Kmflett's Blog

Jeremy Corbyn was a participant in an on-line meeting on Wednesday (on YouTube-Google for the link, it doesn’t copy). It was partly related to the campaign for his For the Many slate in the current Your Party CEC election, and Laura Smith (former Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich also spoke(very well btw) It was chaired by Bradford Councillor Ismail Uddin. My political sympathies lie with another slate but this post is about one of the main themes of the meeting.

Jeremy Corbyn has been around long enough to know that meetings about election slates are niche, particularly when so much needs to be done in respect of practical campaigning.

A key focus was on Palantir and its efforts to get access to NHS patient records. Palantir is a highly unethical US based company but when Peter Mandelson was still UK Ambassador to the US, Starmer accompanied him to a meeting with Palantir in Washington. Mandelson was previously a key figure in a consultancy with links to Palantir. As Corbyn rightly noted there is much campaigning work needed to stop Palantir getting access to local NHS patient records.

However he also touched on the history of Mandelson, Blair and Starmer. He echoed Tony Benn’s views of Mandelson in the 1980s. He went on to note that when he became Labour leader in 2015 Labour HQ advised him to use Mandelson and Alistair Campbell as comms and PR people. He firmly declined.

Moving on to Mandelson’s appointment as Ambassador Corbyn noted that while the Foreign Office always preferred career diplomats for such a role their briefings to politicians were invariably well researched and thorough. It seems inconceivable that Starmer was not aware of Mandelson’s Epstein links at this point, even if a lot more has come out more recently with the release of some of the Epstein files in the US.

Corbyn was circumspect about the Government’s decision (eventually) to release all the papers related to Mandelson to the Commons Security Committee but did not rule out pressing for and possibly organising an independent inquiry.

Important points but possibly not ones that will get reported in the mainstream media…

Other appointments include (according to their Twitter avatars) Robert Jenrick Shadow Chancellor and Zia Yusuf Shadow Home Secretary. These jobs in the real world are filled by Mel Stride and Chris Philp.

A three part series The Tony Blair Story is available to stream on Channel 4. Ive watched the first two episodes.

There is a lot to comment on (not least the apologies for Peter Mandelson’s contributions) but it is an interesting attempt to construct a version of a history of the present.

Both Cherie and Tony Blair are interviewed as is Jeremy Corbyn

One moment in episode two stood out for me personally and a screen shot is above.

It’s of Blair speaking at the TUC in the Brighton Centre just after 2pm on 11th September 2001 after the Twin Towers attacks.

He spoke only briefly before returning to London and the TUC Congress was cancelled.

I was in the hall that day and his appearance and the hours afterwards remain in my memory.

Decisions made after that moment continue to have a significant impact in British and global politics 25 years on

Brewdog’s first London bar. It was the future once (December 2011-July 2025)

Camden was the fourth Brewdog bar to open and the first outside of Scotland, hence the opening on December 11^th 2011 was something of a landmark at the time. The pub itself is not a huge- a ground floor and lower ground- a far cry from some of Brewdog’s more recent openings.

At the time Brewdog still produced cask beer (it was soon to stop) so a talking point 15 years ago was that there was no cask, it was all keg. James Watt turned up in a tank which he presumably thought was a great stunt. In reality those familiar with central London in those times will have been aware that the tank, owned from memory by someone in Croydon and leased out for events, was not a hugely unusual sight.

I have memories of drinking in there with people still well known in the Indy Beer world, when it was the only Brewdog bar in London and Brewdog was the benchmark for what was then called craft beer, both its own brews and guest beers.

I rarely ventured into Camden Brewdog in more recent times- after all there are many more convenient craft beer bars now. In fact I’ve hardly been in a Brewdog bar at all in the last few years because of the employment and cultural issues at the brewer that still seem to me unresolved. In 2011 this would I think have surprised us, even if we were no fans of James Watts’ style.

The pub, well before it was a Brewdog, also featured in the never ending Spycops inquiry into police infiltration into left and radical campaigns. It was a meeting place for the Camden left in the late 1960s and hence undercover police officers were also to be found at the bar.

Last time I passed a few months ago it had for lease/sale signs up. Tbh since its on a one way road that runs parallel to Camden High St it’s not the best of locations.

Brewdog of course have other London bars- including a rebadged Draft House not far from the Camden site- but in recent times, the Waterloo monolith notwithstanding- they seem to close more than they open. A long way from the path breaking times when Camden Brewdog opened.

