Schiller feat. Heppner - Dream of You

I am alive! Apologies for the radio silence. I've been ill of late and having to deal with a lot of stuff, so there's no room left in the brain pan to throw out takes on the horrors of the last week. Here then is your placeholder, and what a tune it is.

From U-Turn to U-Bend

Rachel Reeves's (partial) reversal of the winter fuel cut for pensioners was as much a nailed-on certainty you can get in politics. After the local elections drubbing and the continued erosion of Labour's base, something, anything had to be done to reverse the non-stop slide in Labour's fortunes since the general election. Pensioners on incomes lower than £35k, which is about three-quarters of them, will now receive the payment compared to 1.4m or so who qualified for the help last Winter. For all her talk of the iron-hard fiscal rules, Reeves has found they're flexible enough when occasion demands.

This has nothing to do with finding extra headroom because the economy is performing better. It's all about the politics. The first is the immediate consideration. With her big spending announcements due on Wednesday when departments will receive their multi-year settlements, the government - which are desperate for good news - will hope its commitments earns them praise from all quarters. They want the winter fuel albatross taken from around their neck, so getting ahead of the main event and giving the press something to splash on now - which their elderly readership won't fail to notice - clears the decks for the goodies to come. In other words, Reeves has ensured she won't be overshadowed by ... Reeves. With most pensioners sorted, the government are hoping this is going to be so much water under the bridge by 2029. Who's going to be carping on about this then when all the nice, shiny things will be in place?

They forget we live in a politics where memory lasts and the 1978-9 Winter of Discontent is still a factor for some. No one is going to forget that as soon as Labour got into office, they cut support for the elderly and decided keeping kids in poverty was fine and dandy, while they helped themselves to ministerial perks and freebies (all properly declared, of course). You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and no amount of right-wing posturing can repair the damage done. What might is action. If people see visible improvements in public services, wage packets and pensions going further, and the country looking and acting less mean and shabby Labour are in with a shout of turning it around. But unfortunately for them, their doomed efforts at trying to out-Reform Reform, cleaving to the right, and failing to push policies that might grow and consolidate their own coalition of voters - indeed, at times, actively attacking its natural support - makes this exceedingly unlikely.

No, Labour aren't about to be thanked for turning the clock back. "Doing the right thing" cannot erase the fact they did the wrong thing in the first place, and arrogantly paraded it about as a badge of toughness.

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What I've Been Reading Recently

Time for a catch up on recent reads. In May (which seems an age ago now), this is what was keeping me busy.

Fallen Dragon by Peter F Hamilton
The Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D Simak
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
Chekhov's Journey by Ian Watson
Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick
Dubliners by James Joyce
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F McHugh
Neverness by David Zindell
Parietal Games: Critical Writings by and on M John Harrison edited by Mark Bould and Michelle Reid
The Nameless Day by Sara Douglass
Scarlet Traces by Ian Edinton and D'Israeli
Hard to be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The Girl on the Road by Monica Byrne
The Quiet War by Paul McAuley

I'm going to start with a did-not-finish. Or rather, a barely-started. Last year I put the first two books of Stephen R Donaldson's Gap sequence into my worst books list thanks to their unoriginality and appalling misogyny. The main problem was the egregious sexual abuse meted out to the female lead character. Against my better judgement I had a stab at the third book - The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Rises. And by the end of the first chapter it had sailed out the window. There was the continuation of the misogyny, as we spend an amount of time on how one of the main antagonists tortures his mother. She is trussed up to a medical apparatus that immobilises her and keeps her going against her will, largely for his amusement. Not sexualised in this case, but reduced to a piece of chattel there at his beck and call. I couldn't be bothered wading through this gynophobic trash any more, so if you're looking for a by-numbers space opera with duff characterisation and a streak of woman-hatred, this will be among them at the bottom of the pile.

