Michael Sembello - Maniac

A great tune from a great 80s movie.

Right Riot

There have been two phases to the riotous assembly Nigel Farage stoked following the investigation into the police handling of Henry Nowack's murder. There was the confrontation in Southampton itself. This was no grassroots anger bubbling over, but a flashpoint that saw the far right across London and southern England mobilise for a fight. All the fascist faces were there - Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, Paul Golding, Posey Parker, all dragged their knuckles from their fetid swamps to whip the bovva boys up into a frenzy. And they duly obliged, rampaging through inner city residential streets and attacking the police. No doubt many of them can look forward to a spell in pokey courtesy of the footage shared by their grifting mates.

Yet the political objective was achieved. Having spent the last two years stirring the pot, the far right have had their first summer riot. Another step toward how things used to be, when the National Front routinely took to the streets in the 1960s and 70s. But the second phase of this right riot has proven more successful then any of them could have dreamed. Paper after paper, news outlet after news outlet, have surged across and trampled on the cordon sanitaire and hurled the bricks and wheelie bins of far right talking points into mainstream public discourse. For example, Sky News asked if the police are indeed "anti-white", forcing the gibberish about two-tier policing onto television screens. They were joined in this by The Mail, a "debate" on Good Morning Britain, and The Sun "just asking questions". On top of this Chris Mason, the BBC's chief politics gossip-monger ran cover for Farage as he was criticised by the other party leaders in the Commons one Wednesday. Aha! said Mason, they were being political about Henry Nowack's death too! You've got to ask it's only a matter of time before the great replacement theory gets an airing, all in the interests of debate.What happened in Southampton gave right wing papers and their little helpers in broadcast journalism an excuse to treat far right rubbish, which they themselves know not to be true, as if it was based in fact and was a valid viewpoint. This is where their riot has proven particularly successful.

Characteristically, mainstream politics have been useless in its collective response. Keir Starmer and Ed Davey tried to look statesmanlike, while telling Farage off for not respecting the stated wishes of Nowack's father not to use his son's murder for the politics of division. Instead, if they had anything about them, they should be making clear that his speech instigated Tuesday night's unrest, as Farage knew it would, and make plain that Reform is but the electoralist expression of violent street thuggery. But even when the King responded better than Labour did ti the 2024 riots, anyone hoping for better will be waiting for a long time. Something underlined earlier on Thursday as Starmer was moaned about Elon Musk dialling up the race hate in this country. If only the Prime Minister with his huge majority were in a position to do something about malign foreign actors working to destabilise British politics. At the moment where the violent consequence of Farage's tub-thumping could see politics move decisively against him, there is an absence where the far right challenges to Britain's limited democracy could be met.

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Trade Unionists for Farage?

For The Times, JL Partners' poll of the political intentions of trade unionists found that 28% of them are prepared to back Reform, a 20-point increase since the general election. Labour on the other hand have fallen by the same margin to tie with them. Elsewhere in the survey the Greens have increased their support to 12%. Speculating about the why behind these figure on Times Radio, Terry Stiastny thought it has to do with wokery, net zero, and anti-immigration worries. Which is exactly what I would expect someone with no understanding of the history of the labour movement to say.

The truth is there has always been a strong right wing bloc among working class people. We're not talking about those patronised by Blue Labourism, but dyed-in-wool anti-Labour voters. This is the section of the class that loyally turned out to vote Conservative, amounting to about a third of the work force. That part of the class where I come from. And this also had a political expression in the labour movement. Informally as, for want of anything else, backers of strike-averse right wing Labourism, and formally as the Conservative Trade Unionists. In the 1970s they were a real outfit that commanded the allegiance of tens of thousands of members. Yes, it's hard to believe now, but the Tories had the sort of trade union clout left groups, with the exception of the official Communist Party, could only dream of. The historic appeal of conservatism to working class people is not much of a mystery, and it is worth noting that the Tories made real efforts from the late 19th century onwards to win over "working men" and were particularly successful in the 1930s, following the granting of universal suffrage, in organising rural workers. Working class conservatism runs deep.

