Kmflett's Blog

Braverman set to speak at far right conference in Brussels; Her Commons seat is at risk.

Suella Braverman is set to speak at a far right conference in Brussels during the week

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/13/suella-braverman-brussels-convention-viktor-orban

Labour has called on Sunak to intervene particularly after his recent speech condemning extremism in British politics.

Braverman is paid £90K a year to represent her existing constituents in Parliament. It seems unclear how her appearance in Brussels is fulfilling her job description.

This may be more of an issue than previously thought. With boundary changes her Parliamentary seat is very far from the safe one it previously was.

Psephology is the practice of opinion polling, often derided. As long ago as 1959 the socialist historian E P Thompson dubbed it Ephology, inserting pre-conceived ideas about who would or should win elections into actual election contests.

Certainly historically some polling organisations, YouGov in particular, were thought to poll a base which had more Tory voters and hence produce results favourable to the Tories.

However we live in a market economy and polling companies make their money via all kinds of polls with commercial applications. If their high profile election polls are accurate this is profitable in the wider context.

Survation recently produced a survey looking at the next UK Election. It used the same format that correctly predicted the 2015 and 2019 results and some more recent Election results around Europe.

Looking at the database I checked the figures for Suella Braverman who will be contesting the new 2023 Constituency Fareham and Waterlooville (in Hampshire)

Fareham and Waterlooville 2024 prediction (percentage of vote)

Tory 37.75

Labour 34.69

LibDem 13.63

Green 4.43

Reform 8.24

Majority 3.05

2019 majority 42.23

Obviously these are computed figures for a new constituency but in 2019 the LibDems would have been second. So far in 2024 Labour is second, with Reform on 8%. The Tory majority in 2019 of 42% is predicted now to be 3%.

Braverman’s ambitions to be the leader of a hard to far right Tory Party may be thwarted..

Beard Liberation Front

13th April

As Beard, Shorts & Sandals Pre-Season opens a reminder. Truss hates lefties ‘in environmental clothing’

Delivering the Margaret Thatcher Freedom lecture in Washington on 12^th April 2023 Liz Truss who was Prime Minister for 49 days in 2022 blamed woke culture’ pushed by the “anti-growth movement” and “socialists in environmental clothing” for her own failures.

With the 2024 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Pre-Season now open (delayed due to inclement weather) Truss clearly has ethical sandal wearing beard wearers in her sights.

The Beard Liberation Front has defended sandal wearers and all those who wear ‘environmental clothing’.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, sandals are sensible and sustainable footwear which is no doubt why Truss was attacking them

Daily Mail Culture War on Scones ends in defeat

There is an irony of culture warriors complaining that National Trust scones are made with margarine, the subject of comment in the Telegraph, Mail and inevitably social media. For them margarine is a code word for vegan and hence Woke.

Culture warriors are rarely much good at the British history they claim to champion and so they are unaware that Churchill’s Cookbook, compiled by his chef in 1958, contains several recipes for cakes using margarine.

The Culture War started to go wrong for the Mail when it was revealed that the paper had previously praised the scones.

Now Celia Richardson who does media for the National Trust has tweeted the results of scone sales in the ten days since the Mail story

Cheese (not vegan) no change

Fruit no change

Plain up 15%

Clearly Woke Scones have won the Culture War

Joe Haines who was Harold Wilson’s press secretary in the mid-1970s when he was PM before stepping down in 1976 has revealed that he was close to the deputy press secretary Janet Hewlett Davies during the period.

Haines who is 96 told the Times that he revealed the matter for completeness. Ms Hewlett-Davies died aged 85 in 2023.

It is rather different from the serial philandering of Boris Johnson but also a reminder that while there were persistent stories that Wilson was a Russian agent in reality his secret behaviour was a of a much more mundane and personal character.

Ms Hewlett-Davies surely deserves a place in labour history as a dedicated public servant who was also clearly a Labour supporter. After she left Downing St she was a communications executive for several Whitehall departments and then worked as head of PR at the Daily Mirror.

Harold Wilson, rightly, has several biographies devoted to him. But important women such as Ms Hewlett-Davies who played a key role deserves to be remembered for their professional expertise rather more than what they did in their personal lives.

Beard Liberation Front

12^th April

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

2024 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Pre-Season opens this weekend

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the 2024 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Pre-Season will open at noon on 12^th April.

