Martin Kettle's Blog, page 18

Blocking Scotland’s gender bill is no anti-woke crusade. But it’s not a democratic outrage either | Martin Kettle

Some may suspect Rishi Sunak of trying to start a culture war, but there is a real legislative problem here

Many will see Rishi Sunak’s decision to stop Scotland’s new gender recognition bill from becoming law as both bigoted and brutal. Bigoted because it halts a bill that makes it easier for a person to change gender. Brutal because it blocks a bill that has been agreed by Scotland’s devolved parliament.

Let’s be clear that there is some truth to this view. Some Conservatives would love a crusading unionist confrontation with Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalist government. They would especially welcome weaponising an issue such as the gender recognition bill, where public support for change is cool, and on which the Labour party is divided.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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The Tories’ anti-strike bill will only lead to even greater industrial upheaval | Martin Kettle

This proposed legislation will do nothing to end the current disputes. Instead, its vagueness will give ministers dangerous new powers

The political goals of the government’s new strikes (minimum service levels) bill, unveiled this week by Grant Shapps, the business secretary, are transparent. The bill picks an entirely avoidable fight with the trade unions. It does so for two main reasons, and neither has much to do with the need to bring the current industrial disputes to either a fair or an early end.

The first reason is to rally a still fractious Tory party more firmly behind the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, through an act of explicitly Thatcherite homage. The second is the hope that the unions will overreact and that Labour – which was 21 points ahead in the polls at the start of 2023 – will be drawn in and damaged by association with an upsurge of militancy, thus slowing Keir Starmer’s march towards Downing Street.

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Rishi Sunak leads the Tories in name alone – it’s fear of Farage that’s driving the agenda | Martin Kettle

The threat that the former Ukip leader may attract rightwing support inside and outside the party is causing sleepless nights

In arguably the best book on British politics published in 2022, Michael Crick suggests that in the past half-century, this country’s five most significant politicians have been Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Alex Salmond, Boris Johnson – and Nigel Farage. The first four exerted their influence on events by getting elected to high office. The fifth, Farage, did not. But his influence is as strong today as ever.

Farage’s case for inclusion on this select list rests on two things. The first is his potent ability to connect with the public. As one of his media advisers puts it: “He speaks fluent human.” The other is his unmatched ability to influence other politicians without engaging with them directly, without ever displaying much discernible interest in policy, without getting elected to parliament, without ever having run anything, and in spite of leaving a trail of enemies and political casualties in his wake.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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Tears, cheers and whirlytubes: our critics pick their classical highlights of 2022

While there’s no doubt about the year’s villain, before November’s funding cuts there were plenty of heroes to celebrate. We look back on a year that saw many musical highs and an all-time low

More of the best culture of 2022

For the first 10 months of 2022, it seemed that British musical life was returning to some kind of normality. But that was to reckon without the decisions of the one organisation in this country whose sole reason for existence is to nurture and encourage the arts throughout England.

It was generally accepted that there would be cuts when Arts Council England announced its next round of funding, but no one could have imagined that those cuts would be imposed in such an arbitrary and, in some cases, seemingly spiteful way. The root-and-branch destruction of English National Opera has inevitably attracted most attention – the suggestion the company might move to Manchester was quickly seen as the red herring it so obviously was, while the justifications offered by Arts Council apparatchiks have been specious. But however shocked anyone was by the decision, they can hardly have been surprised.

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It’s time to give unions a seat at the table in talks about how Britain is run | Martin Kettle

This winter’s wave of strikes isn’t just a protest at poor pay, but at a broken economic and political system

A strike can be caused by many different things, but all strikes are the result of societal or economic failure. The failure can be at the micro level – a lack of agreement between management and workforce about what can be afforded, for instance. But the failure can also be at the macro level – government policy that pushes businesses and workers to the limit, inadequacy of the dominant ideas of political economy to cope with changing times and new concerns, or even a failure of the collective imagination of an era or culture.

So, when the UK is hit, as this December, by strikes involving nurses, teachers and lawyers, along with postal, rail and energy workers, there is plenty of micro failure in individual industries to go round. But since the UK is also recording its highest number of days lost through strikes for more than a decade, with those figures certain to rise again over the next quarter, the failure is simultaneously macro – and on a substantial, even historic, scale. The current disputes differ in various ways but they share something larger. They are part of a national failure of industrial policy that demands different, national solutions.