Moving on from visceral loathing to meh, Fritz Leiber's The Big Time fits into this category. It seems a very clever book, what with time agents swinging by and going out on missions in their interminable time war, but it failed to grab my attention. Leiber here was more interested in showing off his literary range than bothering crafting a compelling story. Slightly more shocking where the sf canon is concerned was the Strugatskys' Hard to be a God, one of their more celebrated works. Following a spy placed on a feudal world sliding into authoritarianism, it's easy to see where the inspiration for Iain M Banks's Inversions came from. But this was not as good. The narrative was dull, characterisation flat, and it failed to spark much interest. Continuing on a downer, Simak's The Ring Around the Sun had an interesting premise: the powers-that-be rally against the appearance of goods that refuse to wear out, thereby placing the Earth's manufacturing base in trouble. This is married to a parallel worlds/dimension hopping plot but, again, this did not do it for me. Uninteresting, the initial promise of the premise wears thin and by the end I couldn't care less.

Thankfully, there was a lot of good stuff to balance out the dross. Zindell's Neverness had been on the radar for a long time, and after a mammoth read it was ... alright. A bit like Greg Bear's fare in that reading it is an exhausting experience thanks to hard sf infodumps (this time on higher maths - not a strong point for me) and mind-bending concepts. It ranges from hobnobbing with god-like beings to mucking around with Neanderthals, so jumping between scales and stakes is an interesting, if jarring trick. And it's very much a book for the 1980s. It's about individual self-actualisation and the overcoming of obstacles by sheer force of will. The hard science might have been far out and cutting edge - the soft science less so. Pacier and more fun was Hamilton's Fallen Dragon. All the usual caveats apply where his work is concerned - this was over 1,200 pages and some of it was unnecessary - but his pacey writing and clever plotting ensures he's never a chore. And yes, past observations about multiplicity work here too. It's the consistent and overriding feature of his work.

Speaking of fun, Sara Douglass provided me a rare foray into (historical) fantasy. Satan's minions are undoing the fabric of 14th century Western Europe - can they be stopped? The Crucible trilogy have been on the to-be-read pile since first encountering them 20-odd years ago. And while oddly misogynistic in places, the first tome was well-paced and plotted. I will be reading the rest in due course.

Coming out top for May were two books. China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F McHugh is a novel in which nothing much happens. Our eponymous hero is secretly gay, and has to hide his ethnicity to get ahead in a future where China runs the show. It's a slice of life in which he and a few side-characters try getting on in the 22nd century, and ... it's brilliant. Well realised, well drawn, it's a vividly-rendered future that has plenty to say about our authoritarian todays. A strong recommendation. The other is very much not mundane sf. Paul McAuley's The Quiet War is a "realistic" space opera set entirely within the solar system, and centres on a conflict between the remaining megastates of Earth and the Outers who inhabit the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This predated The Expanse by three years and to say the latter owes the former an unacknowledged debt is to say ... latter owes the former an unacknowledged debt. I thought this was brilliant. The writing, story, characterisation, and extrapolation of technology makes for a compelling work. Both these books are award winners, and both deserve your time.

What have you been reading recently?

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Taken for a Mug

Authoritarian politics always entails chaotic politics. Reform is a case in point. Since "professionalising" his party and "democratising" it, Nigel Farage has retained a firm grip on his swelling operation via a constitution that confers absolutist powers on his appointee chair, Zia Yusuf. Or, rather, did. For Yusuf is gone - and all at a moment that Reform should still be basking in the glow of electoral triumph.

The precipitating factor for Yusuf's departure was Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions. Sarah Pochin, the newly-minted Reform MP for Runcorn asked Keir Starmer if he would consider banning the burqa for the interests of "public safety". A move that was calculated by her to bring some much-needed tabloid attention, it sparked off a public bout of disagreement among the party leadership. Lee Anderson happily endorsed the remarks, whereas Farage equivocated and said he was for a "debate". The official spox for Reform said it was not party policy, and Yusuf - a Muslim himself - took to social media and dubbed the question "dumb". Cue several hours of behind-the-scenes texts and phone calls, but the damage was done. Trotting out some ego-stroking figures, Yusuf wrote "I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office."

