The Joy of Six 1551

 Vince Cable makes the case for building more council houses: "The most compelling argument for councils becoming developers is that the private developer model, however valid for most housebuilding most of the time, depends on a set of circumstances – the ability to earn a profit margin above rising land and property prices – which may not exist. Public sector developers can build through economic cycles and where market conditions are unattractive for private developers."

"Changes in public spaces (including increased provision of green parks, lakes and water fountains) enable easy public access to cooling. Everyday heat adaptation is not only about technological fixes, but about building or redesigning everyday infrastructures that enable a fair and equitable living environment for everybody, whatever the weather." Subina Shrestha and Claire Hoolohan on what Britain must do to prepare for future heatwaves.

Mark Braund looks at Andy Burnham's past support of a land value tax.

"Three Lions has started to to more harm than good. I think that 'thirty years of hurt' line has helped seed a sense of entitlement, a baked-in belief that anything other than outright victory legitimises a sense of hurt. It raises the stakes and ratchets up the pressure – a pressure that ultimately bears down on the very players you're counting on to try and deliver a result." Pete Paphides says it's time to say thank you and goodbye to the song Three Lions.

"The final prisoners left Crumlin Road Gaol in 1996 and, in 2012, it reopened as a visitor attraction and conference centre, sharing the grounds with McConnell’s whisky distillery. Although the prison experience is now dominated by atmospheric lighting, holographic presentations and short information videos, it is possible to see the history behind the modern technology." Angela Buckley experiences the Crumlin Road Gaol Experience.

Jeremy Rees celebrates the magnificent Queenie Watts.

Why stage plays need a character that screenplays don't

Alexander Mackendrick didn't just direct The Man in the White Suit: he wrote the first draft of the screenplay.

In his book Lethal Innocence: The Cinema of Alexander Mackendrick, Philip Kemp quotes Mackendrick on the genesis of that screenplay. It began life as an unperformed theatre play by his cousin Roger MacDougall:

"I did something really wicked: I took Roger's hero and gave him a minor role, and pivoted the whole story around a secondary character, the one played in the film by Alec Guinness, to make a new story entirely. And Balcon liked it, and approved it. When I showed it to Roger he got very indignant, and said, 'My God, you might as well have cut the hero out altogether!', and I said, 'Yes, well, I did actually think of doing that.'"

Having got over his initial pique, MacDougall went along with the further disruption of his play, and with the total elimination of his hero. "Something I discovered then," he recalls, "is that there's a character you need in a play, but you don't need in a film, because the camera takes over from him. It's Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra, it's Horatio in Hamlet. The camera becomes that character who holds it all together – the viewpoint character, if you like. You don't need a person to do it for you."

Next time I watch an old British film that's too obviously been adapted from a stage play, I shall try to work out which character should have been left out.

Jonathan Coe on Kenneth Williams, sex and the Sixties

The novelist Jonathan Coe reviewed The Kenneth Williams Diaries for the London Review of Books when they were first published:

Williams found the perfect expression for his personality in the Carry On films – despite their superficially heterosexual orientation – and became such a cherished emblem of sexual insecurity for gay and straight audiences alike. 

For above all this series represents (and celebrates) a peculiarly English sexuality, one in which an addictive, almost obsessional interest in sex is combined with horror and gaucherie at the prospect of actually performing it. 

In this respect they preserve a far more accurate record of the sexual atmosphere of the Sixties than films of ‘swinging London’ like Blow Up or Darling, which offer adolescent fantasies of sexual freedom when the reality for most punters must have been closer to Carry On Camping, with Bernard Bresslaw and Sid James making a pathetic pilgrimage to a nudist camp in order to gaze longingly at the ‘birds’ – pop-eyed, helpless and fundamentally out of the running. 

What Williams and the leering, pickle-nosed James had in common, then, was their status as sexual spectators, mesmerised but fearful.

I remember being taken to see Carry On Camping at the cinema, when I must have been nine. 

But then I was taken to see Danny La Rue's Christmas show when I was eight. I was one of the children who came up on stage halfway through the show. For some reason, there weren't many children there.

