Blair the false moderate

Tony Blair is quoted as saying the Net Zero policy steered by Ed Miliband is ‘irrational, hysterical and doomed to fail.’

What matters is not the truth, which was obvious long ago, but the narrative. Blair has said these things with only a couple of days to go before Labour gets what Northerners call a ‘threaping’ at the polls in the local council elections.

Similarly Blair the senior statesman was advising Starmer last July to be ‘tough on immigration, crime and wokeism’ as Labour List reported it.

It’s only the resistance to those things that counts. The enemy is ‘the forces of conservatism’ or in other words, the ordinary British people; people who want peace at home and abroad, the rule of law and the chance to earn a living and raise their families.

He still wants the Revolution and to prevent the possibility of small-c conservatism ever resurging. He is just applying the brakes now to make the crash quite certain; to slow down our drive to destruction so his Party doesn’t frighten the populace into an uprising.

Dimming the Sun pays dividends...

*NEW* The Government's plan to #DIMtheSUN has already inspired a Spanish tour company to market short breaks in the UK:

Never apologise, never explain - PMQs 23rd April 2025

In the movie ‘Alien’ the sole survivor discovers that the monster is hiding in her escape pod. She presses buttons to release one poisonous gas after another; at last she finds one that galvanises the alien into frantic escape action.

What triggered Sir Keir in PMQs was Kemi Badenoch’s demand for an admission that he had been wrong about gender; for an apology to Rosie Duffield MP, driven out of the Labour Party for her perfectly sane views on the subject, and to Kemi for the ‘transphobe’ abuse his myrmidons had hurled at herself.

Since the Supreme Court (a 2009 New Labour invention) determined last week that gender has a biological basis as far as the Equality Act is concerned, Starmer could not repudiate the ruling. A man whose political power depends on legal and procedural technicalities cannot defy the law. But to concede that he had previously been misguided on this, or about anything at all? Unthinkable!

Instead, the PM resorted to a panicky non-reply counterattack - Tory failures on the NHS, US trade deals and British Steel. He went for an advertiser’s copywriter-like slogan: ‘They are not Conservatives; they are a con.’ He spoke of people threatening Kemi’s position - ‘the shadow Justice Secretary, who is away plotting’ and ‘the hon. Member for Clacton [Nigel Farage] fighting over the bones of the Tory party.’

What a performance!

It’s not as though the PM is wedded to the trans issue - ‘He does not know what he actually believes,’ said Kemi. His approach to the truth is postmodern: what counts is the ‘narrative’, a principle that underlay Alastair Campbell’s successful manipulation of the public’s perception (Tory sleaze, Labour ethics) that gave us thirteen years of socialist misrule. Now the narrative is that Starmer is never wrong.

As for the Supreme Court, Peter Hitchens says it shouldn’t exist; it is one of the many Blairite cuts at Parliament’s supremacy. Now Labour finds itself hoist by its own petard. Nor is this the biggest problem the Court has presented: its just-delivered £44 billion compensation ruling on car finance is twice the size of Sir Keir’s favourite ‘Tory black hole’ and is an existential threat to the already beleaguered banking industry. Already the sky is darkening with compo-claim vultures gathering overhead.

PMQs these days are mostly a melancholy run-through of scripts. This session was briefly enlivened by Badenoch’s saying that Starmer ‘doesn’t have the balls’ to do the right thing - Quentin Letts says (in the online MailPlus version) she ‘flattened’ him, but also correctly calls the remark ‘coarse.’ It was perhaps inevitable that when TV first entered the Debating Chamber (1989) our representatives would end up playing to the groundlings.

It is a sad thing to see them fighting like rats in a Birmingham garbage sack, for we are in a multifaceted crisis that took decades to develop and for which both sides are responsible. Partly it is owing to the desire to stay in power at any cost - think for example how David Cameron led the unParliamentary applause for Tony Blair at the latter’s retirement from office and took ‘the Master’ as his model for electoral success.

But it is also down to preconceived ideas, plans that turned a blind eye to the key issues facing the country and instead focused on the obsessions of activists. When New Labour swept into Downing Street in 1997, followed by the BBC’s worshipping helicopter, it was on a tide of hope that our economy would be set right. Instead it put into effect a grand scheme of constitutional rearrangement based on policies developed following their 1987 General Election defeat, as Mark Bevir shows here. Yet “Labour Listens” was not really about consulting the general public; the sort of person who joins a party and participates in policy debates is obviously atypical.

