Steve Winwood: Night Train

It's strange how some music dates and some doesn't. You still hear the Spencer Davis Group singles Gimme Some Lovin' and I'm a Man in television commercials, and they're used to convey modernity rather than nostalgia.

By contrast, Steve Winwood's Eighties records now sound dated. Winwood has said himself that he was still doing what he had done in Traffic - combining folk and rock and blues and jazz - but the production of the day gave those Eighties records a surface gloss that has not aged well.

Arc of a Diver was Winwood's second solo album and the one that established him as a solo star - it sold more in the United States 

The title track has magic for me, because the lyrics are by Viv Stanshall, but Night Train is more representative. What I like about it is that it features Winwood as a guitarist - he played all the instruments on Night Train.

This reminds me of a story I read online recently. An American remembered watching some Eric Clapton's Crossroads guitar festival on television, but missing the name of the brilliant guitarist he'd been listening to.

He found out a few days later that it had been Steve Winwood - that guy all of whose records his Mom had and who he hated.

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"Lots of people left that meeting thinking: 'Fuck him. Fuck the PM. Fuck all this. I’m going to go look for a job.'" Emilio Casalicchio has talked to the people who watched the Conservative election campaign unravel from the inside.

James Graham offers some hot takes on the election result. Impressively, this post was written before a vote had been counted.

"While these accounts can no longer draw on RT or Sputnik for information, as they have been banned in the UK since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine began in 2022, both these Russian influence accounts draw heavily on GB News and its presenters." Peter Jukes investigates Russian interference in the election.

Alison Bagley examines the rise and fall of Northamptonshire's Chief Constable: "He embellished his ‘modest’ Naval career, adding eight years’ service and claimed to be a 'Commander' who had piloted a boat as a Coxwain in charge of junior officers, had been a military negotiator in Haiti – a country to which he had never been – and fought in the Falklands War."

Paul Flynn on why Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy still resonates after 40 years: "Smalltown Boy documents in empathetic, kitchen-sink detail the feelings of rejecting one archaic value system and moving to the big gay city to find your own. The choirboy falsetto of singer Jimmy Somerville, set against the chiming electronics of the musical moment, have resisted fossilisation."

"A meeting of the vestry concluded that Thomas Telford was exaggerating, and only the most rudimentary support was given to the cracked column. On the 8th of July [1788], during a funeral, the bells shook the tower so violently that the church was evacuated. The following morning, the clock struck 4am, the bell rang and the tower collapsed, taking a good chunk of the church with it." Steve Bishop finally gets inside what remains of Old St Chad's in Shrewsbury.

Those Lib Dem targets for the next general election in full

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Michael Mullaney, who was our candidate in Hinckley and Bosworth on Thursday, has tweeted a list of the Liberal Democrat near misses at this election. They form a handy list of targets for the next election.

The second column gives the number votes we were adrift of the winner, and the third the percentage swing needed to win it next time. It is this latter figure that determines a seat's ranking in the list.

All these seats are held by the Conservatives except Burnley, which is held by Labour.

                                                                      %

Godalming and Ash                         891      0.81

Farnham and Bordon                     1349     1.27

Hampshire East                             1275      1.27

Shropshire South                           1624      1.57

Dorset North                                  1589      1.60

Romsey and Southampton North  2191      2.19

Cotswold North                              3357      3.34

Torridge and Tavistock                   3950      3.89

Burnley                                           3420      4.31

Hamble Valley                                4802      4.35

Hertfordshire South West               4456      4.62

Salisbury                                         5285      5.27

Buckinghamshire Mid                      5872     5.44

Sevenoaks                                       5440     5.45

Hinckley and Bosworth                    5408     5.66

When I blogged about Gordon Birtwistle, who was our candidate in Burnley having been MP for the town between 2005 and 2010, I wondered about his claim that the contest was between him and Labour, But he turned out to be quite right.

Bit of a cock-up on the counting front in Dingwall: Lib Dems wait for their 72nd win to be declared

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BREAKING... Drew Hendry has conceded that the Lib Dems will win the seat after the recount, so 72 it is.

