Martin Kettle's Blog, page 31
October 9, 2020
Allegra Stratton is a troubling pick for a bad role | Martin Kettle
Revamping the job of Downing Street press secretary is a constitutional error, and journalism is weakened by Stratton doing it
Allegra Stratton should have refused to become the new Downing Street press secretary. I have three big reasons for saying this, and none of them has anything to do with party politics, or my views about the Conservatives or Boris Johnson, or even my liking for Stratton herself.
The first is that, whoever got it, this job is a very bad innovation. Britain has a parliamentary system not a presidential one. It’s important to keep it that way and not undermine it. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister should be answerable to MPs in the House of Commons first, and to the media second. When John Bercow was Speaker, but also now under his successor Lindsay Hoyle, there has been a big effort to make sure that this happens more regularly and more fully. The new post, with its proposed daily televised on-the-record briefings, deliberately turns that on its head.
Related: Boris Johnson is using the Covid crisis as a pretext for a power grab | Gina Miller
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October 7, 2020
Johnson tells a striking story of Britain's future, but it's the results that will count | Martin Kettle
The PM’s conference speech ranged from wind power to social care. Without clear targets, how can we measure his success?
Boris Johnson is a Marmite politician, so it is no surprise that his Conservative conference speech has provoked radically different responses. Those on the right who can only ever see Johnson’s strengths – as vote winner, optimist or charismatic leader – heard only the speech’s virtues and ignored its many weaknesses. Those on the left who see only Johnson’s vices heard the exact opposite – the speech’s narcissism, vagueness and at times nastiness – not its larger potential significance.
There was more to Johnson’s speech than this. Perhaps that is because, in a Covid-dominated virtual conference season, the text of a leader’s speech looms larger than the theatrical performance. That has rarely been the case with Johnson, where the performance is normally all. This time, however, his speech contained a lot of clues about his government’s intended direction – while highlighting the problems it will encounter in trying to stick to it.
Related: What did Boris Johnson's conference speech really mean?
Related: The Guardian view on Boris Johnson’s speech: the politics of a pivotal moment | Editorial
Continue reading...October 3, 2020
Elena Urioste/Tom Poster review – warm lyricism in deft mix of old and new works
Wigmore Hall, London
There was much to admire in the interplay between the eloquence and control of Urioste’s playing and her husband Poster’s dextrous articulation
Instead of their planned honeymoon in March the American violinist Elena Urioste and British pianist Tom Poster found themselves locked down in London. Unfazed, the newlyweds began carving out an online niche with their home produced #UriPosteJukeBox musical videos, whose optimism and eclecticism found an enthusiastic following. With characteristic smartness, the Wigmore Hall promptly added the couple to their autumn reopening concert roster. This concert showed they were right to do so.
Perhaps not surprisingly, marriage was the thread that bound the duo’s programme together in a deft mix of established and new works. The most substantial of the former category was the second of Grieg’s three violin sonatas, written on the composer’s own honeymoon in 1867, where the rapport between Urioste and Poster produced a performance that was carefree in the very best sense. Here, as in Clara Schumann’s three op22 Romances there was much to admire in the interplay between the warm lyricism of Urioste’s playing and Poster’s dextrous articulation at the keyboard. Messiaen’s Theme and Variations of 1932, written as a wedding present to the composer’s first wife, brought out the best in Urioste, as she allowed the long line of the rapturous final variation to unfurl with both control and eloquence.
Continue reading...September 30, 2020
The Trump-Biden debate revealed the dangers of Britain's 'special relationship' | Martin Kettle
If the US no longer stands as an inspirational model for the world, where does that leave those who defer to it?
Ever since the pioneering Kennedy-Nixon encounter in 1960, the questions that political journalists pose after US presidential debates have been the same. Who performed best? Who had the better of this or that part of the argument? Who exceeded expectations or fell short? Who had the best lines and delivered the best zinger? And has any of it changed the election odds?
Related: How the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg could change America
Continue reading...September 23, 2020
Johnson is struggling with the politics of Covid, but it’s dangerous to write him off | Martin Kettle
If he can appear to achieve a last-minute Brexit victory, this shabby prime minister could well enjoy renewed confidence
Optimism is essential in politics. But the borderline between optimism and wishful thinking is easily overstepped. In one of my earliest jobs I interviewed London Labour party candidates and activists during the 1983 general election. One after another they said with passionate sincerity that Labour would win by 50 seats, and proceeded to lay out the compelling reasons why this was so. The following week the Conservatives won the election by nearly 150.
