From Bazball to Culture Wars: strategies of defeat
England lost the Third Test against India on Sunday
The 434 margin of defeat was England’s largest since 1934 and India’s biggest in history
It’s worth reflecting on this in the context of an England team attitude that it doesn’t matter, and on to the next Test on Friday.
Of course there was superb batting and bowling from India who are very hard to defeat- as England did in the First Test- on their home grounds.
Even so given that England looked to be in a good position at the end of the second day’s play with a superb innings from Duckett the scale of the capitulation was significant.
Bazball, a strategy of playing attacking Test cricket to make it attractive to a wider layer of potential spectators in the face of challenges from shorter forms of the game, has its place, particularly when it works.
However if it’s the only strategy, and it appears that it is, it becomes less a way of playing exciting cricket and achieving some results, and more of a management mantra, stuck to even when reality intervenes.
The comparison with England cricket fan Rishi Sunak’s strategy for winning the forthcoming Election can be made. He has no real policies that are making a positive difference to anything despite the Tories being in Office since 2010.
Rather what he has is a serious of Culture Wars, attacking the supposedly ‘woke’ criticising anti-racist programmes and attempts to promote equality. The sound and fury can be impressive and occasionally a result is achieved. It is not however a winning strategy on its own.
People want to see more substance and the same goes for the England cricket team
With Kenton Archer still out of action and a labour shortage at the Bull, Big Dave Archer has been behind the bar. He knows little about bar keeping despite claiming he is an expert. A template for the entire Archers Dynasty. Further he has tried to chuck Tony put of the pub on his birthday
Sgt Knacker Burns & Harry. Deflected class struggle
Knacker Burns and Fallon have been for an evening of faux-golf with Alice and Harry. Knacker dislikes Harry because of his snooty class attitude. Time for an arrest. Two days later Knacker was busy dealing with Captain Underpants outside a Felpersham pub, who turns out to be Harry in a state of undress. Harry has been duly Knackered
Tony bullies Susan and Clarrie
With Helen away Adam is ‘in charge’ at the dairy. The rather tedious practical jokes continue until Adam accidentally lets Hilda the cat in and a lot of milk has to be chucked. Adam arranges with Tony for a fake firing session where Clarrie and Tracey are held to blame for Adam ‘getting the sack’. An outrageous example of workplace bullying. Time for a union membership drive at the diary. It is the TUC’s Heart Unions week
Alistair and Denise. Pt94
Alistair got a Valentine’s card. It was not from Denise. Denise has started a kitten club. Hilda and Tony have been banned already
The private University of Buckingham is to offer an MA and PhD in Woke from Autumn 2024. Since the University is anti-Woke the academic rigour of the course remains to be seen.
So far according to a report in the Times (17th February) 100 people have signed up for an on-line course on the origins of the Woke movement, whatever that may be.
The course will be offered in a new centre of Heterodox Social Science run by a former Birkbeck academic. The report suggests that the centre will consist of people who have felt ‘uncomfortable’ in other Universities.
The aim of the Woke course is to ‘examine woke like any other ideology and treat it analytically and dispassionately’.
The content of the course may perhaps be surmised by the claim that it would be difficult to run the course in a mainstream University.
The centre will issue reports on issues such as the supposed link between teenage depression and left-wing politics.
I stopped by the British Library at St Pancras again this week for research purposes. I endeavour to stop by at least once a fortnight but since a cyberattack at the end of October things have been awkward.
At the moment there is working wi-fi and a read only on-line catalogue. Essentially you can (probably) order books that are on site. You can only do this on site by using a paper slip and the items requested should appear in 70 minutes or so. I did this a couple of weeks back and it worked fine.
This week it also worked fine, noting the paper slips have been reprinted to omit a long list of reasons for non-delivery (rather like the old Round Reading Room days) and a space provided for a reason instead.
The book I wanted to briefly consult- a volume of Tony Benn’s Diaries covering the mid-1970s that is out of print and not available digitally- duly appeared after an hour and bit. It remains noticeable though that the shelves were delivered books are placed for readers collection remain very empty. Pre cyberattack they are invariably fullish
The BL CEO promised readers an updated timeline on progress by the end of February and this duly appeared. Cyberattacks take ages to sort and since the Government has not bothered to do anything about sorting out what is not just a national but international cultural resource, I expect it to be ages.
On this occasion I had been working nearby so I had limited time as I also had a later engagement in Hackney (ok, beers in the CockTavern with friends). Pre cyberattack this would not have been an issue. I would have ordered the books I wanted to consult on-line remotely a few days before and collected them on arrival at the reading room. That isn’t possible at the moment.
However I was able to continue my long running research project into Fletters published in the New Musical Express in the 1980s and 1990s. The NME is available in hard copy, open access, in the Humanities 2 Reading Room.