Gilbert Adair and when Jacques Derrida came to Loughborough

Today I thought of the writer Gilbert Adair, looked up his Guardian obituary from 2011 and found this gem:

He once told us on the arts desk of what had happened when he rang one of his publishers. "You aren't by any chance Red Adair," asked a secretary to whom his name clearly meant nothing. "No," he snapped back, "I'm unread Adair."

After I'd shared that on Bluesky, I dug out his book Myths & Memories, a collection of essays about and memories of British culture.

In one of the essays, 'Derrida Didn't Come', he writes about a conference at the Institute of Contemporary Arts that made an uneasy attempt to come to terms with literary theory:

The third tactic, and undoubtedly the most radical, is that, simply, of non-appearance. It has, I venture to suggest, become so axiomatic of these events for the most prestigious guests to fail to arrive that their absence now qualifies as almost an intrinsic part of their experience. Thus, at the ICA, neither Jacques Derrida nor Nathalie Sarraute, the two stars of the seminar, 'disappointed' our expectations, if one may so phrase it, by making an appearance.

Derrida did turn up sometimes. I know that because I once heard him give a paper to a literary conference at Loughborough University. And, thanks to a news story on the university website about an academic who later wrote a play about the occasion, I can tell you that this conference took place in November 2001. 

Besides the essays, Adair's book contains 400 random memories of news stories and popular culture from when he was young: 

70. I remember reading Nineteen Eighty-four when the year itself seemed to belong to some dim and unknowable future.

192. I remember the Danish musical humorist Victor Borge, each of whose one-man shows seemed a tremendously prestigious affair.

265. I remember Michael Fagin, the intruder who breezed into the Queen's bedroom.

355. I remember Fyfe Robertson.

If I were setting down 400 of my own such memories today, 15 years after his death, I might include:

1. I remember Gilbert Adair

The Joy of Six 1542

"Multiple sources inside the children’s home division said that, as they prepared for sale, they were pressed to rapidly open more homes and take on more children, even when they didn’t have the staff to keep up. They claim they were told this was so the company could be sold for the maximum amount of money." Jessica Murray says that when private equity takes over a UK care home it can mean the children are treated like cattle.

Ben Worthy argues that, if he is to succeed as a prime minister who takes over in mid-parliament, Andy Burnham will need to create a clear sense of change and offer new policy quickly.

"Surbiton itself is no longer a byword for Toryism. Each of its councillors is a Liberal Democrat, with only two Conservatives elected across the entire Royal Borough of Kingston. At a parliamentary level, the successor seat of Kingston and Surbiton has been Tory for just two years since 1997, that brief period of 2015-17 when the Lib Dems fell away. An area which was once considered a safe base for Conservatives with ministerial ambitions and ability is now the home seat of Sir Ed Davey." John Oxley mourns the Conservatives' loss of the Margot Leadbetter vote.

Danielle Williams on how the US lost its public swimming pools to racism: "When legally required to share public pools with Black children, many white families decided they’d rather not go at all. Closing public pools to avoid racial integration became official policy for many cities across the US."

Sintija Brence salutes the Queen Of Southern Gothic, Bobbie Gentry.

"About most of the rescues Gregory is brisk but particular. An elderly couple in a broken-down yacht press biscuits on the crew; a woman makes eyes at the coxswain ('the problem was an open seacock, swamping their bilge'); in failing light a small boy – 'my mum said I should stay with the boat' – is scooped from a flimsy inflatable dinghy just in time." Susannah Clapp meets a literary lifeboatman at Dungeness.

Sparrows Can’t Sing Q&A with Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin

Joan Littlewood directed only one film, Sparrows Can't Sing. It was based on the play Sparrers Can't Sing, which was written by Stephen Lewis (better known later as Blakey off of On the Buses) and staged by her at Stratford East.

Here two cast members, Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin, remember the making of the film and Littlewood's approach in general. Barbara Windsor is in sparkling form.

As I posted this video on Liberal England about 10 years ago, I'm adding another one with Murray Melvin . It's very good, but I'll admit it's here mainly because of the still photo of Joan Littlewood and Stephen Lewis that appears early on.

For another appreciation of Joan Littlweood, try Sheila Hancock.

Why Kenneth Williams wanted to be serviced by Terence Rattigan

Having recently posted a video of Fergus McClelland with Leo McKern in Brecht's Gallileo, yesterday I had a look in the British Newspaper Archive to see if he had gone on acting for long.