What the Times poll simply shows is a switch. The Tories have destroyed themselves by torching their means of mass political reproduction, and so the right wing sections of the labour movement who might have supported them in the past have shifted allegiances to Reform. An assumption borne out by the figures. Just 14% of 2024 trade unionist Labour voters have switched to Reform, the rest coming from those who either supported Nigel Farage at the time, or predominantly voted Tory.

A case of shrugging the shoulders then? Of course not. As we have seen generally, Labour have paved the way for Reform by trying to out-do them from the right on immigration and asylum, affirming thir talking points and not contesting the politics. And, sorry to say, by and large trade unions matter very little in the day-to-day life of most of their members. Ballot papers, a seldom-read magazine, and that's about all most members see of their unions - a point reinforced by the abysmal turnouts for internal elections. On the one hand, the so-called political wing of the labour movement has cackhandedly encouraged Reform support, while its industrial organisation does not, with some exceptions, do much to discourage it.

Reform might be growing their presence in the trade union movement, but it is a passive reflection of their strengthening support in society more generally, and unlike the old CTU is not organised beyond a handful of pockets. It's well within the power of trade unions to reverse this support and stop them from making further inroads. And, fortunately, Reform itself is probably their greatest ally. In February, Richard Tice was boasting how Reform would just undo the new workplace rights Labour introduced in April, but also would tear up workers' protections. Maximum hours, safety at work, paid breaks, holidays, parental leave, fire at will, scrapping the minimum wage, Reform are promising the sort of bosses' agenda that the Tories dreamed of implementing. So proud are Reform that they call it their "Great Repeal Bill". Explaining what a Reform government means for working class people is the start of it, but that has to come from within the unions, from it being taken up by workplace reps and officials. A charge sheet filed on the union website or nestled in its magazine won't do the trick. Anti-Faragist moves will only be effective if a union is relevant to its members, that if their organisation feels like their organisation, that its moral leadership counts for more than the appeal of Reform's racist scapegoating.

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Five Most Popular Posts in May

What a scorcher! No, not just the month but the traffic on this blog! If you're inclined to believe the very basic Google stats package built into this platform, we had almost a million page views last month. Unfortunately, because this has been the pattern for a while it's not a sign of my breaking through into the big time. More a matter of generative AI repeatedly crawling though the pages looking for new words to chew on. I hope it makes them choke. And so, because the stats package is useless I have little idea of whether I'm addressing an audience that could fit into a seldom-seen phone box, or multitudes. Anyway, onwards!

1. The Road to Wigan Keir
2. Should the Greens Stand in Makerfield?
3. Andy Burnham's Second Coming
4. It's the Differential Turnout, Stupid
5. Labour's Political Paralysis

The evaporation of Andy Burnham's soft leftism as he entered the fray of the Makerfield by-election got the top spot. Though now we see he's decided PR might be a good idea after all, and would go into the next Labour manifesto. And there are also suggestions that he's quite keen on a progressive alliance between parties. His re-entry into national politics has proven itself a tale of vibes and counter-vibes so far. In second was the debate in and around the Greens about whether they should stand a candidate - my argument was that the party should demand something in exchange for either standing aside or running a low key campaign. Third, it was Andy Burnham again on the occasion of his Makerfield announcement. In at four were some suggested rules about interpreting the results of the local elections in England, and in at last was the impasse Labour was in at the beginning of the month - a hapless leader, but no one in the PLP being in a position to remove him.

As a believer in second chances, for the second time the spotlight returns to ... this post's predecessor. Tony Blair has said a few things, and what's interesting about his essay is the no frills assertion of what's best for the ruling class, and damn everyone else.

Looking ahead, right now I have no idea what I'll be talking about. But if past behaviour is any indicator, look back at May's content for what will likely crop up in the month.

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A Rare and Unusual Intervention

Tony Blair's essay about what's gone wrong in the Labour Party has been widely read and discussed, and earned decent length ripostes from Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham, and Keir Starmer. The cage of Labour statecraft was well and truly rattled. Still, if you've read one Blair essay you've read them all. There was nothing new here that he hasn't already said in a thousand-and-one other rare and unusual interventions. Blair is a massive fan of ChatGPT and its like, but even he doesn't need to engage their services when a cut and paste from his archives does the job.

