The Joy of Six 1330

Vince Cable gives it both barrels: "Our secular and liberal values; our diverse society; our democratically elected government. All are antithetical to the Trump clan. We need to understand that the sentimental nonsense about the special relationship is over. We are under attack."

 "Trump’s potential kompromat combines with his cultural-political alignment with kleptocracy and dictatorship that makes him a Russian agent of influence. This was played out in ghastly detail in the 28 February meeting in the White House. In considering our response to America’s abandonment of the West, we need to be realistic about its leadership." Arthur Snell says it's time to take a serious look at the evidence of Trump's relationship with Russia.

Mark Pack reviews Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund.

Kate Bradbury sets out what we can do to help bumblebees: "If you don’t have a greenhouse, do you have space for a pot of winter heather? Can you use your conservatory, porch or other covered space to grow crocuses? Can you dedicate a space in which bumblebees might make a nest?"

"When asked by the Bench chairman if they had anything to say, the taller woman said they did not approve of this court, as there was no woman there to try them. They were remanded for a week while efforts were made to identify them." Jill Evans on a 'Suffragette outrage; at Cheltenham in 1913.

"I was astonished: here was drama, humour, satire and wit in abundance, here too I learnt social history and observed sharp psychological insights." Chris Lovegrove won't have Jane Austen's novels called mimsy, tedious and woke.

Cole Palmer's great uncle was a member of Sweet Sensation

This just in from our Trivia Desk...

The black British soul group Sweet Sensation topped the singles chart in 1974 with Sad Sweet Dreamer. One of its member, St Clair Palmer, is the great uncle of Chelsea and England's Cole Palmer.

That's certainly our Trivial Fact of the Day. As far as I can make out, St Clair is second from the right in the front row in the video above.

Later. This story was widely reported this week, but the  Daily Mail had it last year and also revealed that St Clair Palmer later became an actor and appeared in one episode each of Coronation Street and Brookside.

Route of old railway used in the restoration of the Hereford and Gloucester Canal

The blurb on the Court Above the Cut YouTube channel - like, subscribe and tell your friends - explains what's going on here:

Digging a new line of canal at Malswick near Newent. This exciting project from the Herefordshire & Gloucestershire canal is on land next to the old line and Gloucester & Ledbury railway. Join us as we explore the area and look into what's happened, is happening and what will happen in the future. 

The line ran from the River Severn in Over through Newent, Ledbury and on to Hereford taking in three tunnels including the Oxenhall Tunnel. See where the lift bridge is going as well as the new lock to divert the canal restoration onto another new route and back onto the railway which replaced the line.

With its ruined tunnels and aqueducts, you might the think the Hereford and Gloucester is lost beyond reclamation, but there's lots of work being done on it. There's an element of poetic justice to using the alignment of the railway that was built along and across the canal after its closure.

For another example making use of a railway alignment see my post A disused railway in Derbyshire is being turned into a canal.

Paul Marshall: From SDP researcher to right-wing media mogul

The new London Review of Books has a substantial article by Peter Geoghegan on SDP researcher turned right-wing media mogul Paul Marshall.

It takes us through his career, from researcher to Charles Kennedy in Kennedy's days as an SDP Alliance MP, via his own candidacy in the 1987 general election to his take over of the party's ailing think-tank Centre for Reform. He relaunched this as CentreForum, with a far more right-wing agenda.

Then it's on to The Orange Book, which Geoghegan, unlike many of its critics and adherents, appears to have read:

Many Lib Dems still remember Marshall primarily for The Orange Book, the controversial collection he edited in 2004 with David Laws, then a rising star on the Lib Dem right. The Orange Book is less incendiary than its reputation might suggest. 

Although the book was billed as a response to ‘nanny-state liberalism’, most of the essays are standard social democratic fare: Vince Cable making the case for financial reforms, bromides from Nick Clegg about the need for transparency in the European Union. 

Other chapters, however, suggest an effort to move the party to the right. [David] Laws proposed replacing the NHS with a French-style social insurance system. Another MP, Mark Oaten, contributed an essay about cutting crime titled ‘Tough Liberalism’. (He later admitted that it had been written by a researcher.) 

It was David Laws' chapter, which he reportedly included without informing the other authors, that led to a row at the Liberal Democrat conference and to the whole publication being seen as an attack on Charles Kennedy's leadership.

