So it's Jo Swinson vs Ed Davey for the Lib Dem leadership

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Layla Moran issued a statement this morning. It's not entirely clear where or ow she issued it - the source seems to be the BBC Oxford political reporter Bethan Nimmo via a chain of tweets by Chris Mason - but the contents were clear.

She said:

I am very grateful to the large number of constituents, supporters, party members and elected representatives who have encouraged me to throw my hat into the ring in the forthcoming Liberal Democrat Leadership contest. 

As a relatively new MP, however, my first priority has to be to serve my constituents to the best of my ability. 

I hope they consider that I am doing a good job so far, but I do not believe that I would be able to continue to do so to the standard they have the right to expect if I took on the busy role of Party Leader as well. 

For this reason, I wrote to local party members last week to let them know that I would not be standing for the Leadership this time.

Some will wonder whether the revelation that she was once arrested after slapping her boyfriend has led to this decision. But then I suggested when she made that revelation that she was clearing the decks for a leadership bid.

So it may be simply that the lack of alternatives led to her being spoken of as a possible leader and that she has decided she is not ready for the role yet.

Anyway, Jo Swinson is the bookies' favourite to be the next Lib Dem leader, but Ed Davey has been active and effective since he returned to Westminster. You might almost say he has been on manoeuvres.

So it looks as though the two of them will contest the leadership when Vince Cable steps down this summer.

"Economic liberal" Nick Clegg makes the case for monopoly

I began to learn my Liberalism in the 1970s - the days when Liberals championed small businesses and employee ownership of larger ones.

Nationalisation does not float my boat, though it may be inevitable when the franchising system for the privatised railways finally collapses. Already most franchises are operated by state-owned organisations - it's just that it's not the British state.

I was always a bit sceptical of the self-proclaimed "economic liberals" who later appeared in the party. They did not talk about increasing competition as much as I would have like and rarely seemed to oppose the interests of big corporations.

This performance by Nick Clegg has done nothing to make me revise my view.

Fire at a Grade II Listed Kettering factory

Crews remain on the scene of a fire in Regent Street, #Kettering. Road closures remain in place and residents are advised to keep doors and windows closed against smoke. Please avoid the area while the fire is tackled. Read more here: https://t.co/s5drvZi4kO pic.twitter.com/Onsm6aU5aQ

— NorthantsFire (@northantsfire) May 13, 2019

Press reports describe it as the Kettering Bedding Centre, but Historic England know this building as the Regent Works, Regent Street. It was built for the boot and shoe firm Hales & Jowett in 1890.

It is Grade II Listed and that listing says:

This finely-detailed factory is little altered and the carefully detailed and homogeneous front shows it to be a factory but the design also fits into the terraces of houses either side and opposite. This combination of factories and housing adjacent to each other is a particular characteristic of the boot and shoe industry.

I took the photos below last June. If the building has to be demolished it will be sad loss.

Six of the Best 865

"With the local elections, the Lib Dems were finally completely clear in their messaging. “Stop Brexit” – that’s easy to understand. “Bollocks to Brexit” has the added bonus of having a slightly risqué element to it, meaning it will be discussed and thus picked up on." Nick Tyrone says the Bollocks to Brexit slogan is just what the Liberal Democrats need:

Rachel Andrews takes us to the former Bessborough mother and baby home on the outskirts of Cork. Nine hundred children died here, but few graves have been found.

Jonathan Webber introduces us to Simone de Beauvoir's views on parenting.

"Mr Eliot has asked me to tell you how much he personally enjoyed the poems and to pass on to you his congratulations on them." tseliot.com looks at the relations between T.S. Eliot and Ted Hughes.

Ken Andrews watches Joseph Losey's 1963 film The Servant: "One of the delights of The Servant is marveling in Bogarde's depiction of Barrett’s effortless slides in and out of his Manchester accent and contrasting his 'on the job' fussiness with his louche behavior when 'off the clock'."

"The hill was my playground, school and world." Alan Garner on Alderley Edge,

Brian Walden and Weekend World

The death of Brian Walden, which was announced today, reminds us of a golden era of political broadcasting.

Walden was a Birmingham Labour MP between 1964 and 1977, when he resigned to become the presenter of London Weekend Television's Sunday lunchtime programme Weekend World.

A typical edition would have a cabinet minister or leading member of the opposition as a guest. There would first be a deeply researched film about a problem facing the minister or a political dilemma facing the opposition, followed by an in-depth interview.

