Merry Christmas Everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Repurposing the Soviet new year cards from yesteryear for tools in the class struggle today, I'd like to wish all comrades, regular readers, occasional flybys, and randoms who frequent this blog a very merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Here's one Leninist party we can all get behind.

Eurovision 2023 Preview

The coronation had its celebratory concert, but that will get blown out of the water by Eurovision this weekend. And what a show we have in store with some cracking performances from some cracking artists. As this blog is a stickler for custom and practice, here is the annual eye on a handful of picks worth noting.


Mae Muller's I Wrote a Song gets top billing here because a) patriotism is compulsory in Eurovision, even for left wingers, b) Mae is a comrade, and c) the UK is in with a shout of winning, actually. Undoubtedly we would have won last year if it wasn't for the "special circumstances" in Ukraine, and it appears the powers-that-be at the BBC have had a penny dropping moment. Marry a decent artist to a contemporary-sounding(ish) song with nods to the signature Eurovision styles, like practically every other competing country in Eurovision does, and the UK entry will do well. Mae is up against stome stiff competition, but it does stand up well in the field. Can the UK pull it off this year? Some other have a thing or two to say about it.

Eurovision didn't earn its reputation as the greatest show on earth without a touch of ridiculum, and this year Austria have dished up a slice of the absurd.


Teya & Salena's Edgar is a song about being possessed by the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe in case you missed it.

Every year there's a no hoper that tickles my tastes, and here's my pick for the best. Belgium's entry will get the gender cops mad.


Gustaph's Because of You pushes all the buttons. Voguing (which, I hope, will be in the stage show), an early 90s house echo, and a guarantee to upset reactionaries across Europe. Sign me up.

But who is the contest really between? There are two tunes that have garnered most interest. We have Armenia's offering:


Not to my taste, but Brunette's Future Lover is doing the YouTube numbers. And as voting is a numbers game, those willing to take a punt could do worse than lay a few sovereigns on this effort.

The closest contender does have a mean pedigree behind it. The country I speak of is Eurovision superpower Sweden, and here is their entry:


A name familiar to Eurovision stans, Loreen first took the crown a decade ago with her light trance belter Euphoria. Now back with a bit more attitude, an interesting stage game, and a more vocally intensive tune, Tattoo is best placed to and probably will edge Armenia out on the night. But this is Eurovision and its voting system is notoriously brutal. Perhaps the fickle publics are going to choose someone else entirely?

Who is your pick for Eurovision this year?

Red Army Choir Sings Jingle Bells

As someone in the comments to this video put it, "It makes sense that the Red Army choir would celebrate a holiday about a guy with a long white beard who likes red and helps redestribute wealth to all the good kids of the world."

Merry Christmas!

Three More Soviet Christmas Cards

Okay, they're new year cards as opposed to Christmas cards, but artistic license is a thing.

The Whys and Wherefores of Keith

Where would the internet be without people who have too much time on their hands? Probably a better tempered place, truth be told. This blog wouldn't exist for one. And neither would this meditation on why the left likes to call Keir Starmer Keith (or, to flaunt one's subcultural capital, Kieth). I'm at a loss to explain why The Social Review decided to go with an overlong disquisition on a daft nickname, but as this blog has a reputation for indulging political ephemera something would be amiss if even a short comment wasn't passed.

The article itself? Well. Our author Morgan Jones asks a few of his mates about the name Keith, decides it's chronically unfashionable and middle-aged. A bit try-hard shading into a mid-life crisis of divorce mobiles and fake Tinder profiles. Twitter-traveling leftists deploying the monicker are therefore suggesting there's something fake and forced about the Labour leader. What a shocking suggestion. Surely Keir didn't have fibs in his heart when he promised nice Corbynish things with added unity? The point isn't laboured, or for that matter much considered. Instead, moving through Morgan's text messages and FaceTime chats, a rummage through obscure ONS stats usually the preserve of pub quiz masters and Daily Mail features writers, we are not presented any explanation for this vile, bullying behaviour. Not even the obvious answer: it annoys some people.

