Martin Kettle's Blog, page 10

Don’t underestimate Starmer’s push for workers’ rights – it could be his defining legacy | Martin Kettle

For the first time in decades, and with public support, dignity and fairness in the workplace are back on the political agenda

Never underestimate the capacity of the political world to focus on questions that are relatively trivial in the larger scheme of things, all while issues of much greater significance stare them in the face. Labour’s furious row over Diane Abbott’s candidacy is a case in point.


Abbott is a politician coming towards the end of her career. She will have no power whatsoever under a Keir Starmer government. But the recent row over Abbott drowned out a far more consequential internal Labour argument – the one over workers’ rights. It is more consequential because, unlike Abbott, millions of workers are in line to get more power under Starmer.

Exactly how much power, and on what terms, is unclear. The details are still being thrashed out. Some of the issues will only crystallise after the election. These are often represented as party management battles, or ancestral left-right tussles. That is true to an extent, but it misses the main point, which is that Labour is attempting something highly ambitious – to create a new business model for the British economy.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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No gimmicks, no clutter: Zürich Opera’s is a Ring cycle to cherish

Andreas Homoki’s detailed staging focuses on compelling and clear storytelling, and, with Gianandrea Noseda bringing energy and directness to Wagner’s music, this is a fresh and intelligent new cycle

Unlike all too many Ring cycles, Zürich Opera’s new staging will stay in the memory for lots of the right, not the wrong, reasons. This is a fresh and intelligent cycle that is full of interest and consistently musically distinguished.

The Zürich Ring’s principal achievement is musical and theatrical coherence. Andreas Homoki’s production and Christian Schmidt’s neoclassical sets provide a unified visual framework. They are centred on a rotating axis of interconnected rooms and settings. Homoki is explicit that his aim is to move “in the other direction” from what he dubs the “interpretational meta levels” of other Ring productions, especially of those that dominate German opera houses. That does not mean that this is a cycle without an interpretation. But it does mean Homoki trusts Wagner more than some modern directors do: he has staged a storyteller’s Ring.

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A humiliating election speech, with little to offer. Sunak’s USP was competence – what of that now? | Martin Kettle

The PM has gone for the bad choice because he knows things will get even worse. It’s an admission his leadership has failed

The circumstances were excruciating. One of the great rituals in any prime minister’s career – the one when they put it all on the line by calling an election – was instead drenched in rain and almost drowned out by horrible, hostile noise from Whitehall protesters. Rishi Sunak battled on, just about retaining his dignity, and one felt for him in his torment. Yet it was a nasty, low moment in British politics.

Never forget this, however. There is only one reason why a British prime minister would call a general election earlier than they have to, as Sunak did today. That is because they know better than anyone else that things are going to get worse later.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Antonio Pappano Gala review – farewell concert celebrates the best thing that has happened to the Royal Opera

Royal Opera House, London
Singers including Jonas Kaufmann joined newer vocal stars such as Aigul Akhmetshina to honour the much loved music director on an evening that ended with the royal seal of approval

Antonio Pappano is the best thing that has happened to the Royal Opera in its lifetime. His 22 years as music director, notching up 700 performances – making him the Alan Shearer of Covent Garden – have not just been a record stint, studded with highlights. They also came at precisely the time they were most desperately needed.

By the force of his musicianship and commitment he has done more than anyone to turn it from the haunted and defensive place of the millennium into the happy company it still succeeds in being, in defiance of so many anti-musical headwinds, today.

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Our democracy desperately needs a reset – and, behind the scenes, that’s the plan | Martin Kettle

This is a seismic moment as Westminster prepares for power to pass from one party to another. It will affect everything in some way

The Conservative party’s lurch into collective hyperventilation after 2016 gave Britain five prime ministers in eight years. Yet changes of government from one party to another are actually remarkably rare. There have been only three of them in the past half century: to the Tories in 1979, to Labour in 1997 and then back to the Tories in 2010. Lucy Powell, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, pointed out in a speech this week that, at the age of 49, she has only witnessed two changes of UK party government in her adult life; someone aged 30 will not have witnessed a single one in their voting life.

More on Powell’s speech later. But her observation about the rarity of change underlines something distinctive as well as something important. Britain’s rare changes of regime make it something of an outlier. In the US, Canada and Spain over the same half century, there have been seven such changes to Britain’s three. In France and Germany, there have been five. Change is just that bit rarer in the UK, and for that reason it may in some ways be a bigger deal.