As to an attack on nanny-state liberalism, The Orange Book contained the purest expression of that creed I've ever read. It was largely a cuttings job (and cuttings from the Daily Mail, if I recall rightly) by the normally sound Steve Webb and a researcher.

Those cuttings were full of horror stories about the effects of bad parenting. I suppose the idea was that if the lower orders could be persuaded to raise their children properly, then there would be less need for public spending and it would be possible to cut taxes for the middle classes.

It was all a long time ago, but you can read my Liberator review of The Orange Book on this blog.

Then it's on to Brexit. Geoghegan says of Marshall:

In the aftermath of the referendum he attacked the Bank of England for being anti-Brexit, donated £500,000 to the Tories under Boris Johnson and funded the Alternative Arrangements Commission on the Irish border question. The AAC looked like an official government body but was in fact run by a private think tank. It was dominated by right-wing Tory MPs such as Steve Baker and Suella Braverman who opposed the 'backstop' that would have kept Northern Ireland in the single market.

Money well spent? It doesn't sound like it

After he was done with Brexit, Marshall founded the Unherd website. It's tone is the sort of world-weary Toryism you once found in the Spectator and for which I have a weakness myself. And it's a clever name, though many of its contributors have long been heard elsewhere and few of their opinions lack a herd that already follows them.

None of this tone was to be found in his next media venture GB News.

Geoghegan dwells on Marshall's financial career, his membership of the influential and fashionable congregation of Holy Trinity Brompton and, in education, his funding of his own multi-academy trust.

But I am left wondering, for all his money, how much political nous Marshall has if he thought the SDP and then the Liberal Democrats could be wrenched away from their instinctive support for pan-European institutions.

Boris Spassky died yesterday at the age of 88

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Boris Spassky, former world chess champion, died yesterday. His match against Bobby Fischer in 1972 put the game on the front pages of the world's newspapers.

He was brave and fluent player, who made you feel that you could play attacking chess like that too. He was equally at home playing king's pawn and queen's pawn openings as White - a novelty in those days, but now something expected of every grandmaster. I'm reminded of the way W.G. Grace revolutionised batting in cricket by being able to play off the front and back foot.

There's a good obituary in chess.com, which gives full details of his career and some examples of his brilliant play.

In one of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, I quoted David Edmonds and John Eidinow's Bobby Fischer Goes to War:

In the summer of 1946, Spassky passed his days watching the players in a chess pavilion "with a black knight on top" on an island in Leningrad's river Neva. "Long queen moves fascinated me," he recalls. "I fell in love with the white queen. I dreamed about caressing her in my pocket, but I did not dare to steal her. Chess is pure for me." 

Spassky had learnt how the pieces move by watching older children play when he was sent to an orphanage during the Siege of Leningrad. When he was back home, his first trainer used to feed him as well as teach chess. He remembered those summer days in the chess pavilion:

He had thirteen kopeks for his fare and a glass of water with syrup to see him through until the last streetcar carried him home. His feet were bare. "Soldiers' boots were my worst enemy."

As I added in that column, chess can be a great escape.

Mike Amesbury MP has his prison sentence suspended

On Monday Mike Amesbury, the Labour MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was imprisoned for 10 weeks after assaulting a man in the street. Today his appeal was heard and the court decided to suspend his sent

Were the rapid hearing of his appeal or the suspension of his sentence the result of special treatment for an MP? Alan Robertshaw, barrister at law, considers those questions in this video and concludes that the answers are a) no and b) not really.

As ever, Alan provides a gentle education in the law and how courts operate.

A recall petition can still be launched against Amesbury and, of course, he can still resign before that happens and retain a little dignity.

Green children, lethal crinolines and the bandicoot bandwagon

The current Fortean Times has an article by John Clark on the famous case of the Green Children of Woolpit. It begins:

They were green. There were other strange things about the two children, a boy and a girl, found by harvesters in the fields of the Suffolk village of Woolpit on a summer's day in the 12th century. But it was their green skin that people first noticed. There was much more to the story, but that's how it began.

He suggests that the children were Jewish and were either fleeing persecution elsewhere in East Anglia or had been separated from a group of travellers from abroad. This would explain several puzzling aspects of the case, including the children's green colouring.

