I haven’t done a word count, but the press reckons that it is 12500 or perhaps 14000 words long. Seems longer. When I embarked on reading it, I was looking to take issue with his policies. Unfortunately, I can’t do that, because there are none. Or, at least, none proposed or even mentioned here.


I didn’t vote for Starmer, but I thought about it. I have his Ten Pledges on my notice board and, when they were published, each one made me more open to his candidacy and potential leadership. It seemed I was not alone. Many of those who had voted twice for Jeremy Corbyn were attracted by Starmer’s claim that he would not change track, and that the 2017 Labour manifesto was the basis of the party in the future.


In my case, I allowed my heart to overcome my head. I voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey. But when the results came in, I nevertheless believed that Starmer would be a good leader of the party, perhaps in the manner of John Smith, but certainly not like Tony Blair, under whose aegis the party lost my support (though not my membership subs).


Since Starmer’s election, a great deal has happened to cause concern amongst those of my Labour persuasion. I won’t list them because most of you will be aware of the purge of the left, the expulsion and suspension of Jewish socialists, the lack of opposition to Johnson, and of course the current proposals to change the one-member-one-vote system within the party.


But this much-vaunted Fabian leaflet - an ‘essay’ apparently, but not even a good try - was Starmer’s opportunity to show himself as a positive, forward-looking leader: someone who had a vision which was not confined to purging opponents, but concerned itself with ideas, practicality, policy.


I have now read it. Not The Guardian’s summary. I have read it all, word by word, cliché by cliché, banality after banality.


It is heart-breaking. Not merely because of the style - where is that forensic approach? Where is that legal mind at work? Where are the strong socialist principles? Where, indeed, are any principles at all?


Where, in short, is the leadership?


Perhaps the claim to leadership is to be found here ….

Or perhaps not.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I have of course been listening to Volume 16 of The Bootleg Series, and tbh, one needs to get to the last two tracks of the fifth and final CD to listen to anything new and/or worthy of the man. I have also been listening to a soundtrack of Shadow Kingdom, which is masterful. But I have mostly been listening to James Knight's poignantl and cathartic suite, Close. Quite beautiful.

There can be few of my generation who remain immune to the works of Joni Mitchell and David Hockney. I’m not saying you have had to love them, or even like them; merely that you must be aware of them and respect them. Joni’s songs, Hockney’s paintings and drawings, have measured out our lives. They are legends.
 
The image is from 2019, when it apparently “commandeered the internet”, but my politics, baseball and Dylan-obsessed Twitter feed failed to alert me at the time. So it was only this week that a random re-tweet brought it full screen on my iPad. It was minus four outside at the time, and the weather as bleak as our mood. We were in the middle of a pandemic and in lockdown. We were desperate for some colour in our lives.
 
This remarkable picture, a snapshot really, provided it. I printed it out for Jill to frame so that we could have a constant reminder of the happiness and contentment it epitomizes. (A thing of beauty is a joy forever.)

It is about ageing, about life, about colour.
 
And this despite the fact that Hockney has recovered from a stroke and Joni is suffering from Morgellons Disease and had to learn to walk again after a brain aneurysm.
 
So it is a powerful representation of optimism, of determination, of commitment to living. And of friendship and companionship and shared interests.
 
I re-post it now for those who haven’t seen it and need to see it. Which is all of us.

Today from the everysmith vaults

​Coincidentally, on the morning after I had first seen it, I came across a website which was featuring the original demo takes of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni’s 1975 album which eschewed the confessional voice of earlier recordings and introduced jazz, rock, sampling. But the demos were acoustic: her beautiful voice, piano and guitar. It came to me with the title The Seeding of Summer Lawns which I love. I commend it to you.

It’s been a busy week. I know, this is not an opening sentence that you will see often these days but if you extend your definition of the word ‘busy’, you’ll know what I mean. Think of it as a verb rather than an adjective; as in “I have been busying myself with a variety of sedentary activities”.
 
These ‘activities’ – another word I use loosely – are better characterized by the original Old English bisig, meaning careful, anxious, diligent.
 