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If Keir Starmer isn’t careful, Gaza could do for him what the Iraq war did for Blair | Martin Kettle

Many Muslim voters turned against Labour in the local elections, and the continuing conflict only heightens the risk of alienating others

How does Keir Starmer avoid Gaza doing to his Labour party what the Iraq war did to Tony Blair’s a generation ago? Or does the prospect not really worry him?

Amid so many good results for Labour in last week’s English local elections, Gaza’s undiminished capacity to drive a significant minority of Labour voters elsewhere cannot be overlooked. Israel’s latest incursion into Rafah, and the possibility of a full military onslaught there, is a reminder that, though it is fairly far down the list of the conflict’s grim realities, the Gaza war is increasingly disruptive for Labour.

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The SNP failed as an activist party. If it becomes a competent governing force, it may have a chance | Martin Kettle

Whoever wins must stop acting like the leader of an independent nation that does not yet exist, and start leading the real Scotland

Faced with a crisis in its direction and its fortunes, a political party can sometimes change. Labour has managed that since 2019. But parties do not change easily. Sometimes, indeed, they respond by doubling down on past error, as the Conservatives have done. But the choice between continuity and change cannot be ducked, and it is the one that now faces the Scottish National party after Humza Yousaf’s resignation this week.

Part of the crisis confronting the SNP is immediate and circumstantial. The SNP is easily the largest party in the Scottish parliament. Until the next Holyrood election, due in 2026, Scotland cannot be governed without it. But the SNP has lost popularity, is a divided party and, since the breach with the Greens last week, has no natural allies that it is able to call on. Its opposition rivals, moreover, have zero interest in coming to the SNP’s rescue.

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Götterdämmerung review – Jurowski’s six-year completion of Wagner’s Ring cycle was well worth the wait

Royal Festival Hall, London
Jurowski’s attention to detail across four-and-a-half hours brought the darkness of Wagner’s score thrillingly to life

Wagner’s Ring cycle is famously long. Even so, a cycle that has lasted more than six years is some kind of record. Back in 2018, Vladimir Jurowski was still the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal conductor when he embarked on the tetralogy. Then Covid intervened, and Jurowski moved to new posts in Germany. As a result, the cycle’s completion has had to wait a further three seasons, until now.

Jurowski’s Götterdämmerung was overwhelmingly worth waiting for. Concert performances of Wagner inescapably place the orchestra even more at the centre of proceedings than ever. This was enhanced by a restrained and minimalist semi-staging by PJ Harris, atmospheric videos by Pierre Martin Oriol and, in this most foreboding part of the Ring cycle, Mark Jonathan’s lighting, which began and ended in the pitch dark. The result was a performance more than usually focused on Jurowski and the LPO.

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Frank Field saw benefit in the Lib Dems. In this election year, Labour would be wise to do the same | Martin Kettle

The late elder statesman understood the need for a progressive realignment of British politics. That prize shouldn’t be lost

David Marquand and Frank Field, both of whom died this week, never sat on the Labour benches together. The professor of politics and the long-serving backbench MP had very different temperaments too, one searchingly academic, the other a bold moraliser. They also disagreed about many of the big issues in British politics, the European Union above all.

But they also had some hugely important things in common. Both started as free-thinking Labour MPs – Marquand in 1966 and Field in 1979. Both possessed a rare degree of intellectual and spiritual hinterland. Both then went on lifetime political journeys. These took them increasingly away from Labour, though they always remained in Labour’s orbit.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Lucia di Lammermoor review – a vocally breathtaking, disturbing to witness descent into madness

Royal Opera House, London
Nadine Sierra is sensationally good as Lucia in this revival of Katie Mitchell’s production of Donizetti’s romantic tragedy – a dark, thoughtful and sometimes shocking interpretation for the post-#MeToo era

These are beleaguered times for opera in Britain. But this revival of Donizetti’s adaptation of Walter Scott showcases one immense reason why opera will outlast its critics: the singing. After acclaim for Asmik Grigorian’s Cio-Cio-San and Aigul Akhmetshina’s Carmen in recent weeks, Nadine Sierra’s Lucia di Lammermoor completes a Covent Garden spring soprano hat-trick. Fact: a new generation of outstanding sopranos are queuing up to sing at Covent Garden. And in some ways Sierra is the best of them all.

Earlier generations tended to see Donizetti’s 1835 adaptation of Scott’s story of feuding families in the Scottish hills as just a vehicle for the coloratura soprano singing Lucia to show off her vocal agility. Maria Callas’s seriousness and dramatic gifts blew that away in the 1950s. Katie Mitchell’s 2016 production, revived here for the second time, deepens and darkens the work still further for the post-#MeToo era.

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