I’ve recently become involved in a considerate and considered discussion on my local Labour forum. That in itself is noteworthy; not that I was involved - that’s pretty much par for the course, but that the posts were, without exception, courteous and thoughtful. The theme of the thread was the leadership of the Labour Party.​

It’s no secret that whenever two or three members of the party meet, the conversation will turn to the leadership situation and they will all have different views on Starmer and his successor. But this is not merely an issue for Labour. It is vital for everyone.

That is why the Survation poll in The Observer on Sunday, which showed that Johnson is considered to be a better choice of prime minister than Starmer, is so concerning. Especially as the  poll came shortly after Johnson was booed by the attending Royalists at the Jubilee celebrations and, a few moments later, Starmer was - well, ignored. Barely recognised.

And then came this. The word cloud. Which words would you use to describe Sir Keir Starmer? The larger the type, the more frequently the word was used.

Boring. Bland. Untrustworthy. Useless. Weak. Dull. Unknown.

Of the most prominent descriptions, only honest figures. With which I disagree, having on my noticeboard the 10 Pledges which he published in his leadership campaign and subsequently repudiated.

So if not Starmer, to whom does the party turn?

Andy Burnham has shown, as Mayor of Greater Manchester, that, released from the Westminster bubble, he can fight for the people. But he is longer an MP.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow Chancellor, would move Labour substantially to the right of the Tories.

Lisa Nandy ditto.

Ed Miliband has rediscovered his wit and anger in recent months, but he has had his chance.

Angela Rayner confuses me. She is clearly positioning herself for the leadership but her policy U-turns and vicious attacks on the left (especially the Jewish left) are not likely to convince me or the membership.

My choice, for the moment, is Emily Thornberry. I have met Emily. She he is bright, committed, has a sense of humour, hard-working and has a great relationship with Matt Western, our MP, who deserves promotion and needs it to make an even greater impact.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The Jacques Loussier Trio Plays Debussy, recommended by Doctor Dark last week, has now arrived and lives up to its pre-publicity. I’ve played it a great deal in the last few days, with an end-of-the-day glass of wine in the garden, alternating with Les Nuits d’Eté sung by the wondrous Frederica von Stadt. Summer is icumen in.

On the 17th of May 1649, three leading Levellers - Private John Church, Corporal Perkins, and Cornet James Thompson - were executed by firing squad in the churchyard at Burford. This event, which achieved its objective of diminishing and almost eliminating Leveller influence within the New Model Army, is commemorated each year in the town

This year, for the first time since the pandemic, it reverted to a live demonstration in defence of democracy and the right to protest. Speakers included the Reverend Canon Professor Mark Chapman, Ann Hughes - whose study of the Civil War in my county of Warwickshire is seminal, John Rees author of the definitive The Leveller Revolution, Richard Burgon MP and, loudest of all, Attila the Stockbroker.

The attendance - a few hundred - did not match some previous, pre-pandemic, years but it was representative of almost every strand of socialist thought - from communists and clerics to academics and activists, from Greens to Labour, from trades unionists and the International Brigades Trust to a plethora of maverick radicals like me.

This demographic and political diversity is appropriate. The Levellers were equally diverse. Those who wore the sea-green colours came from many social classes and espoused many political aspirations. The Diggers originally called themselves The True Levellers. And Henry Denne, in 1649, wrote that “We were an heterogeneal body, consisting of parts very diverse from one another, settled upon principles inconsistent with one another.”

But they united in the common cause.

Today, few of us can argue with any of the demands outlined in the Agreement of the People. And nor did those who organised around it in The Saracen’s Head.

They may have had different emphases, disagreements over detail, more ambitious objectives for the long-term. But in their debates, no-one accused another of factionalism. Such accusations were the tactics of those who would be prominent in the counter-revolution, the Grandees, and the most prominent of their actions is surely the Cromwell’s order and the executions at Burford.

Which is why Levellers’ Day is important. At Burford, on the Saturday nearest to the 17th of May, the broad left can put aside differences and show solidarity not merely with the three martyrs but the commitment of hundreds of thousands of people of all persuasions to the greater good.