In my opinion, one cannot wind up the self-important pricks on the party's right wing enough. And this is what, forgive me, "Keithism" is about. Yes, it's an in-term with meta-signification picked up and noted by the cognoscenti, but it's not some bullshit Twitter tribe warpaint. It's hardly essential. The 2020 Twitter left already has a collective identity founded on common experience: two hard fought general elections and five years of open warfare with people who should, yes, go off and join the Tories. It's a joke to needle the pomposity of those with little to be pompous about.

Now the Labour right have re-won some of their former power, the hypocrisies long-time members have heard for decades (unite behind the leader, shut up and don't embarrass the party, don't criticise hardworking councillors/MPs in public) are echoing around CLP Zoom calls as if 2015-2019 didn't happen, and more than a few are hoping to reset the old chummery and the repugnant cultures of deference. These people, who a Twitter wag described to me as "temporarily embarrassed right-wing Labour MPs", joined politics to be big I ams. And as we know, regardless of the size of the pond someone will always strive to be the biggest fish. They stand to gain the most from another round of suspensions and expulsions, and lose out if the leadership's ineptitude over shenanigans prevents it from happening. Still, their best hope for advancement is clinging to the leadership's coattails and making their lips sore from kissing as many behinds as possible (funny how these sorts of people never get a seat, despite services rendered).

Deary me, this is proving as ponderous as Morgan's screed. Time to wrap it up. Keith is just a name used to take the piss out of Keir Starmer. It has the happy byproduct of annoying the above, the very worst people in the labour movement who've jumped on his bandwagon. And because it does wind them up, the left are not about to stop doing it. More than this, Keith, Kieth, Keef, Keith Stalin, and the rest are good in and of themselves. The Labour Party needs a heavy dose of irreverence, especially now it's led by an empty suit with an authoritarian mindset who takes his job to be representing the state interest over and above that of working people. If Keithism helps that along, fine. And if it doesn't, also fine.

Image Credit

Dear Change UK, a Belated Love Letter

Dear Change UK,

A year has flown since you came into my life. You were a mould-breaking gun slinger of centrism, fresh as a daisy and pregnant with mucho newness and changeable changeness. And I was, and still am, a no-mark politics nerd blogging from the back streets of Stoke-on-Trent. As your star ascended, you didn't cast a glance in my direction. And when your brilliance faded, affecting nothing but indifference among those minded to vote in the EU elections, I still kept the faith. You never amounted to much, but I was a loyal fan and you provided good fodder for half a dozen blog posts. For that, accept this love note as a demonstration of my gratitude.

Unlike those who use today, the anniversary of your foundation to rub salt into the wounds of your demise, or josh about on Twitter with phrases like "Chuka who?" and allusions to funny tinges, I want to celebrate you in the best way by recalling your accomplishments. For while you might feel bitter about the hostile environs you were born into, and how once sympathetic journalists no longer return your calls, you have made three important contributions to British politics.

The first is no political party can spontaneously come into being. You, dear Change UK, were ill-served by your parentage. Your founding MPs didn't know the first thing about organising, having either had their seats engineered for them by old fixers who had done the requisite moving and a shaking for them, or spent so long on the back benches marking time, drawing salaries, and leaving their constituency parties to seed - until the tidal wave of Corbynism rolled in and put them on notice. Nor were you helped by defections from the Tories, all three of whom, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, and Anna Soubry, were similarly assisted by the party apparat earlier in their careers. Because they had everything done for them, from their point of view politics was a heavily mediatised world. Building support for parties were neither the fulcrum of articulating or representing interests, but an exercise in smart marketing - just like jolly old Macron, across the Channel. Build it and they will come, but this ain't no Field of Dreams. And thanks to their absence of basic organising nous, you had to suffer the indignity of two name changes, an ultra-bland logo after the original was rejected by the Electoral Commission, and your being forced into a broken party model. Sadly for your fate, you were hobbled from birth.

