Baron Lebedev of Hampton (in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames) and Siberia (in the Russian Federation) is engaging in a war of (so far) words with my MP. I’m on the side of my MP, Matt Western (of Warwick and Leamington) who is the underdog in this fight - not least because he is not the son of an oligarch KGB agent, nor does he own a number of major news outlets, and nor is he a friend of Boris Johnson.

Lebedev is all these things, of course. But his prominent role in British government has not been widely acknowledged. Nor has it been investigated to any significant degree by those who claim to speak truth to power.

Identifying truth was the purpose of Matt Western’s question to the prime minister back in March. He asked Boris Johnson about his attendance at a lavish party thrown by Evgeny Lebedev and the concerns reportedly expressed by MI6.

In the Commons, his question was answered (or rather not answered) with characteristic Johnsonian bluster. The real response came the following day when the Speaker received complaints about the question from both Johnson and Lebedev. Matt was called before the Speaker. Subsequently, he received a text from Lebedev.

Now you may think that this is a storm in a tea cup, or - as Johnson put it in a culinary illiterate metaphor - ‘not a crouton of substance in a minestrone of nonsense’.

In fact, it is neither. It is more serious than the party culture in Downing Street, the wallpaper stuff, the instinctive, gut-reaction untruths for which Johnson will be remembered. Nor is it merely cronyism and corruption.

It is about the security of the country.

When a psychologically disturbed man is being charged with treason for breaking into Buckingham palace, it is appropriate to consider the potentially treasonous activities of a more prominent psychologically disturbed man who happens to be prime minister but managed to evade his minders to make a solo visit to a castle in Italy.

For months, Johnson had refused to answer questions about the trip. But, eventually, in July this year, he ‘fessed up. Yes, he “probably” did attend the occasion. But “as far as I am aware, no government business was discussed”.

Did he he report the meeting to Foreign Office officials? “I think I did mention it, yes.”

So why the concerted complaints to the Speaker after Matt Western’s question?

He has “probably” got something to hide. But he hasn’t yet mentioned it. Yet.

Keep going, Matt.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Sollima LB Files  - another great recommendation from Georgia Mann on Radio 3.

 
It’s not only holiday-makers who are suffering from the recent discharges of effluent. Remember when Rees-Mogg claimed that fish were ‘better and happier now they are British”? I wonder how they are feeling now, as they swim in waters which are full of shit.

There was a Twitter shit storm over the weekend, and it continues today. My feed was taken over by pictures of Tory MPs, each of whom had voted to allow the discharge of effluent into our waterways, posted by constituents. I devoted an hour or so to re-tweeting these name-and-shame posts, particularly those who had posed for their portrait in front of beautiful beaches or river banks which contribute significantly to the economy of their constituencies.

Just two weeks before Britain hosted COP26, the environment summit, the Lords - bless them - proposed an amendment to the Environment Bill which would have placed legal restraints on the discharge of effluent. But back in the Commons, 265 Tories voted against.

Few of them had any specific reason for their vote. They were merely lobby fodder. They had been whipped to vote the way they did, and they are still keeping quiet about their vote.

But some knew what they were doing. When questioned, they justified their action in a number of ways.

Some, including Maria Caulfield, claimed that the amendment called for “an immediate end to sewage outflows” which would have “led to sewage leaking into people’s homes”.

The majority talked about the cost, which is too much for the hard-pressed water companies. There is some truth in this. Water companies have already been forced to pay out billions to investors and millions each year to their CEOs.

But that was then. Now, when the predictions of those who supported the amendment have proved frighteningly and disgustingly accurate, some are taking to Twitter to claim that the actions of water companies are “appalling”. As someone on my Twitter feed pointed out, if you are a member of the face-eating weasel party, you can’t complain when face-eating weasels do what they do.

What is appalling is that the actions of the water companies were enabled by a Government majority. What is appalling is that we no longer have the protection of the EU regulations.

The Twitter storm had an effect. Those named-and-shamed are apparently asking Tory HQ how they can defend themselves. And on the opposite side, the Labour front bench has so far made no official statement. Thirty odd Labour MPs abstained on the night, and although abstention has become commonplace from Labour, they must have had some reason for letting the Tories and the water companies off the hook.

Who knows what that might be?

Today from the everysmith vaults: Yesterday’s Radio 4 programme, How to Play, featured Marin Alsop and Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. So that’s what’s playin’ today.

If you place a government in a sealed box - let's call it the UK - together with something that could kill it - let's call it the unions - you would not know if the government was dead or alive until the UK was opened. Until that happens, one could say that the government was both dead and alive.