This issue also revisits the subject of death by fire in women wearing crinolines, finding an example from as recently as 1938. The unfortunate woman was Phyllis Newcombe, who was engulfed in flames at a dance at Chelmsford. Her case is often seized upon as an example of spontaneous human combustion by believers in the phenomenon.

But I was most taken by the Great Bandicoot Panic of 1996. This was a initially a marketing stunt designed to get these small Australian marsupials into public consciousness before the launch of a new Playstation game called Crash Bandicoot.

Bandicoots, the campaign said, were invading Britain and were a serious pest to farmers and gardeners. And, sure enough, members of the public soon report sighting the beasts. The fact that what are called "bandicoots" are in reality several different species meant that anything from a mouse to a badger could be mistaken for the new menace.

So bandicoots were seen in the East and West Midlands, while the South Wales Daily Post reported three separate sightings in two days. And:

During a rumination on the existence of the Rutland Tiger - a local Alien Big Cat - the Rutland Times appeared to accept the presence of the "Australian bandicoot" as a fact.

Then the game was launched, the Christmas silly season passed and, all at once, the bandicoots disappeared.

Incidentally, the Rutland Tiger may well have been left over from the sudden and botched closure of the safari park at Bonkers Hall. This followed an unfortunate incident involving a coachload of nuns. 

These were not, I must emphasise, the Sisters from Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes, who are more than a match for any tiger.

The Joy of Six 1329

"Buying stuff we didn’t know we wanted, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t know has become a cultural obsession, made worse by the fact that prices are going up and incomes are flat lining." Neal Lawson says Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves must abandon their Trumpian obsession with economic growth.

Alexandra Hall Hall finds signs of Trumpist culture wars and a woeful lack of realism in Kemi Badenoch's set-piece speech on foreign policy. "Does she really believe that other countries around the world won’t see through the double standards if we turn a blind eye to abuses when they are committed by 'our allies', such as Israel, whilst simultaneously arguing we all need to take a tougher stance towards Russia?"

"'Trump' is a quintessentially Dickensian name, its crude monosyllable suggesting not only trumpeting or boasting but trumping in the sense of winning, as well as trumping something up in the sense of inventing falsehoods." Terry Eagleton sees Donald Trump as a Dickensian rogue.

Carrie-Anne Brownian has no time for a popular myth about the Victorians: "Until fairly recently, I believed, as many people do, that the Victorians constantly posed corpses as though they were alive, and used lots of fancy tricks to achieve this. ... If someone in a Victorian photo has a creepy look, odds are, it’s a postmortem photo! Except that’s a total myth, perpetuated by people who uncritically believe everything they hear or read."

Ray Newman reads I Saw Two Englands by H.V. Morton, and finds a portrait of the English pub at the outbreak of the second world war.

"The 1960s saw several landmarks in Leicester’s popular music scene. Having paid his dues in local pubs and clubs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gerry Dorsey finally hit the big time as Engelbert Humperdinck and became a global star." Colin Hyde reviews Leicester’s music scene, from dance bands to hip hop.

Malcolm Saville visits Shrewsbury in 1963

Malcolm Saville was a Sussex man, but his most popular books were those set in the Shropshire hills.

This advertisement from the Wellington Journal (12 January 1963) shows him making an appearance at a Shrewsbury bookshop to sign books before giving a talk at the town library.

Saville had long worked in publishing - I believe he was even Enid Blyton's publicist at one time - and did not give up that day job when his career as a children's writer took off.

Running British universities as if they were businesses

Our universities used to be among the few British institutions that the rest of the world really did envy. But from 2010 the Coalition was determined they should be run more like businesses.

In recent weeks the collapse of this policy has been demonstrated by the wave of redundancies engulfing British universities. Looking for mainstream media coverage where I would expect to find it, it's hard even to locate the education coverage at all on the BBC or Guardian sites these days, but the story has been well covered on social media.

And the pithiest comment on it is to be found there too:

This anecdote neatly encapsulates a lengthier observation by Stefan Colini in the London Review of Books in 2013:

Future historians, pondering changes in British society from the 1980s onwards, will struggle to account for the following curious fact. 