Blair was right about one thing, and that's the absence of strategic direction at the heart of this government. A point so obvious that even my cat knows it. But apart from that, the 5,700-word screed is interesting for one reason: for unapologetically laying out the empty world view of the ruling class. Something that "this shows Blair has moved to the right" takes fall far short of. In the piece, Blair says that welfare needs cutting (of course he does), military spending boosting, net zero ditching, state intervention and regulation pared back, and more government funds made available for AI development. On world affairs, he says Britain needs to carry on sucking up to the United States. And does so with an argument identical to that pushed by Peter Mandelson during Donald Trump's Greenland bullying at the beginning of the year.

Central to Blair's argument is that rudderlessness comes from a lack of policy. That is what drives the politics. But politics, which is always a clash of interests, counts persuasion among its properties. While lecturing others about doing politics properly, this is entirely absent from the essay. What the state should be doing, the backing of AI, and continued subservience to the US under Trump are treated as self-evident truths. They certainly are to Blair, because having trousered tens of millions since leaving office his personal, private interests are now entirely aligned with the class interests of the super rich, whose ranks he long aspired to join.

There are two forms of ruling class politics that dominate the powers-that-be. The technocratic managerialism personified by and incompetently manifested by Starmer and his cabinet of right wingers is what "sensible" and "grown up" politics is. Living in the real world means never changing the fundamentals, keeping the present class settlement as is - even though it's breaking down - and fiddling around the edges and selling that as "change". The alternative is just letting it all hang out in the open. The establishment's euphemism for this is populist right wing politics, but it's just the rule of oligarchic capital transacting in full view of everyone. The endless enrichment of the already rich is its programme, and the scapegoating and culture war rubbish are its politics of distraction. Neither, you'll note, come anywhere near to Gramsci's view that ruling hegemony requires intellectual, political, and moral leadership. Both rest on what was established by Thatcher and Reagan, and consolidated by their successors. One perspective says this is the way of the world, while the other almost goads everyone outside the private jet class to do something about them. There is no effort to persuade, let alone mask the realities of class rule.

Blair's essay manages to bridge both camps, making a technocratic case for big power bullying, the oligarchical interest, and what needs to be done to consolidate both. Not in terms of winning an eroding popular consent for this state of affairs, but simply letting ruling class interests run riot. AI for perfecting new forms of exploitation, more markets to keep the balance titled for capital over labour, and the bombs and guns to continue enforcing their grip on global affairs. Blair used to say class politics was old hat, but here he is proffering a manifesto for open class warfare. One comfort zone that he's always been more than happy to inhabit.

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Local Council By-Elections May 2026

This month saw 168,788 votes cast in 57 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 31 council seats changed hands. For comparison with April's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Apr	+/- May 25	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	55	31,741	18.8%	+2.1	-0.8	577	-2
Labour	46	20,056	11.9%	+0.7	-4.8	436	-10
Lib Dem	51	34,190	20.3%	+10.6	-2.3	670	0
Reform	57	47,699	28.3%	-5.9	+5.2	837	+15
Green	55	27,140	16.1%	-8.8	+5.4	493	-1
SNP*	0						0
PC**	2	472	0.3%	+0.3	+0.2	236	0
Ind***	15	6,560	3.9%	+1.6	-0.5	437	-2
Other****	3	930	0.6%	-0.4	-1.6	310	0

* There were no by-elections in Scotland
** There were three by-elections in Wales
*** There were two Independent clashes
**** Others this month were Great Yarmouth First (866), SDP (49), TUSC (15)

With 52 council by-elections taking place on the same day as the English local elections, the pattern of results were likely to be similar. Reform the clear winners, and not great times for the main parties. It wasn't fabulous for the Liberal Democrats and Greens either. Decent vote shares by their standards, but breaking even and dropping one seat respectively were the scores on the doors.