And it is carefully, anxiously, diligently, that I have been following the news. I have watched and listened, read and wrote, considered, responded and ‘reacted’. I have liked, shared, commented, and re-tweeted far more than my blood pressure can handle. I have busied myself with some thankless and demeaning exchanges on local political forums – “I have photocopied your vile post Mr Smith” – and engaged in a series of WhatsApp conversations without discovering what’s up or down.
 
But then two things happened that transformed my sense of ennui.
 
The first was the appearance on Channel 4 of live test cricket, and those who took the decision to outbid Sky must be very happy. I certainly am, because the test, which finished an hour or so ago with a victory for England, was a superb game from beginning to end.
 
Joe Root batted magnificently and captained well. Given India’s fightback on the last day of their final test against Australia, his decision not to enforce the follow-on was sensible and correct.
 
Of course, Root knew that he could rely on Anderson, and Anderson did what Anderson does. That first over, in which his reverse swing did for Gill and Rahane, was as good as any I have seen. And I saw Michael Holding.

​

​The day the test match began, I received my pre-ordered copy of Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera, and I read the opening chapters between overs. He has done his research on the attitudes and methods of British imperialism, and is not afraid to itemize some of the quite appalling actions carried out in pursuit of power and profit, necessary because, as he points out, this aspect of the Empire is not even mentioned, never mind taught in British schools.
 
But his sub-title is How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain. It’s more specific and personal than this, because the book is actually about how imperialism has shaped Sathnam Sanghera: he is open about his own experience growing up in Wolverhampton (Enoch Powell’s constituency), not knowing English until he attended school, but took a first in English at Cambridge and has forged a career in journalism and writer (not always the same thing).
 
He was working for the FT when I knew him, but is now with The Times and Sunday Times, so I seldom see his columns and features, restricting myself to his books (The Boy With The Top-Knot, Marriage Material and now Empireland) where I find myself in awe of his honesty and his prose.
 
Test cricket and a good book. Reasons to be cheerful, part 1.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Joan Osborne sang with the Dead, or at least the post-Jerry variants of the Dead, and I have long been an admirer. But have only just discovered that she also tackled Bob’s oeuvre. Today, I am playing a show from Charleston, WV in which she shows that she is one of the few who can bring something new to a Bob song. Her version of Spanish Harlem Incident is sublime. Reasons to be cheerful, part 2!

​You’re a headhunter. You are tasked by the Labour Party to recruit a “social listening and media organising manager” who will work in the office of the Leader of the Opposition. Where do you start and finish your search?
 
There are, of course, thousands of young socialists who are remarkably adept at social media. But you don’t want one of those. The brief is quite clear that socialists, especially those who may have expressed support for the Corbyn project, will not be considered. And the first job of the new “social listening” guru will probably be to root out these people from the party itself.
 
You glance at the social media consultants in the States, but they are all connected with Trump. Russia, the home of some of the hackers you most admire, is something of an issue for geo-political reasons.
 
And then, you have an epiphany. Israel!
 
Israel was a pioneer of electronic surveillance, manipulation and blackmail. It even had its own notorious specialist group dedicated to these cyber-warfare activities. Surely someone from Unit 8200 might be available, especially now that, under Starmer, Labour is turning its back on the cause of Palestinian rights.
 
“Hang about. This guy looks promising. He was an analyst and an officer in Unit 8200. Nearly five years in Israeli military intelligence spying on Palestinians is just the kind of experience we are looking for.”
 
“What’s his name?”
 
“Assaf Kaplan.”
 
“Is he socialist?”
 
“Oh no. He was running the Israeli Labour Party campaign when they got wiped out. Just six seats these days.”
 
“He sounds perfect. Let’s get him in.”
 
And get him in they did. He’s been in charge of social media surveillance since December last year. And he’s doing a good job, trawling through members’ tweets and Facebook posts to keep the party free from any socialist tendencies whilst removing any reference to his military experience from his LinkedIn profile.
 
Appropriately neither Kaplan nor Starmer will comment.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Rose Simpson is publishing a memoir. Based on interviews and extracts, Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden: A Girl's Life in the Incredible String Band is fascinating stuff and in preparation for its official publication, I am working my way through the ISB oeuvre and loving it.

“Now more than ever, people deserve principled leadership based on conviction, not party political calculation.”
 
