Kmflett's Blog

Boris Johnson has been offering Keir Starmer advice on where to go on holiday in the Daily Mail. To be fair Johnson is an expert on holidays and in particular holidays that someone else is paying for.

Johnson thinks Starmer might head to Greece or the Dordogne. Parliament is in recess and Starmer deserves a holiday (as do others). Where he goes is of little interest, and only that because he is PM.

In fact of course he is at Downing St or Chequers keeping an eye on public order issues. The Times and Telegraph have reported that he has cancelled a European holiday but not where. His most recent was in Majorca in 2022. He has a history of holidays in the Lakes (where the Starmer family went in earlier years) and in south-west Wales where he has friends.

Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick managed to attack Starmer for even having the idea of a holiday last week. To be fair Jenrick is not on holiday at the moment but has taken his suit around various English locations (Romford, the Cotswolds) to bore Tory members (or possibly actors playing Tory members).

Johnson has riot holiday form. When riots broke out in London on 6th August 2011 he was on holiday abroad. He was also Mayor of London at the time but didn’t make it back for 5 days.

His latest successor as Tory leader Rishi Sunak, who remains leader of the Opposition and who it might be thought should be in the UK to offer support to the PM, is in fact on holiday at his Californian mansion. He won’t be back until September.

The whole holidays issue reflects a country that historically has been uptight about what is called work-life balance, at least for the many, although not for the few. Paris is hosting the OIympics but Macron has not been mostly in the French capital but in his holiday retreat. Then again France had 1789 and 1968

As part of his new animal series Banksy has posted a stretching cat on a Cricklewood hoarding.

Its just a little late for International Cat Day but clearly underlines the power that cats have in the Capital and beyond.

A Banksy in Tottenham of the Spurs Cockerel is eagerly awaited…

Liz Truss appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival earlier in the week. The occasion was a discussion about her recent life and times. The audience werent too impressed and some heckled and booed.

Yet at the Scotsman (3rd August) pointed out this is quite normal for a stand-up comic (although Truss was in fact sitting down). When asked to apologise for her 49 day Premiership she described the comment as inane.

She did however venture that her policies of higher mortgage costs for many and tax cuts for the rich would have led to a better Tory Election result on July 4th than Rishi Sunak managed.

Its not perhaps a laugh out loud line but the Scotsman suggests it could be contender in the annual competition to find the best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe

Beard Liberation Front

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

9th August

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said with Kamala Harris choosing the follicly challenged Tim Walz as her Presidential running mate the question is again posed as to whether being bald is a bar to high political office in the modern era.

The Times Diary (8th August) notes that it is rare for high ranking US politicians to be bald.

The same has applied in recent times in the UK with both William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith failing to make a successful mark as political leaders. Of course there is little conclusive evidence that this was due even in partly due to their follicle issues.

In the current Tory leadership race all of the male contenders have a good head of hair and James Cleverley has added a beard for good measure.

The BLF has in the past run a Baldies and Beardies Electoral Alliance recognising that prejudice based on appearance can be a factor in modern politics.

BLF Organiser, there hasn’t been a British Prime Minister with a beard since Lord Salisbury in 1902 and the chances of JD Vance becoming US Vice President in November look questionable. It underlines the importance of the work of the Beard Liberation Front without doubt

Beard Liberation Front

8th August

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that while it accepts that Donald Trump’s running mate JD Weird may well be ‘weird’ this is nothing to do with his beard.

The campaigners say that Vance’s beard appeared in unexplained circumstances in the early 2020s, and while it is very unusual for US Presidential candidates to have facial hair, this is something that the BLF neither applauds or condemns.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz has focused on calling out Republicans as weird. He has a strong point but Vance’s beard in itself is not the thing that makes him weird.

International Cat Day: Cats, Socialism & Collective Organisation

8^th August is International Cat Day designed to focus on cat welfare. Its often suggested that cats are aloof and independent of collective impulses.

However cats can sometimes be socialists in the sense that they often plan to share a catch- mice or a bird-with their people. At other times they can be iconoclastic. Even so there have been strong links between the left and cats.

The IWW had a wild cat* as their symbol and the Post Office HQ at St Martin’s Le Grand in central London employed cats to catch mice with a carefully negotiated feeding to mice caught agreement.

Engels claimed his cat Tidlums was the terror of Regents Park Rd

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn caused a mild media ripple when he revealed to the Independent that his black and white cat did not have a name but is addressed simply as El Gato. More recently further ripples were caused when the Daily Mail reported that he named a cat he had in the 1970s Harold Wilson

There is a picture of the late British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm with his cat. Perhaps there is something about Marxist historians and cats as E P Thompson also had one.

Such pictures appear to suggest a missing link between cats and socialism

While Lenin was a cat lover there is no record that it had a name either (no, it was not Joe). However that is most probably due to a failure in cat history rather than anything else.

Not all politicians have been cat lovers. There is no record, for example, of a cat in Tony Benn’s Diaries except an entry where he notes he was given a ‘black woolly’ cat to hold for a photo shot.

Harold Wilson by contrast brought his own cat into Downing St when he became Prime Minister, while Churchill patriotically named his Nelson.

The New Labour period, perhaps inevitably, was beset by cat controversy. It was thought Cherie Blair didn’t like cats much and in November 1997 Alistair Campbell announced that the veteran Downing St cat Humphrey had gone to a quiet suburban location. Journalists inquired whether this was code for ‘cemetery’ and photos had to be produced of Humphrey happily in retirement..

We should however be cautious about assuming an automatic link between cats and any particular trend on the left, Rosa Luxemburg described what happened when her cat Mimi met Lenin:

“She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him,” Luxemburg writes. “But when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.”

Some names of Politician’s cats

Engels- Tidlums

Lenin- cat no known name

Churchill- Nelson

Wilson- nemo (Siamese)

Corbyn Harold Wilson; El Gato

Blair- Humphrey (until Nov 25 1997)

Thatcher Marvin (2007)

Boris Johnson. Had a cat. It lived elsewhere

The Starmers- JoJo

Rosa Luxemburg, Mimi

• Thanks to Steve Cushion for the reference

Counter-protesters in Derby. Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters

The mass mobilisation of anti-racists and anti-fascists on 7th August saw many Stand Up To Racism placards, reflecting that while there is an element of spontaneity to such occasions they are also need organising.

As ever however hand made placards added a specific flavour to protests. Above one from the Derby protest.