The people themselves spoke emphatically in 2016. What did the Blues do then? What are the Reds doing now? As in the late eighteenth century, we begin to ask on what basis government has the right to rule.

Starmer’s arrival has brought in another detailed program smelling of the lamp, this time provided by the Brown Commission (at his request). The flaws of devolution exemplified in Scotland, London and Wales have not served to deter him from furthering what is in effect Blair 2.0. The Seventies generation that ran barefoot through Oxford’s streets and stencilled Ho Chi Minh’s image on college walls is seeing their destructive dream coming to fruition.

Is Sir Keir really so passive as to have his clothing and his policies arranged for him, his strategy from ‘the Master’, his Parliamentary replies written by assistants in a two-ring binder? Was his over-reaction to Badenoch’s barbs prompted by a fear of looking inside himself and seeing emptiness?

He apologiseth not, neither doth he explain. When Zara Sultana (Independent), a Gazan supporter, asked why he had ‘blocked the arrest of an unindicted war criminal’ (Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar) Starmer simply replied ‘I didn’t.’ He offered no elaboration, which might have involved the role of the Foreign Secretary in offering assurances to Sa’ar.

Otherwise there was the usual mixture of quibbling, begging and fawning.

The SNP is always a good foil: Scottish Labour’s Kenneth Stevenson ‘commended’ the PM for his achievements with respect to the NHS, contrasting them with the SNP’s waste.

Yet when the latter party’s Dave Doogan called Starmer an ‘incompetent-in-chief’ whose failures justified the eleven-point poll lead for Scottish independence, Sir Keir answered that ‘the electorate in Scotland answered that question in July of last year.’ Hubris tempts Nemesis: effectively, Labour won the General Election by default and has since made itself heartily detested in only nine months. The local elections on May the First will likely show that - to quote the Chinese curse - we ‘live in interesting times.’

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Incredible String Band, by JD

The Incredible String Band (sometimes abbreviated as ISB) were a British psychedelic folk band formed by Clive Palmer, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron in Edinburgh in 1966. The band built a considerable following, especially in the British counterculture, notably with their albums The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and Wee Tam and the Big Huge. They became pioneers in psychedelic folk and, through integrating a wide variety of traditional music forms and instruments, in the development of world music.

Following Palmer's early departure, Williamson and Heron performed as a duo, later augmented by other musicians. The band split up in 1974. They reformed in 1999 and continued to perform with changing lineups until 2006.

The Incredible String Band - Everything's Fine Right Now (1970)

The Circle Is Unbroken (2010 Remaster)

Incredible String Band - Creation (1969)

The Incredible String Band "1968": although composed in 1974 by Mike Heron, probably about his musical partnership with Robin Williamson which was coming to an end at that point, it has taken on very much a modern relevance, posing questions about a past of hope seemingly long gone but with a faint promise of it for the future. It's a shame that it was never recorded for an official release by their record company at the time. It was only performed acoustically on BBC radio by Mike & Robin. (= from the description alongside the video)

Retying the Knot: The Incredible String Band (1997) A profile of British psychedelic folk band The Incredible String Band. The Hippest band of the 60's and 70's as they prepare for a reunion gig.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Paco de Lucía, by JD

Paco de Lucía (1947 - 2014) was born Francisco Sánchez Gómez in Algeciras, in southern Spain. He was the youngest of the five children of flamenco guitarist Antonio Sánchez Pecino and Portuguese mother Lucía Gomes; his brothers include flamenco singer Pepe de Lucía and flamenco guitarist Ramón de Algeciras.

There are many 'reaction' videos on YouTube where a musician or a fan will listen to an artist or a single piece of music and then give his/her thoughts/opinion. One such reaction video is from a blogger called 'Arab Man Reacts' in which he is lost for words watching and listening to Paco's technique and says several times what Paco is doing is impossible. A comment below the video (Entre Dos Aguas, the first video of the five here) was this:

He played with Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin...In an interview, Al said "we learned a lot from Paco"...the interviewer asked "And what did he learn from you?"...Al: "to speak English."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paco_de_Luc%C3%ADa

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/memories-of-paco-instituto-andaluz-del-flamenco/mQUxq5VsZOvILQ?hl=en

Paco de Lucia - Entre dos aguas (1976) full video

PACO DE LUCIA , John McLaughlin , AL DI MEOLA

Paco de Lucía - El cafetal (rumbas) (directo Leverkusener Jazztage 2010)

Tangos. Paco y Pepe de Lucía. 1993

Parliament and organised sexual abuse: weak ending

The House rose on Tuesday and will sit again on 22 April. The session ended badly.