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Suella Braverman is spoiling for a fight on human rights – one that undermines this whole government | Martin Kettle

The home secretary’s factionalism and refusal to toe the line are making Rishi Sunak look weaker by the day

There is no mystery about Suella Braverman’s views on the European convention on human rights. The home secretary wants Britain to withdraw from it. And she doesn’t care who knows it, even if that means ignoring the evidence, trashing cabinet collective responsibility and breaching the ministerial code once again.

Withdrawal is what Braverman advocated when she ran to be leader of the Conservative party in the summer contest won by Liz Truss. It’s what she advocated “personally” as home secretary at a Tory party conference fringe meeting in October, before she was forced to resign two weeks later for a separate breach of the ministerial code. And it’s what she came super-close to repeating this week when, home secretary once more, she endorsed a Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report on Channel migration crossings that calls for withdrawal as an option.

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British foreign policy is in flux – we need more than Sunak’s pragmatic blandness | Martin Kettle

The country is not a superpower, its strategic future lies in Europe, and its reputation is in tatters. Does our PM get this?

It would be insulting and false to dub Rishi Sunak as, in Theresa May’s infamous phrase, a citizen of nowhere. Yet with a career rooted in international banking and financial networking, our prime minister is in many ways the embodiment of the globalised economic and political order that is in crisis, and may be in terminal decline.

Life, it seems, has not done much to prepare Sunak for the task he faces on the world stage of plotting a path on Britain’s behalf in a multipolar world. Ukraine, nationalism, energy shortages, climate crisis, Chinese power and refugees are among the issues he must navigate, all of them refracted through Brexit and economic downturn. Sunak is not alone among western or British political leaders in having to adjust to radically changed times. But his inexperience showed in the speech he delivered this week at the lord mayor’s banquet in London’s Guildhall.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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The supreme court’s batting away of Indyref2 leaves Sturgeon more isolated than ever

The five judges’ robust decision leaves the SNP with no choice but to seek independence through a general election

Compared with its ideologically zealous US counterpart, the UK supreme court is a cautious group of senior judges. They are careful not to throw their institutional weight around. They are particularly reluctant to get embroiled in politically contentious issues, especially since their predecessors were forced to do just that in the prorogation ruling in 2019. Today, however, the judges put caution aside.

The court’s unanimous ruling that the law does not allow the nationalist-led Scottish government to initiate a second independence referendum is politically explosive. After all, the Scottish National party itself brought the case, and this emphatic defeat throws down the gauntlet to the party’s leader, Nicola Sturgeon. In a formidably combative press conference, Sturgeon picked the gauntlet up. Where Scotland’s place in the UK is concerned, the game is once more afoot.

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Forget the budget: the scars left by 11% inflation will last for years to come | Martin Kettle

It’s more than 40 years since UK inflation was so high. Voters will not forget, nor will they likely forgive, come the next election

In no way can Jeremy Hunt’s autumn financial statement on Thursday be treated as a budget like any other. The economic stakes for the country and the political stakes for the Conservative government after the Liz Truss debacle are simply too high and too serious for that. Today, though, the stakes ratcheted up a notch, when the UK inflation rate rose unexpectedly steeply in the year to October to reach 11.1%.

This is a big moment, resonant with grimmer 20th-century times. It comes in part as the latest in a series of severe economic shocks, following Brexit, Covid and the energy crisis, that appear to be driving Britain into a longer and deeper recession than its neighbours, and which are not yet over. But the inflation spike is also an event of which millions of voters, with mortgages, overdrafts and needs that they cannot cover, have no recent experience.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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I’ve booed at the opera before. But what happened to a young soprano this week was plain cruel | Martin Kettle

On Tuesday evening in Covent Garden, during a performance of Handel’s Alcina, a 12-year-old child was heckled on stage

There is nothing wrong in principle with protesting at the opera. I’ve very occasionally booed shows I hated, and I want to be free to do so again if I choose. Not everything on the opera, or any other stage, has always got to be cheered politely or given the reflexive standing ovations that seem ever more common. Booing and whistling at the opera or theatre can sometimes be healthy and necessary protest. It is actually a lot more common than you may think, especially on first nights, especially in continental Europe. I once even heard Luciano Pavarotti, no less, booed at La Scala in Milan.

What happened at Covent Garden on Tuesday evening, however, wasn’t booing but heckling. It was repeated and mean-spirited barracking during a touching and plaintive aria about the loss of a father. Most disturbingly of all, it was the heckling of a child. It took place during act one of Handel’s opera Alcina, to a boy character, Oberto. Covent Garden’s production gives Oberto a poignant prominence. The target was Malakai M Bayoh, a 12-year-old boy soprano who is alternating the role with another young singer during the six performances scheduled by the Royal Opera this month.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please .

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