It is perhaps a salutory reminder that not all research is fruitful in that I looked through all issues for the first half of 1998 and all issues for the final quarter of 1996 and found no fletters. As often with research there were more questions than answers. Had I stopped writing to the NME (pre e-mail probably by fax) in this period? Or were they simply not printing my fletters (which did happen). Then again on occasion, because of that I used pseudonyms (as did most NME letter writers), but can I remember what they are.
Research in progress. I already have quite a collection of NME fletters by the way
Bernie Grant b.17th February 1944. Anti-racist, socialist, beard wearer.
Bernie Grant who was one of the great post-1945 political figures, was born 81 years ago today.
He died 25 years ago after a period as leader of Haringey Council and then Labour MP for Tottenham from 1987, one of the first four black MPs to be elected in the modern era.
There is no question that Bernie made a significant impact on Haringey politics and well beyond which continues. He was the first black leader of an authority anywhere in Europe and while the example has been far too slow to be followed it was a landmark.
His fight against racism and opposition to the Thatcher Government when he was Council leader again set a template
I was Chair of Haringey Trades Union Council throughout the period that Bernie was Council leader and MP.
I recall particularly Election meetings where in those days we would invite the Labour candidate only to speak. Bernie was an inspiring and indeed an idiosyncratic speaker. Throughout the period he was pursued by the tabloid press (fortunately it was well before social media) and particularly the S*n who labelled him ‘Barmy Bernie’. We were always on the look-out for ill-intentioned types at these kind of meetings keen to twist an off-cuff the remark.
My connections do go rather wider. His brother was a trade union colleague in telecoms (as was his partner) and like myself an anyone but England cricket fan.
We have to accept I think that political figures like Bernie Grant come along only rarely in each generation. Remembering him 81 years after his birth is important not least for the motivation it should give us to continue the fight now, in a period where his voice would be a powerful rejoinder to a political establishment that is far from keen on recognising and in particular acting on the causes he championed
An extract from a new biography of Keir Starmer by Tom Baldwin (Times 17th Feb) has revealed his Masterchef strategy for Government.
The Labour leader ‘tries’ to cook for the family if he is not too busy.
He puts on the radio and finds the most complicated recipe available
‘The more chopping up and preparation there is, the better the music sounds. After an hour or so everyone is moaning at me.
Vic (his partner) wonders why he has to use ten different saucepans. HIs children will declare they don’t want what he is cooking and ask if they could have some pasta.
Starmer notes ‘the beauty of my system is, that by the time I’m ready they are all so hungry they’ll eat anything’
Here at last is the much sought after plan for a Starmer Government
67th anniversary of CND: needed now as much as it was in 1958
The state of the world on the 67th anniversary of CND suggests that it is needed now more than ever. At the moment the world is at a very dangerous moment and that includes countries that have nuclear weapons, either officially such as the US and Russia or unofficially such as Israel.
The spark for the organisation that led to CND was a series of nuclear tests in 1957.
In 1957 it was Britain that was testing a nuclear bomb in the South Pacific, and these were not in any way officially sanctioned.
Part of the motivation after the debacle of Suez in 1956 was to put Britain back on a military footing with the US and this indeed was what happened.
The impact on the left was significant.
It was the 1945 Labour Government that had originally sanctioned the development of British nuclear weapons in the first place and around the nuclear tests a familiar discussion between multilateral and unilateral disarmers took place.
Nye Bevan, the de facto leader of the Labour left in the 1950s, was no fan of nuclear weapons but took the position that while others had them Britain needed them too. Whether or not he would have backed a ‘first use’ policy didn’t seem clear.
Beyond that however there were large numbers who simply wanted to get rid of all nuclear weapons and being in the UK, to start with British ones.
The moves that led to CND started with letters from Bertrand Russell in the Guardian and an article by J. B. Priestley in the New Statesman. Canon Collins, based at St Pauls, was also a key figure.
The Inaugural meeting was held at the Central Hall, Westminster on 17th February 1958
In other words the ‘great and the good’ of the liberal-left became attracted to the cause. But the foot soldiers were of course the left- many constituency Labour Party members and the wider left.
Peggy Duff a Camden Labour Councillor who had worked for Tribune and went on to become the first General Secretary of CND summed up in her autobiography what the original activists were like.
‘They belonged to no political party. Many of them belonged to no church. They had no politics. Their interest in banning the bomb was mainly ethical. They thought it was wrong. Most of them were young.. they believed that the bomb immediately threatened the future of civilisation, that it had to be banned very quickly or Armageddon would come’.
Trump’s return and Israel’s genocide in Gaza will surely mean that a new generation will join those who first opposed the bomb 67 years ago.
Do the Tories face electoral oblivion or will they morph into a hard right Faragist Party
The Tories lost two By-Elections on 15th February one at Wellingborough by the second largest swing since 1945
The crisis for Sunak is just getting worse. He may be preoccupied with bomb out to help out Netanyahu but a YouGov poll showed the Tories would be reduced to a rump at the forthcoming Election. Sunak is the second unelected PM the Tories have had since 2019 and now some want a third.