Farage greeted his announcement with "Politics can be a highly pressured and difficult game and Zia has clearly had enough. He is a loss to us and public life", but it's his fault it came to this. Since Farage "returned" to British politics, Reform has eschewed the crudities of outright racist culture wars. I.e. They did not overtly play anti-Muslim cards or go for the "culturalist" racism favoured by the BNP during its heyday, or flirted with by the Tories. Partly because Farage wanted to appeal to as many conservative-minded people as possible, including that layer of first and second generation migrants who are happy to pull the ladder up after them. And that Yusuf, a Muslim, was part-bankrolling the operation. For whatever reason, it appears this political strategy was not discussed explicitly among the Reform parliamentary grouping, otherwise Pochin might have selected another question for her PMQs debut and avoided today's fall out.

Just how damaging is this for Reform? It could hurt them. For Yusuf, after sinking money and his time into the project, he's got to be realising that he's been taken for a mug. No amount of anti-immigration right-wingery and cash can change the minds of a racist party. They will never accept you. And that means the thin following Reform has among Britain's minority ethnicities might take note as well, and wake up to the fact that, at best, all they'll ever be for Farage are useful idiots for hoodwinking the unwary.

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Keith Roberts in Context

I read Pavane by Keith Roberts last year, and it is among the greatest English novels of the 20th century. A beautiful work that is seldom known and recognised outside of sf circles. Here, courtesy of the Outlaw Bookseller, is a detailed and fascinating career overview.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft at the End of the Tories

I owe Geoffrey Wheatcroft something of a debt. Before getting hold of John Ross's Thatcher and Friends, which argued that the blessed Margaret's 1983 triumph was symptomatic of a decades-long secular tendency toward decline, there was The Strange Death of Tory England. An irascible and funny condemnation of the Conservatives by one of their own, for Wheatcroft is a Tory journalist. And unusual for his tribe, an honest one. Strange Death was and remains an important book because it tries to get to grips with the party's crisis from the right, and eschews the drivel and comfort thinking of more recent lesser efforts. Having also written a book on the subject, I was interested in what Bloody Panico!: Whatever Happened to the Tory Party? - Wheatcoft's latest tome - had to say.

And the unfortunate answer was ... nothing much new. It is a brisk, short read packed with obscure anecdotes of Tory Party lore, and withering observations of the miserable cadre of Conservative politicians this country has suffered. Particularly of the fraudulent Boris Johnson. But knowing his explanation for why the Tories are facing their final crisis depends on being familiar with the earlier book. Wheatcroft himself dubs Panico as less a sequel, and more a coda or afterword. It reads like one. We are taken on a whistle stop tour of everything that has happened to the Tories since Michael Howard piloted the Tories to a third successive electoral defeat, and with the curled lip of disgust deals with all his successors up to publication in early 2024. Kemi Badenoch is therefore sadly absent. There are insights and tales of scandals to whet the salacious appetite, but without the original book you're left thinking Wheatcroft puts the crisis down to bad politicians being bad at politics.

In Strange Death, the end of the Tories began in the 1960s. This was the period where the interwar generation of patrician Conservatives were gradually displaced and shunted aside by a rising generation of petit bourgeois and professional politicians. This was a cohort that had only known rising living standards and growing affluence, but simultaneously did not see, or as is more likely, did not respect the foundation on which this was built: the compact between capital and a massive, active labour movement. Thatcher typified this trend, hating both the unions and the patrician Tories in the party that "caved" to them. But she was not the source of the Tory sin against reasonable conservatism. What did it was the abandonment of the conclave method of selecting a Tory leader by a ballot of the parliamentary party. The occasion was the fall of Alec Douglas-Home, and voting was brought in as a reaction against his appointment by preferment. In the first exercise of inner party democracy in the Tories' history, Ted Heath came out on top. And as the parliamentary party became more "professional" in composition, the ballot ensured the grip of the Old Etonians was broken. Its future was no longer guided by gentlemen of good judgement, but by rootless MPs easily swayed by faddism and popularity. This more than anything else sealed the Tories' fate.