We can learn from them.

And if I have one key take-away from the day, it is this from Richard Burgon MP:

“The Tories know what they are doing” he said. “We must be as class conscious as they are.”

Today from the everysmith vaults: I used to love Jacques Loussier’s transcriptions of Bach but seldom play them any more. But I have recently discovered that he has given Erik Satie the same treatment. Playing now are the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Exquisite.

“History doesn’t repeat itself; but it often rhymes.” This take on Marx’s famous dictum, in 18 Brumaire, that history repeats itself - the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce - is widely attributed to Mark Twain, although it was in fact coined by the psychoanalyst Theodor Reik. Both the Marx and Reik quotes occurred to me yesterday, appropriately May Day.

I was listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast. After nine of them, including the English, the American, the French, the Haitian, the July, the 1848, the Commune, and the Mexican revolutions, Mike finally arrived at the Russian Revolution back in May 2019 and is still going strong.

I am always a few episodes behind, so I was listening to #10.94 which was concerned, inter alia, with the 10th Party Congress in 1921 and, in particular, the response of Lenin and Trotsky to the criticism by the Workers’ Opposition and the Democratic Centralists of the Communist Party leadership.

Their response was to accuse the critical organisations of factionalism. Apologies to you Trots out there, but Trotsky was the strongest and most vicious in his condemnation of the WO demands: How could the party which was “the political manifestation of the industrial proletariat” betray the industrial proletariat? To claim this, was to deny both the vanguard role of the party and, thus, the revolution itself.

Of course, in its criticism of the top-down hegemony of party bureaucrats, it was doing no such thing. But Lenin (and Trotsky) were more concerned by the fact that the opposition was organised. The party had already taken over the unions, on the basis that the workers needed no protection from an employer which was their own state. Now, by banning factions, it was extending this theoretical concept to anyone with concerns or criticisms of the party. Especially if they expressed them in meetings or published them in newspapers and periodicals.

But ban them they did. No manifestations of factionalism of any sort would be tolerated, and failure to comply with this resolution “is to entail unconditional and immediate expulsion from the party”. And the power to define factionalism and expel members?

The Central Committee.

This resolution, On Party Unity, is crucial to the future of the party and the country. Because one man, Stalin, saw the opportunity to dictate what was right, what was wrong, who was in and who was out. And if you didn’t like it, you were guilty of factionalism and expelled.

I’m writing this on May Day, less than a month since a Jewish comrade and friend in my constituency was expelled from the Labour Party for anti-semitism.

I’m cautious about drawing precise parallels. But are you concerned about the denial of free speech within the party and the diktats of Starmer and Evans? Do the recent and continuing purges in the Labour Party, aimed primarily at left-wing Jews and socialists, ring a bell?

If it does, then the bell tolls for thee.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The John Adams Violin Concerto. A recent discovery which is haunting me day and night. The recording I have is by Leila Josefowicz and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson. I’ll be checking out others in the weeks to come.

“Congratulations Boris. You have managed to smuggle TWO truths past the team.” The parallels between David Mitchell’s The Unbelievable Truth on Radio 4 and PMQs become clearer with each week that passes.

If you are not familiar with the programme, the idea is that contestants deliver a short essay on a given topic, the majority of which will be false but which will include random truths to be identified.

So, for example, the topic might be the Patel policy of exporting asylum seekers to Rwanda for ‘processing’. It’s a policy which has drawn criticism from labour, Lib Dems, SNP and the Church of England.

None of these organisations, however, has pointed out that Johnson was right, at least in this: that the originator of this policy was not Patel but David Blanket, the Labour Home Secretary under Tony Blair. Blanket described this policy, at the turn of the millennium, as “a 21st century innovation” to solve the “problem” of immigration.

(Johnson went on to describe Starmer as a “Corbynista in a smart Islington suit”. This may not be true now, but it was certainly true when Starmer stood for the Labour leadership. He stood on a programme which adopted the 2019 manifesto but which promised that, with his haircut and tailoring, he was more electable.)

The issue here is Labour’s complicity in the creation of an anti-immigration stance, the “hostile environment” which has empowered Patel and Johnson to put this vile and immoral strategy into practice.