This by the way is the third consecutive month Labour haven't been able to break the 12% barrier. There is the abysmal, and then there is the abyssal. For all the Starmerist talk that the party would never be forgiven if it ditched the PM and had a leadership contest, the numbers suggest otherwise. If Labour wants to survive it can't but get shot.

Next month is pretty much a Wales special. Thanks to the big Senedd gains enjoyed by Plaid Cymru and Reform, many a new MS have vacated their seats. That means 13 by-elections, which (I think) is a new Welsh record. Also, Reform are defending seven seats so it'll be interesting to see wha happens to them. Could their winning streak of seemingly endless net gains come to a halt?

7 May
Basingstoke & Deane, Oakley & The Candovers, Ind gain from Con
Brentwood, Brentwood West, LDem hold
Cambridge, Trumpington, LDem hold
Cannock Chase, Hednesford Pye Green, Ref gain from Grn
Chelmsford, Broomfield & The Walthams, Con gain from LDem
Cherwell, Banbury Calthorpe & Easington, Ref gain from Lab
Cherwell, Bicester West, Ref gain from Ind
Chesterfield, Staveley North, Ref gain from Lab, Ref gain from LDem
Crawley, Three Bridges, Lab gain from Con
Dudley, Wollaston & Stourbridge Town, Ref gain from Lab
East Hertfordshire, Little Hadham & The Pelhams, Con hold
Eastleigh, Chandler's Ford, LDem hold
Exeter, Heavitree, Grn hold
Gloucestershire, St Mark's & St Peter's, LDem hold
Great Yarmouth, Caister South, Oth gain from Con
Guildford, Onslow, LDem hold
Halton, Daresbury, Moore & Sandymoor, Ref gain from Lab
Hastings, St Helens, Ind gain from Lab
Hertfordshire, Flamstead End & Turnford, Con gain from Ref
Hertsmere, Bentley Heath & The Royds, Con hold
Horsham, Itchingfield, Slinfold & Warnham, Con gain from LDem
Knowsley, Roby, Lab gain from Grn
Leeds, Adel and Wharfdale, Con hold
Leeds, Morley North, Ref gain from Ind
Leeds, Temple Newsam, Ref gain from Lab
Lewes, Newhaven South, LDem hold x2
Mid Sussex, Hurstpierpoint, LDem hold
Newport, Rogerstone North, Con hold
Norwich, Wensum, Grn hold
Powys, Llandrindod South, LDem hold
Reading, Caversham Heights, Con gain from Lab
Reigate & Banstead, Earlswood & Whitebushes, Grn hold
Rochford, Downhall & Rawreth LDem hold
Rochford, Hawkwell East, Ref gain from Oth
Rother, Rye & Winchelsea, Ref gain from Lab
Rugby, Bilton, LDem gain from Con
Salford, Cadishead & Lower Irlam, Ref gain from Lab
Sheffield, Beighton, Ref gain from LDem
Sheffield, Firth Park, Lab hold
Somerset, Mendip Hills, LDem hold
St Albans, Sandridge & Wheathampstead, LDem hold
St Albans, St Stephen, LDem hold
Stevenage, St Nicholas, Ref gain from Lab
Stratford-on-Avon, Bishops Itchington, Fenny Compton & Napton, LDem hold
Surrey, Warlingham, Ref gain from Con
Tunbridge Wells, Sherwood, LDem gain from Lab
Tunbridge Wells, Southborough & Bidborough, LDem hold
Welwyn Hatfield, Welwyn East, Con hold
West Northamptonshire, Hackleton & Roade, Ref hold
West Suffolk, Abbeygate, Grn gain from Con
Wokingham, Wokingham Without, LDem hold
Wolverhampton, Wednesfield South, Ref gain from Lab

21 May
Dorset, Bridport, LDem hold
Fylde, Kirkham, Con gain from Ind
Lancaster, Castle, Grn hold
Malvern Hills, Alfrick, Leigh & Rushwick, LDem gain from Ind

28 May
Swansea, Fairwood, LDem gain from Con


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Nigel Farage and the Politics of Corruption

On the saga of the £5m Nigel Farage has trousered from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, we've been issued with no end of excuses. Reform tried denying it was any business of the Commons, seeing as the money was wired before he decided to stand in the general election. Parliamentary standards disagreed. Then Farage said it was for the security he'll need for the rest of his life, being a divisive public figure and all. Then the story switched to its being a reward for his years of dedicated campaigning. Coincidentally, Farage started voicing enthusiasm for crypto shortly after the bung dropped into his bank account. And now, Reform are claiming that news of the gift is courtesy of Russian hacking, evidence of which is not forthcoming.

