Kmflett's Blog

The above graphic is from the Resolution Foundation. It combines data on average hourly wages around the UK with the price of a pint of Guinness. The darker areas of the chart represent places where your money gets you fewer pints.

Of course there is always Wetherspoons which mostly will be selling a cheaper if not the cheapest pint of Guinness in a particular area.

Given the growing popularity not just of Guinness but of dark beers in general it might be thought that it would be a subject of conversation in the May 7th local elections. Do candidates know how much a pint costs in the patch they are standing in, and do they know what the wage or salary levels are? They can probably do little to influence either (Council workers wages aside) but it should be really useful knowledge

Source: The Observer 19th April 2026

Nigel Farage is the MP for Clacton but as the above indicates his sources of income are many and varied beyond the job he is elected to do and paid out of the public purse for.

In particular his promotion of a crypto currency outfit he is associated with is bringing in funds. Were he doing this in Parliament it would be illegal. However he is rarely there and doing it outside of Parliament remains at the moment perfectly legal.

The Guardian & the Telegraph have revealed that Farage received a £5 million donation from the Thai based businessman Richard Harborne just before he decided he would stand as a candidate for Clacton in the July 2024 Election. Harborne is reported as a ‘crypto billionaire’. Its not clear whether Farage disputes the reports currently.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/29/revealed-nigel-farage-was-given-undisclosed-5m-by-crypto-billionaire-in-2024?CMP=share_btn_url

The FT is a paper of corporate capital and it doesn’t have a sports section. It does however write on sport quite a bit in respect of matters of finance. A few days ago it was examining Spurs (I’ll post further on that) and its now had a look at Chelsea.

Chelsea are owned by Clearlake and Tod Boehly and this week sacked their fifth manager of their ownership. Liam Rosenior had lasted three months and lost the last five matches. If Chelsea don’t get a Champions League place it will cost the club £75-80m. Considering the fact that the club lost £262m in 2024/5, its biggest ever loss, it can be see what the financial forces at work are.

The FT reports that the club treat players as ‘stocks in a portfolio’ with unusual seven year contracts spreading the cost but also looking at re-sale values.

Apparently Chelsea are currently profitable after winning the Club World Cup but whether any of this is doing football or football fans any favours seems highly questionable. At best.

The Financial Times (23rd April)has had a look at the recent history of Prime Ministerial apologies. Liz Truss didn’t hang around long enough to do many though she did, sort of apologise for her mini-budget. Rishi Sunak apologised for Gavin Williamson (bullying) and for leaving D-Day commemorations early.

Keir Starmer’s record of apologies is longer, in recent times focused on Epstein and Mandelson, but he has also deeply regretted his island of strangers speech and for intervening over the appointment of a Labour donor as the football regulator.

However, and this is worthy of note in the 24 hours news cycle, for the moment, media we have in 2026 the record holder for apologies is of course Boris Johnson. He had to apologise to Queen Elizabeth when a Court ruled that his decision to prorogue Parliament as a Brexit related ruse was in fact illegal. There were numerous apologies over lockdown events and Downing St parties. It was however his apology on 6th July 2022 for appointing serial groper Chris Pincher as Tory Deputy Chief Whip that concluded his long list of apologies. That was an apology too far and Johnson had to go.

In the apologies stakes Starmer still has a way to go

Beard Liberation Front

28th April

Sign the petition to demand that Morgan McSweeney shaves off his beard

https://c.org/ZBxVwX6kpD

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called on Morgan McSweeney former senior advisor to Keir Starmer to shave his beard off before he brings the hirsute into disrepute any further.

McSweeney has not always worn a beard and his ginger follicles appear to be a relatively recent development.

The campaigners say there is little point in speculating what led McSweeney to grow his beard but the demand that he shave it off has become urgent. He is damaging the public image of the hirsute.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, generally we look to promote the growth of facial hair, while recognising that it is, or should be a personal choice. However in the case of Morgan McSweeney a more robust approach is required. The beard needs to go.

Olly Robbins, the senior civil servant, sacked by Starmer, has been giving evidence to a Commons Committee on the vetting of Peter Mandelson while he was being appointed US Ambassador at the back end of 2024. Keir Starmer announced the appointment before the vetting process was complete (it appears) and Robbins has noted that there was pressure to get Mandelson into the role.