Although British business enterprises have an extremely mixed record (frequently posting gigantic losses, mostly failing to match overseas competitors, scarcely benefiting the weaker groups in society), and although such arm’s length public institutions as museums and galleries, the BBC and the universities have by and large a very good record (universally acknowledged creativity, streets ahead of most of their international peers, positive forces for human development and social cohesion), nonetheless over the past three decades politicians have repeatedly attempted to force the second set of institutions to change so that they more closely resemble the first.

 Some of those historians may even wonder why at the time there was so little concerted protest at this deeply implausible programme. But they will at least record that, alongside its many other achievements, the coalition government took the decisive steps in helping to turn some first-rate universities into third-rate companies. If you still think the time for criticism is over, perhaps you’d better think again.

And because this is Britain, these new business-like universities turned out to feature indifferent senior managers on grossly inflated salaries.

Ed Davey will publish his book 'Why I Care: And Why Care Matters' in May

After leading a strikingly successful first general election campaign, the next thing on a Liberal Democrat leader's to do list is the book. And Ed Davey is about to tick that one off too.

The Bookseller reports:

HarperCollins has bought Why I Care: And Why Care Matters, the debut from Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Editorial director for HarperNorth Jonathan de Peyer acquired world all-language rights directly from the author. The book will be published in hardback, e-book and audio in May 2025.  

“Care is the thread that runs through Ed’s life,” the synopsis reads. “Aged only four, Ed lost his father. When his mother also became ill with cancer, Ed and his brothers nursed her at home until she died when Ed was just 15. That formative experience was one of the main inspirations in seeking election and with it the opportunity to take action. 

Now, he and his wife care for their son John, who has severe physical and learning disabilities, as well as raising their younger daughter. So, Ed has real knowledge of the emotional, physical and financial challenges faced by legions of carers in Britain today.”  

HarperCollins said of the politician’s debut: “Why I Care is both a deeply personal story, drawing on Ed’s own experiences, and a book that reflects the stories of people everywhere to offer a vision of change. Shedding light on the often-invisible world of carers, he calls for society, our government and our institutions to recognise, support and lift up the silent carers who form the backbone of our communities. This isn’t just Ed’s story. It’s the story of millions.” 

And Ed Davey says:

“Carers don’t just look after their loved ones: they’re propping up our NHS and are so often the bedrock of our communities. It’s a tough job, caring. But the thing about being a carer is you develop these amazing relationships. As I’ve gotten older, having had all these family caring responsibilities and now seeing life through the eyes of my son, I could not be more passionate or determined to sort out care in this country. And that’s why I’ve written this book.” 

I can see Why I Care making more of an impact than the books Charles Kennedy and even Paddy Ashdown wrote as Lib Dem leader. And I shall end here by reflecting on how quickly "gotten" is replacing "got" in English English.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England, whether they're on politics or wider culture. And I'm happy to entertain a wide range of views.

But I'd hate you to spend time writing something I really wouldn't want to publish, so do get in touch first.

These are the last 10 guest posts on Liberal England:

• This blog is not suitable for kids - Laurence Warner
• The future’s bright, the future’s orange - Stuart Whomsley
• An Oasis reunion? Have we not suffered enough? - Stuart Whomsley
• The night the Walker Brothers played a Market Harborough club - Jo Colley
• An essay in identifying Englishness - Stuart Whomsley
• No sign of an end to defections in local government - Augustus Carp
• When Syd Barrett met Nick Drake - Rob Chapman
• Councillors changing party: Christmas update - Augustus Carp
• Old Carp's Almanack: Councillor defections in 2024 - Augustus Carp
• How Dune anticipated Deep Seek - Peter Chambers

"England are like a Mars bar in the chippy: getting battered"

We've already heard the legend that is Allaster McKallaster commentating on Seventies football at its finest, but it turns out he's just as much at home with rugby union.

Before their coverage of the Calcutta Cup on Saturday, ITV screened a highlights reel from McKallaster's commentaries on Scotland's four consecutive victories in the contest.

We may at last have found a worthy successor to Bill McLaren.

The Joy of Six 1328

"With just two days until we mark three years since the invasion, we need to talk about this man, because no one truly knows what could have happened if he hadn’t been there to lead. This is a man who could have left. A man who was expected to leave. The world was really expecting he would run." Victor Kravchuk pays tribute to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Jennie Kermode is worried that US politicians are again talking about mass sterilisation: "The US first began sterilising people with mental illness - requiring neither their consent nor that of their next of kin – in Pennsylvania in 1905, and in 1927 this was formally ruled to be in accordance with the constitution. Although never actually banned, it decreased dramatically after 1978, when new regulations ruled that consent was ... necessary."