One general election result remains to be announced: it's the one from the Scottish Highland constituency of Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire. A second recount will be held there tomorrow morning.

The delay does not appear to be caused by an exceptionally close result, but we are still having to wait for what sounds as though it will be a 72nd seat for the Liberal Democrats.

The Press & Journal describes what  went on at the Highland Football Academy in Dingwall in the small hours of this morning:

Jamie Stone held on to his seat for the Lib Dems around 5am and a result in the neighbouring constituency was expected to follow shortly after.

However, election count officials were seen looking exasperated shaking their head as the delay wore on.

The candidates for the election were also left in the dark, unable to say what exactly was the problem.

Counters were left twiddling their thumbs and to grow increasingly frustrated as speculation about the next step filled the air. ...

At 6.30am a recount was announced.

That was due to take around 90 minutes but shortly before 10am, returning officer Derek Brown announced that another recount was needed.

The reason given was a “discrepancy between the number of verified votes totalled and provisional counted votes”.

A fresh recount will now take place at 10.30am on Saturday.

The Press & Journal says the Lib Dems, whose candidate is Angus MacDonald, are confident of victory - is closest challenger is Drew Hendry from the SNP.

And the Inverness Courier report suggests why:

Count agents have widely credited Liberal Democrat Angus MacDonald with having pulled off a major upset and secured the Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire seat ahead of the SNP’s Drew Hendry. ...

The calculus is quite simple as by the end of the night Mr MacDonald had between three and four more boxes than Mr Hendry – in each box there are 500 ballots so the margin of victory was likely between 1500 and 2000 votes.

Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire covers much of the area that was represented by Charles Kennedy. It would be good to reclaim it, just as we took back Paddy Ashdown's Yeovil yesterday.

71 Liberal Democrat MPs were elected yesterday

Yesterday was an extraordinary day. We now have the largest Liberal or Liberal Democrat representation in the Commons since the brief revival of 1923-4. A total of 71 Lib Dem MPs were elected, and that could rise to 72, depending on the result of a second recount tomorrow in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire. Only one piece of music will do.

This is a vindication of the party's strategy and general election campaign. I was sceptical of the imaginative use being made of opinion polls, but in the end this still underestimated the hunger of the prosperous South to get rid of the Conservatives.

I voted Labour in Harborough - given our party's pleas to Labour supporters to vote for us in our target seats, it would have felt hypocritical not to - but the Tory held on here. As I suspected, Labour just didn't have enough activists here to win.

Britain's most unpredictable seat - Leicester East - was won by the Conservatives. A year ago, following the gains they made there in Leicester City Council elections, this would have been no great surprise. But, from what I heard, there was a feeling that the Tories had chosen a weak candidate for the parliamentary seat. True or not, this didn't stop her winning.

Labour also lost Leicester South, where Jonathan Ashworth lost to an Independent who stood in protest against the party's policy on Gaza. It is worrying that voting in the city is beginning to reflect religious affiliations, a process perhaps encouraged by the Tories' courting of the Hindu community.

And a word too for Matthew Green, who came close to winning South Shropshire (which is largely the old Ludlow seat that he represented between 2001 and 2005). Next year's county council elections in Shropshire should be interesting.

An early Lib Dem victory in North Shropshire

The Bailey Head in Oswestry is the new Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) West Midlands Regional Cider Pub of the Year, says a press release from the British Guild of Beer Writers.

Well done to the pub's owners Grace Goodlad and Duncan Borrowman, who will be known to many readers of this blog. 

Grace and Duncan were both Liberal Democrat councillors in Bromley. Duncan is also a former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate and was a member of party staff at Cowley Street for many years.

The Bailey Head is also the reigning CAMRA Shropshire County Pub of the Year and Shropshire County Cider Pub of the Year.

Ed Davey: Tomorrow's election is a once-in-a-generation chance to put an end to years of Conservative chaos

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In an article posted on the Guardian's website this afternoon, Ed Davey describes tomorrow's election as "a once-in-a-generation chance to put an end to years of Conservative chaos":

It is tempting to look at the opinion polls and the shambles of a Conservative party election campaign and think that history is assured. But absolutely nothing has been decided yet. 

