Kmflett's Blog

Tory Resignations & sackings from Geoffrey Howe to Suella Braverman. The influence of extra-Parliamentary protest & the significance of 13^th November

On November 1^st 1990 Geoffrey Howe resigned as Chancellor in Thatcher’s Tory Government. On 13^th November 1990 he made a quite lengthy resignation speech in the Commons. He launched a wide ranging attack on how Thatcher was running the Government. In political folklore the speech is likened to be being savaged by a dead sheep. Even so the speech provoked a Tory leadership challenge and on 22^nd November Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister and John Major took over.

Its easy to see that as a matter of Parliamentary politics but extra Parliamentary politics had a major say. Thatcher had abolished the old system of rates which funded local Councils and replaced it with the Poll Tax. It was widely unpopular and many (myself included) refused to pay. There were protests and demonstrations including a large one in central London on 31^st March 1990 that became a minor riot. Howe some might say was pushing at an open door.

Fast forward 33 years to November 2023 and we find hard right Home Secretary Suella Braverman was sacked by Tory PM Sunak on 13^th November. She had spent the previous week attacking the police and trying to get a march calling for a ceasefire in Gaza banned. In the process she provoked a mob of the hard right and fascists to attack the police in Whitehall on 11^th November. The peaceful protest march attracted 800,000 people.

Braverman’s response to her sacking which typically appeared on X on 14^th November claimed Sunak had broken a pact with her which had ensured he became Tory leader a year ago. It attacked his Premiership in a wide ranging way.

Braverman is a provocative speaker and writer, unlike Howe but the political parallels are there. A Tory Government and leader floundering not just because of internal political disagreements but also because of protests on the streets.

In her latest rant former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has demanded that Christmas be cancelled, certainly for MPs and perhaps generally.

The Commonwealth Parliament that sat between 1649 and 1660 worked at Christmas, although the main discussion seemed to be about the fact that despite a ban on the festival, most others were in fact celebrating it.

Braverman’s plan is that MPs must debate her latest strategy for sending asylum seekers to Rwanda during Christmas after her last one was declared illegal by the High Court on Wednesday.

The group of MPs that normally backs Braverman, the New Conservatives, appears to have been silent on its leaders conversion to cancel culture. Its difficult to see Lee 30p Anderson getting himself out of the pub to sit in Parliament on Xmas Day

Beard Liberation Front

17th November

contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

James Cleverley excluded from Parliamentary Beard of the Year list

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, is drawing up the list of contenders for the annual Parliamentary Beard of the Year shortlist.

The list goes to a web based public vote with a winner announced in mid-December.

One issue that BLF assessors have reviewed is whether or not the current Home Secretary James Cleverley merits inclusion.

The criteria is NOT about the politics of the beard wearer, but whether there beard has promoted a positive image of the hirsute in Westminster and elsewhere.

The BLF is democratic and accountable so the issue of James Cleverley’s beard was put to one hundred supporters in an on-line poll. 61.8% said he should not be included with just 15.7% saying he should. 22.5% abstained

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, James Cleverley is arguably the most prominent beard wearer in Westminster politics. The issue we consulted on is whether on balance his beard presents a positive image and should therefore be included on the Parliamentary Beard of the Year shortlist. The answer from the sample of our supporters is a decisive ‘no’. We wish Mr Cleverley’s beard well.

A dispute is underway in France on EU plans to stop Camembert cheese being sold in distinctive round wooden boxes.

The boxes may be environmentally friendly but they are not re-cyclable. Under a proposed new EU regulation makers of industrial camembert will have to use new boxes. Camembert with an artisan designation will be able to continue to use wooden boxes.

45,148 tonnes of industrial Camembert was consumed in France in 2022 with only 6,000 tonnes of that being artisan Camembert.

Its clearly a battle between Craft and Big Camembert, although how to determine the difference beyond the artisan designation is not made clear. I would suggest that like much craft beer craft Camembert should be unpasteurised. Indeed this is a requirement in France for the cheese to be given artisan status*

The information is reported in The Times (16th November) a reminder again that the British ruling class remains obsessed with French cuisine

*thanks to John West for the reference

King Charles changes ideological commissars as new Clerk of the Closet appointed

Alan Rusbridger posted on X an extract from the Court Circular in today’s Times (16^th November). It reports that a new Clerk of the Closet has been appointed by King Charles. The Right Rev Richard Jackson (Bishop of Hereford) has taken the role after the Right Rev James Newcombe stepped down.

What does the Clerk of the Closet do? X had some entertaining suggestions. However the role has existed since the 15^th Century, albeit between 1651 and 1660 due to events it was done in exile. Part of the job is to present new Bishops to the King (who is Head of the Church) who then pay homage to him. Another part of the job is to act as an ideological commissar to vet theological texts that the King may come across to make sure they are appropriate.