There is something to this argument, but it is a shame that Wheatcroft didn't recapitulate it for Panico as it might have encouraged some of his more superficial readers to think deeply about the Tory crisis. Instead, all we get is a lament for a decent conservatism that once was. This implies, not unlike Peter Hitchens's frequent criticisms of the Tories, that they're no longer conservative. But whereas Hitchens argues it's because conservatism has been displaced by an amorphous progressivism (if only), for Wheatcroft - though he doesn't explicitly say it - they are a party, standing naked to the world, that supports class power, privilege, and inequality. And no party so exposed cannot last very long.

Panico therefore comes with a recommend, if only for the novelty of a Tory not putting the roots of their crisis at getting rid of Johnson, or not stopping the boats, or letting Brussels rule Britain for so long. But for the full spectrum and dimensionality of the crisis, there is another book and a blog for that.

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Local Council By-Elections May 2025

This month saw 203,837 votes cast in 106 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 54 council seats changed hands. For comparison with April's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Apr	+/- May 24	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	106	39,991	19.6%	+6.5	-7.4	377	-2
Labour	104	34,061	16.7%	-2.9	-18.1	328	-33
Lib Dem	87	46,074	22.6%	+1.7	+3.8	530	+2
Reform*	88	47,049	23.1%	+3.4	+22.6	535	+34
Green	85	21,821	10.7%	- 2.6	-0.8	257	+3
SNP**	1	1,039	0.5%	-6.8	+0.0	1,039	0
PC***	2	261	0.1%	-3.1	+0.1	131	0
Ind****	41	9,038	4.4%	+1.9	+0.1	220	-3
Other*****	27	4,503	2.2%	+1.7	-1.1	167	-1

* Reform's comparison results are based on recomputing their tallies from last year's Others
** There was one by-election in Scotland
*** There were two by-elections in Wales
**** There were five Independent clashes
***** Others this month consisted of Alba (47), Blue (11), Christian People's Alliance (23), Gwlad (9), Heritage (44, 16), Homeland (26), Jago (7), Liberal (16), Oxted Residents (890), Patria (7, 7), Rejoin EU (65), Scottish Family Party (25), Tattenham's Residents (2,084), Tunbrudge Wells Alliance (416, 62), TUSC (91, 91, 47, 30, 23, 10), UKIP (21, 15, 14, 10), Workers Party (398)

Behold, Labour's worst ever council by-election results since this blog started covering them in 2013. Keir Starmer can slap himself on the back for achieving an even worse result Keir Starmer managed on May 2021. The Tories never performed as badly as this, even when their ratings were in the toilet and Liz Truss was still in office. What happened here was an extension of last month, which was the first time in "normal circumstances" that neither of the main government parties were placed in the top two, and bodes ill for parliamentary by-elections over this Parliament. The momentum is with Nigel Farage, with the Liberal Democrats being the alternative "progressive" protest vote du jour.

A lot can happen in four years, but unless Labour ditches its deeply unpopular leader and adopts the sort of policy orientation that normally provide the reasons why people vote for the party, there's no recovery from this. No amount of right wing spinning is going to win over those who vote Reform, but it will disgust those ordinarily supportive of Labour who will go elsewhere. Which, ironically, means more easy victories for Farage as his party makes hay with divided opponents. This is known to the higher ups in Downing Street, and yet they carry on down this destructive path.

What this means for council by-elections is a further chipping away at Labour's local government base and the demoralisation of the skeleton crew of activists left. There are fewer by-elections scheduled for June, but we can more or less forecast the month's results now. And in July. And August. And until the right wingers that have hollowed out the party and its support are gone.