There are seats in former Conservative heartlands across the country – such as Bicester and Woodstock, Frome and East Somerset, and Mid Sussex – where seats are on a knife-edge between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. A handful of votes could be the difference between beating the Conservatives and them clinging on.

This historic chance for change is dependent on some people voting tactically for the party best placed to beat the Conservatives in their area. In many areas of the country, among them parts of the home counties and the West Country, Labour cannot and will not win. 

Only the Liberal Democrats are capable of bringing change. In many constituencies – such as Didcot and Wantage, St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, and Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe – the only way to beat the Conservatives tomorrow is to vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Ed says he is grateful to Labour voters who are voting Liberal Democrat this time. He adds that he's encouraged by how many are doing so "not just tactically but enthusiastically, because of our progressive plans for the country".

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The media must start holding Reform and Nigel Farage to account, says Hardeep Matharu. The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the 'real views' of the British people.

Imran Mulla and Peter Oborne examine Rishi Sunak's worrying links with India's far right.

"Compared to similar size towns in the UK, Clacton has a limited heritage and cultural offer. It has a wonderful but very small museum space run by active volunteers in the public library. There’s room for about five visitors at a time, and it’s open just twice a week. Sadly, other venues where Clacton’s hidden heritage was celebrated have shut, such as museum dedicated to Pirate Radio which closed in 2016." Tony D. Sampson and Andrew Branch argue that Nigel Farage’s populism distracts from what people in Clacton are really proud about.

"Across the world there must have been so many of us who experienced a similarly uncanny sense of déjà vu upon reading Nineteen Eighty-Four for the first time. That is because for those of us who come from “wounded democracies” or autocracies-in-the-making or downright dictatorships, Oceania was never some far-fetched dystopian land set in an unforeseeable future, but something closer, much more visceral. And frightening too. It was not even a prescient warning about where things might lead if politics went unexpectedly wrong. For us, Nineteen Eighty-Four was already here. It was already happening." Elif Shafak on the undiminished power of George Orwell's novel remains as powerful as when it w

Richard Williams pays a visit to Robert Wyatt in Louth.

The King's Cross district of London got its name from a memorial to George IV that everybody hated and which lasted only 15 years, explains Matt Brown: "The octagonal base survived two further years after the statue was removed. It served variously as a police station, beer shop and advertising space. When it was pulled down in 1845, few people mourned. Newspaper accounts of the removal were scarce and short."

Reform and The Man Who Was Thursday

If you believe Reform's leaders, then its activists and candidates are either plants or actors. At least, that's the leadership's defence whenever a new piece of controversy about the party hits the headlines.

It reminds me of the way conspiracy theorists of the left look at the news media. If a story's being covered, that proves it is a dead cat to distract us from something more damaging to the authorities. And if it's not being covered, that proves that someone powerful has taken out a super-injunction.

Perhaps Farage and Tice fear Reform will turn put to be like the Anarchist cell in G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. In the course of the book, it's revealed that the cell's members are all police agents, there to keep an eye on the others.

Nine-year-old selected to play for England women's chess team

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From the Guardian:

She is a nine-year-old British prodigy, who has already caused a commotion in the chess world with her fearless play and string of spectacular victories. Now Bodhana Sivanandan, a nine-year-old from Harrow, is set to make history as the youngest person to represent England in international sporting competition.

Sivanandan, who only took up chess in lockdown, is one of five players chosen for England’s women’s team to play in the Chess Olympiad in Budapest in September. The next youngest player, Lan Yao, is 23, while the other members of the team, Jovanka Houska, Harriet Hunt and Kata Toma, are all in their 30s and 40s.

“I’m so pleased to be picked for England,” said Sivanandan, who has set her sights on becoming a grandmaster and winning the women’s world title. “It’s a great honour and I’m looking forward to being part of a team.”

Malcolm Pein, one of the selectors, suggests that Bodhana "must surely be the youngest to be selected to represent England in any international sporting competition," and the Guardian's researches suggest he is right.

South Shropshire Lib Dems and the future of England fast bowling

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The England selectors have included the uncapped Nottinghamshire seamer Dillon Pennington.in their 14-man squad for the first two tests against the West Indies this summer.

