Kmflett's Blog

Dominic Cummings: Bismarckian

Dominic Cummings has appeared in the news again, albeit from a very unreliable source. According to the Mail, Cummings is in touch with Musk and is behind his recent Twitter outbursts about various UK related matters. The article claims that Cummings is talking to Musk about the launch of a ‘start up party’ which will break the mould of politics. Cummings has been going on about this for years and nothing at all has happened. It is however very much in line with what is known of Cummings political views.

It may come as a surprise to those who know Dominic Cummings from his Vote Leave and No.10 period but he took a first in history at Oxford, studying under the late Prof. Norman Stone.

Stone was a right-wing historian and fan of Mrs Thatcher and idiosyncratic in his views. Of historical actors in the modern era he favoured Churchill and Bismarck as significant historical figures.

Cummings picked up his interest for Bismarck from Stone and has blogged about the German Chancellor (1815-1898). Bismarck, the ‘Iron Chancellor’ was instrumental in creating a unified German State. His Wiki entry notes that he ‘distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong well-trained bureaucracy’.

Cummings returned to the Bismarck question in answers to questions to subscribers to his social media site in 2021. Not just Stone but Eric Hobsbawm supported the historical significance of Bismarck. Cummings may yet warrant a footnote in the history of post-Brexit Britain.

Studying Bismarck was the best help to understand what politics really is and how it’s possible to radically outperform – but also that you should never ever expect anybody to say ‘oh I was wrong you were right’. In politics you never really know if what you’ve done is a mistake! And even very smart people struggle to escape fashion and gang mentality

And in another answer he said:

If you want to study effective action in politics there is no better case study than Bismarck.

He was playing a completely different game to everybody else and you can trace a lot of how he did it and how he thought in the record.

Guardian report 21^st June 2021

Bismarck was not an enthusiast for democratic politics and judging by the views Dominic Cummings relayed to Laura Kuenssberg , neither is he. He talked in 2021 of a plan to oust Johnson as Prime Minister once he had been elected as he was entirely unsuitable for the job. We had to wait a bit longer for that and the ousting was nothing to do with Cummings.

Cummings isn’t a fascist but he is clearly a supporter of a significantly more authoritarian society than Britain currently is. There will be those who argue that this isn’t possible given how dismissive of civil liberties both the last and current Governments are. It is. Look around Europe for examples and indeed to America.

Full marks to the Mirror for analysing what ‘man of the people’ Nigel Farage has actually earned since he became an MP in July 2024. Needless to say being an MP is the least of it.

Farage notes that the amount is gross before tax and that the money goes not to him but to a company, presumably Thorn In The Side, which is a tax efficient way of doing things.

Meanwhile Clacton is one of the poorest Parliamentary Constituencies in the UK..

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-slammed-over-huge-34462708

The Ambridge Socialist

12^th January

Leonard: CND marcher

Attending, and speaking, at the funeral of a University friend this week, Leonard revealed his youthful past, a CND marcher to Aldermaston and a familiarity with the act of Lenny Bruce. At one point Leonard was set to join his son in Singapore but then decided to move into Brookfield to be with Jill.

David Archer’s threat to murder beavers is on hold

David Archer has form when it comes to murdering things. There remains the death of Nigel Pargetter who ‘fell’ off Lower Loxley roof on January 2^nd 2011. He has a conviction for badger murder and was threatening to do the same to beavers who, it was suggested, might appear in the Rewilding Project. Justin Elliott found out and the matter is on hold.

In Other News

Brad has concerns about University.

He is finding his maths degree difficult but in reality running George’s ‘business’ is the issue

Sgt Knacker Burns

Knacker is off to a ‘special duties’ secondment in Yorkshire. This at least will leave Fallon free to focus on the Bull’s restaurant

The noise around Dry January seems a little less (so far) this year. I’m not doing it but respect the choice of those that are.

An interesting perspective appeared in the Times (11th January).

Selfridges which now stocks 1,000 whiskies and plans more reports ‘huge growth’ in limited edition whiskies.

The reasons for the interest are hardly new. Whisky has long been a safe investment bid as the price of one-off bottlings only ever goes one way- up. (see Ardbeg’s yearly special release which sells for a little over £100 a bottle and costs a lot more as stocks dwindle). It can also be a special present or something to mark a one-off celebration.