The mood was like a university tutorial, with Walden as the stern tutor. He did not go in for histrionics: his strength was that he made sure he was as well informed on the subject in hand as his guest. Politicians did not get away with bland generalities.

Maybe it's a sign of my age, but I find it hard to imagine many current politicians standing up to this sort of scrutiny.

Broadcasters long ago decided that the public is not interested in this kind of television. Perhaps that is one reason why we are faced with a generation of political pygmies.

Oh, and Weekend World had the best theme tune ever - Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain.

The Beatles: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

I saw a comment on Twitter about Richard Curtis's new film Yesterday, which imagines a world in which the Beatles have not existed.

The comment said something to the effect that this world would be terrible, because all the music would be like Cliff Richard.

That, of course, nonsense. There were plenty of other British bands influenced by Black American rhythm and blues in the early 1960s, and plenty of them made the same move to psychedelic music later in the decade.

I have a problem with The Beatles - and not just that their name is a lame pun. I can see they are good, but as with Mozart in classical music, I can't see why they are better than other people who were around at the time. That reaction to the film was somehow typical of the reverence with which The Beatles are treated.

Maybe it is Brian Epstein's styling, which is part of what made them pre-eminent by giving them family appeal, that puts me off them now. But whatever the reason, I have only chosen cover versions of their songs - by The Jam and Laibach - on this blog.

But here is a Beatles song, but one with a difference. It is written by George Harrison, not Lennon and McCartney, and Eric Clapton plays the guitar solo.

Harrison later explained how this came about:

We tried to record it, but John and Paul were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine. It wasn't happening. They weren't taking it seriously and I don't think they were even all playing on it, and so I went home that night thinking, 'Well, that's a shame,' because I knew the song was pretty good. 

The next day I was driving into London with Eric Clapton, and I said, "What are you doing today? Why don't you come to the studio and play on this song for me?" He said, "Oh, no – I can't do that. Nobody's ever played on a Beatles record and the others wouldn't like it." I said, "Look, it's my song and I'd like you to play on it."

So he came in. I said, "Eric's going to play on this one," and it was good because that then made everyone act better. Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seriously.

Happy St Pancras Day

12 May ought to be a public holiday in the East Midlands.

David Steel's suspension lifted as Lib Dems "recast" investigation

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From BBC News this evening:

The Liberal Democrats have lifted the suspension of former leader David Steel, according to a senior party source. 

Lord Steel had the whip removed over comments he made to a child abuse inquiry about the late MP Cyril Smith. 

The source told the BBC that the whip had now been restored while the party recast the procedure being followed in its investigation into the comments.

Lord Steel was suspended after telling the inquiry that Cyril Smith had admitted abusing youths to him.

One odd thing about this affair is that Steel told us the same thing back in 2014 and no one turned a hair.

Woman's surprise at Kingsmill loaf full of bread crusts

BBC News wins Headline of the Day.

The judges had to go for a lie down afterwards because of all the excitement.

Three more poems by W.T. Nettlefold

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One of my favourite posts on this blog is the one about Bill Nettlefold. He was a minor poet of the 1930s whom I met as a teenager and later found quoted in the introduction of the Penguin anthology Poetry of the Thirties.

The poem quoted in that introduction, an odd and angry denunciation of T.S. Eliot, was the only Bill Nettlefold poem I had ever found.

That was until a couple of days ago, when someone very kindly posted three more of his poems as a comment on my original post.

They are all derivative of the young W.H. Auden and thus very much to my taste.

Here is one of them, published in Left Review in December 1937.

A Lullaby for a Baby Born in 1937 

Oh hush thee my baby and sleep while you can,
The days that are flying will make you a man.
Sleep deeply my baby, 'tis I who should cry,
The Masters are planning the way you shall die. 

The mining and blasting, the coal that we hew,
The steel we are casting, are, baby, for you.
To mortgage your future, the brain blood and bone;
Your life an investment to cover their own. 

Oh stay as a baby, stay just where you are,
So tiny and helpless, yet bright as a star:
But buds break to blossom as brief moments fly,
And Masters are planning the way you shall die.

Peterborough East station from above in 1934

With political eyes turning to Peterborough, here is an aerial photograph of the vanished Peterborough East station. You will find it in the bottom right-hand corner.

Read all about Peterborough East on Disused Stations.

The surviving Peterborough station, then called Peterborough North, is right at the top of the photo.