I raise it not merely because I am ashamed and embarrassed by the current Labour party. I raise it because I am ashamed and embarrassed by the state of our politics in general. The government is a shambles of corruption. The opposition is fighting its own activists with more resources and vitriol than it does the government.

Which leaves us where, exactly?

We are nowhere. Nothing shall come of nothing. We are under the hegemony of a political elite which includes both “major” parties, plus the press, plus the broadcasters, plus the church, plus the global oligarchs and financial markets.

I shall work for my local MP - an honourable exception to the above - at the next election. And I will almost certainly continue to howl against the dying of the light in this blog.

But I warn you: It’s not dark yet. But it’s getting there.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Shostakovich of course - the magnificent 10th symphony performed by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

We all know that, in the political world, enquiries are not launched to discover the truth; rather, the intention is to kick the can of worms down the street. Hence, for example, the lack of surprise - even lack of interest - at the recent ‘findings’ of Lord Geidt after two separate investigations. And hence the quite extraordinary delay in the completion and publication of the Forde Report into Labour shenanigans, the deadline for which passed over two years ago now.

So what can we expect from the investigation currently being undertaken by Sue Gray, a civil servant and employee of Johnson, into Johnson and his serial partying during lockdown?

Frankly, very little. For two reasons.

Firstly because the investigation was commissioned and launched in order to allow Johnson to prevaricate in parliament. We must wait for the findings he proclaims whenever a pertinent question is asked.

This is of course standard practice for all politicians and one factor in the lack of trust which would appear to be shared by the majority of the electorate.

But it is the second reason which is fundamental to our expectations, and it is essentially about marking their own homework.

Sue Gray is not independent. She is a career civil servant. She has no power to sanction anyone. Her role is tightly defined and it is to lay out the facts.

This should not take long. After all, the facts are already in the public domain and have not been denied. Indeed, Johnson has already confirmed that he attended the party on 20 May 2020. (He also spluttered that he thought it was a ‘works do’, which tells you something about his definition of work but ignorance of the law is no defence.)

No schedule has been established for this inquiry. It will take as long as it takes. And if it does its job, Johnson will not be in a hurry to draw a line under the whole sorry episode. Or episodes.

She will not be helped by the fact that staffers at No 10 have been instructed to clean up their phones (an activity with which Ms Gray is frighteningly familiar), and you can bet that Johnson’s diary will be packed with excuses for being unavailable for interview.

This shouldn’t matter. Ms Gray works in No. 10. She knows what’s going on. She is a member of the elite, part and parcel of the cabal. And the more I hear Tory MPs telling us that she is the best person for the job, the more I distrust both her and the process.

But let’s assume that her laying out out of the facts is accurate, timely and damning. Then what?

Ask Priti Patel. The person who will have to act on the findings will be Boris Johnson. And as with Patel’s bullying, he will decide to move on.

Nothing to see here. No action taken.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The death of Bernard Haitink is very sad news indeed. As he said, he suggested rather than instructed. Delving into the vault I am amazed at how many of my favourite recordings were performed under his baton. Today, it is A Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams, with The London Philharmonic and the wondrous Felicity Lott.

PS Just as I was about to press the post button, news of yet another party at Downing Street emerges. I worked in advertising agencies in the '70s, where and when to say that a drinking culture prevailed would be an understatement. But we never had this many parties.

If anyone mentions 9/11 to me, the television images flood back. The tanks in the streets, the thousands confined in football stadiums, the bombing of the Presidential palace, the torture and murders, the burning of books, the death of Allende.

No, this 9/11 is not the attack on the twin towers. This 9/11 was in 1973 in Chile when Pinochet and the CIA launched a coup d’etat against the democratically elected presidency of Salvador Allende and for nearly twenty years imposed a vicious programme of neoliberalism.

Essentially, the Pinochet regime turned Chile into a laboratory for experimenting with the ideas of Friedrich Hayek. Hayek was primarily an economist, but his economic liberalism forced him into political philosophy. As thousands of trade unionists and leftists were tortured and murdered, Hayek was writing to The Times to defend the coup.