When did rock 'n roll die? Chris Dalla Riva and Daniel Parris offer a statistical analysis.

"In an unnamed city, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) keeps his head down in the Department of Records, covering for ineffectual boss Mr Kurtzmann (a brilliant Ian Holm). Meanwhile in his dreams, he is a winged warrior, who soars amongst the clouds, battling a giant samurai creature and rescuing a Botticelli Venus from her aerial cage." Tim Pelan celebrates the chaotic genius of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Londonopia finds that the grazing of sheep in London's parks has a long and complex history: "Just when you thought sheep had permanently retired from their park-keeping duties, along came World War II. With food shortages rampant and every inch of available land needed for practical use, parks across London were repurposed for the war effort. Victory gardens sprung up in many green spaces, and in some cases, sheep were reintroduced to provide both wool and meat."

Ben Austwick takes us to Lud’s Church, a natural geological feature in the Staffordshire Peak District, with rich literary and religious connections.

Buildings expert James Wright to speak in Market Harborough

The award-winning buildings archaeologist James Wright will be speaking in Market Harborough on 12 March.

Organised by the Market Harborough Historical Society, the event takes place at the Methodist Church Hall in Northampton Road. It begins at 7.30pm, and if you're not a society member there's a £4 charge on the door.

James has two decades' professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to discover how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period. 

He is the author of the popular Mediaeval Mythbusting blog and his book Historic Building Mythbusting will be available to at the meeting:

The book is a deep dive into commonly believed and repeated stories about historic buildings. Nine themes will be investigated in detail, the myths will be debunked, underlying truths revealed, and there will be a look at how and why the tales developed in the first place.

James Wright said: “Go to any mediaeval building in the land and there will be interesting, exciting and romantic stories presented to the visitor. They are commonly believed and widely repeated – but are they really true?” He goes on to say: “These stories include those of secret passages linking ancient buildings, spiral staircases in castles giving advantage to right-handed defenders, ship timbers used in the construction of buildings on land, blocked doors in churches which are thought to keep the Devil out, and claims to be the oldest pub in the country. Delightful as these tales are, they can be a tad misleading in some cases and absolute myths in others.”

For example, tales of hidden tunnels are often connected to the Reformation and an emerging cultural identity which was suspicious of Catholicism. The spiral staircase myth was invented in 1902 by an art critic obsessed with spirals, left-handedness, and fencing – it is intricately bound up with the Victorian obsession with militarism. Ship timber yarns can be linked to the ideals of a seafaring nation. Blocked doors in churches are connected to forgotten processions on church feast days. The book even looks at the archaeological evidence which points to the possible identification of what may genuinely be the oldest pub in the land.

Understanding the truths behind the myths is just one part of this book – it will also seek to understand how those tales came to be.

This book links folklore, history, art, architecture, archaeology, sociology, and psychology to delve into the myths surrounding many mysterious features in mediaeval buildings. We can learn so much of value about a society through what it builds. By explaining the development of myths and the underlying truths behind them, a broader and deeper understanding of historic buildings can bring us that little bit closer to their former occupants. Sometimes the realities hiding behind the stories are even more interesting, romantic, and exciting than the myth itself…

Robert Jenrick: In the real world, If you lie about your CV you resign

Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds have been embarrassed in recent days by inaccuracies in their CVs on LinkedIn.

And these were perfectly valid stories for the media to investigate, even if what they have found looks to have been overhyped, at least in Reeves's case.

But one man was in no doubt that these stories were serious: step forward Robert Jenrick - you can see his tweet above.

Which makes this story from the Mirror rather amusing:

Ambitious Tory Robert Jenrick has been forced to correct his own CV - after accusing Labour politicians of embellishing theirs.

In a biography on his website, Mr Jenrick claims to have been "the joint youngest Cabinet Minister since the Second World War, tied with Harold Wilson and William Hague" when he was made Housing Secretary in 2019.

But he was 37 at the time he was elevated to the cabinet, while Wilson and Hague were 31 and 34 respectively when reaching Cabinet minister status.

Thanks to Peter Black for flagging it up.