The second lesson, much to your disadvantage, was the absence of a political space for you. Your founders misread the polls that consistently returned huge majorities of voters who self-defined as inhabiting the centre without interrogating what this means. A sign of millions upon millions hankering after a centrist hero, or those same millions don't know (nor care) what professional politicians understand by 'the centre', and so interpret it according to their common sense? There are plenty of slightly racist Tory voters who think their politics are in the centre, simply because they might also agree with nationalising the privatised utilities. Or because low level bigotry is, to them, commonsensical. If that wasn't bad enough, you were launched while another self-defined and properly-established centre party was a going concern, and who managed to gobble up the lion's share of remain votes during your first - and only - electoral outing. Who knew being accepted as the authentic third party in British politics, and the one most closely associated with pro-EU arguments would prove an insurmountable obstacle to a half-formed party whose best known members were strangers outside the thin layer of Westminster watchers? What you were to prove was the impossibility of a centrism independent of the fringes of the two main parties, and the Liberal Democrats. And thanks to your example, the idea another bunch of MPs might try and emulate your singular example is poppycock and deserves taking seriously by precisely no one.

And last of all, your best achievement, and one I am raising a toast to you for, is your conveyance of some of the worst Labour MPs of the 2017-19 parliament out of politics. Whether they lied about the party, repeatedly scabbed on collective efforts, briefed against the membership to the press, made stupid and self-serving arguments, or later became a laughing stock, it is an unalloyed good that none of these people sit in parliament any longer. It's almost as if they created you and treated you cruelly, and you wreaked upon them vengeance by terminating their careers. One hopes, in time, the Tory party will prove as effective in immolating the Commons careers of its own MPs.

There we have it. Change UK. The Independent Group. The Independent Group for Change. You made my heart sing during an otherwise dark year in politics, and it pains me to know history will forever counter-pose your farce to the old SDP's tragedy, a cautionary tale of knowing what not to do. Yet for me, and a peculiar band of leftists, you did more than render a service and off some terrible MPs. We feel genuine adoration, one that has shades of pity, but adoration nonetheless. You scorned our affections but we will never spurn the admiration we have for you. And so tonight I light a candle, knowing it will be a very long time before we see your like again and that just perhaps, those who plotted your emergence but were too cowardly to join the ride have learned some lessons. Especially about the fragility of MPs without a proper party to support them, and how no one is bigger than the collective.

Yours with tenderness,

Phil

Three Soviet Christmas Cards

Say what you like about the late and unlamented Soviet Union, it certainly knew how to do Christmas cards.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Is The Independent Group a Wind-Up?

Is The Independent Group a wind up? We'll pass over Luciana Berger fluffing her lines and introducing herself as the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree at the launch. TIG is incorporated as a private company to get around donation reporting rules for political parties. This move, which is without precedent as far as the party affiliation of sitting parliamentarians is concerned, is about preventing scrutiny of their finances. And this is one eschewed even by Farage's new party, an outfit and a project that has serious questions to answer about past finances. Not the best way then to break the mould of the old politics.

Fancy another? TIG is owned (sorry, "supported") by a shell company going by the name of Gemini A (website registered in Panama [edit: see comments]). Looks suspect, yes? It gets better. Not only is the business address a Wetherspoon's in Altrincham, a curious choice for an explicitly anti-Brexit "party", said pub trades under The Unicorn. You couldn't make it up.

They also thought it would be a good idea to poach a Tory, and so approached Ruth Davidson to be their leader. Having a sense of self-preservation and half a brain, she turned down their kind offer. But still, Soubz is there waiting in the wings. She's already removed all mention of being a Tory MP from her Twitter bio in preparation for the jump.

And it would be remiss to forget Angela Smith's appearance on Politics Live where she did a racism. Lest we forget.