Pennington joined Notts at the end of last season, having played for Worcestershire before that. And his profile on Cricinfo reveals that he is originally from Shropshire:

Dillon Pennington possesses the natural strength and height to become an imposing fast bowler of international quality. He was part of Worcestershire's satellite academy in Shropshire - coached by Paul Pridgeon - which has been so prolific in producing young players in recent years.

And Matthew Green, who was Liberal Democrat MP for Ludlow between 2001 and 2005 and is fighting South Shropshire in the current election, recently revealed on Twitter:

Thrilled to see Dillon Pennington @DillonPenningt4 called up to the England Test Squad. I had the pleasure of captaining him for his first games in adult cricket, when he played for Much Wenlock CC in 2012.
Always a delight to see others who are #Shropshire born & bred, excel. https://t.co/p6HkQRW89q

— Matthew Green (@MatthewGreen02) June 30, 2024

Shropshire Lib Dems are on such a roll at the moment they're even finding fast bowlers for England.

The glorious medieval leaves of Southwell Minster

Southwell Minster is at once one of England's least known cathedrals and one of its finest.

Its glory is the wonderful medieval stone carving of leaves, green men and more in the chapter house.

This video by Allan Barton gives a brief introduction to both the building and its carvings.

De Montfort University expert tips Lib Dems to win Leicester East

If there is a seat where anything could happen on Thursday, it's Leicester East. There, two former Labour MPs for the patch (Keith Vaz and Claudia Webbe) are taking on the party's official candidate, while the Conservatives, after recent promising local election results, seem to have blown things by selecting an unimpressive candidate at the last minute.

But, quoted in a comprehensive feature about the contest on the Great Central Gazette site, Alistair Jones, associate professor in politics at De Montfort University, says:

This constituency will be tight. There are ten candidates, including two ex-Labour MPs for Leicester East, the actual Labour candidate, a Conservative and an ex-Conservative standing, as well as Reform UK. 

This fight is not just Labour vs Conservative, but it is also about Keith Vaz and his desire to return to frontline politics. The result is likely to be too close to call. Expect demand for recounts. Zuffar Haq, Liberal Democrats, will squeak through on a minuscule majority.

And it could happen. Zuffar is an experienced candidate with a strong record of campaigning across the city.

Reece Stafferton wrote a Liberal England guest post about the plans for the Great Central Gazette a couple of years ago.

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"The ABC shared its findings with disinformation experts, who said the network's activity had the hallmarks of a Russian influence operation." Michael Workman and Kevin Nguyen reveal the Australian broadcaster's research into Russian interference in the general election and how - suddenly - the Tories are concerned about it.

"Starmer has picked his battles well and, for the most part, won them. For instance, the Labour leader has pledged to restore the UK’s net zero targets to their more ambitious former selves - prior to Sunak’s tinkering. Meanwhile, he continues to rubbish the government’s Rwanda deportation plan as an expensive, overly elaborate gimmick." Josh Self argues that Keir Starmer's part in the collapse of the Conservative Party should be not be overlooked.

Gary Hutchison discusses his research into violence in Victorian elections.

Hazel Marsh, Esbjörn Wettermark and Tiffany Hore on the way Romani Gypsy and Traveller people have shaped Britain’s musical heritage: "In 1907, after hearing Romani Gypsy Betsy Holland sing in Devon, Cecil Sharp (a key figure in the first English folk revival) wrote: 'Talk of folk-singing! It was the finest and most characteristic bit of singing I had ever heard.'"

"Knife is a clear and unsurprising departure. We have a defiant Rushdie, still, but also a vulnerable one. It’s a vulnerability he didn’t allow in his 2012 autobiography Joseph Anton, a highly readable book but whose third-person narration sounds as affected on the page as he would in person." Shehryar Fazli reviews Salman Rushdie new memoir.

Amy Lim says that, for all the nostalgic prettiness of her watercolors, Helen Allingham was a highly professional, pioneering woman artist: "In her lifetime, through a combination of talent, hard work and shrewd marketing, Allingham enjoyed immense critical and commercial success. She was also, for many years, a single mother, supporting her children through her art."