Conspiracy stories abound here and there might even have been a genuine conspiracy of sorts involving the ex Downing St Head of Staff Morgan McSweeney who recently quit the job but not before losing his work mobile phone to theft.

We are in the area of a pre-history of the present here but in this instance conspiracies don’t make good material history.

While the existing US Ambassador had good relations with Trump, who was starting his second term as President in early 2025, it can perhaps be seen why Starmer thought Mandelson would fit the role. He was after all just as dodgy as Trump and that could clearly have been helpful.

However the wider background is the role of Labour Together which John McDonnell raised in the Commons on 20th April.

Morgan McSweeney was a key figure in Labour Together, essentially an organisation of the Labour right. It was a motor in winning Starmer the Labour leadership, although its as well to remember that this took place via a membership ballot. A suggestion is that Starmer owed a debt to McSweeney and to another key figure in the organisation Mandelson.

Given that Starmer had and has no great base in the Labour Party, they were people he relied on and would no doubt have wanted around.

The issue is what Labour Together actually represented and how it was funded and by who, and for what purpose.

John McDonnell

Many on the Labour Benches, at least, will appreciate my right hon. and learned Friend’s apology today, but many of us remain bewildered about why the appointment took place, despite the warnings that many of us gave him. Is not the reality this? When he sought to realise his ambition to become leader of the Labour party, with very little base within the party, he became dependent on McSweeney, Mandelson and Labour Together to organise and fund his election. When he became the Prime Minister, the reward for McSweeney was control of No. 10, and the reward for Mandelson was the highest diplomatic office. The unspoken message to civil servants was, “What Mandelson wants, Mandelson gets.”

This has damaged the party that I have been a member of for 50 years. I urge the Prime Minister to take steps to clear this toxic culture out of our party, and to take the first step by having an independent inquiry into Labour Together.

House of Commons 20th April 2026

Queen Elizabeth 1926-2022. The end of Empire and after

Queen Elizabeth 11 was born one hundred years ago on 21^st April 1926 and died in 2022. I am not of course a monarchist but the historical perspective is interesting. I wrote the below at the time of her death. If as my 2022 analysis suggested we are now in the twenty-first century it is one of Trump, Gaza, Ukraine and climate crisis. The current monarch is meeting Trump on a State visit at the end of the month.

Britain is a constitutional monarchy so the role of the Royal Family and the monarch in particular is not just ceremonial but also political. Investigations in recent times by the Guardian and others have underlined that the then monarch and also King Charles actively sought to influence political decisions where they have interest or concern.

In that context the death of Queen Elizabeth on 8^th September2022 represented a conclusion to the long twentieth century (I have the historian Daryl Leeworthy to thank for this point). The Queen actively ruled over Britain for 70 years. It was not for the most part a nation at ease with itself.

From her early decades when Britain was still extricating itself from direct colonial rule- the first decade of Elizabeth’s reign saw the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya bloodily dealt with by the British Army and even latterly the Royal Family’s relationship with the slave trade has so far only elicited a ‘sorry’.

In the UK it might be argued that until the late 1960s the Queen did preside over a degree of social peace. The changes in society in that period- the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality, the equal pay act are however not in any way associated with the monarchy.

The point was not lost on many since by the time of the 1977 Jubilee the Sex Pistols irreverent God Save the Queen better fitted  a national mood than forelock tugging.

It has been downhill all the way since. The death of Princess Diana, Prince Andrew,  the expulsion of Prince Harry and the numerous doubtful dealings of King Charles. Perhaps it could be argued that the Queen rose above all this but she also presided over it all.

It is if course far too soon to draw anything but the most provisional of historical balance sheets, leaving aside numerous media hagiographies. Political decisions can however be made. It’s time to end the constitutional role of the monarchy, disestablish the Church of England, and confine King Charles III to a ceremonial role only

Socialist Worker, July 1981

The front page of Socialist Worker in the week Charles married Diana in 1981. It was street sold.

It stood perhaps more in the anti-monarchist tradition of Reynolds’s News, the biggest selling paper of the late Victorian period, than the Chartist Red Republican (1850) which carried the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto.

Its an excellent way to remember the 100th birthday of Lilibet..