“I have not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet that it had been under Allende” he wrote.

He should have got out more. But his small circle was convinced that democracy was an irrelevance. The free market, he wrote, is ‘indispensable for individual freedom … the ballot box is not.’ Small though the circle was and is, this conviction was and is powerful and influential.

Hayek and Pinochet were, of course, both friends of Thatcher, who carried a Hayek manual in her famous handbag. Hayek wrote to her complaining of the slow progress of neoliberalism in the UK, comparing it with the ‘achievements’ in a short space of time in Chile.

We are nearly half a century on and neoliberalism is still hegemonic, although the term itself is not. Its adherents are in denial. Although I have never heard Sunak use the term in public, he is on record as stating that he emphatically favours Hayek over Keynes. And of there is the odious Nick Cohen in a column published in The Observer on the Sunday before the second round of polling in Chile, claiming that not Blair, not Cameron, not even Thatcher herself, were neoliberals.

In his victory speech, Gabriel Boric told us that ‘If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave’.

I profoundly hope so. For Chile, Latin America, and the rest of the world.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I have been revisiting the Airplane and subsequently the Starship. I think the prompt was a proposed live performance of Blows Against the Empire, which is where I started this morning. The mono version of Surrealistic Pillow followed, then Crown of Creation, and right now the final Airplane show at Winterland in August 1972. Love anything with Papa john Creach.

I have yet to meet anyone who lives within the borders of Warwick District Council and also supports the proposed merger with Stratford in order to create a super-authority across South Warwickshire. I assume such people do exist, because WDC has, this week, voted in favour and our future is now in the hands of Head Leveller-Up, Michael Gove, who will doubtless make his decision on the basis of political expediency.

It is a bizarre but not unprecedented issue. The “majority” for the proposal consists of Deloittes and the Conservative councillors on the Warwick and Stratford District Councils.

But the recent consultation demonstrated that there is a real majority against.

Residents are clearly against. Our MP is against. The Labour membership is against. The Greens are against. Parish councils, including mine, are against. Even four Tories are against. And of course I am against.

I scanned the record to see how my Labour councillors voted. Were they for or against?

Neither.

They abstained.

Given the opposition to the proposal throughout the constituency and, in particular, the call by Matt Western for a local referendum, you might think that this was a strange decision. How can the Labour Party not have an opinion on a proposal which will diminish local democracy significantly?

True, it would not have changed the decision, but it does demonstrate to voters where the Labour party stands. Or rather, sits. Which of course is firmly and uncomfortably on the fence.

I have read the rationale from the Labour leader on the WDC. Announcing that he has been led “to a position of abstention”, he stated that:

“I and my group … will want to take part in discussions about the devolution of powers, assets and decisions to towns and parishes. And above all, we will want to ensure that residents’ and other stakeholders’ voices are heard and heeded whether we continue to explore the merger proposed, service integration and transformation, or some other form of political geography.”

Well, yes. But by abstaining in this crucial vote, Labour has snubbed its MP, reneged on its responsibility, and handed the leadership of the opposition to the Greens.

Having sat on our hands during a key democratic vote, I suspect it may be difficult to regain a role “at the centre of the debates about protecting residents”.
​

Today from the everysmith vaults: Ignoring the call of Bob’s Christmas In The Heart, and indeed almost anything that hints of Christmas, I am listening to Shostakovich, the Jazz Suites. Thanks to Georgia Mann of Radio 3’s Essential Classics for reminding me of them.

I had my data stolen a month ago. I had not given any information to the company from which it was stolen, a so-called ‘third party’, and I don’t even know who the third party is. Nor do I know the extent of the theft, except that it is ‘significant’ and serious enough to involve the National Crime Agency (NCA), National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Which sounds pretty serious to me.

If you are one of the (hundreds of) thousands who received the email from the Labour Party about this ‘incident’, and asked to keep it ‘confidential’, you are not necessarily a member of the Labour Party. You could have resigned, been suspended or expelled. Or - and this is very concerning - you could never have been a member of the party at all.

The fact is your data was stolen because the Labour Party was holding it; not only holding it but also sharing it with ‘third parties’. (I use the plural here because the email referred not to the the third party but a third party, from which I infer that there are more than one.)