He did for a while, because here's a report from the Coventry Evening Telegraph for 14 March 1966, when he would have been 15:

Duke of Edinburgh Introduces 'Nelson' 

Duke of Edinburgh has recorded an introduction for ATV's specially commissioned play by Terence Rattigan: 'Nelson: A Study in Miniature,' to be screened at 9.25 tonight. 

The play has a strong cast headed by Michael Bryant and Rachel Roberts as Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and including Celia Johnson, Michael Hordern, Sir Felix Aylmer and Fergus McClelland. 

This interpretation of Nelson – which covers the 24 days he spent in London and at his country home at Merton before his final voyage to the West Indies and engagement of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar – is largely seen through the eyes of his nephew.

And as McClennan played the part of Nelson's nephew, he must have been central to the production.

Today an extract from an episode of Round the Horne appeared in my YouTube feed. It contained a classic Kenneth Williams rant about not being properly serviced by the scriptwriters – you can listen to it above.

And when you hear Williams say they should get Terence Rattigan to write the show, "then we could have Prince Philip introduce the show ... like he done that thing on Nelson," you will recognise what he was talking about, just as I did.

Incidentally, this a good example of how Round the Horne got away with murder. "Terence Rattigan would service me" indeed.

Kenneth Horne had a parallel career as a business executive and the view at the BBC seemed to be "Horne's a good man" and "If Horne's involved then it's probably all right."

I suppose this coincidence is just an example of the quantum level of weirdness I mentioned the other day, just as I mentioned Kenneth Williams and his wish to be serviced.

No Carry Ons: Kenneth Williams's other films

This is fun. A compilation of 11 short clips of Kenneth Williams in films that aren't Carry Ons.

Williams, as he frequently pointed out on Round the Horne when he wasn't being properly serviced, was classically trained. When he was young he was highly regarded as an actor, and Maggie Smith acknowledged him as an influence on her own work.

The suspicions of Beaver Hateman: Kate Summerscale on the Uncle Books

I read the first ‘Uncle’ book in the British Council library in Santiago, Chile, when I was about eight and my father was working as a diplomat in the city. I borrowed the next five volumes of the series in turn. 

I was delighted by Uncle – a millionaire elephant who wears a purple dressing gown, engages in savage skirmishes and is wildly generous to his followers – and he became more famous in our family than Babar. When we returned to England, I was amazed that no one seemed to have heard of him.

So wrote Kate Summerscale in The Complete Uncle, a collected edition of all six of the Revd J.P. Martin's books that was published in 2013.

It now fetches silly prices, just as the individual titles did before it was published. Which makes you wonder why the books have not remained in print.

Years before The Complete Uncle appeared, Imogen Russell Williams asked the same question in the Guardian, under the headline The Elephant Not in the Room:

Bizarrely, Jonathan Cape, the original publishers, don't want to reissue Uncle because the protagonist is rich, capitalist and deeply complacent, and therefore the books are "classist". But no one can fail to detect the gleeful humour and wry justice in the lampoons propagated by the Badfort tribe, even as they applaud the righteous wrath with which Uncle "kicks up" offenders 50 feet into the air. ...

Insurgent little pamphlets are dropped by Hitmouse from rickety biplanes: "TO ALL FREE CITIZENS: This is to announce that we have at last completed our plans against Uncle, the arch-bully, tyrant, and boaster!" Described by the Independent as "Animal Farm for pre-teens", Martin's sly ridicule of the imperious and pompous master of Homeward should be required reading for all baby Lefties.

With his hating book, where he writes the names of his enemies, and the skewers he uses as weapons, Hitmouse anticipated the modern journalist. But I will admit his Badfort News was my model when I wrote Focus leaflets.

Anyway, if you ever see one of the Uncle books at a reasonable price, snap it up. You will enjoy it.

I shall end by:

• admitting that Uncle was a subconscious influence on my creation of Lord Bonkers, though it took me years to realise it;
• sending you off to read my post on the discovery that the Revd J.P. Martin and Stanley Unwin, two giants of the British nonsense tradition, were both attached to Daventry transmitting station during the war.

The long, long apprenticeship of Sir Nigel Hawthorne

Before Yes Minister made him famous in 1980, Nigel Hawthorne served a long apprenticeship in the acting profession. But I had not grasped till recently just how long that apprenticeship had been.

