Daily Sketches: A Cartoon History of British Twentieth Century Politics by Martin Walker (Paladin Books 1978)

 

Bernard Partridge

Punch, January 29, 1908.

Partridge was. the heir to Tenniel in Punch’s pages, and by this time Punch’s cartoons carried all the authority of a statement from His Majesty’s Government (or at least so one German Ambassador told Berlin). There is an elegant ambiguity about this cartoon — the attacked capitalist is not sympathetically drawn, but neither is that sly grin on Keir Hardie’s face. It is not clear which side Partridge is taking. But the dog’s ferocity, and its French jacobin hat (a cartoon symbol of subversive foreign ideologies since French revolutionary days) show that Partridge was worried. The Leitmotif of potential class war is clearly present. There is an interesting echo of a famous nineteenth-century Punch cartoon, featuring similar dogs, and titled ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’. Partridge would have been familiar with it.

Mixing Darts and Politics

I saw a chance to come up with a 'Mixing Darts and Politics' label, and I seized it. I'm not apologising.

Political poetry signage from the recent 2025 Poland Darts Masters:

The bucket hats suggest that they should have been at the Oasis gig but they seem happy enough. A nice touch to have the Rob Cross lookalike holding the sign.

Bending that knee . . .

Willie Hamilton's not turning in his grave . . . he's trying to escape from his tomb so he can stick the nut on Keir Starmer. I can smell Keir's desperation from here.

I need to keep a tab on all these bastard tweets.

'I'd like to report a murder on the internet, officer.'

Count Binface won the internet today:

This is in response to this farcical piece of news. On what planet did Starmer's advisers convince him that this was a good political move? They must secretly fucking hate him.

Play For Today: All Good Men (1974)

 

"Uncle Bobby, what do I sing now?"

Torturous I know, but I have to make use of my encyclopedic knowledge of Dallas somehow:

'We are all Keireerists now.'

The Labour Party: bending the fucking knee since 1906:

When those Pabloites commit themselves to deep entryism, they don't piss about. They go all in.

Hinterland by Chris Mullin (Profile Books 2016)

It was some time before I had any further contact with Blair. Then, in November 1994, he invited me to his office and asked if I would be willing to go on the front bench. This was not the first time I had been asked (I was by now very respectable). As long ago as 1992 John Smith had asked me to be housing spokesman and I had declined in favour of remaining on the Home Affairs Select Committee. Blair talked of ‘pepping up’ the front bench and giving it a radical edge. ‘So many of the left are …’

‘Impossibilists,’ I said.

‘I was going to say “conservative”. Their idea of being radical is to defend the status quo.’ An astute observation and one that was hard to deny. The Labour left at this time had few new ideas beyond repealing the Tory trade union laws (some of which were sensible and popular) and reversing all changes in the management of the NHS, regardless of whether or not they made sense.

Waiting for the great leap forward

Via a Facebook thread, one of those anecdotes you wish were true, if only to see Tom Watson and Nick Cohen's heads explode in indignation:

 "The competing Trot sects in 1980s Islington North CLP voted for Jeremy as their compromise candidate because each of them couldn’t accept that a member of a rival 4th International would be the MP".

The Inglorious Nine.

No, not a reference to the Labour splitters. It's me hitting three treble 1s. I didn't even have the nous to adjust my feet after the first two went in.

Michael van Gerwen, your crown is still safe  . . . for now.

"Dad, I went on a School Trip to London and all I brought back was this book on the Millies . . . "

Via Facebook:

A follow up to the album challenge.

Day #10
With no explanations, post ten books that have made their mark on your life. Once a day, post the book cover and nominate a new person.

PDH (The Tractor Millie)

Quote of the Day

From a profile of Ken Livingstone in today's Observer:

"Everybody loves him, apart from the people who hate him."

I still maintain that anyone who joined the Labour Party in 1968 was either a political strategist of genius like proportion or a bloody fool. Look out for anyone who has joined the Labour Party in the last three months. You're possibly looking at a future Prime Minister.

What's in a name?

