Martin Kettle's Blog, page 21
July 8, 2022
After being absolved by Durham police, Keir Starmer should sense power within his reach | Martin Kettle
Labour can fight the next election with ‘integrity’ as its battle cry against a post-Boris Johnson Tory party clearly devoid of it
A very good few days for the Labour party just got even better. In a normal week, the ousting of Boris Johnson and a summer succession battle between a field of underwhelming Tory leadership candidates would mean Labour’s cup was already full to overflowing. But this has been an extraordinary political week. And it proved to have one more big reveal up its sleeve. It came just before lunchtime on Friday with the news that Durham police will not be issuing fixed penalty notices to Keir Starmer or Angela Rayner.
The immediate political consequence is that it is now beyond doubt that Starmer and Rayner will lead their party into the next election. If Durham police had fined either of them, they would have had to step down. Labour would have been instantly reduced to the same sort of internal turmoil and inward-looking argument that is now gripping the Tories. Now this option is completely off the table. All the talk about Andy Burnham, Lisa Nandy, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and the rest can be put back in a box, perhaps for two years, perhaps for even longer.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: Boris Johnson resigns
Join our panel, including John Harris, Jessica Elgot and John Crace, as they discuss the end of the Johnston era in this livestreamed event, on Tuesday 12 July, 8pm BST | 9pm CEST | 12pm PDT | 3pm EDT. Book tickets here
July 7, 2022
The Hong Kong Diaries by Chris Patten review – handover notes
The journal of Britain’s last governor makes for candid reading, supplemented by a polemical essay on Hong Kong 25 years on
Chris Patten’s appointment as Hong Kong’s last governor in 1992 marked a cultural change for the colony. His predecessors had mostly been diplomats or administrators – Patten was a senior UK politician with reforming ambitions and a flair for public relations who aroused suspicion in both Beijing and Hong Kong. Many intrigued against him. But he had one supreme advantage – the loyal backing of John Major, the prime minister, and Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, back in London.
Patten’s goal was to ensure the 1997 handover to China went as smoothly as possible, while at the same time entrenching the rule of law and trying to extend democracy. He got some of what he wanted, but it was too little and too late. There were serious ructions with China along the way, and some within Hong Kong itself, about the new airport, passport rights, civil service pensions, Vietnamese refugees and, more than anything else, Patten’s reforms. The politics, in his words, were a “snake pit”.
Continue reading...July 6, 2022
This mutiny should be the end of Johnson. But never underestimate his sheer lust for power | Martin Kettle
The prime minister’s sense of entitlement will mean he has to be dragged kicking and screaming from Downing Street
There is only one question in British politics right now. How long can Boris Johnson survive as prime minister following the resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid yesterday? Only recently, Johnson was publicly speculating that he sees himself staying in Downing Street for another decade. Today, we can more realistically measure his time not in years but weeks, days – and even hours.
In conventional political terms, the case for Johnson to go is more overwhelming than ever. His prime ministership is irretrievably tarnished by scandal, the Chris Pincher debacle merely the latest of them. Most of his signature policies have not lived up to their billing. The “humility, grip and new direction” for which Javid called in his resignation letter are non-starters. He is at odds with much of his party over basic issues of style and strategy. He has lost his chancellor. And he is a vote loser. Last night in a snap poll, 69% of voters – and a majority of Conservative supporters – said Johnson should quit.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...July 1, 2022
Sturgeon is unlikely to get her 2023 referendum, but be warned: the threat is not going away | Martin Kettle
Until we have a vision of a less Anglocentric, more conciliatory Britain, nationalists will keep trying for independence
On the face of things, now may not seem like an ideal time to be restarting the campaign for Scottish independence, as Nicola Sturgeon has done this week. Only one in five Scottish voters think a new referendum is a priority in the next two years, a YouGov poll found this week. For most Scots, independence trails in importance behind the NHS, the economy, education and the climate crisis.
On the wider stage, moreover, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked European nations into much greater unity and overarching shared purpose, not their fissiparous opposites. The G7 and Nato summits this week embodied an imperative for Europe to put its often serious differences aside and pull together against Russia’s generational threat. Even Boris Johnson gets that, a bit.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...June 30, 2022
Why on earth shouldn’t Angela Rayner go to the opera? | Martin Kettle
Dominic Raab’s attack on the Labour frontbencher’s attendance at Glyndebourne says more about our class-ridden approach to culture than it does about her
It wouldn’t happen in Germany, and certainly not in Italy. It wouldn’t cause as much as a raised eyebrow in the US or even in Russia. Only in Britain would a political leader going to the opera stir a controversy.