We know from Angela Rayner that, under the new leadership, what is true is not acceptable: so it is probably no longer acceptable for a member of the Labour party to quote Caroline Lucas approvingly.
 
But I do so now on this New Year’s Eve, the day after the vote on the EU trade bill and the day before we enter 2021 as an insular nation at the whim of global events and Johnson’s right-wing idiocies.
 
Yesterday evening, I ranted on a local Labour forum about my disgust at the party’s response, which produced only a single vote against a policy which had the backing of merely 26.5% of the British population in 2016. (That vote was many things, but the one thing it clearly wasn’t is “the will of the people”.)
 
This morning, I am attempting to recollect that emotion in tranquillity; to enter 2021 with a degree of equanimity; to find positives in the midst of this plethora of angst-ridden negativity.
 
It is not easy. Yesterday, in the House of Commons, our representatives voted 521 to 73 in favour of a bill which – and I am quoting defiantly from Caroline Lucas again – “cuts British jobs, sidelines our services sector, undermines hard-won protections for the environment, workers’ rights and consumers, and turns Kent into a diesel-stained monument to hubris and political myopia”.
 
The principal sufferers from this hubris and myopia are, unfortunately, the principals of our two major parties. Both Johnson and Starmer have changed their minds frequently on this key issue, and not because the facts changed. Whenever it was politically expedient, the principals changed their principles. Whenever there was a chance to undermine their leaders and climb the greasy pole to leadership positions, they seized the opportunity. And they were ruthless in pursuing power: Johnson culling the liberal intelligentsia of the Tory party; Starmer expelling or suspending those who raised the mildest of objections to his authoritarianism.
 
Both claim to be curing divisions and putting an end to factionalism. But both are achieving this by enforcing the hegemony of their own factions and, in Starmer’s case, refusing the opportunity for members even to discuss his actions.
 
Yesterday showed that, in the parliamentary parties at least, there is no principled opposition left in either party. Under Starmer, Labour has failed to vote against a succession of bills: allowing surveillance, torture, Covid corruption and incompetence and Brexit. What is the point of a two-party system when both are at one? And at one not only with each other but with the media, the elite, the ruling class?
 
Starmer said, in a Johnsonian reference, that he now regards the Brexit issue as closed. Closed it may be, but there will be no closure.
 
He wants it to be so. He can stop us discussing it. He can suspend or expel those of us who do. But right now, on the eve of a new year outside Europe, in the middle of a pandemic, and with no confidence in our governance, I despair.
 
I do, however, wish everyone a happy new year. Good luck!

Today from the everysmith vaults: Perversely, on the sixth day of Christmas, I am listening to the St Matthew  Passion. 

​Rudi  Dutschke arrived in Cambridge in 1969, courtesy of Clare Hall, where he was to recuperate from injuries sustained in an assassination attempt and complete his dissertation on Georg Lukacs. He did not engage with the student politics of that time, although his meticulous reticence did not prevent Heath from deporting him from the UK for doing precisely that. But he did talk and speak, informally and discreetly, and it was from his talks that I was introduced to Gramsci and, more particularly, to Dutschke’s concept of the ‘long march through the institutions’.
 
People are re-reading Gramsci right now, not least because of his development of the notion of hegemony, arguing that the ruling class enforces its power not solely through economic and class coercion, but also through ‘ideological illusions’. And those who haven’t read or re-read Gramsci are attributing the phrase ‘long march through the institutions’ to Gramsci rather than Dutschke.
 
One person who clearly has read Gramsci is Dominic Cummings. And although he is no longer at the helm in Downing Street, he has already accomplished a rapid route march through the institution of No. 10 and beyond.
 
The Tory party itself was the first to be transformed, as Johnson expelled the majority of those with any intellect or compassion, leaving s with the likes of Hancock, Williamson and Patel in important offices of state.
 
Now, we have the EHRC, which has no black commissioners and has just appointed a man who boasts that even his children think he’s racist.
 
Then there is the BBC, where each new appointment nudges the prevailing culture further to the right. And the mainstream media, which is overwhelmingly in the hands of the ruling elite.
 
Perhaps most fundamentally, we have seen a series of sackings and forced resignations of senior civil servants.
 