If you click on the arrow above, you will see him in a scene from Going Straight, the short-lived sitcom that followed Norman Stanley Fletcher after his release from the Slade Prison of Porridge.

That scene dates from 1978, but he had a bit part in an episode of Dad's Army as early as 1969. I recall a story that someone had gone to David Croft on Hawthorne's behalf, saying he was a very good actor who was getting many parts and asking if Croft could offer him something. Croft did, though as I recall Hawthorne doesn't really convince as a lorry driver.

But I've now know that Hawthorne's apprenticeship stretched right back to the start of the Fifties, and two of this blog's heroines helped me discover this.

Here's Sheila Hancock writing in The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw:

I was thrilled to be so near London where someone might see me. I was playing quite a good role but whenever I was in danger of getting a laugh, Frank would intervene with, "No, don't laugh – poor soul – she went to the RADA, you know" (pronounced radar by Frank). "No perlease, perlease have some respect."

Nigel Hawthorne and I watched in awe as he jettisoned the script and went off into wild fantasies of his own It was one of Frank's frequent periods in the theatrical wilderness and no one important came near us, but supporting this anguished man gave us a friend for life.

With the help of the British Newspaper Archive I can tell you that this all took place in 1956.

Two years earlier, Hawthorne had been in the supporting cast when Freda Jackson returned to her alma mater, the Theatre Royal, Northampton, to play Marguerite Gautier in The Lady of the Camelias. He was in the repertory company there in 1954 and 1955.

He was acting with the company at the Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, as early as 1951. Hawthorne had first gone on the stage in South Africa in 1950, and was to alternate between Britain and South Africa for a few years without finding much in success in either.

And we have a part for a third heroine of the blog. Because, just as Sheila Hancock does, Hawthorne said he owed his career to Joan Littlewood.

Here's Markland Taylor reviewing Hawthorne's Straight Face, The Autobiography, which was published just after his death, in Variety:

Hawthorne’s luck changed magnificently when he downed six bottles of Guinness before auditioning for a role in a production of Littlewood’s hit

Oh! What a Lovely War planned for a tour of England and Europe, and was cast.

This led to his invaluable relationship with Littlewood and his career blossomed, leading to highly rewarding work on stage, screen and television.

This was in 1964, so Hawthorne still had 16 years to wait before be became famous overnight. This is a story about talent and persistence, but it may ultimately be one about having the right mentor.

The Mouse That Roared (1959)

I had somehow avoided seeing The Mouse That Roared until a few weeks ago. Perhaps because I'd seen its sequel, The Mouse on the Moon, I expected a gentle comedy where the action all took place in the fictional European statelet of Grand Fenwick. So I was surprised to find that much of the film is set in New York.

That was not the only surprise. With its satirising of Cold War thinking and the multiple roles played by Peter Sellers, it looks forward to Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove. Grand Fenwick declares war on the USA, reasoning that when it is defeated it will reap a fortune in American. Only it wins the war and brings the US's deadly new Q bomb back home from New York.

Sellers gets good support from the welcome faces of William Hartnell and Leo McKern, and – remarkably – Jean Seberg has a prominent role too. It's one to watch next time it's on Talking Pictures TV.

Bill Oddie: On Ilkla Moor Baht'at

Graeme Garden was singing the praises of Bill Oddie's music for I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and The Goodies on the Through the Square Window podcast the other day. And this is a good example of how funny and accomplished it was.

The Dandelion Records label, says Dandies in the Underworld, was a labour of love run by John Peel and record company Clive Selworthy. The latter explains how the record came about:

One of the label’s most collectable singles is Bill Oddie's On Ilkley Moor Baht’at. I think I was behind that. It was another one of our jokes that nobody got. He’s a clever boy is Bill Oddie, but people thought it was a serious record, as the lyrics went unnoticed, so it disappeared without trace.

I mentioned it to John, who said he was up for it, and we managed to get most of The Grease Band, Jim Capaldi and Sue and Sally who were on the original Joe Cocker Reprise band release, and it was great. John and his producer John Walters produced it. It was a one off, and quite expensive to record, as it featured all of those amazing players. But, again, no regrets. It was worth doing and still gives us a smile.

