Donald Trump has launched another attack on Iran backed inevitably by veteran war criminal Netanyahu whose mission remains a regional war in the Middle East, as a starting point.
Hunter S Thompson wrote about the last US President to be as deranged as Trump (thanks to Rick Halpern for posting it)
“The power of the presidency is so vast that it is probably a good thing, in retrospect, that only a very few people in this country understood the gravity of Richard Nixon’s mental condition during his last year in the White House. There were moments in that year when even his closest friends and advisers were convinced that the president of the United States was so crazy with rage and booze and suicidal despair that he was only two martinis away from losing his grip entirely and suddenly locking himself in his office long enough to make that single telephone call that would have launched enough missiles and bombers to blow the whole world off its axis or at least kill 100 million people.
. . . But it was mainly a matter of luck that Nixon’s mental disintegration was so obvious and so crippling that by the time he came face to face with his final option, he was no longer able to even recognize it. When the going got tough, the politician who worshiped toughness above all else turned into a whimpering, gin-soaked vegetable… But it is still worth wondering how long it would have taken Haig and Kissinger to convince all those SAC generals out in Omaha to disregard a Doomsday phone call from the president of the United States because a handful of civilians in the White House said he was crazy.
Hunter S Thompson, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1976 via Rick Halpern
Global brewer Molson Coors has announced that it plans to close Sharps brewery in Cornwall by the end of 2026. The usual talk of difficult decisions is on display but for companies like this, its not about brewing provenance or people its just another business decision. The business is beer but it could be anything.
Sharps Doom Bar is the leading UK cask beer brand, at least in part because its a staple on the bar in 800 or so Wetherspoons pubs at a very drinker friendly price. I’m not a fan particularly but I don’t have to like the beer to understand that this is just the latest act of vandalism by global big beer, and there have been a good number
Some observers of the Gorton and Denton By-Election organised by a reputable group Democracy Volunteers, have suggested that they saw instances of family voting on 26th February.
As a veteran of North London polling days I’d note and it has been correctly reported, that any issues on polling day need to be reported immediately to the Returning Officer to address. This was not done. Rather comments were made after the poll which look uncomfortably like Islamophobia. So much so that Farage has reported the matter to somebody or other (he does this a lot).
I’m not sure if the Democracy Volunteers were well meaning or in the Phil Ochs Love Me I’m a Liberal camp, but there is another issue.
The turn-out on Thursday was 47% despite a high profile campaign.
I’d suggest that thanks are due to:
1 Everyone who registered to vote
2 Everyone who had the correct ID to vote
3 Everyone who actually made it to the polling booths
Democracy depends on steps 1-3. Democracy Volunteers perhaps a little less so.
Postscript. A month long police investigation found no evidence of family voting. Farage of course does not accept the police verdict..
*This of course is not a genuine headline but one produced by a random headline generator designed by the New World site.
For those familiar with Heath’s Telegraph stories (he edits the Sunday Telegraph) the difference between the random generator and his actual words is usually quite small
The Pitman to Parliament story is part of the foundation history of the Labour Party and its first leader Keir Hardie was a key example of the process.
The first working class MPs elected to Parliament in 1874 Thomas Burt and Alexander McDonald were pitmen and stood on a Lib-Lab ticket.
The election of a plumber Hannah Spencer as MP for Gorton and Denton on 26th February suggests a twist to the story ironically or arguably fittingly in the week of the 125th anniversary of the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in London on 26th and 27th February 1900. It became the Labour Party in 1906 when 29 Labour MPs were elected at a General Election.
Labour did not come fully formed. There was a process of working out how best working people could be represented in politics and Hannah Spencer may be about to write a new chapter….
Tom Kerridge, "Immigration is constantly used by political parties for masking years and years of underfunding in infrastructure, health, housing, employment, education" #BBCQT
"It is not the fault of immigration, it's the fault of poor spending, poor money management"… pic.twitter.com/riW0IieA4O
The Times Editorial (26th February) sums up the political crisis of the British ruling class.
