The Hundred & the One Day Cup: the future of English & Welsh cricket in the balance.
Starting on 21st July English and Welsh cricket takes what is now an annual break from the traditional formats of the game. There are no County Championship games or Test matches until the third week of August now.
Instead we have the relaunched and newly franchise owned The Hundred and the Metro Bank One Day Cup based on the traditional Counties.
Of course both formats can be watched and enjoyed but the media coverage and hyperbole will be with The Hundred. It has certainly provided a significant (if unintended) boost for the women’s game. It has also attracted some new audiences(how much is less certain- Welsh Fire say 40% of ticket sales for 2026 are from people who have not attended a game before.
The reality is of course that The Hundred only exists because the ECB did not trademark the 20 over format which they pioneered and so had to tweak the format to get franchise money on board. That job is now done.
The One Day Cup is being covered by BBC radio commentary but don’t expect to see matches on Sky TV even though they have the contractual rights to show them.
Supporters of County cricket underline and rightly so that The Hundred is designed to take support away from the County game and remove the membership system, where supporters in effect form the basis of clubs.
How this will play out remains work in progress and there are battles still to be fought over the future of English and Welsh cricket beyond the hype that we will be getting about The Hundred.
Ed Miliband made an important statement on being appointed Foreign Secretary on 20th July.
The first paragraph echoing the fight against fascism and underlining that it goes on is unusually forthright for a UK Foreign Secretary, although interpretations of where fascism might be found will I’m sure differ…
The third paragraph is less happy and not at best a view that Ralph Miliband and Marion Kozak (his partner) would have had as I’m sure Ed Miliband knows.
“My parents came to Britain as Jewish refugees from the Nazis. To them, Britain was both a sanctuary and a beacon of hope in the global fight against fascism. I will carry my parents’ faith in that spirit of Britain to my role representing our country.
“I will be a Foreign Secretary who fights for Britain’s interests and our values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law on the world stage.”
He promised to maintain close ties with both the EU and the United States, as well as upholding Britain’s commitments to Nato and the United Nations. Miliband added: “The FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) I lead will also be at the forefront of issues which pose profound and substantial threats to justice and equality in Britain and across the world.
“We will work with others on tackling the climate crisis, strengthening our partnerships for international development, and reforming our international institutions so they deliver for all countries, including the world’s poorest people.”
This Guardian graphic gives a snapshot of how Keir Starmer destroyed Labour’s Broad Church from 2020-25.
Of course it is partial, the impact on Labour membership and activists was incomparably greater, Parliamentary discipline being the tip of an iceberg.
Andy Burnham has said he will not use disciplinary measures. We shall see on that but as an opening statement it is a modest improvement on what had become a narrow and sectarian Party in many cases
45 years of the Special’s Ghost Town. Still a history of the present
June 2026 marked the 45th anniversary of the release of the Specials single Ghost Town. It went on to spend three weeks at Number One in the charts in the summer of 1981. This week, July 19th 1981 was the last week at the top.
Recorded in Leamington Spa and produced in Tottenham, the single is now part of social history capturing the disaffection and impact of the first years of the 1979 Thatcher Government.
Its significance goes far wider than the music charts. It speaks to an experience of particularly younger people that is not so different in 2026 despite the passage of more than four decades.
The idea for the song, both the lyrics and the musical style came to the Specials Jerry Dammers as the band were touring the UK in 1980. They saw the first impacts of Thatcherism, with closed shops and businesses and people begging on the streets.
The following year saw the first reaction to this with riots, starting in Brixton in April 1981 and by the summer when Ghost Town was to be heard coming from car radios, a much wider area. Unemployment had risen to 2.5 million and the Metropolitan Police were engaged in the racist policing exercise branded ‘Operation Swamp’
It seemed like the music and the political reality were matching.
Dammers went on to produce the political anthem Free Nelson Mandela in 1984 before pursuing wider anti-racist music and cultural work.
Ghost Town is a history of 2026 as much as 1981. The lyrics still speak to our times:
Can’t go on no more,
The people getting angry,
This town is coming like a ghost town
Time to be angry indeed. An agenda for Andy Burnham
Neither to laugh or to cry but to understand was Marx’s favourite aphorism. There are a hard core who are busy regretting the resignation of Keir Starmer as PM and claiming that he has done a great job. For many others it’s not so much a matter of laughing but cheering.