It’s now one of the most collectable Dandelion records and was one of the records in John’s box of 50 favourite records, along with The White Stripes and Medicine Head.

The Grease Band members playing on the record are Henry McCullough (guitar) and Alan Spenner (bass).The organ player is Verden Allen from Mott the Hoople, while Jim Capaldi, of course, was the drummer from Traffic.

And the backing singers are not "Sue and Sally" but Sue and Sunny. The Wikipedia entry for Joe Cocker's album With a Little help from My Friends says Sue, Sunny, Madeline Bell and Rosetta Hightower sang on the title track, which Oddie is affectionately parodying here.

As Dandies in the Underworld also mentions Python Lee Jackson's In a Broken Dream, I'll end by sending you to my post about staying at a bed and breakfast in Bishop's Castle run by the man who overdubbed the organ on that record.

The Joy of Six 1498

Peter Juul argues that Donald Trump sees America not as the leader of a global posse bringing international gangsters to heel, but as a mob boss threatening America’s allies and neighbours while carving up the world with other gangster powers.

"The government’s plans will patch up the water system, particularly with the boost in revenue from bill payers. But the private sector has found unanticipated ways to maximise profits in the past and may well do so again. Rather than continually tweaking the failed private model, the only real route to operating water in the public interest is for it to be in public ownership." Kate Bayliss and Frances Cleaver say is treating the symptoms of the water industry but not their ultimate cause.

Britain’s swift population fell by two-thirds between 1995 and 2023. Emma Beddington lists 10 ways we can provide these beautiful birds with the help they need.

Josh Taylor asks how Australia can sell its social media ban for young people to the world when the evidence suggests it is not working: "When the age assurance technology trial released its final report before Australia’s under-16s social media ban came into effect last year, its first finding was: age assurance can be done privately, efficiently and effectively. Four months since the ban came into effect, we can say that was – to paraphrase Yes Minister – a courageous statement."

Richard Norton-Taylor reviews Antonia Senior's Stalin’s Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire: "Stalin’s task in building what Senior calls his 'Red Empire' was made so much easier, and so much more brutal, by the intelligence the Cambridge spies passed to Moscow. This included information about partisans and individuals hostile to the Soviet Union, and about how much support they would get from the Western allies."

"Not long after, in 1845, inventor Charles Wheatstone attended a demonstration in London. Chess legend Howard Staunton played against his rival George Walker over the South Western Railway line between Portsmouth and London. Müller-Pohl describes how witnesses found the match “rather tedious,” but it received a lot of press." (Roughly) Daily on Victorian e-sports.

Deep joy in Long Buckby at blue plaque for Stanley Unwin

A good news story at last. West Northamptonshire Council has installed a blue plaque outside Stanley Unwin's old bungalow on Long Buckby's High Street, reports BBC News.

Unwin lived there for decades, having worked at at the Borough Hill transmitting station in Daventry during the war along with another hero of the English nonsense tradition. After the war he joined the BBC as a sound recordist, until illness among the cast of a show led him to do his doing his party piece in front of the microphone.

His act involved speaking nonsense in a way that made it sound perfect sense if you weren't listening too closely – or overtroiling your eardroves. You can see him in action in the video above. I did a couple of turns in his style in the last iterations of the Liberal Revue at Lib Dem annual conferences.

Unwin's heyday was the Fifties and Sixties when he appeared on radio, television and in films. After that he was regularly rediscovered by new generations of radio producers and creative directors, and I remember seeing him on Inside Victor Lewis-Smith when he was past eighty.

I've already made one pilgrimage to Long Buckby to photograph the headstone for Unwin and his wife in the village churchyard. I'll have to go back soon to see his blue plaque.

Searching for Frankie Howerd in York

I've made it back from York. Our spring conferences always seem to involve too much travel and not enough conference, so I rarely attend them. But it was good to meet old friends and have a look round the city where I took my first degree many years ago.

One sight I made sure of seeing in York this time was the blue plaque on Frankie Howerd's early childhood home. The map suggested you could walk to it through a park that runs along the banks of the Ouse, but the park turned out to be flooded. I was forced to find a more inland route.

There's a reason that Hartoft Street, where I found the plaque, was built so it ended well short of the river and in steps taking you down to the park.