Hansard’s record describes Jess Phillips MP as The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. More exactly she is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls. As a local councillor she did much good work for years helping women in a socially deprived part of Birmingham.

Today she was obliged to read out the Government’s further backtracking on investigations into the ‘grooming’ gangs that have long sexually abused an extremely large number of women and girls around the country.

The State has rejected the call for a fresh national enquiry - one that would have the power to compel witnesses. A reason given is that there has already been one such, looking into child sexual exploitation in broad terms, that reported in 2022.

However what concerns many of the public is the specific issue of wholesale organised abuse by groups of men largely of Pakistani heritage. It is felt that close examination would reveal that police, social workers and local politicians were aware of these outrages and chose to cover them up or even, in effect, help and abet them.

Rather than open a can of worms that threatens to embarrass the Labour Party, in whose areas of control much of the abuse went on, the Government has previously proposed local investigations in five authorities. These would not have the same legal powers and could be subject to influence from local parties that might have the ability and incentive to downplay and bury the bad news. Nevertheless a budget of £5 million was set aside to conduct these reviews.

Now, among announcements of what the Government plans to do in future about such abuses, Mrs Phillips had to tell the House that those millions are to be made available to the five councils not solely to drill down into collusion and cover-ups, but simply to use at their discretion to deal with related matters, such as therapeutic help for victims.

This must have been a very difficult speech for Mrs Phillips, given her long-time personal mission to serve vulnerable females. As ‘Spiked’ writer and former editor Brendan O’Neill observed in The Spectator, and also ‘Granniopteryx’ on her YouTube channel, the Minister’s body language and muttering clearly proclaimed her shame. At least one political commentator has suggested that Mrs Phillips should have resigned rather than allow herself to be used as the mouthpiece for an administration itself keen on minimising public attention to this matter, which has potential religious and racial aspects and severely challenges the narrative that ‘diversity’ is good for the nation.

Replying for the Opposition, Shadow Minister Katie Lam MP was ferociously critical of the Government’s revised approach and gave a shockingly explicit example of the abuse suffered by victims of the gangs.

Ms Phillips tried to re-broaden the scope: ‘I think it is a shame that she referred to only one sort of child abuse victim, when the statement is clearly about all child abuse victims… we are also talking about children raped by their fathers or raped in other circumstances, such as in children’s homes and institutions…’

This fire will not be put out so easily and Ms Phillips must feel torn between her principles and her loyalty to the Labour Party.

Evil is so often fostered by the ‘greater good’ argument: ‘Do this most regrettable bad thing now, because it helps the Party that stands for the people. In the long run it is all for the best.’ How many tyrannies have run on that basis?

We need the disinfectant of truth, not the strong perfume of distraction. Otherwise, ‘in the long run’, trust in authority will be further corroded and prejudices will fester. As the inscription above the Old Bailey says, ‘Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer.’ That is what is best for society.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Carole King, by JD

Since writing her first number one hit “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” at the tender age of 17, Carole King has arguably become the most celebrated and iconic singer/songwriter of all time.

Carole wrote “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for The Shirelles with then-husband Gerry Goffin. The dozens of chart hits Goffin & King wrote during this period have become part of music legend, including “Take Good Care Of My Baby” (Bobby Vee, 1961), “The Loco-Motion” (Little Eva, 1962), “Up On The Roof” (The Drifters, 1962), “Chains” (The Cookies, 1962; The Beatles, 1963), “One Fine Day” (The Chiffons, 1963), “Hey Girl” (Freddie Scott, 1963), “I’m Into Something Good” (Herman’s Hermits, 1964), “Just Once In My Life” (with Phil Spector for The Righteous Brothers, 1965), and “Don’t Bring Me Down” (The Animals, 1966).

https://www.caroleking.com/

Carole King - It Might as Well Rain Until September

Carole King - Now and Forever (from Welcome To My Living Room)

One Fine Day - Carole King

Willie Nelson & Carole King - "Will You Still Love Me tomorrow"

Carole King - Tapestry - Live in Hyde Park 2016

A sporting oddity from my past, by Wiggia

A short tale away from the usual doom and gloom that daily saturates opinion columns to a degree that is unprecedented in my lifetime.

This came about after Rolf. knowing that I raced bicycles on the track/velodromes many years ago, asked if I had seen a recent episode of the Antiques Roadshow on the Beeb, that had been broadcast from Roundhay Park in Leeds. I hadn’t but naturally looked on iPlayer for the episode and there it was, the only banked grass track as far as I know in the UK and probably the world.