This is not the first time Farage has stood accused of receiving funds for political favours. Indeed, what characterises his relationship to money is its brazen transactional character and consistent repetition. A foretaste of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do relationship to the law we would expect during the nightmare scenario of a Reform government. But what are the political uses of such corruption, seeing as it's a common feature of the extreme right, here and abroad?

As already hinted, there is the shock and awe element, of being seen to be political teflon. I can imagine some canvassers hitting the doors in Makerfield and getting depressed that Farage's £5m kickback has not booted Reform's chances out of contention. As per Trump and what we've seen in the United States, allegations of corruption from political opponents go nowhere because, in many cases, they're rightfully perceived as being little different. Additionally, this can be threaded into narratives - spontaneously elaborated in the Facebook groups and retailed by GB News - that Farage is getting singled out and targeted for telling the "truth" about this country. The right in this country, whether in its Tory or more extreme forms, will not waste an opportunity to play the victim.

More important is the message Farage's corruption is sending to his class. Accepting money from here, there, everywhere signals that Reform is open for and to business. Farage himself, like Boris Johnson before him, covets cash and this ensures a congruence between his politics, the interests of the most reactionary elements of the ruling class in this country, and the globalised oligarchs. A bonfire of regulations, the dismantling of Labour's new, meagre protections on workers' and renters' rights, and the final destruction of the NHS as a free-at-the-point-of-use system fit nicely with those ruling class views that think we have it easy and need putting back in our box.

Yet this is not without risks. Farage is carrying on as if certain elite interests can shield him from consequences indefinitely, but this is not so. There's the obvious problem of investigations into rule-breaking. The £5m bung, for instance, puts Farage at risk of a Commons suspension and potential by-election in Clacton. One might be tempted to think he could walk it, but this is where the politics of corruption could bite back. While true not many Reform-minded people care about the provenance of his income and what he does to ensure similar gift giving continues into the future, but there are people outside the Farage fandom that do care a great deal. Brazen corruption could negatively catalyse and mobilise opposition to him and Reform which, considering their levels of support, could be hard to fend off. Imagine, for example, if the rest of the political establishment dredged up an independent anti-corruption candidate akin to Martin Bell's successful challenge to Neil Hamilton in Tatton during the 1997 general election. Could Farage see off Martin Lewis?

Risky or not. corruption is baked into extreme right wing politics. Farage can no more resist cash offers than he can the politics of scapegoating. The cash flow is the guarantee that Reform will stay in oligarchical pockets, and the closer we get to the next general election the more those taps will gush.

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The Road to Wigan Keir

Well done Andy Burnham for resolving the question of whether the Greens should stand in Makerfield. He's spent the entirety of this week providing very good reasons for not supporting his candidacy.

It began even before Labour's NEC greenlit his challenge. No sooner had Caroline Lucas counselled the Greens to stand aside because of Burnham's position on electoral reform, he came out as an opponent on proportional representation. "Fairer votes" means the disproportional wonders of AV Plus. Which, with uncharacteristic haste, the government is about to restore for mayoral contests ... just in time for a Manchester mayoral by-election, should one be needed. Then Monday came around. Having said very warm things about the EU and admitting he'd like to see Britain back in eventually, he 180'd and said we shouldn't undo Brexit. Getting two u-turns in for the price of one, Burnham committed himself to Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules. Very different from the Andy Burnham of last September, who dared utter sacriligeous words about the holy wisdom of the bond markets.