Plenty of those who frequent the palace of wishful thinking today have opined with similar certainty recently that Boris Johnson is now dead in the water. They have said he is not happy, that he is still ill, that he realises he is not up to the job, that he can’t cope with Covid. The Conservative party is said to be in ferment, Tory backbenchers are apparently unbiddable, and the public sees that it bought a political turkey last December. By spring, therefore, Johnson will be gone, to be replaced by Michael Gove, Rishi Sunak or some other freshly fashionable alternative.
Continue reading...Shostakovich: where to start with his music
In the eye of Russia’s revolutionary storm, he wrote some of the most powerful – and cryptic – music of the 20th century. Whether he is judged a Soviet lackey or heroic dissident, the wealth of his musical legacy is beyond doubt
Right from the start there were arguments about the music of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75). Even now, some of them still continue. Was he a radical or a conservative composer? An original or a derivative? A communist or a dissident? One thing, though, has become much clearer. The music of Shostakovich has never been more widely played or more consistently popular than it is today.
Winston Churchill’s remark that Russia was a 'riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma' could apply to Shostakovich
Continue reading...September 16, 2020
Party conferences are in urgent need of a change. But moving online isn't it | Martin Kettle
Let’s face it, no one ever told delegates: ‘Go back to your bedrooms and prepare for government’
I can’t have been the only veteran of the British party conference circuit to have breathed a sigh of relief at being spared an increasingly unrewarding annual trek this autumn. Now that we are on the verge of this country’s first ever virtual conference season, however, I’m not so sure this was right.
The first such gathering of 2020 began this week with the Trades Union Congress. Next Sunday, Labour begins three days of online debates and speeches. In the following two weeks, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives will follow suit. In October the SNP is expected to complete the season. In the whole history of British party politics, there will have been few gatherings odder than these.
Related: Labour should be aiming to shape public opinion, not follow it | Ellie Mae O'Hagan
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist.
Continue reading...September 9, 2020
This Brexit bill finally buries the Conservative party of law and order | Martin Kettle
For a Cummings-influenced government to break promises is no surprise. But breaking the law is still a jaw-dropping move
To the patron saint of modern Conservatives, the rule of law was always fundamental to economic prosperity. It was also always distinctively British. In her memoirs, Margaret Thatcher identified the rule of law as the foundational underpinning of commercial confidence in any society. And in a 1982 interview she said that Britain gave the very idea of the rule of law to Europe. As she put it: “The law came from us.”
Related: Plans for post-Brexit UK internal market an ‘assault on devolution’
Continue reading...September 3, 2020
Boris Johnson is floundering, and his majority may not save him | Martin Kettle
For now, he’s the only person who can keep his party together. But Conservative MPs are increasingly frustrated
Ordinarily, a prime minister with a big working majority does not have to worry much about backbenchers. Tell that, though, to the ghost of Margaret Thatcher, whose MPs ousted her in 1990 when she had a majority of almost 100. And tell it today to Boris Johnson, who, even with a majority of 80, finds his back increasingly against the wall.
Related: Boris left flailing as his limitations become clear for all to see | John Crace
Continue reading...August 19, 2020
Johnson vowed to strengthen parliament. Yet he and Cummings are silencing it | Martin Kettle
We are witnessing nothing less than an attempt to overturn Britain’s established system of representative democracy
Why are the members of the UK parliament not holding the government’s feet to the fire amid these multiple crises? The case for them doing so is overwhelming. In the middle of a global pandemic, with coronavirus cases rising again at home, the government has abolished England’s main public health body. The examination and university entrance systems are in real-time chaos. The economy has fallen into recession. Jobs are collapsing by the thousand daily. Oh, and the Brexit talks have stalled.
Meanwhile, a prime minister who can’t cook and who likes to take luxury foreign holidays at someone else’s expense is supposedly out in the rain on a midge-ridden Scottish camping holiday with his partner and a three-month-old baby. Believe that if you wish. What really matters is that Boris Johnson is simply absent without leave.
Related: Public Health England is the new scapegoat for the government's dire failings | Stephen Reicher
Related: MPs 'advising' big business undermines democracy. Second jobs should be banned | Zarah Sultana
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist.
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