That is quite an achievement for an administration – I use the word loosely – which took power exactly a year ago.
 
Richard Neville, the founder of the magazine Oz back in the ‘60s, said that  “There is but an inch between the positions of the Tory and Labour parties” he said, “but it is in that inch that the British people live”.
 
That inch expands and diminishes occasionally, as it did when Labour embraced the so-called Corbyn project. For a couple of years, it became a yawning chasm, prompting the neo-liberals to respond in terror with ad hominem attacks on Corbyn himself, Diane Abbot, John McDonnell et al.
 
But with the election of Starmer to the leadership, it is clear that the Labour Party is the next institution in line for the marchers.
 
The suspension of Corbyn, the sacking of Long-Bailey, the appointment of Evans, the prevention of any debate within the party, these are not individual acts of authoritarianism. They are part of a strategy.
 
The 57,000 or so members who have left since his election will not be missed  by the Starmer cabal. Indeed, their resignations will be welcomed. Each resignation reinforces the hegemony.
 
Richard Neville’s inch is now measured in millimetres, if at all.  And the position of it is significantly to the right.
 
But the divide within the party itself, between the leadership and the membership, is huge.


Today from the everysmith vaults: Not Bob's Christmas album, but a return - after a month-long hiatus - to Rough & Rowdy Ways. Still extraordinary.
 

The received wisdom is clear: disunited parties do not win elections. Which effectively rules out both our ‘major’ political movements. Both are undergoing a struggle for the ‘soul’ of their movements: not only the policies and ideologies, but also the emotional and cultural approaches to the development and communication of those policies. For many, this is more crucial and voteworthy than specific plans and programmes.
 
It is significant that Starmer is following the example of Johnson a year ago when he (Johnson) expelled the likes of Dominic Grieve, Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke. Subsequently, he enforced a compulsory commitment to his Brexit plans from every Tory candidate. Not one refused.
 
It would appear that Starmer is pursuing a similar course. He has sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey. He has introduced the politics of abstention. And he (or, as he has argued, his unelected General Secretary) has suspended Jeremy Corbyn.
 
What’s more, he (or, as he has argued, his unelected General Secretary) has forbidden Labour members to discuss these issues. And he (or, as he has argued, his unelected General Secretary) has suspended members and officials who have gone ahead and discussed the implications of his actions.
 
Further, peevishly, he has now withdrawn the whip from the newly reinstated former leader. And posted on Twitter a crass and lengthy thread which is ill-written, inaccurate and self-serving.
 
I cannot judge whether this attack on the left and campaign of self-aggrandisement has reached its climax. If not, it must be pretty close.
 
I am, however, unconvinced that his determination to purge the party of those who are not of his persuasion (you may think as I do that this is a form of the factionalism of which he accuses the left) has come to an end. Despite the huge numbers of resignations and the even greater numbers of subscription cancellations, there are still many of us remaining. And we will not go quietly.
 
He has a name which is revered in the party. (Had I had a son, he would have been called Keir also.) He was a human rights lawyer. He was elected on a series of pledges, all of which have been forgotten or contradicted since the election itself.
 
It is clear that his agenda is and has been to take back control of the Labour party.

His machinations during the General Election campaign leave no doubt that his plan was to undermine the party and its leader and seize the opportunity. And it came to fruition.
 
As leader, he has abstained a great deal and whipped his MPs to do the same. He has, in his words, exercised supportive opposition. Only after months when the conversation amongst members centred on the growing evidence of cronyism and corruption has he mentioned it in Parliament.
 
His actions, rather than his words, have been exclusively against the left. Just as Johnson’s were against the Remainer Tories.
 
But the events of last weekend have shown that Johnson has seen the error of this approach. Cummings is going. Cain is no longer enabled. The spin is now of a new, more mellow leadership from Johnson, a new, more compassionate conservatism. Yeh, right!
 
Perhaps Johnson or Carrie sense that, despite the propaganda of the mainstream press, the Cummings strategy is fatally flawed in the long term. You cannot govern when your party is “like rats in a sack”.
 
And Starmer should watch, listen and learn. Because Labour is not his party. It is ours.