Looks like the Crewe and Nantwich Constituency Labour Party hasn't gone with my original suggestion for a candidate to replace the late Gwynneth Dunwoody at what will be an incredibly difficult by-election for them. Shame that, as it was probably their best chance of retaining the seat.

Of course, what with Tamsin Dunwoody being born in Devon, educated in both London and Kent, and someone whose working life has been spent primarily in London and Wales, she's obviously the best placed local candidate for the Labour Party in the North West.

I'm sure that the matter of the selected candidate's surname didn't even come up during the selection process. The realisation of the winning candidate's surname just happened to be a fortuitous added bonus for the local PLP after their decision was made. They do say that fortune favours the politically brave.

Don't let it be said that this blog exhibits any cynicism towards political dynasties. Why shouldn't the offspring of political grandees be allowed to go into the family business? It is one of the more lucrative of business options in a time of recession, after all, and if an electorate are willing to give extra weight to an individual's candidature simply because of their surname, then maybe they get the politicians that they deserve.

I only wish more scions of the political class took the Oliver Baldwin route when following in the parental footsteps. That bloke had a chutzpah that's lost on today's motley Krew of Kareerist Kidz.

Friends With Money

Class Warfare John takes a trip down memory lane with one of his friends in the north:

David Abrahams - a humble prole?

The Genial Thug

Quote of the day:

“Blair’s great skill was personal charisma - what used to be called bullshit. Merde de beouf. Whereas with Brown, there’s been nothing of that whatsoever. He’s got a very good brain - better than Blair’s - and a very good sense of direction, which I think Blair didn’t really have. Blair, in the end, was rather like Wilson: bullshit and nothing else, whereas Brown has a very solid understanding of what he’s up to.” [Denis Healey interviewed in last Saturday's Guardian.]

Hat tip to Neil at the Drink Sots.

Bill was right . . . sort of.

It's taken years for me to utter those words, but, there, I have - I've said it now.

I am genuinely surprised by this result. Flummoxed would perhaps be a better term. Harman, the most uninspiring and vapid of the deputy leadership candidates, was also the choice of the Brownite Camp.

What happens to the long terms plans of Cruddas now? Does he see himself as a possible leadership contender if and when Brown loses the next General Election, and does he continue in the same vein with his leftward move?

Chairman Brown

Possibilist Bill has been getting literature from what look's like the Mormons through his letterbox. Who'd have thunk that Mitt Romney's campaign would have extended geographically that far?

It's Bill's own fault if he will keep that sort of company.

On a slightly more serious note: who'd have thought that with the coronation of a bloke who wrote his PhD on Jimmy Maxton, and who was the editor of the 'Red Paper of Scotland' anthology in the mid-seventies, we would see the final death knell of Old Labour?

OK, I'm exaggerating for blogging effect - just woke from the strangest bastardish dream - but I will stand by what I always insisted: now that Blair has finally picked up the cheque from that dinner date from 13 years ago, we have the closing chapter on what has been - in terms of personnel - the most left-wing Labour Government in history.

If you don't believe me, check out Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee's 1992 classic 'Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock's Labour Party' out from your local library.

Whinge of the Day

'These times demands the New York Times' is the ad slogan on every other bus or yellow cab in New York. A snappy wee ad line* for an oh so smug newspaper.

I'd like to borrow - and paraphrase - the slogan just for a moment: 'These times demands that the Labour Left Briefing webmaster gets his or her arse in gear' and gets their bloody website into shape.

I know, I know - my copywriting skills need a bit of work.

With their chap possibly challenging Brown for the Labour Party leadership - less David and Goliath, more a case of Arbroath versus Bon Accord circa 1885 - their moment in the sun has finally arrived, and yet it looks like that their website** is one step above a geocities site that has been knocked together in the time it takes to draw up a composite resolution at a local GMC meeting.

I thought it was us ultra-lefties who were supposed to be the dilettantish amateurs?

*The radical New York free paper, The Indypendent, recently took the New York Times to task for the smugness and doubletalk of its advertising slogan.

**Yep, I know that John McDonnell's own website, John4leader, is much more easy on the eye, but no excuse should be necessary to poke the LLB bods with a sharpened stick. They've got it coming for that awful excuse of a website.