The Joy of Six 1470

Timothy Snyder reports from a frightened city: "In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians."

"I think the way he is trying to interfere with our democracy, generally our country, is quite outrageous. For the richest man to come here with his totally unfounded and ignorant comments is shocking." Interviewed by Big Issue, Ed Davey sticks it to Elon Musk.

"The use of armed militia to terrorise the inhabitants of Minneapolis is not just beyond the rule of law, it is fascistic. It’s the final evidential point between what is happening today and the political forces that ripped Europe apart in the last century: and that’s not just me saying this, it’s some of the most eminent historians of authoritarianism." Carole Cadwalladr says what’s happening in the US is technofascism and it could happen here.

Madeleine Brettingham on the difficulty of making a living as a writer today: "The biggest revolution in how writing is distributed since the printing press has decimated all our assumptions about how creative careers work. Somewhere between the noughties and the pandemic everything changed, leaving many (including me) attempting to climb up ladders that no longer exist."

Norma Clarke reviews a book on working-class lives in Charlie Chaplin's London: "Charlie was a gutter child, a 'street arab' in the language of the time: undersized, skinny, his bright eyes on the main chance as he roamed up and down between Kennington and New Cut, where market stalls overflowed with produce he had no money to buy and probably became adept at stealing."

Did a tsunami hit the Bristol Channel four centuries ago? Simon Haslett revisits the great flood of 1607.

The Joy of Six 1469

"What matters is not the books themselves, but the thinking they reward. They cultivate a taste for compression over depth, for transferable lessons over context, for confidence over uncertainty. They attract people who want the world to be legible in a handful of rules, who prefer inspiration to explanation, and who mistake momentum for understanding. Over time, this becomes a habit of mind: a way of approaching problems that privileges clarity and speed over patience and complexity." John Oxley fears British politics is suffering from Airport Book Brain.

Rosalind KennyBirch looks at the way Finland counters fake news. "There is no vaccine for fake news, but media literacy can come close."

Rose Runswick has posted Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's election address from 1906. Here he is on the record of the Conservatives: "The legacy which they have bequeathed to their successors – and I say it in no partisan spirit, but under a full sense of responsibility – is in the main a legacy of embarrassment, an accumulation of public mischief and confusion absolutely appalling in its extent and its ramifications."

"The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as a religious struggle between Muslim and Jewish groups, but the witness of Palestinian Christians exposes the hollowness of that narrative. It is a nationalist struggle between Israelis and Palestinians." John McHugo highlights the plight of Palestinian Christians.

"Stoke-on-Trent says it is facing a heritage emergency and needs £325m in public and private funding to safeguard its historic sites and stories," reports Rebecca Atkinson.

Gráinne Maguire lists five things Is This Thing On? gets wrong about the world of stand up: "Will Arnett has all the natural funny bones of a dead family pet. He wears the same expression the entire time—startled and blinking, like Eeyore caught looking up porn at work and hauled into HR. Yet we're supposed to believe this set – more misguided late-night voice note than comedy – is all it takes for him to be embraced by the world of comedy."

The Earth is healing: The Muppet Show is back

The blurb for this trailer on YouTube says it is "a special event", first being screened on February 4 on Disney+ and ABC.

Rhik Samadder has seen it and says in the Guardian:

Happily, it hasn’t been updated so Fozzie is doing bits on TikTok, or Rowlf protesting about streaming royalties. The guys are still trying to put on that variety show, and it’s still all going wrong.

The Joy of Six 1467

Claire Jones says Britain is sliding backwards into open racism: "Shame has evaporated. With skin colour as their yardstick, the UK’s self-appointed 'defence warriors' are having a field day shouting at anyone brown-skinned, from ordinary folk to celebrities and political figures, to 'go home'."

"While it’s relatively easy for regulators to monitor the actions of Snapchat or TikTok, it’s impossible to police the millions of websites that might contain forums and chats. Any policy shift will have failed if it ends up pushing kids into even less regulated places on the internet." A social media ban for under-16s would be popular but, asks James Clayton, would it really help?

"Off 16 planned non-London LTNs tracked by the researchers, just one was fully implemented – a failure rate of around 94 per cent." Megan Huws argues that councils lack resources to deliver Low Traffic Neighbourhoods amid the culture wars.