Today from the everysmith vaults: ​A friend sends me a link to a magazine article which lists the  best Ry Cooder albums in order of merit. I didn't agree with any of the placings. But it did remind me of one album which was placed somewhere in the mid-30s out of 50. The soundtrack to Performance, with jagger and Anita Pallenberg, directed by Nick Roeg. I had not listened for decades, but I should have done.

“We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document; the radicalism and the hope that inspired across the country was real.” These are my thoughts exactly; but they are not my words. The words are Keir Starmer’s, during his leadership campaign, and he went on to commit himself and the Labour Party to ten pledges. These included raising taxes on big business and the rich, increasing public investment and public ownership, scrapping tuition fees, abolishing and replacing Universal Credit, and defending the rights of migrants.
 
I was passionately involved in the events which Owen Jones describes in his new book, This Land: The Story of a Movement. But it turns out I didn’t know the half of it.
 
I knew, of course, of the McNichol groupuscule and its determination to undermine the new leadership at any cost. I knew that Mandelson had claimed that each day was an opportunity to bring down Corbyn. And I knew of the chicken coup, the machinations of Tom Watson, the claims of anti-semitism, the frustrating policy changes over Brexit.
 
What I didn’t realize was what a contrary old bugger was Corbyn himself. What made him an inspirational leader made him a shit CEO.
 
Owen tells of his sulking fits, his refusal to speak to McDonnell for weeks, his tardiness, his dislike of conflict, is going AWOL for hours and days.
 
And he also tells us of the incompetence of his hand-picked staff.
 
One of the key criticisms we make of Johnson and Gove is that their background as newspaper columnists makes them ill-equipped to run a country. There is a great divide between banging out a thousand words once a week and mastering the detail required to conceive and implement policy. The latter matters.
 
Owen of course is also a newspaper columnist, and in my judgement, a good one. He writes well and fluently in his columns, on Twitter and in this book. But he knows his limitations. He rejected a role in the inner circle.
 
Seamus Milne, the so-called posh-boy Stalinist, did not. He accepted with alacrity. And although he and Owen were both Guardian contributors, it is clear that Owen made the right choice and Milne the wrong one. Milne was more than capable of over-ruling the decisions of others, but barely able to make one himself.
 
He was, however, responsible for Labour’s strapline in 2017. “For the many, not the few” was not a new phrase by any means – it goes back to at least to Shelley - but it resonated as strongly as “Take back control” and “Get Brexit done”.
 
Newspaper people should stick to the knitting. And the essence of leadership is to surround oneself with people with specific and complementary skills. One such is John McDonnell who emerges from this story, unsurprisingly, as one of the few grown-ups in the room. He had – he has - the experience and expertise, the total commitment and work ethic to run an economy and a leader’s office.
 
Which makes reading of Corbyn’s sulky disagreement with him all the more difficult to take. And it is not made easier by Owen’s final chapter, entitled “The centre cannot hold”.
 
It is, as Owen says, important that we learn the lessons of the last five years, that Labour integrates its radicalism with organisation and competence. I suspect that those who voted for Starmer had something like this in their minds as they did so.
 
So far, I have seen and heard very little competence and no radicalism at all.
 
Let’s hope I am wrong.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: A lovely studio session from Mike Bloomfield and Janis Joplin. Not sure where I got this. It’s marked Unknown Studio, San Francisco, December 1969. But it’s brilliant. Listen to Janis singing Had To Get Out Of Texas. So glad she did.

Robert Peston thinks he knows everything. He thinks he knows what our leaders are thinking, usually because ‘a source’ has told him. He never tells us the identity of these sources of course, but we are assured that it is true. After PMQs, he reported as follows: “A saddened Boris Johnson urges Starmer to return to ‘more of the spirit of togetherness we saw yesterday’. A moment of great pathos.” (My italics.)
 
My friend Simon Garrett was quick to point out that he means bathos.
 
Johnson, “a revered classicist”, would have corrected him immediately. Pathos, from the Greek for suffering, is a quality which evokes pity; bathos, from the Greek for depth, is a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous.
 
My point is not that of a pedant. It is that of a political activist.
 
What Peston was reporting and what his words reinforced is a new narrative which is emanating from this government.
 