The Tiggers' week from hell arrives in Peterborough

Whatever did for the idea of a single Remain candidate in the Peterborough by-election - Patrick Maguire of the New Statesman thinks he knows - we can agree that this statement from the Tiggers' Gavin Shuker is remarkable:

"Change UK, the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and Renew have been working hard these last few days on a joint approach to the Peterborough by-election, recognising that we need to put the country’s interests first, securing a People’s Vote and remaining in the European Union. 

"We all agreed to stand down any candidates we might field in favour of a genuinely independent, pro-People’s Vote and pro-Remain candidate who had expressed an interest and intention to stand. 

"However, senior Labour figures, including senior figures campaigning for a People’s Vote, made it clear that they would strenuously disrupt the campaign and obstruct an independent Candidate, driven by fears that it would harm their party in Peterborough." 

Did the Tiggers really think the Labour Party would accede to the loss of one of its seats without a battle?

At least the Liberal Democrats and Greens got their nomination papers in after the breakdown of negotiations and will each have a candidate in the by-election. The Tiggers will not.

Perhaps they were afraid that would upset Labour too?

Stagecoach to take legal action against the Department for Transport over the East Midlands franchise

East Midlands Business Link confirms a story that has been in the offing for a while:

Stagecoach Group has confirmed that its wholly owned subsidiary, Stagecoach East Midlands Trains Limited, is taking legal action against the Department for Transport. 

The group said that a claim was issued yesterday (8 May) at the High Court in London under Part 7 of the Civil Procedure Rules. The claim alleges that the Department for Transport breached its statutory duties in connection with the procurement of the new East Midlands rail franchise.

As things stand, Stagecoach is due to hand over the East Midlands franchise to Abellio, which is owned by the nationalised Dutch railways.

The franchise system increasingly gives rise to legal action, while there are a diminishing number of companies interested in bidding at all.

It seems the model set up when the railways were privatised under John Major is on its last legs.

Oakham: The least used station in Rutland

And, perforce, the most used station in Rutland because it is the only station in Rutland.

We travel to Oakham from Corby over the mighty Welland Viaduct and see more of it from the ground later on.

If you fancy travelling over it yourself, then a good opportunity is coming up.

Between 25 May and 2 June every train from St Pancras to Leicester and beyond will take that route. This is to allow for the completion of the realignment of the track at Market Harborough station.

And if you ever find yourself with time to kill on Oakham station, I recommend the Grainstore Brewery and its pub.

A psychologist on M.R. James

"There is something that interests me as a psychologist and that is why the ghost stories had such a lasting influence. Why is it that we just love to be frightened?”

Professor Uta Frith is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Here she delves into the origins of James’s unsettling stories and what they reveal about our love of a good scare.

If you are interested in developmental psychology, I recommend you follow Uta Frith on Twitter.

And if you like M.R. James's ghost stories there is A Podcast to the Curious.

The Tiggers have lost control of their own Twitter account

My thesis that the smoothness of The Independent Group's political careers up till now has given them an exaggerated sense of their own competence received further backing today.

Alex Wickham broke the story on Twitter this afternoon, and the Spectator's Steerpike has it all in one place:

Following the political party’s decision to change its name from the Independent Group to Change UK, it decided to update its Twitter handle today: from @TheIndGroup to the rather strange @ForChange_Now. Unfortunately, it seems the breakaway MPs didn’t realise that someone might take over their old account handle once it had been vacated. 

And, in a matter of minutes, the @TheIndGroup account was hijacked by an individual campaigning for a hard Brexit. .... 

Even more unfortunately, anyone Googling the Independent Group to find out more about the newly formed party, will instead by directed to the hard Brexit account. And the party managed to lose its Twitter ‘blue tick’ which verifies that a user is genuine.

And here's Sparks:

Searching for Cardinal Wolsey

Now we have turned up Richard III, the obvious next person to look for in Leicester is Cardinal Wolsey.

Accused of treason and summoned back to London from the North, Wolsey fell ill on the journey. He arrived at Leicester Abbey announcing:

"Father Abbot, I am come hither to leave my bones among you."

His grave was lost at the dissolution of the Abbey, but you wouldn't think so if you visited it today (as I did).

The site of the abbey now lies in Leicester's largest park - Abbey Park. After it was excavated in the 1930s, low walls were put up to show where the buildings had been.

There is even a grave slab for Wolsey, but he was buried in the Lady Chapel and the dig failed to locate it.

Should we try to find the old boy now?

I once heard someone make this suggestion to a leading member of the team that found Richard. He replied slightly acidly that, if they did find him, Ipswich would no doubt try to claim the remains.

Anyway, here are some photos of Abbey Park from today's visit. As well as the site of the abbey, it includes a miniature railway, a length of the River Soar and the ruins of Cavendish House.