The charge sheet is lengthy. Appearing as Labour leader in 2020 he was promoted as Jeremy Corbyn but without a beard and with a smart suit. Then one by one the leftish policies he stood for leader on were ditched until by the time of the 2024 General Election there were none of substance left.
Once in Office matters got worse. He pushed through cuts in welfare and benefits (since reversed) supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza with occasional complaints about Netanyahu and presided over an increasingly authoritarian regime on protest.
There was a further point. It would be a struggle going back to 1924 and Ramsay McDonald to find a Labour PM who did not have a variety of significant downsides. There was also the issue that Starmer was not a good politician or leader. He had the air of a provincial bank manager, enthusiastic only about Arsenal.
This however is not where Starmer came into politics in the 1980s. To understand the differences is important because it can at least partly explain how a left-wing politics can end up making a difference and also, in other circumstances, when it can’t.
There is one biography of Starmer, written by journalist and associate Tom Baldwin. While it’s not comprehensive it does detail Starmer’s development from Leeds University to becoming a lawyer, DPP, Labour MP and finally Labour leader and Prime Minister.
What it doesn’t do is explain Starmer’s trajectory and reflect if it might have been different.
Starmer studied at Leeds University and then went to Oxford as a postgraduate. It was here that he was found in the Labour Club. He became associated with a small left-wing magazine Socialist Alternatives which published half a dozen issues in the second half of the 1980s. They remain available on-line.
What the Socialist Alternatives project was and what Starmer thought it was may not be quite the same. It sought to link red and green politics, then a relatively novel idea. It worked around the left Labour Socialist Society which was associated with Tony Benn and Hilary Wainwright. Later it became active in the Green Party for a period, although it’s unclear if Starmer was still involved at this point.
It was also part of a ‘Pabloite’ or orthodox Trotskyist attempt to seek a new direction for far left politics. How much Starmer was associated with the theory of this is unclear..
Starmer wrote a number of rather dull articles for Socialist Alternatives including an interview with Tony Benn, where he explored with him how Labour could move significantly to the left and open itself up to anti-racist and feminist politics.
This seems to be the last association Starmer had with any kind of organised left politics until he appeared as the Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015. In between he was a left-ish North London lawyer. He opposed the 2003 Iraq War and acted for the McLibel Two in a famous case against McDonalds.
He then became DPP in 2010 where there was little obvious radical impact.
It has been said that Starmer was the only PM whose politics were a private matter. What we do know is that he was associated with no group or co-thinkers in the Labour Party or beyond. Hence he became a useful front person for Morgan McSweeney and others to mount their sectarian war against the Labour left. Without organised supporters and co-thinkers whatever Starmer’s original project was it was doomed to fail.
Its Baby Week in the Archers. News that Kirsty is pregnant is out and Tom, fairly typically, tried to make it all about him. Kirsty lost Wren a child she had conceived with Tom but it’s still not all about Tom. Later he apologised…
Sgt Knacker Burns has unfortunately returned from Coronation St (surely there must still be a role for him there) and noting that Amber and Kirsty are pregnant decided to raise the matter again with Fallon. She does not want a baby and it is about her not Knacker.
Meanwhile Amber’s mother Anne-Marie has been making a nuisance of herself but managed to have a discussion with Susan in the village shop where she appeared to be human. This seems unlikely. Anne-Marie was only acting.
Brian hands out the cash
After Ian told Brian that he knew that Ruari bottled George Brian decided to send £7,000 each to the members of the Aldridge Collective. Whether Home Farm actually has that amount of money to spare seems rather questionable.
Knacker Burns tries to frame Lynda’s dog for sheep murders
Sgt Burns has only been in the rural crime officer role for a few days but he is already attempting to frame Lynda’s dog Monty for the recent sheep dog attack. Knacker Burns record of solving crimes is negligible (bunting??) so Lynda’s Doberman is likely safe
In Other News
Brian didn’t appear in BBC reports from Ambridge this week for the first time since mid-February…