1st May
Amber Valley, Ironville & Riddings, Ind gain from Lab
Amber Valley, Kilburn, Denby, Holbrook & Horsley, Con gain from Lab
Bassetlaw, Beckingham, Ref gain from Ind
Bassetlaw, Sturton, Ref gain from Lab
Blaby, Glen Parva, Ref gain from LDem
Boston, Trinity, Ref gain from Ind
Breckland, Thetford Priory, Ref gain from Lab
Bridgend, Pyle, Kenfig Hill & Cefn Cribwr, Ref gain from Lab
Brighton & Hove, Westbourne & Poets' Corner, Lab hold
Cambridge, East Chesterton, LDem gain from Lab
Cambridge, West Chesterton, LDem gain from Lab
Cannock Chase, Norton Canes, Con gain from Lab
Chelmsford, Moulsham & Central, LDem hold x2
Cheltenham, Charlton Kings, LDem hold
Cherwell, Banbury Cross & Neithrop, Con gain from Lab
Cherwell, Banbury Grimsbury & Hightown, Lab hold
Cherwell, Deddington, Con hold
Chesterfield, Brampton East & Boythorpe, LDem gain from Lab
Chichester, Midhurst, LDem hold
Chorley, Chorley East, Ref gain from Lab
Cotswold, Tetbury with Upton, Con gain from LDem
Cotswold, Watermoor, LDem hold
East Cambridgeshire, Stretham, LDem hold
East Hertfordshire, Braughing & Standon, Ref gain from Con
Eastbourne, Langney, LDem hold
Eastbourne, Upperton, LDem hold
Erewash, Cotmanhay, Ref gain from Lab
Erewash, Kirk Hallam & Stanton By Dale, Con gain from Lab
Erewash, Nottingham Road, Con gain from Lab
Essex, Chelmsford Central, LDem hold
Exeter, Mincinglake & Whipton, Ref gain from Lab
Exeter, Topsham, Lab hold
Forest of Dean, Cinderford East, Ref gain from Lab
Forest of Dean, Newent & Taynton, Con gain from LDem
Gedling, Porchester, Lab hold
Gravesham, Rosherville, Lab hold
Hampshire, Winchester Eastgate, LDem hold
Hampshire, Yateley East & Blackwater, LDem hold
Harlow, Mark Hall, Ref gain from Lab
Hartlepool, Throston, Ref gain from Lab
Isle of Wight, Central Rural, Ref gain from Con
Isle of Wight, Freshwater South, Ind gain from Oth
Isle of Wight, Lake North, Ref gain from Con
Lambeth, Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction, Grn gain from Lab
Lancaster, John O'Gaunt, Grn hold
Lichfield, Curborough, Ref gain from Lab
Melton, Croxton Kerrial, Con gain from Ind
Mid Devon, Clare & Shuttern, LDem hold
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Knutton, Ref gain from Lab
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Loggerheads, Con hold
Norfolk, Mancroft, Grn hold
Norfolk, Marshland North, Ref gain from Con
Norfolk, Thetford West, Ref gain from Lab
North Devon, Barnstaple with Pilton, LDem hold
North Norfolk, Holt, LDem gain from Con
North Warwickshire, Arley & Whitacre, Ref gain from Lab
North Warwickshire, Atherstone Central, Ref gain from Lab
Norwich, Bowthorpe, Lab hold
Norwich, Mancroft, Grn hold
Norwich, Sewell, Grn hold
Oxford, Headington Hill & Northway, Lab hold
Pendle, Vivary Bridge, Ref gain from Con
Peterborough, Barnack, Ind gain from Con
Redbridge, Hainault, Lab hold
Ribble Valley, St Mary's, LDem gain from Lab
Rochdale, Balderstone & Kirkholt, Ref gain from Lab
Rugby, New Bilton, Lab hold
South Oxfordshire, Wheatley, LDem hold
South Oxfordshire, Watlington, LDem hold
St Albans, Redbourn, LDem hold
Stratford-on-Avon, Alcester West, LDem hold
Stratford-on-Avon, Welford-on-Avon, LDem hold
Stroud, Stroud Central, Grn gain from Lab
Surrey, Nork & Tattenhams, Oth hold
Tandridge, Oxted South, Oth hold
Teignbridge, Teignmouth West, Ref gain from LDem
Tewkesbury, Innsworth, LDem hold
Thanet, Thanet Villages, Ref gain from Con
Thurrock, Ockenden, Ref gain from Con, Ref gain from Lab
Three Rivers, Durrants, LDem hold
Tonbridge & Malling, Snodland East & Ham Hill, Con gain from Lab
Tunbridge Wells, Park, LDem hold
Tunbridge Wells, St John's, LDem hold
Warrington, Great Sankey North & Whittle Hall, Lab hold
Watford, Holywell, Lab hold
Watford, Oxhey, LDem hold
Welwyn Hatfield, Brookmans Park & Little Heath, Con hold
Welwyn Hatfield, Peartree, LDem hold
West Devon, Tavistock North, LDem gain from Ind
West Oxfordshire, Standlake, Aston & Stanton Harcourt, LDem hold
West Sussex, Midhurst, LDem hold
Winchester, Colden Common & Twyford, Grn gain from LDem
Wyre, Park, Ref gain from Lab

