Two years ago this week Liz Truss was elected Leader of the Tory Party and hence became Prime Minister.
She appointed a Cabinet with 29 MPs and one Peer (Lord True). It is a scale of the debacle that was the July 2024 Election result for the Tories that just 10 remain as MPs today.
They are (in no particular order of mediocrity or sanity)
Cleverley
Argar
Philp
Malthouse
Heappey
Tugendhat
Braverman
Badenoch
Morton
Stuart
The self styled Chair of Reform UK Zia Yusuf who until recently was also a Tory member has given an interesting interview to the Independent. An extract and link is below. He admits that Reform is inspired by the electoral success of far right French politician Le Pen and by the advance of German far right to fascist party AFD that topped the poll in Thuringia in the East of Germany on 1st September,
He also suggests, unsurprisingly perhaps, that some Tory activists are uninspired by the current leadership candidates, a hint possibly that Braverman is set to defect to Reform this autumn.
It cant be said that we haven’t been warned. Reform UK need robust opposition and Stand Up to Racism and others are on the case.
According to an interview with the Independent on September 1st
Yusuf is looking to the German elections this weekend where the far right Alternative for Germany is set to make massive gains or the French elections which saw France’s Marine Le Pen double her vote from 17 per cent to 34 per cent in two years.
He said: “We are a very different party from them but we live in unprecedented time and we have five years not two to double our vote.”
Mr Yusuf claims that Reforms appeal has already reached Conservative Party officials working at central office (CCHQ) as well as councillors who have defected.
“A number of people from CCHQ, including senior people, have reached out saying that they’re thoroughly disillusioned with the Conservative Party, that the whole bureaucracy at CCHQ is, I mean, I’m using their words here, corrupted.
“They’re really tired of it and you know, they don’t really see that changing, regardless of who becomes their leader. They don’t see how that fundamental problem could possibly be resolved. So we’ve been engaged in conversations with them.”
BBC Test Match Special
Ticket prices & Test Matches
Test Match Special in particular has been voluble on 1st September about the lack of attendance at Lords for the fourth day of the England v Sri Lanka Test. Tickets cost a minimum of £95 and despite it being known in advance that tickets sales had been poor nothing was done.
Of course its Lords and as Duncan Stone points out in his book Different Class, its about elitism. The MCC talk about inclusivity but the practice is too often lacking. There is a large Sri Lankan community in London. One wonders what was done to persuade them to come?
I was at the West Indies Test at Lords in July with my partner Megan, Jimmy Anderson’s last and enjoyed it. But then I at least fit the demographic. White, in my sixties, not impecunious. Only the beard and my socialist politics marks me out.
Perhaps this is something that Lisa Nandy the new Culture Secretary might address. I don’t see much evidence that Keir Starmer is a cricket fan (I have scoured Tom Baldwin’s biography) but that could be work in progress.
The problem is not just Lords of course. Attendance at international cricket matches is good for home matches played by Australia, India and England (the above allowed) and elsewhere as anyone who looks at games on Sky or TNT knows its sparse.
Partly the nature of working life in 2024 lends itself much more to short form cricket. Partly there is a huge mismatch in resources for the promotion and staging of Test cricket.
Back however to England and Wales, its not just Lords. Crowds at the Old Trafford Test in August were far from capacity. If we switch codes, 45% of the attendance for Hundred games this year was at Lords and the Oval.
To their credit two Lords admin people spoke to Jonathan Agnew about ticketing, attendance and cost. Clearly matters are reviewed but an alert sounded, at least for me, when dynamic pricing was mentioned. Essentially that means charging what can be got away with. As Agnew underlined however it should be a matter of pricing tickets at a level those without so much money can afford and widening the attendance at Test matches beyond people like me
Perhaps its time cricket grappled with the cost of living crisis. Energy prices are on the rise again. A day at the Test may seem expendable compared to keeping warm this winter.
The Ambridge Socialist
1st September
The Janus Face of Clive Horrobin
Its not clear if anyone is convinced by the new occasionally born again Clive Horrobin, even Clive himself. This week he has been practicing yoga, praising the healthy qualities of pineapples and trying to buy ‘real ale’ in the village shop before he was barred after his last visit was recalled
He has, he says anyway, bonded with his father and also made various threats that he will go large if people don’t stop being nasty to him Conversing with George he noted that rich people don’t go to jail so Alice will be fine, while proletarians always do. This sounds like something he got from talking to his friends in ReformUK.
Clive Horrobin’s website
Alex Jones | Playwright – My Blogs (alex-jones.org)
Sgt Knacker Burns cooks chill tofu.
Meanwhile it has been established that Suella Braverman does not listen to the Archers. Knacker Burns cooked a chill tofu for Fallon this week but there was no outburst from Ms Braverman calling the BBC Woke…
The EV charging station & Damara Capital
A reminder that the EV charging station on the perimeter of Ambridge which seems to be taking a very long time to materialise, is funded/owned by Damara Capital aka Justin. Justin’s actual CV as a business type has been called into question but Fallon discussing her thoughts on vegan cuisine with steak and chips Justin was a major error.