The campaigners say that it is far from the earliest start to the pre-season in recent years. The 2022 pre-season opened on 20^th March but with March 2024 one of the wettest on record only with improving weather is it appropriate for the pre-season to get underway.

2024 Pre-Season guidelines

1] Shorts should ideally be three-quarter length-‘culottes’ for the 2024 season. The length of shorts is particularly important as climate change may mean that unprotected legs get sunburnt.

2] Footwear should be casual. There is a considerable range of sandal type footwear now available. Some leave parts of the feet and toes open to public view, while some do not. The BLF is not prescriptive about the matter.

3] Socks should usually not be worn. However in the pre-season they are optional

3a] If the beard, shorts and sandals are to be displayed in relatively busier urban areas it is likely to be prudent to wear closed rather than open casual footwear and ankle socks, not visible to others may be worn.

4] There is no prescription or definition on what type of beard may be worn, or how this may match with the shorts and sandals. This is left up to the individual.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, Socks and Sandals season has been a major influence on summer fashions in recent times and we expect the 2024 season to be no different. We’re pleased to be able to announce the opening of the pre-season after carefully studying the Met Office’s beard friendly weather guidance.

The Times is officially no fan of machine breaking and Luddism. Indeed its Editorial on 10th April 2024 warned ‘Luddism helps nobody’

In 1830 and 1831 agricultural labourers were engaged in breaking threshing machines which were destroying their already meagre livelihoods. The Times was the cheer leader for severe sentences and indeed as E P Thompson notes in the Making of the English Working Class numbers were hung. It was in the same period in 1834 that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation, on this occasion for the different strategy of organising a union.

The Times in the 2020s has from time to time backed a modern Luddism even though of course still condemning the historic movement. The Editorial on 10th April calls for smartphones to be banned in schools and limited in workplaces. Its not quite got to the smashing stage yet but one senses the revenge of history at work.

How the press saw William Cuffay, black organiser of the Chartist demonstration at Kennington on Monday 10^th April 1848

This week marks the anniversary of the Chartist rally for the vote in 10th April 1848.

The organiser of that rally and indeed of London Chartism in the Year of Revolutions was William Cuffay, a black tailor.

Cuffay was not a political leader of Chartism nationally, although he may have played a key role in London, but he was certainly the person who was responsible for making things happen.

Ahead of 10th April the Chartist Assembly of 49 delegates meeting in London, concerned that the Government would try to prevent the Kennington rally, agreed to send a deputation to the Home Office to reassure the Home Secretary that nothing beyond peaceful protest was planned.

Cuffay alone voted against on the grounds that as the organiser he was determined that the rally went ahead whatever the Government’s view was

Then, as it would now, racism likely played a key part in how the media depicted Cuffay. The Times referred to the Chartists as ‘the black man and his party’

The caricature above is from Punch. The context is explained below:

In 1848 particularly Cuffay was lampooned in print, in newspapers like the Times, and the Observer, in magazines like Punch and the London Illustrated News. While he was in Newgate Gaol awaiting transportation Punch carried The Three Christmas Waits a lampooning poem by William Makepeace Thackeray. A book titled The Political Life of Cornelius Cuffey, Esq., Patriot, &c, &c., was on sale for half a guinea. It consisted of a poem that was lavishly illustrated with hand-coloured lithographed plates protected by tissue guards, and claimed  to have been “Printed for Sale at the Bazaar in Aid of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution”. This organisation was an invention of Punch in 1846.

While Cuffay was noticed by official society in 1848 he was after that promptly written out of history. It took Peter Fryer’s Staying Power (1984) on the history of black radicalism in Britain to bring his name back on to the historical record.

https://cuffay.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/punch.html

Protest, Rough Music & MPs houses

In a further authoritarian lurch the Government plans not by passing a law but by a technical tweak to existing measures before Parliament to make protests outside MPs houses punishable by six months in jail. Keir Starmer was not happy when Just Stop Oil sang climate change themed Christmas Carols outside his house so clearly something MUST be done.

The discussion has been had before in the Spring of 2024

I agreed with Marina Hyde writing in the Guardian on 24^th February 2024 that protesting outside MPs houses is not generally an effective protest tactic. Historically however it has been a tradition known as rough music when protesters convened at an individual’s house often late at night, making noise. Sometimes it was aimed at people who had transgressed a moral code and was far from always progressive, Sometimes it was aimed at figures of authority.