Between 2011 and 2021 the Knight Frank Luxury Investment index scored whisky at 428 with classic cars scoring a much lower 164.

Whisky has dropped back since particularly bottles costing many hundreds of pounds. However significantly limited edition bottlings at £100-£150 are doing well underlining Selfridges sales report.

Anyway if you’re not doing Dry January don’t forget to have a dram or two on Burns Night in a couple of weeks

Liz Truss has been in Paris speaking at a conference organised by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

On the face of it, its an Iranian opposition grouping in exile which wants a secular and democratic Iran. At various times it has been accused of terrorist links but in recent times appears to be US backed. Certainly General Keith Kellogg who has been appointed by Trump as a special envoy to Ukraine and Russia was present.

Truss again backed Trump while urging opposition- a new Cold War- against other authoritarian Governments such as China and Russia.

Truss declared that the way to cause the Iranian Government to fall was for the West to stop buying oil and gas from it. Having checked ONS figures the UK does not appear to do so- by far the biggest source being Norway.

This did not of course stop Truss from repeating one of her most used phrases (after The Blob) ‘drill, baby, drill’ by which she means fracking.

Government papers released at New Year provide an interesting insight into what Pat McFadden MP, currently a senior figure in the Starmer Government was doing twenty years ago in 2004. He was not then an MP (elected 2005) but a political advisor to Tony Blair who was then still PM.

On 12th October 2004 McFadden wrote a briefing for a Cabinet meeting part of which touched on how to effectively oppose the Tories. Part of it read:

‘we must ruthlessly oppose the Tories as being a] of the past b] for the few c] retreating to the right’

Not a bad idea for a policy in 2025 either

11th January

Contact London Socialist Historians Convenor Dr Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

The London Socialist Historians Group has added its voice to calls for a Met Police ban on a Palestine demonstration starting from the BBC on 18th January to be reversed.

The starting point for the protest at Broadcasting House is designed to bring a focus on BBC bias in reporting on events in Gaza, with statements by the Israeli Government simply broadcast with little fact checking to see if they are in fact true.

The last Tory Government brought in a series of laws to restrict the right to protest which Labour has yet to reverse, despite voting against some of the measures when in Opposition.

The historians say that the right to protest has been hard won in Britain from Peterloo in Manchester in 1819, where soldiers killed 16 people protesting for the vote to much more recent events such as the death at police hands of anti-fascist protester Blair Peach at Southall in 1979.

London Socialist Historians Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, the recent official view of protest has been that civil disobedience and direct action are not acceptable and are often punished by draconian jail terms. Its clear that this was just the start of an effort in criminalising all protest including on this occasion a peaceful march designed to highlight the on-going genocide in Gaza and the BBC’s reluctance to report it. We back calls for the Met Police’s decision to be reversed.

The Times whose owner Rupert Murdoch and Editor Tony Gallagher are not elected or accountable to anyone have long failed to understand that trade union leaders are not ‘barons’ or ‘chiefs’ but officials who are elected by their members to carry out the democratic decisions of union conferences.

Of course union GS’s don’t always do that but as a Times Editorial (11th Jan) on RMT GS Mick Lynch who is standing down had to admit that is more or less what he actually did. Some might wish he had done ever more but the Times is obviously not in that camp.

Mick Lynch’s successor will be announced in May after a vote by members. Currently thanks to Tory anti-union laws, turn out will likely be quite low as e-voting is illegal. The present Government is set to change that. The bigger a democratic mandate union leaders get from members the more than can face down the unelected media barons who attack them

A key part of the Easter experience is obviously Cadbury’s mini-eggs.

Christmas has gone and they are on the shelves in the usual standard 80g pack

Easter Sunday is late in 2025 on 20th April so there is a three month selling window.

How sales will go is another matter. In 2025 the cost is £1.85. In 2024 it was £1.50 and pre-pandemic in 2019 £1.15.

The 25% price hike is due according to Cadburys to increases in the cost of cocoa and sugar. No doubt there is truth here but its difficult also to avoid the thought that a hike in Cadbury’s Easter profits is also on the cards..