According to this narrative and these sources, Johnson is a hard-working prime minister who is working day and night to fight this virus. He should be supported all the way by a responsible opposition in an informal parliament of national unity. Instead, Starmer is constantly carping, cavilling and criticizing. He is undermining the heroic struggle of Johnson and Cummins and thus the national effort to overcome Covid in the UK.
 
The ebullient Churchillian prime minister is gone. He’s a victim. We should feel sorry for him.
 
I don’t. But nor will you hear from me stuff about him lying in a bed of his own making, although he is.
 
The problem is that the whole country is in the same bed that was (un)made by Johnson and Cummins. We are all in this together.
 
Unless you are Johnson and Cummins. Unless you are one of their cronies. Unless you are Serco or a Russian oligarch or Green or Dyson.
 
Of course, Starmer has barely been critical at all. All these shenanigans rate hardly a mention in his speeches or questioning. A new leadership would appear to be no leadership at all. There are no policies being announced. There are no debates or discussions within the party. In fact, the party is not allowed to discuss anything of any import.
 
I acknowledge that Starmer is smarter than Johnson. (I have only just realized this is an anagram.) But right now, and despite protestations on both sides to the contrary, the differences are minor if they exist at all.
 
“Strange all this Difference should be
‘Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!”

Today from the everysmith vaults: ​I gave up both whiskey and whisky more than thirty years ago and have eschewed them ever since. But that hasn't stopped me listening (on my smart toaster) to the new Theme Time Radio Hour from Bob Dylan. Two hours of banter and music about whiskey/whisky. 

You know you’re getting old when you count up the number of Tory prime ministers who have held sway during your lifetime: in my case, it is Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Cameron, May, and now Johnson. Ten of them. And I had no ideological connection with any of them. I loathed them all. The prime of my life has been under the aegis of Tory prime ministers.
 
But with Johnson, it is fundamentally different. Churchill was a racist and imperialist. Eden, despite being MP for my own constituency, was a wuss. Macmillan, an avowedly one-nation-Tory, was a manipulator, only one-nation while it served his purposes. Heath was out of his depth. Thatcher did not even believe in society. Major was thrown in at the deep end and could never get out. Cameron was a chancer. May was the architect of the hostile environment and a church-goer.
 
But Johnson? He makes you yearn for the old days.
 
The days when Churchill claimed that mustard gas was permissible against “inferior races”; when Eden invaded Egypt; when Macmillan “laid down his friends for his life”; when Douglas-Hume did – well, what did he do?
 
When Heath took on the unions with the 3-day week; when Major did fuck-all; when Cameron introduced austerity and called the EU referendum; when May presided over the Windrush scandal and universal credit.
 
Ah! Those were the days.
 
No thinking person could have any ideological empathy with any of these people who seem to rise inexorably to the top of the Tory party. But my loathing for Johnson is not based on ideology. Or at least not exclusively or even primarily.
 
It is the result of his corruption, incompetence and cronyism, his lying and his selfishness, his ego and vanity.
 
He is not solely a bad prime minister. He is a seriously unpleasant human being. He is a spoilt brat who has been handed everything he wanted until, suddenly and without warning, he was called on to take responsibility.
 
He was responsible for the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. But not responsible for it. It was the EU.
 
He was responsible for playing down the Covid crisis, claiming that this was an opportunity which Britain would be “brave’ enough to exploit. But this was because he was misled by “the science”.
 
He was responsible for God knows how many children. But they are not his responsibility.
 
He was responsible for a frightening alliance with Putin and the Russian funding oligarchs. But that was Labour.
 
He was responsible for some of the most outrageously racist writing I have ever read. But not his responsibility: it was taken out of context.
 
I could go on. And given half a chance, I will. But right now, the evidence is too much. Even the BBC is beginning to recognise the signs.
 
This man must go. And so should this shambles of a cabinet.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: In these physically distanced times, tickets for strong quartet concerts are at a premium. But I have managed to acquire one for the Carducci performing Beethoven Opus 95 and Shostakovich String Quartet #9. I have been listening to the Amadeus recording of the former and the Kodaly version of the latter in preparation for an evening in the Holy Trinity Church, where I am not a regular worshipper.