But you know what truly damns this clowns' car of an ego vehicle? It's the total lack of seriousness. They have learned nothing, nothing since 2015. Like the ill-fated Corbyn coup, no ground has been prepared in the wider party. This is a gaggle of minor-to-anonymous parliamentary personages with no backing apart from shy rich people and naff celebrities. They didn't try and win over other party members, let alone appeal to those who have left Labour. No work was done to reach out to the affiliated organisations or to try and get councillors on board. In other words, the most basic organising, the 101 of launching a new party, has been set aside. Why? Incompetence is part of the story, but it's in equal part the arrogance that comes with launching an elite political project. The truth is you, me, the little people don't matter. Politics is a plaything for MPs, Lords and Ladies, and the money bags who can buy their way in. Us? We're just voting fodder at best, and the people who politics is done to the rest of the time. We don't understand, we don't get it, and we definitely should have no role to play in a political party above the station of envelope stuffing and leafleting.

This is what their split is about. It's no accident this comes after three of them got no confidence votes by the constituency parties, that similar moves were being made by another, and that Chuka Umunna's local party voted to move away from delegate-based to all-member meetings. Democracy is only okay if it leaves them unchallenged and gifts them a job for life. 

Let's be honest. The Labour Party is well rid.

Appalling Scenes with Cadbury's Heroes

Nothing says Christmas better than fulminating over the injustice nestled in our sweetie tins. Puncturing the season of goodwill this year is Cadbury (AKA Kraft) and their shortchanging fans of their Heroes (sans Miniature) range. This year Santa delivered us two tins of diminutive iterations of their popular chocolates. And lo, the scandal we have seen in previous years is back. See for yourself:

I haven't seen gross disparities like these since looking at the UK's income inequality figures. It's an outrage.  n = 68 for the first tin, and 69 for the second. Terrible! And there is a close(ish) resemblance between the two. Measly numbers for Twirls, over generosity - if that's the right phrase - with the Fudge, Creme Egg, Dairy Milk. The evidence is right there, staring you in the face.

We must step up the campaign until justice wins. Victory is nothing less than parity in every single tin of Heroes, Celebrations, Roses, and Quality Street. What have you got to lose? Join in and take the fight to Big Confectionery! Hashtags in previous years were #FairHeroes, #FairCelebrations, etc.

H/T to @ravisubbie for kicking off this important struggle.

Merry Christmas!

It's been a long year. It's been an exhausting year, but we're nearly there. So Merry Christmas to you all!

Centrism: An Explainer

Celebrations: A Comparative Analysis

Last year, Ravi launched his important Fair Celebrations campaign. Yours truly chimed in last Christmas with an exposure of Cadbury's Heroes. This year, there's none of that sugared down Kraft Foods muck as Santa has brought us two tins of Celebrations. Never one to miss an opportunity to advance the frontiers of human knowledge, here's the break down of each of the two tins.

My, there isn't much variation between the two tins, but there is still plenty of inequality. We're not talking Britain-since-1979 levels of injustice here, but a noticeable shortchanging guaranteed to upset Twix fans. Peter Mannion MP would be upset.

This year the campaign has stepped up its activity with mainstream regional coverage courtesy of the Birmingham Mail. Next year, Newsnight? Join the campaign by tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, tumblring your Celebrations reality and hashtagging them #FairCelebrations (plus #FairHeroes, #FairQualityStreet, etc.). And don't forget to @RaviSubbie too.

Forward to Victory!

Wishing You a Solid Christmas

Brexiters Less Likely to Change Underwear Daily

Many props to Mike Smithson for spotting this and letting folks know about it. A case of correlation and not causation? I park it here without comment and for your information.

The Shape of Things to Come

A friend went to Stockton and saw the future.

Ants in the Coffee

I'm working on what the trendies and hipsters call a 'long read'. It's about Neoliberalism - what it is and what's likely to come after. I'm about 2,000 words in and not sure if the mid-point has been reached. Yikes.

You're here looking for a bit of blogging red meat to play with, and so ...

I've been making cups of coffee since I was a little kid, mostly for myself and mum. And I followed the standard prep format. Coffee and sugar in first, followed by the milk and then topped up with boiling water. Seeing the half/semi-dissolved granules swimming about the surface was, in my book, the sign of a drink well made.