Still in use, it has been there since 1894 and still remains part of the sports complex in the park. It was built at a time when cycle racing was attracting large crowds. Road racing did not really get going until the turn of the century and this was a relatively cheap way of providing a track. 1,200 unemployed men were used by the council to build the track and other facilities, and as well as being banked it is almost certainly the only permanent grass track still in situ.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w2vs/antiques-roadshow-series-46-14-roundhay-park-leeds-3

This also gives a short history of Beryl Burton, probably the greatest woman cyclist we have ever produced (at 15.10).

I did compete very often on grass tracks. All were simply grass athletic tracks with bikes on them, not easy to ride as with no banking the bends are not easy to navigate at speed and with fixed gears as all track racing bikes have there was a danger with the lean angles on bends, of pedals digging in.

In the early days wooden rims were used as they had more ‘give’ on the bumpy surface and Dunlop actually produced a special tubular tyre for grass track racing, more of a sort of ‘off road’ tyre that gave much better grip. These were much coveted as Dunlop stopped making them through lack of demand.

But there was another side to grass track racing. During the summer fetes and galas all over the UK would include grass racing among various other events. These were much sought after as they actually gave worthwhile prizes that in many cases could be traded back for cash or sold; remember this was an amateur sport then.

Were there any really good riders on grass? Well one springs to mind: Neville Tong who was selected to ride for England in the Commonwealth games in ‘58 in the kilometre. This is a very hard solo time trial from a standing start against the clock. He won the gold medal in this event with a record time, he was then taken under the wing of legendary Reg Harris at Fallowfield track Manchester in an attempt to convert this grass track strength into a hard track sprinter. Sadly the attempt failed and Tong went back to what he was good at, grass track racing.

Below he is seen at the Maindy Stadium Cardiff taking his lap of honour, and below on his beloved grass.

My infrequent forays into grass track racing were rewarded in an outing to Hertford fete in ‘59 - was it really that long ago? - when I won the star event, the five mile scratch race and took home for my mum a silver tea service, which adorned the sideboard for a few years.

(Excuse the old faded press cutting.) From memory this was my last effort on grass, not many events in 

southern England and the hard track took priority. Nonetheless the Antiques Roadshow revived some old and pleasant memories.

Beleaguered: PMQs 2nd April 2025

Before the session began the Speaker read out a statement of his recent visit to the Ukrainian Parliament. He and other European assembly Speakers were there for the third anniversary of the Russian massacre at Bucha. He took with him messages of support from the Commons and the major English parties. The PM also referenced Bucha in his opening remarks. Later the Lib Dem Leader commended Starmer for his ‘commendable leadership over Ukraine.’

The consensus is dangerously comfortable and exclusionary. Nobody mentioned the ECHR’s ruling last month that Ukraine had failed to prevent the massacre of ‘anti-Nazi activists’ at Odessa in 2014; or the 14,000 killed by Ukrainian forces in the Donbas before Putin’s invasion. It is not even clear who in Parliament understands the white-hot hatreds at work in Ukraine, where Stalin killed millions in the Thirties; or that Russia today is not the USSR, which was a Communist bloc set on world domination; or the risks we run in stoking conflict with a nuclear power that could easily finish us with an EMP as Peter Hitchens has pointed out.

Our foreign relations are in further difficulties. The Chagos Islands giveaway is still a hot issue and was the subject of another ‘urgent question’ from the Opposition straight after this session (the USA seems unconcerned, perhaps mistakenly - China takes a long strategic view.) Attempts to stave off the impact of President Trump’s tariffs have been complicated by our lamentable record on free speech - though less so than the EU’s, it turns out.

The PM is clearly aware of a creeping crisis. He is fond of evasion and stock responses but his phraseology gives the game away. Today he said ‘national interest’ five times and ‘calm and pragmatic’ three times (and ‘calm’ once more after that.)

Calm was needed: the Lib Dem Leader urged a ‘coalition of the willing’ (including the EU and Commonwealth) against the US tariffs and Sir Keir replied that he had to keep options open.

Nevertheless the NIC hike was going ahead, whatever the objections from the other side - and as before, Mrs Badenoch was caught on the PM’s fork of not wanting it yet being unwilling to say she would reverse it. Again, he noted that the Conservatives were complaining about council tax increases that Labour had promised to freeze, but they themselves had allowed increases in twelve of their post-2010 years in power.

