Off The Fence: On The Lash With Sir Keir

A particularly punchy edition for you

Dear Readers,

Good morning, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter from the team at The Fence magazine.

Issue 19 is very much ‘at large’, and we’ve got some great snaps on Instagram from Jack Goode, who’s taken the magazine on a punt, and Nick Morgan, who’s taken the magazine to the cricket. 

Rory Thompson shows the mag appreciating one of the supreme examples of Elizabethan architecture, and we were absolutely delighted by this snap of the editorial team of Registered Gas Engineer magazine savouring the paper stock. Thank you, Scott.

Remember that we are running a competition in which you can win a bottle of Bollinger, which you can drink or use as an ornament, as you so desire. 

Today, we’ve got two pub crawls, two great pieces and a rare retraction. But first, let’s talk about the crime beat.

Human Traffic

Last week, Francisco Garcia published this forthright and moving piece about Glodi Wabelua, the drug dealer whose prosecution for human trafficking at the age of 20, had made him a legal cause célèbre.

Already the subject of a piece in the NYT, the story had a deeper resonance for Francisco, since Glodi Wabelua was an old schoolmate, and had in fact lived only a hundred yards from his childhood home. The result is a piece of rare insight and poignancy, that offers fresh perspective on the details of his story and the complex social, legal and psychological conditions which led to his crimes and their punishments.

Those who followed the aforementioned NYT piece may remember the furore it generated among the British press for both its slant – that Mr Wabelua was victimised by a new law that had been cynically wielded against him by a draconian government – and the consistent flaws in its reporting of same, not least confusion over which law Wabelua actually broke, and which governing body was responsible for enacting it. 

A subsequent Secret Barrister rebuttal went into the meat of those issues in some detail, ending its takedown with an impassioned plea for a better type of reporting on the case. ‘It is entirely possible’ quoth the Clandestine Silk ‘for Mr Wabelua to have been properly convicted of serious offences… [a]nd, whatever his errors or flaws, to have emerged as somebody sincerely intent on, and evidently capable of, turning bad into good. That is a story I would pay a subscription to read.’

Garcia’s humane and forensic piece on the case is just that. Something for our American cousins to ponder when they report on matters on these shores.

Something to Tell You

The novelist and screenwriter, Hanif Kureishi, was paralysed from the neck down after an accident in Rome. His son, Sachin, has written a piece that is both lucid and moving on caring for his stricken father, and how their relationship has changed, and how it hasn’t changed. It’s a piece we commend to you all. 

Couple of Pints of John Smith

As the Labour Party prepares for power after 14 years in opposition, we thought we’d put together something in the spirit of the magazine. No declamatory essays or stultifying long-reads here. Here’s a little pub crawl, in which you can ponder the future of left-wing politics in this country, and also have a good time with your friends.

As most people know, there are no ‘Hampstead intellectuals’ left. They’ve all been priced out – apart from David Hare and Melvyn Bragg. And there’s only one Labour ‘big beast’ left in the NW3 jungle: Alastair Campbell. 

The podcaster and mental health campaigner lives close to The Southampton Arms, regarded by some people as the best pub in London (it’s not). Campbell doesn’t go to the pub (he’s famously sober) but it’s only five minutes’ brief wander to the next destination.

If the Guardian Weekend magazine transmogrified into a pub, it would probably be The Dartmouth Arms. It’s dimly lit and has irritating opening hours. There are DJ sets, which are strictly vinyl. There are marauding bands of badly behaved children and it is far too expensive. It’s also Ed Miliband’s local, who lives very close by in a very large house: a mansion the tabloid newspapers took great delight in photographing.

Now it’s time to head south down to Kentish Town. It’s not far, about eight minutes walk or so, to The Pineapple, a decidedly mediocre pub with nice Thai food. The front bar smells unforgivably bad. This is the doorstep boozer of Sir Keir Starmer himself, who lives around the corner, and does, quite genuinely, treat the place as his local. 

Three drinks deep, it’s time for the lengthiest bit of transit, it’s 20 minutes walk over to the Tollington Arms, which is close to the Emirates, Arsenal’s stadium, and very close to the home of Jeremy Corbyn, the constituency MP (Islington North). Corbyn, like Campbell, is a sober man – probably where the similarities stop – but he did join the successful campaign to keep The Tolly open after energy debts imperilled the pub’s fortunes post-pandemic, so you can thank him personally for your £7 Amstel. 

For the final stretch, it’s 15 minutes stroll down the Holloway Road and into Barnsbury, to The Albion, a particularly chi-chi pub. It has a beautiful back garden but irritating clientele and poor service. It was also the boozer of one Tony Blair, when he lived round the corner on Richmond Crescent. (Blair may have left the street in 1997, but Emily Thornberry remains).

Two glasses of ale, please, barkeep

Now, to make the trip zip with a little more energy, you and your companions might discuss various questions along the way. The Conservative Party are obsessed with slurring their opponents as being from the ‘north London elite’ despite such a concept being reductive, not to mention loaded with antisemitic connotations. But is it not somewhat remarkable – or at least weird – that four out of five of the last leaders of the Labour Party reside in the same square mile of the country’s capital? Furthermore, Keir Starmer appears to be the only one among them who genuinely likes going to the pub, but is somehow regarded as inauthentic. What’s he got to do to prove his pintman cred – knock over a cyclist?