The Brighton AQUARIUM has really come into its own since the time (three years ago) when I witnessed its beginnings. In accordance with the compromise it has reached with PARSON POWER, it now stays open on Sunday afternoons (until the evening), but on the arid condition that the poor devils of EXCURSIONISTS shall not obtain a drop of liquid, not even undistilled water. You ought to
go and have a look at it one of these days.
Love to the whole FAMILY and kind regards to Madame Pauli
Marx to Engels 26th July 1876
The Royal Family are at Balmoral for their summer holidays which last until October. Keir Starmer has arrived for the traditional pre-opening of Parliament visit (31st August) but King Charlie and Camilla are not in fact resident at Balmoral but at another of their palaces the nearby Birkhall. However Prince Andrew is at Balmoral so now doubt Sir Keir pass the time with him.
To mark the occasion the King cleared off to Aberdeen to open the summer flower show of the Royal Horticultural Society who are marking their 200th anniversary.
Charlie opened the show (where he inspected some vegetables) with a giant pair of Royal scissors. Unfortunately, perhaps having an historic aversion to things being cut with sharp objects, he was unable to cut the tape without assistance.
The public purse is paying for a good deal of this which makes it rather less amusing
Jonathan Agnew has queried how many wickets Chris Woakes has taken with his ‘recent’ beard compared to an earlier clean shaven period.
The Beard Liberation Front notes that Agnew is wrong as Woakes beard is not recent. He may of course shave it off and re-grow it to improve its wicket taking impact.
Below is a BLF media release from 8th August 2020
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Chris Woakes played a key role with bat and ball in England’s Test victory against Pakistan at Old Trafford.
In England’s second innings Woakes key partnership with Jos Buttler was key and Woakes ended on 84 not out and took 4 wickets in the match.
Woakes has been the most consistent beard wearer in the England cricket team and he now takes his place with other great England hirsute cricketers including Ian Botham, Freddie Flintoff and Ben Stokes.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Chris Woakes could be a contender for Beard of the Year in December. In the meantime he has proved that not only catches win matches in cricket, beards win matches too
Parliament returns next week so this weekend sees what has been traditionally as the August ‘silly season’ in the media to a close. Of course in 2024 with social media and 24 hour news there is no actual shortage of news.
Even so the habits of the right-wing media remain. In August 1997, the first summer of the newly elected Labour Government, PM Blair was away, and Deputy PM John Prescott was in charge. On 17th August 1997 Prescott was by the Thames launching a new environmental initiative. He was pictured addressing a Chinese crab in a jar. He named it Peter (Mandelson) and pondered if it would claw its way on to the Labour NEC.
Fast forward 27 years and its the first August of another Labour Government. There is a slight tweak to the silly season story. PM Starmer is not on holiday but Deputy PM Angela Rayner is. She has been pictured in the DJ Booth at an Ibiza nightclub. Cue much tut-tutting from the right-wing media, absolutely none of whom of course have taken a holiday in August.
If we are to be serious for a moment, issues of work-life balance, holidays and political theatre arise here. Mainly however just the perpetual behaviour of a mostly right-wing media. We know Tony Blair has been sockless in Sardinia but where is Boris Johnson taking his latest holiday?
Boris Johnson writing in the Daily Fail, no doubt from his latest holiday destination, has claimed that Keir Starmer’s reported decision to move the portrait of Margaret Thatcher at Downing St is ‘petty’. Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin had noted that he found the picture ‘unsettling’. That is a considerable understatement for those who spent the 1980s fighting the impact of Thatcher’s tour of destruction across Britain.
Perhaps Starmer, noted for a certain authoritarian tendency, might now go further and ban the public display of any depiction of Thatcher, either portraits or statues. Remembering her as social history in a museum is appropriate. Glorifying her in public is two fingers up to the working class communities she intentionally destroyed.
The reference for those unaware is to the 1968 Alex Glasgow song, As Soon As This Pub Closes (the Revolution Starts). Farage wont be leading a revolution but a putsch is a possibility.
According to a reliable informant Farage is often to be found fag in mouth in the environs of the KGB News studio at Paddington.
I’m not an enthusiast for State bans on things not least because history suggests that the temptation to ban left wing protests and publications grows with each ban issued. That said there is sense not in banning smoking but in restricting the places where people can smoke. A lot of this of course has already happened.
The Tory 2024 Manifesto called for smoking to be phased out and Labour is following that policy. The numbers of people who smoke has declined very significantly but there are still reportedly 80,000 smoking related deaths a year.
If the plan to further restrict smoking around pubs etc is to go ahead there needs to be detailed consultation with pubs, workers and customers to be clear how it would work and what the impact would be.
Farage won’t be interested in that, the detail of the democratic process, he will no doubt carry on smoking with likely predictable results.
He has said he won’t visit a pub again if the ban goes ahead. Weigh that point with the reality that Farage said Brexit would be good for the UK when he just meant his own bank balance
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