Johnson is allegedly on holiday in Slovenia, where he arrived from a round of parties at Chequers. Zahawi, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is also on holiday. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has disappeared off the face of the tabloids. Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister, is at the time of writing in Thames Ditton. Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, is engaged full-time in her spat with Rishi Sunak. Oh, and the Leader of the Opposition is also on holiday.

There is clearly nothing for them to do at the moment. There is of course a cost of living crisis, which is casting millions into fuel and fuel poverty and which is forecast to get worse and worse in the coming months. But that can wait until September. Or maybe October or November.

So too can the climate emergency.

So too can the parlous state of the NHS.

So too can education, the housing crisis, the problems for trade in the aftermath of Brexit.

None of these, in the view of the governing and opposition parties, require immediate attention.

We used to call this the 'silly season'. Nothing happens, so newspaper headlines focus on frivolous inanities, the less serious stories.

The problem this year is that we have a succession of issues which are very serious indeed, which are profoundly important and fundamental to all of us.

Is the government alive to them? They are certainly dead to me.


Today from the everysmith vaults: TS Eliot once said (admitted? confessed?) that The Waste Land was "just a piece of rhythmical grumbling". Hearing his reading of it, I was inclined to agree. But to 'celebrate' the centenary of the poem, Drama on 3 put out He Do The Waste Land in Different Voices, a reading which while faithful to the text, shows us the different characters and different voices of what is not merely a poem but the first radio play. Quite brilliant.

It’s taken two years or more, but it’s now available: all 138 pages of it. And unlike the majority of journalists (or the majority of those who have commented on it), I have now read it all. Someone had to do it. Despite the occasional prevarications and the lack of co-operation from many of those in the Senior Management Team, especially those who were paid off by Starmer, the Forde Inquiry is pretty clear that what happened inside the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019 was undemocratic, racist, misogynist, factional, and - frankly - very scary. We are living with the consequences to this day.

Within minutes of the announcement of his inquiry, Forde tells us, he was inundated with emails from those mentioned in the leaked report and their lawyers threatening “legal action if we examined data referred to in it”. It, of course, is the leaked report, to which Forde ascribes initial capitals, Leaked Report, but its full title is The Work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in Relation to Antisemitism 2014-2019. It is this report and its leaking which prompted the Forde Inquiry.

Many of those mentioned in the Leaked Report were less than cooperative:

Some crucial staff members had moved on, and we had no powers of compulsion; and others had sought legal advice as well as having provided statements to two other enquiries. … Some promised further documents, which were never supplied; some were accompanied by lawyers. It was concerningly difficult to gather vital minutes of meetings and to understand the rationale for decisions. Key documents were unavailable; others were not supplied and details of of meetings were not recorded.

They were, however, able to make their own submission to the EHRC. And they were also, of course, minded to contribute to the now infamous Panorama programme, Is Labour Antisemitic?.

The main narrative of the programme was that Corbyn’s office lined up to involve themselves in a number of disciplinary processes. Selected (and selective) quotes from emails were used to back up the staff members’ accounts. It was damning and convincing. But as the Forde Report makes clear, the emails were edited to reverse their meanings, and the only contributions from LOTO were by invitation - “insistent” invitation from HQ staffers. There is no evidence of any attempt by LOTO’s office to “interfere unbidden in the disciplinary processes in order to undermine the Party’s response to allegations of antisemitism”.

In other words, the programme was bullshit.

Which did not prevent Ofcom rejecting 28 detailed complaints. But which probably explains the recent withdrawal of John Ware’s libel suit against Jeremy.

But it is evidence of the ‘group-think’ which prevailed in the political and media elites.

They refused to publish the fact that HQ staff based in Ergon House secretly transferred funds in support of right wing MPs. Forde says they did and it was “wrong”.

They failed to report the evidence of misogyny, racism and sexism within the HQ senior management team. Forde makes it clear that there is such evidence and recounts it.

They failed to point out that the suspensions and expulsions which they glorified were the result of specialist software and thousands of hours of internet scouring, which justified disciplinary action. The compliance team would ring bells to celebrate a suspension or expulsion.

You didn’t read that in The Guardian. I read it in the Forde Report.

I recommend that you do also. We need to understand what has happened to our party in the last half dozen years.

Without the factional, racist and sexist of activity of senior management, we may have won the election in 2017.

Without it, Starmer would not have been leader.

Without it, the UK would be a better place.

But it did happen. All of the above. And more. And we must face the consequences.

Today from the everysmith vaults: At the funeral of my friend Peter Nelson last Monday, the service scheduled a time for reflection, during which was played Blue in Green from Kind of Blue​ by Miles Davis. Still reflecting, still playing.

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.