Labour MP jailed as former Reform Wales leader is charged with accepting bribes to aid Russia

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It's been a busy day in the courts for politicians, writes our legal affairs correspondent.

First, the Independent (formerly Labour) MP for Runcorn and Helsby, Mike Amesbury, was jailed for 10 weeks after punching a constituent in the street.

As Amesbury has been imprisoned, a recall petition can now be launched to remove him from the Commons if he doesn't do the decent thing.

Then Nathan Gill, who was a UKIP and later a Brexit Party MEP between 2014 and 2020, and briefly the leader of Reform Wales after that, appeared in court accused of accepting bribes to make statements in the European Parliament that would benefit Russia.

The Crown said the alleged offences were carried out during his time as an MEP and before the UK left the European Parliament, on 31 January 2020.

Gill was granted bail on the condition that he surrenders his passport and does not obtain international travel documents nor contact his co-accused, the retired Ukrainian politician Oleg Voloshyn.

Industrial steam locomotives at Beckton Gas Works

Operating between 1870 to 1976, Beckton Gas Works was variously described as "the largest such plant in the world" and "the largest gas works in Europe". 

After it closed, it became a favourite shooting location for films, television and music videos. Most notably, some of the Vietnam battle scenes in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket were shot there.

But while it was open it has an extensive railway network and its own steam locomotives. The atmospheric scenes in the video above were shot in the Sixties.

The site has largely been redeveloped - part of its railway system was taken over as a route by the Docklands Light Railway,

h/t Joe Brown on Twitter.

Ruth Shaw (1937-2024): Doyenne of Liberalism in Sutton

Mourning the death of Adrian Slade the other day, I initially wrote that he was the Liberal Party's first councillor on the Greater London Council.

I should have known that Stanley Rundle had been the member for Richmond upon Thames before him, because I heard many tales of the contribution he made to local politics when I lived there in the early Eighties.

But I had not heard of Ruth Shaw, who represented Sutton and Cheam between 1973 and 1977.

Ruth died in 2024, and Sutton Liberal Democrats have a page celebrating her life - I have borrowed the photo here from it.

The page lists her lifetime of work for the Liberals and then Liberal Democrats:

Ruth was one of a small group of people who kept the Liberal Party alive in Sutton & Cheam through the lean years of the 1950s. She: 

• was a founder member of Sutton & Cheam Young Liberals in 1950; 

• was the first ever Liberal councillor on Sutton & Cheam Borough Council in 1961 (finally winning a seat on her seventh attempt); 

• was elected to the GLC in 1973 to represent Sutton and Cheam, one of only two Liberals on the council. She put her victory down to "community politics" and the party's opposition to the Ringway 3 project. She was given a place on the GLC's transport committee; 

• was the first (and last!) Liberal Greater London Councillor for Sutton & Cheam 1973-77; 

• was Sutton councillor for Worcester Park North 1986 to 1990 and North Cheam 1990 to 2002; 

• was named an Honorary Alderman by Sutton Council in 2011; 

• held most Local Party offices, including Chair and President.

The page also records what Ruth said to the Sutton Guardian when she was awarded and OBE for her services to politics:

"I didn't see this coming at all.I was  absolutely astonished and obviously very pleased. To get this recognition is wonderful although I don't even feel like I've done all that much - although I must have been doing something right. 

"I just believed liberalism was the right way to go. In the '50s people on the doorstep told me it had no future but I couldn't see it that way. Now the Liberal Democrats have been in power here for more than 25 years."

It's obvious that Ruth's early work in Sutton and Cheam did much to make Graham Tope's victory in the 1973 Westminster by-election there possible.

St Vincent: New York

St Vincent - the American singer-songwriter Annie Clarke - has featured here before. New York is a track from her fifth studio album, Masseduction, which came out in 2017.

Laura Snapes reviewed it on Pitchfork:

Presumably the first single from her forthcoming fifth album as St. Vincent ... it surprises by totally forsaking her cosmic guitar playing for simple piano, which blooms beneath her laments for the lost accomplice who made NYC more than just a pile of old bricks. 

Maybe it’s her noted hero Bowie, though Clark’s yearning, gasped entreats suggests a deeper intimacy than distant admiration: “So much for a home run with some blue blood,” she sighs, ruing the loss of “the only motherfucker in the city who can stand me” (possibly the highest compliment a New Yorker can pay).