8 May
Calderdale, Skircoat, Ref gain from Lab
Eastleigh, Eastleigh Central, LDem hold

15 May
Barnet, Whetstone, Lab hold
Broadland, Acle, Ref gain from Con
Stoke-on-Trent, Birches Head & Northwood, Ref gain from Lab
West Dunbartonshire, Clydebank Waterfront, SNP hold

22 May
Eastleigh, Hedge End South, LDem hold
Sutton, Carshalton South & Clockhouse, LDem hold
West Sussex, Horsham Riverside, LDem hold

29 May
Carmarthenshire, Lliedi, Ref gain from Lab
Castle Point, Canvey Island Winter Gardens, Ref gain from Ind
Lewes, Newhaven North, LDem hold
Maldon, Maldon West, LDem gain from Ind

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Five Most Popular Posts in May

Where did May go? Don't know, but if the question was how did May go?, where this blog is concerned it went very well. Lots of views, lots of folks checking out the archive. Lovely.

1. Zack Polanski's Green-Left Populism
2. Labour's Money Woes
3. Explaining Rayner Danger
4. More Anti-Immigration Cynicism
5. After the May Day Massacre

Coming out on top is Zack Polanski's leftwing pitch for the Green Party's leadership. Could his leftist pitch be enough to encourage more to join the Greens, and then ensure it becomes a radical left alternative to Labour? The potential is there, backed by examples from the continent where several Green parties have become something other than an establishment party, But Polanski winning is far from a foregone conclusion. In second is news that Labour are broke and has returned to the cycle of financial crises that visited the party when it was last in office. But, the piece argues, this is entirely contrived. For the Labour leadership this suits them and the people they represent politically. In third, Angela Rayner was in the news for her "left wing" views. Of course, they're nothing of the sort but it serves as a reminder about why the Tories and the right wing press fear her. Less than what she believes but what she represents - the "unreliable" working class pole of Labourism. In at four was another doomed attempt by Keir Starmer to out-Reform Reform on immigration. And lastly we have Nigel Farage's triumph in the local elections.

What posts get the second chance this time? Sticking with politics I'm re-upping Farage's attempt to hook in the low paid. Partly because every single response from establishment outlets have been utterly clueless and useless. And tipping over into science fiction, there's this on Bridge by Lauren Beukes.

No definite posting plans for stuff in June. We'll see what events, dear boy crop up. As ever, if you haven't already don't forget to follow the (very) occasional newsletter, and if you like what I do (and you're not skint), you can help support the blog. Following me on Bluesky, Facebook, and for what it's worth, Twitter, are cost-free ways of showing your backing for this corner of the internet.

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