This last was built on the site of the abbey's gatehouse and sacked after the siege of Leicester in the Civil War.

As I suggested after an earlier visit, the statue of Wolsey looks bemused to find himself in front of the cafe.

The Heart Within: Race, class and bombsites

You can watch the 1957 film The Heart Within free of charge on the British Film Institute website.

The blurb there explains why you might want to:

Teenager Danny lives in London's docklands and befriends Victor, a Trinidadian dock worker, who becomes the chief suspect in a murder in this low budget crime thriller which cleverly mixes Boy's Own adventure with social realism. It gives postwar Britain's most prominent black actor, Earl Cameron, one of his best screen roles as a man on the run for a crime he didn't commit. 

This is a departure from other 1950s British films which located black characters in colonial Africa and viewed them as 'problems' or 'exotics'. The Kings of the Caribbean provide some great calypso music.

All that is true, but there are two other reason why this film interests me.

The first is that Danny is played by David Hemmings, who crops up on this blog regularly. Here he is aged 15 or 16, but playing a couple of years younger.

The second is that the film is largely set on London's postwar bombsites, whose treatment in films of was the subject of a recent post on this blog.

Hemmings' Danny is very much a character from Hue and Cry - he has a paper round and is saving up to buy a watch, which in those days was a powerful symbol of adult status.

Yet the bombsites are still depicted as somewhere that people on the wrong side of the law hang out and where Danny is threatened.

On the other hand, that threat goes hand in hand with beauty. I often get the sense that postwar London was an exotic city.

The damage done by the bombing opened up new vistas of Wren's Italianate churches and the bombsites themselves would have been alive with rosebay willow herb and other flowering plants. Rose Macaulay's novel The World My Wilderness conveys this view of London in the period.

A word too on class. The portrayal of working-class characters is often excruciating in British films of this period - see Kathleen Harrison's turn as Violet the maid in The Winslow Boy if you doubt me.

But here James Hayter, product of a Scottish public school, and Hemmings, product of lower middle class Kingston Upon Thames, deliver likeable and convincing performances as cockneys.

Hayter is Hemmings' grandfather and cares for him. The fate of his parents is never mentioned, but you sense they lost their lives to the bombing that produced the landscape of the film,

One final point: I was convinced that I remembered a scene where Hemmings had been told off by the police inspector and was sprawled out and sulking as a result.

His body language, I recalled, was precisely the same as in Blow-Up nine years later.

Sadly, having skimmed through the film on the BFI site, I cannot find the scene. I fear it is too good to be true and that I imagined it.

The most thorough analysis of last week's local election results

Just before the local elections, I recommended Andrew Teale's guide to the contests - you will see that he was right about Hinckley and Bosworth.

Now he has posted his analysis of the results, region by region, and I can thoroughly recommend that too:

Cotswold notwithstanding, the most impressive performance for the Liberal Democrats in this region came in Bath and North East Somerset; the Lib Dems swept the city of Bath and did well enough in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s North East Somerset constituency to win an overall majority. The young fogey himself now has a Lib Dem councillor in his home Mendip ward. 

In what was generally a very impressive set of elections for the Green Party, this was one of only two districts where they were wiped out (the other was Cambridge). 

Six of the Best 864

In a post dedicated to Paddy Ashdown, Rob Stickland (the new councillor for Yeovil Without) celebrates the Liberal Democrat success in South Somerset: "He was certainly with me during the election day, knocking doors, with rosette plain for all to see, his advice ringing in my mind 'don’t use a car, walk the area show your colours and be proud, let the people see you'."

Mary Reid itemises the Alliance Party's advance in Northern Ireland's local elections.

"I don’t recall ever meeting a monied Jew when I was growing up in Manchester. We certainly didn’t know any. A few comfortable ones, maybe – but the rest of us worked hard to make ends meet, some improving as the country itself became more prosperous, others just getting by." Howard Jacobson reviews the Jewish Museum London exhibition "Jews, Money, Myth".

Robert Macfarlane on the notebooks that underpin his new book Underland.

Running Past describes the damage caused by a V-1 (doodlebug) attack on houses by Hither Green station and the subsequent redevelopment.

"I heard 'Oh Bondage Up Yours!' when it appeared on The Roxy London WC2, a 1977 album of live recordings from the club in Covent Garden. Her voice went through me like a stiletto. I wasn’t sure whether I loved or hated it – but it woke me up." Tracey Thorn celebrates the late great Poly Styrene.