The paper did not back Labour in 2024 (The S*n did) but in the Gorton and Denton By-Election its hoping Labour will get over the line. The Tory vote has after all declined into almost non-existence in the Constituency, although generally the Opposition party would be well placed on such an occasion.
A Reform victory would be a ‘remarkable development’, in other words it could be lived with. The Greens by contrast have mentioned Gaza and are therefore entirely beyond the pale..
It will be interesting to see what The Times has to say about the actual result
For those unfamiliar Allister Heath is the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and prolific author of the world’s going to end due to the left headlines and articles.
New World, not exactly my politics, but often good at prodding the right, has produced an Allister Heath random headlines generator.
Does it make any sense? Well Starmer once did a photo-op in Brewdog Tower Hill
This post first appeared in the Morning Star. I will add some more detail in a further post
Mandelson & New Labour. The end of the affair
Channel Four aired a three part documentary, The Tony Blair Story, in mid-February. It was a history of the present back to the 1980s, albeit other histories are available. One person, close to Blair, who was interviewed in each episode, was Peter Mandelson. Each episode also concluded with a disclaimer that Mandelson had been interviewed before the full details of his connection to Jeffrey Epstein was known.
It was however a reminder, needed by the few if not the many, that Mandelson was central to the New Labour project and remained so until very recently.
Mandelson first appeared in the Labour Party when Neil Kinnock became leader in the 1980s and Tony Benn noted in his diary at the time that he was not good news for the future of Labour. John Smith shunned Mandelson, but after his death, he became closely associated, using the codename ‘Bobby’, with Tony Blair’s successful attempt to become Labour leader.
Mandelson’s political methods are well known but it was the politics he promoted that was and is really key. In 1996 he published a book, The Blair Revolution, with former SDP activist Roger Liddle.
Seamus Milne then a Guardian journalist reviewed the book in the London Review of Books in April 1996 and had this to say about what Mandelson and Liddle were proposing:
coalition with the Liberal Democrats, public sector no-strike deals, workfare for the long-term unemployed, expansion of private pensions and scepticism towards universal benefits
Mandelson held various Ministerial positions in the early New Labour years from 1997 and he was also sacked twice by Blair for actual or alleged breaking of Ministerial rules
Thanks to Government papers released by the National Archives at the start of 2022 we do have a record of Mandelson’s vision for Labour at the time he was Minister Without Portfolio (May 1997-July 1998). Effectively this meant he was policy advisor to Blair and the papers contain a note he sent to him about what he thought New Labour should be. It read in part:
Its political genesis is a synthesis between the historical position of left and right. It is too simplistic to say it adopts ‘left’ values but is rightward in how to achieve them. It is probably more accurate to say that it has left values but is open about to achieve them and recognises that it was the right, not the left, that up to the end of the 80s was prepared to think more freely. Privatisation of certain industries or the sale of council homes or greater autonomy for schools could have been left ideas
National Archives File PREM 49/244
We can see here the practical impact of the New Times policy pursued by Marxism Today. Understanding that Thatcherism had become a hegemonic project on the right, Mandelson and Blair sought to emulate it with a few tweaks. As Stuart Hall later noted in a sharp criticism it wasn’t the hegemonic project that was the problem it was the failure to see, likely deliberate, that it had to be built on the left not the right.
Mandelson’s influence was minimal when Ed Miliband became Labour leader and as Jeremy Corbyn underlined in a recent Commons speech non-existent during his leadership. Mandelson however was still promoting his project and this time hit upon Starmer, someone with no specific left politics, to head it up.
At a party held in a central London pub in 2022 to celebrate 25 years of New Labour Mandelson was reported as leading a chant of ‘Viva New Labour’.
Recent events suggests the end of this 40 year affair. Understanding why it existed and what it meant is essential for the left.
