies.

The BLF says that common issues with pies for those with beards are:

Excessive gravy

Puff or flaky pastry

‘Deep filling’ making it difficult to avoid contact of the pie with the beard

The campaigners cite the traditional steak and kidney pie as an example of pies which are made without thought for the requirements of the hirsute pie consumer. Such pies often have excessive gravy- and comparatively little steak and kidney- which ends up in the beard.

The campaigners say that the hirsute should choose their pies with care to ensure that they enjoy a traditional eating experience without beard pollution

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, no self-respecting beard wearer wants the remains of their lunch or dinner in their beard so once again as part of British Pie Week we are promoting the Beard Friendly Pie. Its something of a comeback for the traditional pork pie, perhaps reflecting that the hirsute are fed up with pies that, pace the Twits, leave as much in the beard as goes in the mouth

GB News is the broadcasting arm of Reform. Reform boss Nigel Farage is the channel’s best known broadcaster.

The headline comes after Reform MP Rupert Lowe had the whip withdrawn following a falling out with Farage. Allegations of bullying and threats of violence by Lowe have been made which he denies.

The person in the picture is Tim Montgomerie former adviser to Iain Duncan Smith who recently defected from the Tories

Socialist History Seminar, Monday 17th March 5.30pm, Room 301, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1

Report

Toby Manning did an excellent seminar presentation with snatches of songs which were in the Top 20 charts from the late 1950s through to the 1980s (the book covers more recent decades as well). His argument was that, in part at least, records that were hits reflected the mood and politics of the moment.

A lively discussion ensued notable perhaps in particular for gender/class issues being looked at with the ‘doormat’ songs of Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black etc. Toby Manning pointed out that singers were far from always able to control the material they sang, being tied into record labels and producers.

The book is available to buy at this link:

Details

The Pop Chart as an Archive Toby Manning will discuss his Marxist approach to popular music, exemplified by his book, Mixing Pop and Politics (Repeater, 2024).

His presentation will argue that the Billboard Hot 100 and OCC Top 40 charts provide an archive of popular attitudes, of what Raymond Williams called ‘structures of feeling’.

Marxist musicology usually regards commercial music as co-opted by capitalism, but Manning’s analysis of music’s archive – from 50s rock’n’roll to contemporary post-punk, with psychedelia, soul, glam and hip-hop between – reveals both radical and reactionary attitudes.

Moreover, Manning argues, popular music expresses an enduring utopianism that resists containment and is hence politically hopeful.

Organised by the London Socialist Historians Group. Contact Keith Flett: @keithbeard.bsky.social

For anyone who has watched (and opposed) the activities of the hard and far right in UK politics over the last decades the news that Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe has lost the Reform whip in Parliament will come as no surprise

According to a statement from the always reliable team of Lee Anderson and Zia Yusuf, Lowe is accused of bullying Parliamentary staff and threatening Yusuf. Lowe denies this.

In reality its all, as ever, about Farage. Despite recent changes Farage remains the boss of Reform which has no serious democratic structure.

On Thursday Lowe, a former football club owner and landowner, called Farage a political messiah

Today Lowe has been summarily purged.

Its entirely familiar to anyone who has seen previous UKIP bust ups with Farage coming and going depending on his personal preference at the time.

Whether Reform will continue in its present form or split time will tell. Whichever it is, it still needs opposing both with protests and alternatives to its hard right politics.

The reasons for the split might, as above, just be Farage. It might be the pressure of Reform trying to work out what to say about Trump, Ukraine and Putin. Protests also make a mark but Reform’s vote in local council by-elections (a crude barometer as turn-out is low) continues to be (too) good

That said Lowe seemed to get Musk’s support and the link is that both are fans of Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Yaxley Lennon supports not Reform (his fans don’t like Farage) but UKIP. Notably the current UKIP leader Tenconi posted on Twitter an invitation for Lowe to join on 7th March. UKIP are more streets than Parliament in the current form but as ever no doubt we shall see (and protest wherever appropriate)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/07/reform-uk-chaos-claims-bullying-rupert-lowe?CMP=share_btn_url

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Gramsci

Rachel Reeves has told Sky News that she often swerves a visit to Pret for lunch and makes herself a cheese sandwich, thereby saving £5. My experience suggests that a cheese toastie & a coffee from a Central London Pret will leave you with very little change from a tenner

https://news.sky.com/story/bluesky-13322841

However Reeves sandwich stance reflects a potential split with Keir Starmer who is on record as liking a tuna sandwich or a cheese toastie for lunch often most likely from Pret.

Kemi Badenoch started an earlier round of the sandwich culture wars by declaring that sandwiches were not real food. The provoked Farage to defend sandwich lunches although obviously his Whine Bar lunches are largely of the liquid kind

Beard Liberation Front

19th February

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

GIVING UP SHAVING FOR LENT

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with Lent now underway it is the ideal opportunity for people to give up shaving

The BLF says that a beard grown between now and Easter, can add significantly to the diversity of British life.

The Lenten beard is a long religious tradition which in recent times has crossed over into secular fashion as well.

The BLF is not religious though it respects those who grow Lenten beards for that reason. However the pre-Easter beard also has a place in British folk custom, with the facial hair representing the new growth of Spring to come.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said it is the best time of year to grow a beard as Spring blossoms so do beards. It is time to revolt into style and grow an organic beard for Lent. I personally will not be shaving during Lent, or pruning my beard in that period

King Charles has revealed his favourite music on Commonwealth Day next Monday which are in conjunction with Apple- the Royal Family is a very successful business.

One favourite is Bob Marley’s could you be loved, albeit has interpreted by a Buckingham Palace marching band.

The Mail(!) reports

The monarch says of Marley, who would have turned eighty this year: ‘I remember when he came to London to perform when I was much younger, and I met him at some event. 

‘That marvellous, infectious energy, of course, he had, but also his deep sincerity, and his profound concern for his community. I always recall his words ‘The people have a voice inside of them’. He gave the world that voice in a way that no-one who heard can ever forget…

Get Up Stand Up is not mentioned and what Marley would have thought about the head of the colonial power liking his rebel music we could possibly imagine…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jg9ej244do

A very English obsession: French wining & dining

There is a tradition (of sorts) of some sections of English society being rude about the French dating back at least to the Napoleonic Wars and before that 1789.

Yet there is another tradition to be found in ruling circles of seeing French food and wine as the best available. Of course there is excellent French food and wine.

Churchill’s cookbook, a volume of recipes provided for him by his cook in the 1940s and 1950s focuses a lot on French food, although his favourite cheese was the Swiss Gruyere.

Partly the reason for this was that English food at the fine dining end of things during this period was not great. One of the reasons Raymond Postgate started the Good Food Guide in the 1950s was to address this.

Things have changed. The Times prints articles most weeks pointing out, for example, that France is one of the biggest consumers of Macdonalds, and recently noting a French trend for fish and chip eating.

The veneration of French wine (which has its own issues) continues. It may explain for example given who owns and edits the main ‘broadsheet’ papers that everyone has a regular wine column but only one, the Sunday Times has a beer column (and that recent, written by Pete Brown)

On 5^th March 2025 published a list of world capitals with the most restaurants.

The research was by Knight Frank and headed the Wealth Report. It should clearly not be taken too seriously.

However on a list of restaurants with extensive fine wine list. London is top with 528 and Paris only third. The average London fine dining restaurant has a wine list running to  428 bottles.

Who is drinking it? The Times reports that ‘parts of the capital over the past decade have become to the global rich’. By 2028 London will have a further 20 five star hotels.

Cost of living crisis anyone?