Leanne Tritton on the difficulty of reusing redundant buildings in Britain today.

James Bloodworth looks at what the fame Russell Brand enjoyed until recently tells us about our society.

"It's a shot of such pure emotion and simple poignancy that it is regularly cited as the greatest ending in cinematic history. In the 95 years since City Lights' release, numerous films have tried to replicate its subtle artistry and the power of its performances." Gregory Wakeman watches a Charlie Chaplin masterpiece.

"Like trying to do geometry with blancmange": My Liberator article on Blue Labour

Move over Lord Bonkers: I have an article in the new Liberator (issue 344). You can download the whole issue for free from the magazine's website.

Nor for the first time, I am led to reflect on how hoary my cultural touchstones are growing. The first series of Reggie Perrin was originally screened 50 years ago - it's as though there had been a Liberator contributor when I first joined the editorial collective whose articles relied upon his readers having knowledge of comedy from the early Thirties.

But don't blame me: I've been waiting for a new generation of young Radicals to sweep us to one side since at least 1990, but they have never appeared.

A Better Yesterday

I’ve finally worked out who it is that Blue Labour reminds me of: it’s Doc Morrisey from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. In the classic sitcom written by David Nobbs, Perrin, deep in the throes of a midlife crisis, seeks help from Sunshine Desserts’ company doctor. They have the following conversation.

Doc Morrissey: Do you find you can't finish the crossword like you used to, nasty taste in the mouth in the mornings, can't stop thinking about sex, can't start doing anything about sex, wake up with a sweat in the mornings, keep falling asleep during Play For Today?

Reginald Perrin: That's extraordinary, Doc! That's exactly how I've been feeling.

Doc Morrissey: So have I. I wonder what it is? Take two aspirins.

Blue Labour, though some MPs claim to owe allegiance to this tendency, is largely Maurice Glasman, and Maurice Glasman is entirely Blue Labour. And the only coherent thread running through the pronouncements of Maurice Glasman (Lord Glasman – he was made a peer by Ed Miliband in 2010) is an ill-focused, Perrinesque nostalgia for the past of his country and party.

Even that is being kind to him when you consider the misshapen catch that comes up when you trawl for his recent media appearances. Among the views he has expressed are that “in order to be truly radical, Labour must recognise its debt to Jesus Christ”; that the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target is a fantasy that should be abandoned in favour of new fossil fuel extraction while the national grid is taken over by the Ministry of Defence; and that Shabana Mahmood is like Elizabeth I – “She’s devoted to her job. She’s unique.” If Glasman were a social media account, you would have muted it long ago.

Visit the Blue Labour website in search of more intellectual substance and you will be disappointed. The featured post there is What Is to Be Done, which dates from October 2025 and is written in a semi-apocalyptic style: “The hour is late.” Nevertheless, there is something in its analysis that Keir Starmer won a “loveless landslide” and came to power without much of a legislative programme or analysis of the country’s problems behind him.

The trouble with What Is to Be Done is that it’s full of grand statements like “We should bring public services like rail, utilities like water, and critical industries like steel, back into public ownership,” but short of any practical proposals for how such ideas can be put into action. And when it does get close to making such proposals, what we get is an agenda that will be familiar to anyone with a very online Conservative MP: “drastically” reduce immigration, curb the powers of the courts, tell the police to concentrate on repeat offenders. Explore the Blue Labour website and you will find the same high ambitions and shortage of detail in other documents, even its Plan for National Reconstruction. 

All of which makes it a surprise to find Compass publishing a document billed as making “the case for a new Soft Left/Blue Labour politics”. It’s Soft Skills, Hard Labour by Frances Foley, who was until recently the group’s deputy director. A surprise because, though it is affiliated to the Labour Party, Compass’s emphasis on cross-party working and support for proportional representation has meant that Liberals tend to feel quite warm towards it. So sensible is it that it’s chair Neal Lawson has been threatened with expulsion from the Labour Party.

Enter Compass

Lawson, incidentally, shares Glasman’s sense that Keir Starmer lacks direction. In a recent Guardian piece, he suggested that Starmer was promoted as Labour leader by people who decided he was the man to drive Corbynism out of the party. They assumed there was no chance of the Conservatives being defeated in 2024, so didn’t worry about his shortcomings as a future prime minister. He would be gone before Labour got in again. Yet so rapid was the Conservative collapse that Starmer found himself in Number 10. It’s a neat mirror image of the Labour left-winger who said in 2015: “If we’d thought we had a chance of winning the leadership then Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t have been our candidate.”