It would appear that Labour is in clear breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a breach which could justify compensation.

The issue, and this is why the chances of us ever hearing the full story are minimal, is not the breach itself but Labour’s privacy policies. Actually, not the policies but a succession of actions which do not accord with the policy statement. The ICO has already found against Labour innumerable times for its actions or lack of them, notably for its failures to respond to SARs requests. (SARs are Subject Access Requests which, under GDPR Article 15, makes it compulsory for an organisation to reveal the data it holds on an individual.)

It is, I regret to conclude, yet another example of the contempt with which David Evans et al treat the membership at large. We know that the database is used primarily to troll and monitor the activities of members. We even have an ex-Israeli intelligence agent in charge of this.

The email promised to update us. Don’t hold your breath. Like the Forde Report, the issues have been kicked into touch because,  I suspect, behind the hacking ‘incident’ is a plethora of illegalities and witch-hunting which, I am afraid, is the modus operandi of the current secretariat.

Today from the everysmith vaults: As Bob moves from town to town on the current leg of the never ending tour, I am grateful for the recordings that our American bobcats and Dylanologists are sharing with the rest of us, especially the remastered shows from Bennyboy. I'm currently loving Bloomington.

I am writing this on ‘short rest’. A wild card game against the Yankees followed by a fantastic and ultimately successful series against the Rays have conspired to deprive me of sleep and contribute major stress to my extended waking hours. But the Sox are now champions of the ALE and there are two sleeps available before the first of the ALCS against either the White Sox or the Astros. There is a sense in this solitary part of the Red Sox Nation that the Sox are on a roll.

Being a Sox fan in Europe means long nights. Games mostly start after midnight, and even the game 3 afternoon start at Fenway (9pm BST) went to extra innings and continued into the early hours. But during the day and early evening, normal life continues and has its own highlights.

One such took place last Friday, the anniversary of my father’s death. After 18 months or so, the International String Quartet series returned to Leamington, featuring the Sacconi Quartet. I had missed their previous performance at the Pump Rooms, a decade ago, so was keen to be right upfront for their return. In a heavily and professionally Covid-proofed auditorium, I managed to reserve Seat B1.

In fact, the attraction was not solely the Sacconi, nor even the return of live chamber music to my neck of the woods; it was the programme.

The Sacconi were to play (after the obligatory Haydn warm-up) the eighth of Shostakovich’s quartets and to devote the second half of the concert to the String Quartet In C# minor, Opus 131 by Beethoven.

The latter has been one of my favourite pieces of music. I have a dozen or more versions of it at home and one of them will doubtless figure in my list of Desert Island Discs. The Sacconi did it more than justice: they are are a powerful, muscular band and they brought out the grandeur of the fugue, the joy (in the Allegro) and passion throughout, whilst addressing the delicacy and profundity of the Adagio. It is a heavy responsibility to play this masterwork. The Sacconi took it on and triumphed.

But by then, we knew they would. We had already heard the Shostakovich 8th, his 1960 response to a visit to a bombed-out Dresden.

I mentioned that it was the anniversary of my father’s death because he was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the war. And a distinguished one, with a DFC and AFC to prove the point.

I do not know whether he was involved in those controversial raids in mid-February 1945, during which the city was systematically destroyed and more than 30,000 civilians are believed to have died. (Some estimates place it over 200,000.) At this stage of the war, the only ‘civilians’ would have been the elderly and sick, women and children.

It has been described as a war crime, principally by those of my political persuasion. But it is significant that Churchill, in his massive 6 volume history of the war, makes no mention of the Dresden destruction.

As I say, I have no idea if my father was one of those involved. He never spoke of it, but then he never spoke of any of his wartime experiences.

But I know enough of him to know that he would have listened to the Shostakovich quartet and, as did Shostakovich himself when it was played to him by the Borodin, “buried his head in his hands and wept”.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Away from performances and mlb.tv, I am listening to English music. Warlock, Delius, Elgar and - currently - Vaughan Williams. It's A Sea Symphony​ playing right now. 

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.