Sir Keir came under fire from another direction. Ayoub Khan (Independent, Birmingham Perry Barr) said that the piles of uncollected rubbish in Labour-run Brum were ‘so large that they can be seen by satellites orbiting in space.’ For him, it demonstrated that Labour were unable to govern. However Khan omitted to mention that a major factor in the Council’s financial problems leading to the bin strike stemmed from a court ruling upholding women’s entitlement to equal pay, backdated and costing £760 million.

It was the chance for a classic socialist point but the PM failed to exploit it. Instead he gave a familiar recitation on increased NHS appointments, the rise in the national minimum wage and ‘record investment into this country, growing the economy.’ The first is a service improvement but the second a potential threat to employment and the third, if Starmer’s dealings with Bill Gates and Larry Fink are a factor, potentially a matter of concern: what is left to sell off?

Ed Davey gave an example of what happens when we sell national assets to foreigners. In 2022 the American private equity firm KKR bought a 25% stake in Northumbrian Water, steeply increased consumers’ bills and last year dumped almost a million tonnes of raw sewage into a conservation area. Now it wanted to buy into Thames Water. Starmer said the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 addressed some of the issues ‘but we will go further.’

Returning to Ayoub Khan, it seems he himself is not aiming for socialist equality but special treatment. For example, he and many of his co-religionists seek to influence our foreign policy respecting Gaza - a convert to Islam very nearly unseated Jess Phillips MP on that issue in last summer’s General Election. (Labour’s Jayne Kirkham also called for the restoration of aid and supplies to the Strip, as well as an investigation into the killing of aid workers there last year.) Another Birmingham MP, Tahir Ali (Labour), has been campaigning for a new airport in Pakistan. Since 1689 our Constitution has been based on national sovereignty, but internationalism is raising its head once again.

The Labour Party has its hands full trying to hold onto this vigorously universalist element in its ranks, which is a growing one: a 2017 study by Pew Research estimates that by 2050 Muslims may comprise up to 17% of the UK population. The Tories may be half-dead, yet how long will it be before Labour too are ‘Yesterday’s Men?’

There is still a little life left in the Conservative dog: only yesterday and at the last moment, but thanks to the efforts of Robert Jenryck MP, the Sentencing Council suspended its advice to judges to offer ‘two-tier’ justice to miscreants. Maybe one day the ‘protected characteristics’ general challenge to impartial law will be overturned.

Another sign that Labour’s juggernaut may swerve slightly came in last week’s PMQs when Kim ‘Reaper’ Leadbeater MP, already backtracking on the timetable for implementation of her ‘assisted dying’ bill, sought an assurance of continued support from Starmer. He carefully noted that there were ‘different views’ on the issue, identified her ‘as the Bill’s promoter’ and said he would work with her as he would ‘for every private Member’s Bill that passes Second Reading.’ One feels a gentle distancing in progress.

There were so many other items put on the PM’s to-do list. Claire Hanna (SDLP) wanted an assurance that the digital services tax would not be cut, so as not to pander to Trump’s ‘bullying’. Gavin Robinson (DUP) wished the PM to resist EU ‘retaliatory action’ on imports to Northern Ireland. Tim Farron (Lib Dem) asked for help to end the poverty of hill farmers and to maintain the landscape. Mrs Elsie Blundell (Labour) wanted skilled jobs for her Mancunian ‘grafters’. A North Devon hospital was still in need of long overdue repairs, said Ian Roome (Lib Dem.) Thousands of Scunthorpe steelworkers were facing redundancy, said Martin Vickers (Con). Greg Smith (Con) said increased costs created by the Government were causing layoffs at a local chocolate-maker (out came the ‘£22 billion black hole’ in reply.)

All this and more. Uneasy lies the head that wears the cloth cap.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Niamh Crowley, by JD

Niamh Crowley is an Irish violinist and was a child prodigy, appearing on television at the age of five (see final video below.)

She began her musical training at the age of four and attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music for eleven years. She continued her studies in Violin and Piano at the Royal College of Music, London.Niamh works regularly with the National Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, and the National Sinfonia. She is an experienced recitalist and has performed concertos with many orchestras including Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the RTE,Concert Orchestra and Saint-Saens Violin Concerto in the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~samusic/about.htm

Not a Theme Night - Muinera (Niamh Crowley and gang)

Not a Theme Night - Fiddle Faddle (Niamh Crowley)

Not A Theme Night - Glór Shligigh (Niamh Crowley)

Song for Guy (Niamh Crowley and Kieran Quinn)

Niamh Crowley performs 'Csárdás', a piece she also performed on The Late Late Toy Show as a child.