There is no such clarity to be found in Soft Skills, Hard Labour. Foley’s method is to look at different tendencies within Soft Labour and Blue Labour and then map how they complement each other or conflict across the divide. So we have chapters titled “Postliberal Democrats’ challenge to the Rules-based Majoritarians” and “Democratic Communitarians’ challenge to the Rights-based Liberals”. It’s a brave effort, but her two main concepts are so diffuse to begin with that it’s like trying to do geometry with blancmange.

It may be that Blue Labour has more to it than Glasman’s eccentricities – his other recent contributions to debate include apologising to Nigel Farage live on GB News after Keir Starmer said the Reform leader’s immigration policy was “racist and immoral” and claiming that progressive liberals “don’t want you to enjoy anything, not even sex with your wife!” There is an essay collection edited by Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst – Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics – but it was published in the very different world of 2015, where it billed itself as seeking to “move beyond the centrist pragmatism of Blair and Cameron”.

Iconoclasm

Frances Foley is attracted to the appetite she sees in Blue Labour for iconoclasm, which is an attraction I imagine anyone who works in the very on-message world of pro-Labour think-tanks is likely to feel after a while. She may even be demob happy: her brief biography in Soft Skills, Hard Labour reveals she is leaving Compass “to set up a new programme matching young people with jobs in climate, whilst training them in political organising,” which sounds more valuable than what most think-tanks produce.

Whatever the reason, she is right to say:

The word “progressive” strongly implies that change is always for the better, rather than to be questioned or resisted. It also suggests that “progress” is a meaningful – and crucially agreed upon – political concept.

That is why I try to avoid using this concept, though a stronger reason is the argument put forward by Simon Titley, late of this parish: 

"Progressive." What does it mean? The only discernible meaning is "not conservative" or "not reactionary"... negative definitions. The "p" word is a lazy word, so give it up. It will force you to say what you really mean. We need real politics not empty slogans.

Similarly, when Foley writes of what she terms “Rights-based Liberals”:

They tend to assert the primacy of rights as a priori, not as social constructs created by citizens, but as a first order framework that sets the parameters for what is politically viable. In this sense, Rights-based Liberals see rights as trumping pure democratic sovereignty, setting limits on what democratic societies can decide. 

she is right about the attitude of many on the left towards rights: we should never forget they are human inventions and not somehow ordained by nature. 

There is a better, more pragmatic argument for human rights: by inventing them we increase the chances that government will treat us well. A good example of this is the right to petition for a writ of habeus corpus – a right hoary enough, surely, to win the support of even Maurice Glasman. Nor is it clear how the working class will benefit from any abolition of rights: it’s the powerful who benefit in a free-for-all, as we see in news reports from the US every evening.

But then it’s often hard to see how the working class will benefit from any Blue Labour policies. The only mention of education you’re likely to come across in Blue Labour circles is vocational education: you rarely get the sense that they are much interested in the number of working-class university students or entrepreneurs. What they are telling working-class young people is that somewhere there is a lathe with your name on it and I remain unconvinced that is what all of them want.

Nostalgia

It's easy, and it’s largely justifiable, to dismiss Blue Labour as offering nostalgia for a vanished industrial world, but too much comment on social media from people who like to think they are on the left treats the past as something to point at and laugh. Such comment is all about the performative adoption of approved cultural opinions: nowhere will you see it mentioned that the Fifties saw full employment and record levels of trade union membership or that the Seventies saw the greatest income equality Britain has ever enjoyed. 

One thing Blue Labour has got right is that many self-styled “progressives” aren’t much interested in the working class: it’s just that I’m not convinced Blue Labour is much interested in the working class as it exists today either. Maurice Glasman’s target voter is a white working-class man in a manual job in the North of England in 1957.

Treating the past as a reminder that our current economic and social arrangements are not set in stone and things could be and have been different is sensible. But demanding we return to this past, and demanding it without so much as making a gesture towards providing a route map, is ridiculous. I didn’t get where I am today without knowing the difference.