The radio version of the song - New York did turn out to be the first single from that album - cleverly changes this to "other sucker".

Reader's voice: But do we need swearing at all? I mean, Paul Simon didn't write The Only Living Motherfucker in New York, did he?

The Joy of Six 1327

Emma Burnell reviews Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, and ponders the limitations of the Morgan McSweeney approach to politics: "All too often the project behind Starmer - and McSweeney in particular - seem not to see this. That poor culture and poor behaviour are poor in and of themselves – not excusable when it’s 'one of us' exhibiting it."

"Johnson and Truss at least had the grubby excuse that sucking up to MAGA Americans might be in their own financial interest - for the US market for disgraced former British PMs can be a lucrative one, there being no shortage of wealthy fools there happy to be taken for a ride. Jenrick did not even have that excuse. Nor, of course, does Kemi Badenoch, the party’s actual current leader." Alex Massie is merciless in his dissection of the rotting of the Conservative mind.

The government's agenda for local government is all about size and centralisation, but Jessica Studdert sees a "new local" emerging that involves power, prevention and place.

Daniel Jones and Martin Durham on the role of women in the British Union of Fascists: "If fascist policies were often reactionary or ambiguous, they were not always so. Like almost every other political force in the thirties, the BUF wanted to win newly enfranchised women as supporters and voters, and felt it necessary to put forward policies that would alleviate and improve the conditions of women’s lives."

Rafael Behr argues that Bridget Jones 4: Mad About the Boy is an allegory of the current political crisis. Hear him: "Her heartbreak is a parable of political bereavement, describing liberal angst at the sudden unravelling of institutional and legal norms underpinning European security. (Plus sex and jokes.)"

Ampleforth Abbey has become the latest site to join the Dark Skies Friendly Community scheme run by the North York Moors National Park, reports Yorkshire Bylines.

The Making of Gone to Earth 3

With the world becoming a scarier place, it's time to return to the Shropshire hills and some more behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Gone to Earth. This is the Powell and Pressburger film adapted from the novel by Mary Webb.

This video starts with Cyril Cusack baptising Jennifer Jones at Lords Hill Chapel, which stands above the lead-mining village of Snailbeach on the Stiperstones. Later there are shots of David Farrar on his horse, Jones chatting to local children who are extras in the film, and of a horse race. When this appears in the film, Ludlow Castle is in the background.

If you want to know more about the Shropshire locations used in Gone to Earth, you could start at Reelstreets. Then you could explore the relevant material on The Powell & Pressburger Pages.

Why did Labour lose two of the three seats in Leicester in the middle of a landslide?

Leicester was an exception at last year's general election. Labour lost two of the city's three seats - one to the Conservatives and one to an Independent.

Alistair Jones. associate professor in politics at De Montfort University, looks at those results and at Leicester politics in general in the current issue of Liberator:

All three Leicester parliamentary constituencies have been treated akin to personal fiefdoms by previous Labour MPs, going back to the 1980s and 1990s. Consequently, the central and regional party had held little sway. In 2023 and 2024, the central Labour Party decided to reassert its authority, regardless of the short-term electoral cost. 

Leicester may be one city but it has three parliamentary constituencies which rarely communicate with each other, even – or is it especially – when all three MPs come from the same party. That local infighting has left a rather nasty legacy for the Labour Party, which is being exploited and exacerbated with allegations of racism. 

To read his article, download the current Liberator (issue 427) from the magazine's website - there's no charge.

I'm far too modest to point out that, in November 2023, I wrote:

The Conservatives have been gaining ground in local elections in this part of the city, which means that the seat [Leicester East] is less safe for Labour than it looks on paper. And that means the question of whether Vaz, Webbe or both of them will stand as an Independent at the next election really matters.

Anas Sarwar and Scottish Labour find a new inspiration: Elon Musk

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This morning Elon Musk's attack on Volodymyr Zelensky was in the news. Here's the Independent:

Elon Musk has accused Volodymyr Zelensky of "feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers" as the Trump administration continues ferociously lashing out at the Ukrainian president.

The Tesla owner wrote on his X site, without evidence, that Zelensky is "despised by the people of Ukraine" in a post that refuted Kyiv’s claims that the president has a 57 per cent approval rating. Earlier this week Trump had claimed that the Ukraine leader had an approval rating of '4 per cent'.