In 2025 the ability to communicate with those in authority, through e-mail and social media means there are more direct ways of making a point. However, as I’m afraid is too often the case with too many MPs, the effort to engage beyond perhaps a bland statement, is missing. If MPs will not participate in democratic dialogue with constituents they may find the traditions of rough music reassert themselves, awkward and sometimes disturbing though they may be. Starmer himself is a champion of non-engagement with those who disagree with him, preferring the administrative measure to debate.

It might also be noted that while the media frequently comments on protests, usually to condemn them, they have been probably the most frequent group to be found hanging around outside at least some MPs houses in recent times. When Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may have created a record here.

Jess Philips, writing in the Observer on 25^th February 2024, made a clear and appropriate distinction between political protest aimed at MPs and individual threats to them. Women MPs are the most frequent targets and its long been known that Diane Abbott has received perhaps the most abuse in recent times

The point remains though that if legitimate democratic forms of protest are restricted, frustrated or banned, then more controversial protests are possible. The Sunday Times Editorial on 25^th February2024 warned on this very point, while hardly being a fan of protests in general

Wes Streeting & the middle class

Wes Streeting has criticised ‘middle class lefties’ who he thinks are standing in the way of his efforts to privatise bits of the NHS should he get to be Health Secretary in the next Government. He might well find that the mostly not middle class UNISON and RCN are rather more formidable opponents.

Streeting will only fit the definition of a ‘leftie’ if its one drawn up by Lee Anderson. However his £90K desk job marks him out as definitively middle class.

I’m not sure what Streeting studied at Cambridge, even after checking but it probably wasn’t history.

I did however check Raymond Williams Keywords. As might be expected its quite complicated. The modern usage dates from the earlier decades of the nineteenth century and developed in the decades after.

Before the 1832 Reform Act there are instances of references to the middling and lower orders. However the distinction began to arose between the lower or working classes and the upper classes. In between were the middle classes- quite small in numbers at this point.

By the 1880s there was a distinction between workers who did manual work and got paid a wage and the middle class- also workers- who however attracted a salary and did desk jobs ranging from clerks to managers and professionals.

Williams did not touch on more modern developments (reasonably given the book was published a while back now). However certainly from the late 1960s there developed a trend for middle class workers to become unionised. The political hold that the Tory Party held over them also cracked, perhaps in some cases because the salaries they were paid did not lend themselves to a supposed middle class lifestyle.

As E P Thompson noted class is not a static category but determined in practice in relations between people and struggles coming out of that.

Given that Labour is an electoral party seeking a broad base of support Streeting’s comments reflect a narrow factionalism which suggests a lack of genuine experience of life as it is actually lived on the shop floor and in the office

The declining appearances and value of Liz Truss

For someone who crashed the economy in 49 days in the autumn of 2022 Liz Truss remains omnipresent. However that is not always in the UK and it certainly is not in Parliament

Her most recent UK images include one posted on Easter Sunday standing outside a derelict rural church clutching a lamb and a crowd photo at Nigel Farage’s 60^th birthday event at Carnary Wharf just after Easter

Her value seems to be declining along with her UK presence

She is paid £87,000 to do her actual job as an MP but has not spoken once in the House of Commons in 2024. Most of the other 24 MPs who haven’t spoken this year are standing down at the General Election.

In 2023 she made £300,000 from speeches mostly outside of the UK

In February 2023 she spoke in Mumbai and was paid £65,751

In March 2023 she spoke in Tokyo and was paid £6,443

In May 2023 she was in Taiwan for a 4 hour event for which she got £80,000

In June 2023 she pocketed a total of £64,000 for speaking in Switzerland and Dublin

In October 2023 (presumably after a summer holiday) she got £32,000 for speaking in Houston and Washington

In December 2023 she was paid £30,000 for speaking at a conference in London, a very rare  home fixture

Yet in February 2024 according to the Daily Mirror when she spent most of the month in the US she accrued ‘only’ £32,000 for appearing at a number of events.

It would appear that the more Truss speaks outside the UK but fails to underline her UK political presence the less she is worth.

Truss’s memoir/manifesto is out next week, titled Ten Years to Save the West. David Bowie had a better take with Five Years.

It will be interesting to see how much effort Truss puts into the UK book launch. The US publisher specialises in volumes on conspiracy theories which seems about right.