The Reform ‘Shadow Cabinet’. There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke

Reform has eight MPs at the moment (they come and go) but Farage has decided to appoint a ‘Shadow Cabinet’. Four of the eight, 30p Lee, Danny Kruger, Andrew Rosindell and Sarah Pochin are clearly considered too unreliable to get a role, which is a very low benchmark.

The Times described it as having the ‘tincture of amateurism’.

Former Green MP Caroline Lucas on Newsnight pointed out to Zia Yusuf that while at the press conference to announce his top team there had been 25 questions, in fact Farage answered (or in the case of a sexist sneer to an FT journalist, did not answer) all of them

However the list really looks something like this

Minister for Proper Fucking Lunches Nigel Farage

Minister for Dubai affairs, Richard Tice

Minister for Weight Loss Robert Jenrick

Stropmaster General Zia Yusless

Minister for Division & Inequality, Suella Braverman

It is a joke but as Dylan noted in All Along The Watchtower, ‘there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke’.

The Together march against racism takes place in London on March 28th

While Keir Starmer’s father was a resolute beard wearer (and Guardian reader) Starmer himself is a lifelong clean shaven revisionist. So far.

However when push comes to shove it appears Starmer is taking advice from actor Hugh Dennis on whether a beard can save him. It worked for Keir Hardie after all.

The picture (Times 16th Feb 2026) is from Starmer’s regular Sunday afternoon football game in North London

Brewdog despite its Punk ethos has never recognised a trade union. The new Employment Relations Act may mean it has to finally do so but in the meantime Unite the Union has built a significant membership particularly at its Ellon Brewery site.

Unite Hospitality lead officer Bryan Simpson has told the BBC that following the announcement at the weekend that Brewdog may be broken up or sold, the union has received many calls from worried Brewdog employees. He also reported that some workers had already seen their hours cut from 32 to 24 with a subsequent reduction in pay.

Scots paper The National reported on 16th February that Brewdog staff have been told by senior management that major investor TSG is pushing for a quick sale with March 2026 a potential date.

While stories on Brewdog speculate on the financials and the impact on craft/indy beer the impact on people, their jobs and lives is surely a bottom line here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c627eyzmmg8o

Wednesday 25th February 17.30hrs

John Foot on The Red Brigades, Writing the History of a Terrorist Group

A recording of the seminar is at this link

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/cUVjjKL6f_4QOofahM-nXN0RQwMzkXebsE1GceVyqfAUVc_a4_AbGukzm4kGt-6k.FBOJNEfR6kyAleqi

In March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro,murdering his bodyguards. For nearly two months, they held him hostage while a shocked world looked on, before eventually killing him and dumping his body in the middle of Rome. But who were this terrorist group? What did they want? And how did they continue to operate for almost twenty years, terrifying a nation from 1970 to 1988? John Foot’s talk will describe how they became the most formidable left-wing terrorist organisation in post-war Western Europe. Drawing their support from the student protest movements of the 1960s, activists and workers radicalised by the ‘hot autumn’ of 1969, the Red Brigades were inspired by terrorist groups from across the world, especially in Latin America. They recognised no rules and authority other than their own, and launched a campaign of murder, kidnap, kneecapping and intimidationthat paralysed Italy’s justice system and reshaped the political landscape. For a time, they were admired as freedom fighters by the Italian left and commemorated as martyrs. Underlining the meticulous research behind his new book on this subject, Foot will outline the true story behind the myths that have grown around the Red Brigades, highlighting the human costs of their actions, as well as their impact on Italian society. He will explain how the contradictions inherent in their actions eventually led to their downfall in a series of high-profile mass trials and the legacy of conspiracy, distrust and bitterness that still lingers in Italy to this day.

We may be taking back control but don’t expect to hear about the traditional Collop Monday from GB News or Farage.

In the traditional calendar Shrovetide consists of there days: Shrove Sunday, Collop Monday and Shrove Tuesday.

Following this comes 40 days of Lent a period of frugality (poor people only)

Collop Monday was the last opportunity to use up any meat that would not last until the end of Lent.

In the days before refrigeration meat in February would consist of salted or smoked bacon or pork in the main. It would be cooked and eaten and the fat produced used to make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

The point being, and this is perhaps where Collop Monday might find support in 2026, that today is meant to be the last day of meat eating until Easter.

As Eric Hobsbawm noted all traditions are invented, Collop Monday was invented by the Christian Church in Medieval times, and they can of course be reinvented to suit