The fact that the opera was at a country house in the Sussex countryside, with a black-tie dress code is part of the story, of course. That the politician in question is a Labour figure, a woman and working class probably even more so.
Continue reading...June 16, 2022
Johnson doesn’t see poor asylum seekers. He sees a way to win byelections and survive | Martin Kettle
He has been derided as an uncontrollable shopping trolley, but there is calculation in how he tacks right to secure his position
Perhaps to his own surprise, Boris Johnson finds himself part of a generation of western leaders who are compelled to grapple with much more daunting global issues than they expected a few years back as they rose towards power. Yet whereas Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz all give the impression, to different degrees, that they grasp the interconnected seriousness of the moment and are attempting, with varying records of success, to address it, Johnson is completely different. For him, government is overwhelmingly about getting and maintaining office. Everything else – war, inflation, climate, public health – is secondary.
It is extremely important to understand this overriding priority. It may be impossible otherwise to make sense of some of Johnson’s political choices and stances. The Rwanda deportation row this week is the latest prime example, though it is far from the only one. There is no point trying to understand the attempted deportations as a policy that might be an attempt to solve a genuine problem – global asylum seeking. They can only be understood as performative politics for the benefit of the parts of the Conservative party that hold Johnson’s future in their hands.
Continue reading...June 8, 2022
A smart cabinet would be plotting to get rid of Johnson. This one is neither smart nor brave | Martin Kettle
The PM has picked ministers who owe him everything and do his bidding. They have a duty to the country but are shirking it
This ought to be the cabinet’s moment. A prime minister who exults in his own uniqueness is dragging his party down in the polls. Byelection reverses loom, and perhaps even a general election defeat. An unexpectedly large number of MPs have just voted no confidence. If ever there was a moment for his most senior colleagues to speak and act on behalf of the Tory party, this is it.
Instead, what do we get from Boris Johnson’s cabinet team? We get parroted rhetoric about massive agendas, his capacity to “deliver”, lines in the sand, and moving on. We get a video of the cabinet compliantly listening as Johnson delivers a five-minute Putin-style ramble in which he pointedly ignores Monday’s revolt entirely. And now we get windy, wishful waffle about how it will all be solved by tax cuts.
Continue reading...June 6, 2022
Boris Johnson won the confidence vote but in every other way he is the big loser | Martin Kettle
The prime minister is damaged; so are the country and his party. His relief will not be long-lived
After a snap contest whose abbreviated timetable was tailored to his advantage, Boris Johnson won the vote of confidence tonight only by 211 to 148 votes, with all 359 Conservative MPs casting ballots. It is a win, but it is also a disaster for the prime minister.
The real victor in the 2022 Tory leadership confidence vote was not Johnson. He is irreparably damaged. Politicians don’t recover from such things. Nor was the victor the Conservative party. The winners were the parties of opposition: Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the nationalists.
Continue reading...June 4, 2022
This jubilee is not like any other: we look back but can also see the future | Martin Kettle
Where past celebrations have been about unity, empire and nation, this is a preview of a very different Britain
That was the jubilee, that was. Well, almost. The celebration is not over yet. Lots of people had a good time and their enthusiasm overflowed. Lots of others were less bothered but enjoyed the show all the same. For a minority, it was historic and glorious; for a different minority, infantilising and awful. But the official revels now are almost ended. On Monday, it will be back to war in Ukraine, the cost of living and Tory MPs’ letters.
How much, if at all, has Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee mattered in the larger scheme of things British? It’s easy to wax pompous about this on both sides. Enduring monarchical splendour? Merely bread and circuses? It doesn’t help that jubilees are such odd events, contingent and ephemeral. They follow no defined pattern, and have no constitutional significance. Those of us with grey hair are now enjoying, if that’s the right word, our fourth royal jubilee in 45 years. But our children and grandchildren may never see another one.
Continue reading...June 2, 2022
Orfeo review – descent to the underworld takes you to heaven
Garsington Opera, Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch
John Caird delivers a triumphant fusion of staging, choreography and performance – with Ed Lyon formidably assured in the title role
Sometimes everything comes right in the theatre. You know it when it happens, and Garsington Opera’s Orfeo is such a moment. It helped that the Chilterns weather was so benign for the summer season opening, but the real achievement belonged squarely to the performers and to director John Caird’s production team.
Monteverdi’s “fable in music” of 1607 tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in a psychologically intense musical word painting that is poised between the madrigal era and that of baroque opera. Caird’s beautifully deft production, with designs by Robert Jones and lighting by Paul Pyant, creates a pastoral Arcadian vision before tragedy strikes, and a shadowy underworld as Orpheus makes his doomed pursuit of the dead Eurydice.
Orfeo is at Garsington Opera until 3 July.
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