Then, over 20 years ago, I went to university. In the second year our house was in a street about two minutes walk from the main entrance to the ivory tower, so all the folks we knew would pile round inbetween lectures. Many hours of Neighbours and Home and Away were spent with cakes from Wright's Pies and beverages from, well, me. And I recall one of my housemates (hello, Liv!) moaning about my "ants in the coffee". Imagine my horror that, apparently, the trusty and tried Cartledge way of doing things was wrong. The water goes in first and the "ants", my beloved melting coffee sands, were unworthy. Sad to say, I capitulated and adopted the "proper" method and have added the milk last ever since.

The important questions then are:

a) How do you make your (instant) coffee?

b) Is it a region thing?

c) Is it a class thing?

This has puzzled me for the best part of 15 minutes, so can you shed some light on the situation?

Eurovision 2016 Preview

As Howie has reminded me, it's time for the European referendum that truly matters. As I work my way through piles of undergrad essays, I have listened to every single entry not once, but twice - all so you don't have to. Here then is my preview of this year's contest. Who stands out? Who's any good? Who will win?

I always like it when contestants push the envelope a bit, and a few have had a go this year. Whether they've tried too hard is up to the Eurovision voting public to decide. But in the originality stakes, there's Samra for Armenia, which seems pointlessly innovative but follows hot on the heels of last year's haunting piece about the 1915 genocide. Also of interest is Justs of Latvia. This is not so much a song of two halves (a la Norway's Icebreaker), but rather a tune divided. Its foundation is a very contemporary deep house sound, which is wrecked utterly by soaring - yet bland - vocals. Still, good to see some folk want to be down wiv da yoof. The most political entry is Ukraine's 1944 by Jamala. I have no idea why a song named for the year Stalin reoccupied the country would have been a popular choice among the Ukrainian public. Lastly of interest is Sandhja for Finland, just because it's a poppy track that, well, just isn't Eurovision. I can imagine a one-hit diva of the decade past, such as Agnes, having a hit with this back then. But now?

Okay, let's get serious. First, who's going to win? Bear in mind my Eurovision forecasting has proven much worse than my politics punditry. I have a record of abject failure to fall back on. This time, it looks like Le France could do the business. See:



It's not my glass of vino, but it could do well with the Eurovision masses. Tune? Check. Sung in two languages, one of which is English? Sorted. Good looking smiley bloke fronting it up? Yah. If the number of YouTube views are anything to go by, the crown will be Amir's.

But what's this? The bookies disagree? They do. They have this as their favourite:



Yes, Mother Russia. Admittedly, this is a very strong entry. Russia always takes its Eurovision seriously, which must sit uneasily with the country's institutionalised homophobia and allergy to all things camp. And Sergey Lazarev does the Rodina proud here. A rising vocal crescendo, a thick solid beat, and a Eurovision vibe will see it do well. But the winner? Hmmm. The bookies are seldom wrong ...

Other particularly strong entries with the YouTube crowd are Malta and Poland.

Naturally, here's the obligatory plug for the UK's entry:



For once, Eurovision fans have a song we needn't be ashamed of. In fact, I'd go so far and say a) it's good, and b) it's a contender. Yes, I really mean that. The tune is very Eurovision, and Joe and Jake are the kind of inoffensive good-looking lads that will go down a treat with some of the regular audience. For readers overseas, vote, vote, and vote again for jolly old Blighty and its beezer entry!

And now it comes to the big moment. Who am I endorsing? This:



A cross between Barry White and Sébastien Tellier (as @CatherineBuca puts it), Serhat's I Didn't Know for San Marino is the contest's stand out tune. It croons, it discos, it even sleazes (just a little bit), it deserves to go through to the grand final and take the crown. And not only because it's excellent - I want to know how 2017's Eurovision Song Contest can fit in San Marino.

The heats begin Tuesday May 10th and Thursday May 12th, 8pm on BBC Four, and the television event of the year broadcasts 8pm Saturday 14th May on BBC One. Be there or be dull.