The Tories remain around 20% behind Labour in the polls and are badly split. Nadine Dorries resignation letter to Sunak last Autumn was partly farcical but partly sharp in pointing to numerous Tory policy failures.
Meanwhile former Home Secretary Suella Braverman on the hard right of the Tories has renewed calls for Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and ban demonstrations against genocide in Gaza
In 2005 Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote a book arguing that the Tory Party had reached the end of its historic existence. As the years since 2010 have unfortunately demonstrated he was wrong. However in a recent Guardian article he returned to the point, arguably more persuasively.
The Tories as a party representing ruling class interests have been ‘shapeshifters’ pragmatically shifting positions and policies to fit the demands of the moment. So the Tories resisted demands for an extension to the vote with force at Peterloo in 1819 and in Parliament with the 1832 Reform Act. However in 1867 they passed a further Act extending the suffrage.
Likewise they were the party of the landed aristocracy but in 1846/7 repealed the Corn Laws because this was in the interest of the rising industrial manufacturing class. In much more recent times Tory leader Edward Heath took Britain into what is now the EU in the early 1970s. 50 years on the Tories are focused on Brexit and staying out of the EU.
The problem they have is that beyond making money for their mates and sometimes themselves they no longer have a coherent view of what a ruling class politics which can also win elections is. There have been five Tory leaders since 2015 each seemingly more incompetent than the last.
Boris Johnson personifies the crisis. He was not a supporter of Brexit and notoriously only became so not out of some great principle or understanding of ruling class interests but because it served his personal ambition to be Prime Minister.
I don’t agree with Wheatcroft that the Tory Party is finished is an absolute certainty.
There are several factors which might see it survive in some form.
The first is Labour. Despite huge majorities in 1997 and 2001 Blair while tinkering with reforms determined that his real focus was illegal wars. Then in the financial crash of 2008 Gordon Brown decided that the key thing was to save the market economy and in doing so ushered in an era of austerity. Unsurprisingly Labour votes declined significantly and the Tories who had looked finished made a return
Starmer has his own variant on this. If the Tories are busy making themselves redundant then perhaps the way forward is to move Labour into that space. His own version of the Great Moving Right Show. So hapless are the Tories at the moment that this strategy might work, if only briefly.
The Tories however might shapeshift again and move themselves further to the right still, around the racist politics of Suella Braverman and others. Nigel Farage and the Reform Party while a minority have the capacity perhaps to mobilise votes around such a grouping. Their vote at Kingswood and Wellingborough was not as high as the predecessor UKIP got in 2015 but the electoral context is different with Labour 20 points ahead.
There is scope for such a political reconfiguration on the hard right mirroring developments across the rest of Europe and in the US. With Truss sharing a platform with fascist Steve Bannon and Lee Anderson outside the Tory Party and in ReformUK after a racist rant too many, the possibility is growing
Opposing it rather than joining in the Great Moving Right Show is essential.
There is speculation that after an election defeat Farage could emerge as the leader of a reconstituted hard to far right Tory Party. Perhaps but that would also mean the end of the existing Tory Party with various strands of ruling class strategies within it.
For the left while ousting the Tories electorally is essential the real response to this is in workplaces and on the streets. Strikes and protests won’t win Starmer’s support but they can exert real political pressure from the bottom up. That is essential as a counter to top down Parliamentary politics
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that former Beard of the Year Michael Rosen, has posted a self portrait of his beard on X on 16th February that underlines North London Beard Power
The photo taken at Alexandra Palace in Muswell Hill shows Michael Rosen’s beard with the old BBC Ally Pally mast in the background
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, just as the BBC used to broadcast to the nation from Ally Pally so Michael Rosen’s follicles reach out from the heights of North London to bring Beard Power to all
Writing in 1959 the socialist historian and activist E P Thompson noted that psephology, voting statistics and predictions, should really be called ephology.
He had a point. Elections are about people and a basic expression of how they think the UK part of the world should be working not statistics or extrapolations based on them
Even so the Bloomberg graphic above is interesting. Four of the five largest By-Election swings from Tory to Labour since 1945 have taken place in the last year. The other took place in the years before Labour’s 1997 landslide. Chris Webb’s victory for Labour at Blackpool South on May 2nd saw a 26% swing, the third largest since 1945.
Moreover the nine seats lost in By-Elections by the Tories since 2019 are only equalled in recent decades by John Major’s Government from 1992-97. The Tories dismal poll rating has shown no improvement of note since Sunak took over from Truss
Whatever might be thought of Starmer’s Labour, these stats reflect an historic crisis of the Tory Party and potentially a shapeshifting reconfiguration of the right in British politics. They also suggest that Labour will be in No.10 before long. It likely reflects a change of political mood in the country that is not susceptible to anything either Sunak or Starmer can or cannot do