"If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election,” the tech billionaire wrote.

Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, was making his speech to his party conference today. Did he take the opportunity to condemn Musk's foul slur?

Not exactly. Over to the Daily Record:

Anas Sarwar has echoed Donald Trump and Elon Musk by announcing Scottish Labour's own plans for a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The Scottish Labour leader said that he would create the department because of "the SNP's wasteful incompetence". He pointed to the ferry scandal at the £1 billion new Barlinnie jail.

Unless things at Holyrood are much worse than I've heard, it's not true that the Scottish government has provided Barlinnie with its own ferry. I'll be charitable and put this error down to the Record rather than Sarwar.

Anyway, he went on:

That’s why we will have our own Department of Government Efficiency to stop the waste and deliver value for money for you, the taxpayer. And that value for money will extend to every part of government."

He continued: "I can tell you now that as First Minister, I will end this culture of waste, respect people’s hard-earned money and get value for every penny."

I get it that Labour wants to attack the SNP's record in government. But why, even before his remark about Zelensky, drag Musk into it? It's not as though he's popular with British voters.

Perhaps Sarwar has a secret crush on him? Perhaps a teenage spin doctor thought they were being clever by hooking the speech to something already in the news?

Or perhaps we're right to conclude that Labour no longer believes in much beyond getting into power.

Memorial to five schoolboys killed by mine on Swanage beach to be unveiled in May

A new memorial to the five schoolboys killed by a mine on Swanage beach in 1955 will be unveiled on 10 May from 10.30am. The event will take place in front of the War Memorial in Swanage, and a short service will also be held in memory of the boys.

I came across the story last year when I found a folder of press cuttings I had saved back in the Nineties - think of them as pre-internet bookmarks. Today's news comes from the gofundme page set up to raise money for a new memorial.

Mike Martin: More likely than not, we'll be involved in a war by 2030

If you thought yesterday's quotation from Charles Masterman on July 2014 was bad, you won't want to read Mike Martin in The Big Issue.

Here's the opening of the magazine's interview with the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells:

"I’ve been sitting in private committee briefings with senior officials, and they say there’s a good chance we’ll be in a war before the next election. I think that’s right, that’s my view,” Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, elected to parliament in the 2024 election, tells me. “There’s certainly more than a 50 per cent chance we’ll be involved in a war before 2030."

Great. This is the prediction of a politician with more than a passing interest in military matters. Martin is a former British Army officer who served multiple tours of Afghanistan, picked up a PhD in war studies and has authored books including 2023's How to Fight a War.

It’ll all be professional soldiers and drones though, you might think. A modern war for modern times. "Obviously if we got into a big war, we’d have conscription straight away," says Martin. The Ukraine war has shown how, despite all the high-tech advances, modern wars still involve soldiers digging trenches like they did in the First World War. 

“Would we need to conscript? Yeah, we would. Because ultimately, we’re not at a stage yet where you can replace people with drones,” says Martin. “We’re a long way off from that. Drones are fine, as far as they go, but you still need people to occupy villages, hold ground, and all the rest of it. And that’s not going to change for quite some time.”

The great danger, as I see it, is that British troops form part of an inadequate peacekeeping force in Ukraine, while Russia misses no opportunity to draw that force into skirmishes. Meanwhile, the US sits on the sidelines and Trump makes interventions that are sympathetic to Russia.

Trouble is, at present that seems to be the sort of peacekeeping force most likely to emerge.

Huey Long (1893-1935): The populist Democrat from Louisiana

Huey Long, who was governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and one of its senators until his assassination in 1935, was mentioned here the other day.

He was a populist Democrat, but unlike Donald Trump he really did care for the people of the state and was prepared to take on big business. Comparison to Lyndon Baines Johnson, another who used the political dark arts to progress a laudable agenda, might be more enlightening.

This video takes you through Long's career and the cases for and against him.

A reminder of Nigel Farage's slavish adoration of Donald Trump

There are whispers that Nigel Farage intends to row back from his support for Donald Trump. So here's a reminder of the slavish adoration he has for years poured upon that grotesque figure.

You may also remember that Farage was once very keen on being filmed and photographed with British veterans of the second world war. But it seems none of them was as brave as Donald Trump.