Like the monarchy itself it all seems rather antiquarian in 2023. Harmless it may be, but it also costs money that could be better spent elsewhere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerk_of_the_closet

There were a number of Parliamentary votes against the Iraq War but probably the most important was on 18th March 2003. Parliamentary approval for Britain to back Bush’s war in Iraq wasnt required but to his credit in this respect Blair sought it.

The vote was carried with 84 of 412 Labour MPs voting against- 20% of the Parliamentary Party. 69 abstained. There was one frontbench resignation that of the late Robin Cook.

On 15th November 2023 there was a Parliamentary vote on an SNP amendment to the King’s Speech to support a ceasefire in Gaza. 56 Labour MPs voted against-28% of the Parliamentary Party (currently at 198). There were at least 8 frontbench resignations and sackings. Like Blair, Starmer was determined to place support for the US’s position on Gaza above party unity.

These votes did not and will not end well for the many Iraqs and Palestinians who were or will be victims of war. It didn’t end well for Blair after 2003. Starmer hasnt yet learnt that lesson even though he opposed the Iraq War twenty years ago

In the nineteenth century radicals looked to disseminate really useful knowledge to counter officially promoted useful knowledge. The latter often focused on orthodox market economics to create an impression that poverty and wealth were parts of a natural order unrelated to what people did or did not do.

The battle for really useful knowledge continues. The headline inflation figure announced today is 4.6%. This is partly due to a statistical blip, as the figure is compared year on year and partly because at the moment energy costs have fallen. Rishi Sunak was quick to claim credit for the drop in inflation, although he previously said it was caused by factors outside of the control of the Government.

The reality is rather different to the spin. As the TUC in a social media graphic pointed out today’s figure means that prices are still going up, just not as quickly. Food price inflation is at 10.1% and there seems little sign of it falling. Meanwhile many will wonder if the current reduction in energy costs will actually translate to lower bills this winter.

In all the media coverage of inflation there is little reference currently to the role that wage rises have had. Its quite difficult to spin a story that accounts for increased wages and falling inflation. In reality wages remain below the level they were at before the financial crash of 2008/9.

Really Useful Knowledge suggests the need to organise to get more wage rises

The Making of the English Working Class (extract from the book)

Since Luddites or food rioters do not appear as satisfactory ‘fore runners’ of the Labour Movement they merited neither sympathy or close attention. And this bias (of the Fabians KF) was supplemented by the more conservative bias of the orthodox academic tradition.  Hence ‘history’ has dealt fairly with the Tolpuddle Martyrs and fulsomely with Francis Place; but the hundreds of men and women executed or transported for oath taking, Jacobin conspiracy Luddism, the Pentridge and Grange Moor uprisings, food and enclosure and turnpike riots, the Ely Riots and the Labourers Revolt of1830 and a score of minor affrays, have been forgotten by all but a few specialists or, if they are remembered, they are thought to be simpletons or  men tainted with criminal folly

There will be a discussion on the Making of the English Working Class at 60 on Monday 20th November at 5.30pm. Free on Zoom. Participants are encouraged to relate their own experiences of reading the Making!

Register here

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/making-english-working-class-60-roundtable-discussion

Alec Douglas Home

Rishi Sunak’s new Cabinet is the most public school dominated since 1964 when Sir Alec Douglas Home’s Tory Cabinet had all four top positions filled by ex-public schoolboys. Home himself was an Old Etonian and the only PM to have played First Class cricket(for Middlesex). He had renounced a Peerage and won a By-Election to be briefly PM, before Labour won the October 1964 Election.

The Sutton Trust has found that 63% of the Cabinet are privately educated underlining that the Tories remain a Goverment of the few not the many

Sutton Trust Report (Guardian 14th November)

The Sutton Trust, a charity supporting social mobility, has done its analysis of which schools and universities the new cabinet attended, with all four holders of the so-called great offices of state – prime minister, chancellor, foreign secretary and home secretary – having attended private schools, the first time this has happened since 1964, under Alec Douglas-Home.

The analysis finds that Sunak’s latest cabinet is little different to his previous administrations, with 63% having gone to private schools, 53% having attended Oxford or Cambridge universities, and 41% having been both privately and Oxbridge educated.

The privately educated proportion of ministers is well above the 30% in Theresa May’s cabinet, or the 50% in David Cameron’s 2015 cabinet. The last Labour government’s cabinets had around 30% of ministers who had been privately educated.

The trust also found that the proportion of Sunak’s cabinet ministers educated at comprehensive schools is the same as Liz Truss’s cabinet, at 19%, but lower than Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, with 27%. In Sunak’s latest cabinet, 16% went to a selective grammar school.