He was just getting started. A couple of months ago, Angela Rayner gave a speech that criticised Shabana Mahmood's cruel immigration policies as "un-British" - an intervention Burnham apparently endorsed. This week, he's now a supporter of this doomed attempt to out-flank Reform on the right, and went further at his by-election/leadership campaign launch by demanding net migration be driven even lower. And to round things off, in double quick time Burnham has gone from being a defender of trans rights to accepting the establishment attack on trans people. In other words, everything that was wrong about Labour a week ago are now his policy positions. The only difference that exists between him and the Prime Minister is over who should be in Number 10. From the soft left, it's been a short, sharp road to Wigan Keir.

I suppose some tendentious rationales can be concocted for these about-turns. It's a Reform-leaning seat, so it's time to deploy the Blue Labour strategy that's proven a stunning success everywhere else. There's extra press scrutiny, so time to stifle the leftish vibes given off by "Manchesterism" so one can emote fiscal orthodoxy and fealty to Treasury shibboleths. Reform's problematic plumber might go in for cheap point scoring come any hustings, so socially liberal approaches to immigration and trans people has to be ditched. Or you could see it as Burnham adapting himself to the Labour selectorate. Plenty of MPs bear a grudge from his refusal to go along with their anti-Corbyn wrecking, and further back for breaking and critiquing the Blairist orthodoxy on health. And these days, the Labour membership are much more middle class and managerial than at any other time and are, by and large, habituated to life in a rudderless political husk. Either way, Burnham's pitch is the traditional Labourist marriage of perceived expediency and political cowardice.

This does raise serious questions about what Burnham's Labour is going to look like. At first contact with re-entry into national politics, the great hope of the soft left has capitulated across the board. The criticisms that allowed him to cultivate a prince-across-the-water persona as Keir Starmer stumbled from one catastrophe to another have evaporated. He looks as clueless and as spineless as the man he would replace. If Labour don't change tack, if Burnham carries on like this assuming he wins the by-election and subsequent leadership election, the crisis afflicting the party is sure to persist. Except, without taking stock and changing direction, the new leader will guide the party into its final, terminal phase.

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Where Now for Politics?

Come and hear me speak in Birmingham this Wednesday!

Should the Greens Stand in Makerfield?

Now that Labour's NEC have given Andy Burnham the okay to stand in Makerfield, the Greens have got to decision to make: should they stand? The party put out a statement saying they were doing just that, and the ball had started rolling on candidate selection. This was followed up with Caroline Lucas saying that she hoped the decision to stand "wasn't true" and this was a moment to "put country before party" and give Burnham a clear run. Not only to minimise the risk of Reform getting in, but to secure "fairer voting", something Burnham is a long-standing advocate of. By chance, they're appearing on stage together in a fortnight's time.

Lucas presents a compelling case encouraging the Greens to sit this one out. But, as one Green spox put it, which version of Burnham is going to turn up? For instance we hear that he's about to drop his bid to rejoin the EU, ostensibly to court and/or neutralise Reform support in Makerfield, while the Telegraph writes that he stands by his pledge. Which is which? Those with long memories might recall his being all over the place during the 2015 Labour leadership contest - has he changed?

There's going to be a lot of pressure on the Greens to stand down. For one, there's the usual vote-Labour-or-get-Reform "argument" that worked out so well in Gorton and Denton. Though, in this case, the Burnham factor means there's more heft to it. Then there are the expectations of the Greens' new members and voters, a good chunk of whom are effectively refugees from Labourism. Not a few of them will share Lucas's positive views of Burnham, as well as her diagnosis of the stakes. If a Green candidacy is seen costing Labour the seat under these circumstances there might be a price to pay.

In my view, if the local Greens are minded not to stand they shouldn't sell their cooperation cheaply. What Labour seem determined to learn the hard way is that its monopoly on left wing votes is long over. If the Greens are to cede them ground, then Labour needs to work to make it worth their while. Burnham should be challenged on Green priorities to make public promises on them. What springs to mind is the aforementioned electoral reform, but I would also add wealth taxes, action on low pay and precarity, more action on solar and wind, and ending the race to the bottom on immigration and asylum. If he cannot commit, then that suggests any Labour Party he ends up leading will be marked by the same rudderless malaise we've seen under Keir Starmer. Go on, Andy. If you want the Greens to stand down then give them a reason.

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