Written By The Victor

Sorry for paraphrasing in the headline, the full quote is – as we all know – ‘Der Sieger wird immer der Richter und der Besiegte stets der Angeklagte sein’, or, ‘The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused,’ as Herman Göring told the Nuremberg trials. But while we’re on the subject of people who should’ve been standing in the dock in 1945, the Sunday Times led with a thundering ‘exclusive’ this past weekend. Robert Verkaik, hawking his new book, The Traitor of Arnhem, touts that Anthony Blunt, the effete art historian & Soviet spy at the heart of the Cambridge Five, was perhaps an unwitting Nazi triple agent whose spilling of military plans led to the deaths of 17,000 Allied soldiers. 

Scintillating stuff, for sure, with a fresh, newsy hook, given Verkaik’s contention that Blunt’s epochal betrayal gave way to ‘Stalin's Iron Curtain and Putin's invasion of Ukraine.’ And yet, the matter is far from settled, as history’s rougher, tougher brother – historiography – stepped into the arena in the form of Miranda Carter. 

Carter, author of the definitive Blunt biography, took to Twitter to unpick Verkaik’s casus belli, that Blunt was the infamous codename ‘Josephine’ responsible for the foiling of Operation Market Garden, the last great Allied loss of the Second World War. ‘I find it hard to believe that Blunt, who was deeply naïve about his politics, but who had real and personal reasons for supporting Communism, & who genuinely hated the Nazis, would have spied for them,’ she wrote. ‘I have reasons to be sceptical.’ Those reasons are laid out far better than we can summarise, right here. 

Thankfully, history is already pretty clear on Anthony Blunt’s existing sympathies – it’s not like you’d buy a t-shirt of him and the Cambridge Five skateboarding in fuccboi gear, would you. Would you? Email info@the-fence.com if you would. Seriously. 

Crep Check

A member of staff who will remain nameless misidentified Giles Coren’s footwear in last week’s mail-out. As three of you pointed out, Coren is sporting a pair of Nike Air Max 90s in this video, not Nike Air Force Ones. We are happy to correct the record, and the staff member responsible for this blunder has been sent to a streetwear education camp (sponsored by Palace Skateboards).

The Paper It’s Printed On

Commendations to our partners in print at Galley Beggar Press, who have updated their exacting and sobering microanalysis of the publishing industry, ‘What does a book cost?’ We recommend giving it a read, but to give you the answer: so much money, Jesus Christ. Now, we’re not Franciscan monks with tatty skin from a life in the hairshirt, this is very much the life we chose, but paper & printing costs are climbing by the year, affecting anyone in the business of putting words on a page. 

We keep our subscription prices stolidly low so we can bring as many of you in as possible, starting at £19.99 for the digital sub, and £29.99 for the pretty quarterly we talk so much about. Keep signing up and we’ll keep doing this forever, no matter the cost.  

Baker’s Dozen 

When she's not prowling Soho as the Sunday Times's restaurant critic, Charlotte Ivers prowls Soho in the footsteps of one of the Doctor Who franchise's most beloved, and somehow, most surprisingly still alive stars, Tom Baker. For Issue 19, she retraced Baker's steps to try to replicate his famous Sunday Times Life In A Day, in which he frequents no fewer than fifteen (15!) pubs in a single day, an admirable feat that took both of them around 15 hours. 

In 1978, when that piece was written by Jeffrey Bernard, Baker was 44 and Soho was in its supposed golden era. In the four or so decades since, the area has been transformed. Gone are the all day watering holes and haunts of artists, writers and Old Soho legends. In their place, neon-bright boba tea shops and an endless parade of All Bar Ones. Read the lamentable outcome online now. 

In Case You Missed It

People don’t buy books writes Elle Griffin in her analysis of the current state of Big Publishing.

Yes, they do replies Lincoln Michel, in a countervailing analysis of same.

Lauren Bensted pens an extraordinary, angering, and funny account of the bowel removal that followed the birth of her first child.

Brothels, backstreets and by-elections: Jacob Furedi on how vice captured Blackpool.

‘If you were to take the five hundred members of the US media who talk about college campuses the most and cast them all into the sea, the overall quality of our national discourse would rise significantly’ writes Hamilton Nolan, in a piece on US Campus Panic which only gets better from there.

And Finally 

The Irish-American industrial complex is an occasionally irritating, occasionally sweet, always odd phenomenon. From Joe Biden right down to the average Joe, the Yanks who insist on saying 'Pattys' rather than 'Paddys Day' love to return to the motherland for the first time, and they love to share their bewildered findings with the world and the folks back home. 

In 2009 Dr Dot became one of them, granting the world one of Belfast's finest early viral videos in the process. Dot Stein went to west Belfast in 2009 and decided to drop into the city's cemetery one afternoon to interview four local boys who were at the time minding their own business with bags of glue. ‘Met some interesting folks and learned a LOT about the city and its history,’ she recounted. ‘I LOVE Belfast!’

The ensuing interview sees her ask her subjects for a quote for their American descendants. ‘You wanna say anything to the Americans? You wanna say anything to Americans?’ Dot probes. She is rewarded with the following summation of the Irish-American cultural exprerience: ‘Yiz love your McDonalds-iz anyway don't yiz yiz cunts yiz’. 

14 years later the document remains Dot's most popular video and has become, as one YouTube commenter says, ‘the greatest video made of Belfast ever. It will never be topped.’ It has, in classic early internet millennial fashion, been immortalised in murals and as twee prints on Etsy, and will presumably become the basis for several Biden 2024 campaign slogans. 

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That’s a wrap once more on this fine little newsletter, number one-hundred-and-something it must be. As always, if you’re missing your Issue 19, or have been missing the last ten issues, or have been missing us in a more existential sense, email support@the-fence.com and we’ll help with anything that we can. Go play out in the sun. We’ve got a treat for you on Friday. A real treat. Speak then.

All the best,

TF