Martin Kettle's Blog, page 36
February 12, 2020
Sinn Féin’s success makes the breakup of the UK more likely | Martin Kettle
As a direct consequence of Brexit, a union between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic is now far more likely
Ireland’s remarkable general election clearly marks a turning point for the republic. By topping the poll last weekend, Sinn Féin has broken the old politics wide open. Mary Lou McDonald’s party will now be either part of Ireland’s new government or the main opposition. Either outcome marks an astonishing change of fortune. Only nine months ago, in last year’s European elections, Sinn Féin came a poor fifth in seats. Within living memory, the party was a virtual pariah in the south.
Related: Sinn Féin begins efforts to form leftwing coalition in Ireland
The UK left the EU two weeks ago, but in Northern Ireland the withdrawal agreement remains unfinished business
This article was amended on 13 February 2020. An earlier version said Bertie Ahern had suggested there would be a border poll within the next five years. This has been corrected.
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February 5, 2020
The Labour leadership election only matters if the party breaks with the past | Martin Kettle
Unity is breaking out in the Labour party as the leadership election rolls on. Or, at least, so it keeps being said. There is unquestionably some evidence. It is partly embodied by the growing consensus, which has surprised many, that the contest is now Keir Starmer’s to lose. But the unity talk is also partly wishful. It would be wise not to take it entirely at face value.
Unity is mostly better than its opposite. After Labour’s brush with electoral mortality in December, a search for unity obviously makes immediate sense. This is especially wise for a party that throughout its history has mostly been a federation of interests and ideologies rather than a cult restricted to the doctrinally pure or the wretched of the Earth.
Related: Though Labour is split, unity may now be easier than it looks | Polly Toynbee
Continue reading...January 29, 2020
Boris Johnson is still triumphant. Huawei shows that won’t last | Martin Kettle
Brexit is the prime minister’s greatest victory. But the dilemmas he faces are a reminder that no government is ever safe
A big election victory never looks more impregnable than on the morning after. The Conservative triumph on 12 December was no exception: the verdict seemed absolute. Boris Johnson hymned the dawn of a glorious new era. Labour took refuge in the infantile disorder of imagining itself the heroic “resistance” to an all-powerful ruler. The headlines promised that a Commons majority of 80 would mean “Johnson unleashed” with a mandate “to govern as he likes”.
Related: UK has chance to relook at Huawei 5G decision, says Pompeo
Continue reading...January 22, 2020
Brexit is not ‘done’. We have to start talking about it again | Martin Kettle
Britain is still a part of Europe. Though we’re leaving the EU, there are still huge issues to play for
It’s as though a meteor like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs has landed in our midst. Overnight, Brexit has gone from dominating British politics to suffering a form of political extinction. When the electoral meteor hit on 12 December, Brexit became the issue that no one – not even Boris Johnson – wants to mention any more. In some ways it is a huge relief, not least to political commentators.
We all need to heal our wounds. So does the country. But while the essential issue has been settled, the conspiracy of silence that has followed needs to end. The UK needs to learn to think about Brexit again.
Regulatory and trade issues are all still to play for, and that must be done in public, with proper scrutiny
Related: Many in the north backed Brexit. They will soon begin to feel the costs | David Conn
Continue reading...January 15, 2020
The Scottish standoff will not be decided at Westminster | Martin Kettle
Boris Johnson will have to back massive investment north of the border if he wants to hold back the tartan tide
The possible breakup of the country barely impinged on most British voters during the 2019 general election campaign. For the majority, Brexit was overwhelmingly the dominant issue. But Boris Johnson’s refusal this week to allow Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government to hold a second independence referendum is a reminder of one of the Brexit election’s most important and umbilically linked consequences.
In Scotland things were, of course, different during the election. Yet even here it is important to recognise that Brexit, not the future of the union, was also at the front of the stage. In the Scottish National party’s 2019 manifesto, Sturgeon is pictured at a rostrum with a single slogan: Stop Brexit. Polling showed two Scottish voters in three thought Brexit a key issue, many more than chose any other subject. No one who followed the campaign in Scotland can seriously dispute that the SNP’s tremendous success on 12 December, when it took 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland, owed at least as much to its opposition to Brexit as to the issue of independence.
Related: Boris Johnson refuses to grant Scotland powers to hold independence vote
Continue reading...January 13, 2020
La Bohème review – exuberant and persuasive revival performed with elan
Royal Opera House, London
Conductor Emmanuel Villaume brings drive and intensity to Richard Jones’s detailed but inconsistent production of Puccini’s brilliantly written opera
There are Puccini operas that some of us might not miss never seeing again. But La Bohème is incontrovertibly not one of them. One takes a seat for La Bohème with happy anticipation. When Puccini duly captures you with his brilliantly written and constructed score, those expectations are rarely disappointed – and certainly not in this Covent Garden revival.
Richard Jones’s production, which made its debut in 2017, has several virtues. These bohemians really do shiver in a spare and freezing garret under a Parisian sky from which the snow falls before a note has been sung. Stewart Laing’s sets push the principals to the front of the stage so that big vocal moments ring out. Characterisations are standard but credible. But there are downsides. The exuberant street and cafe staging of act two bowls along with enormous elan, but it is so pyrotechnical, with so much shifting of scenery, that the action and the music are a bit overwhelmed.
Related: 'Tell me what traditional means' – director Richard Jones on La Bohème
Continue reading...January 8, 2020
Anyone who thinks they understand Boris Johnson could be in for a surprise | Martin Kettle
How much does the British political world really know about Boris Johnson? It certainly thinks that it knows a lot. After all, Johnson has been around for a long time. He has always courted publicity. He possesses a mega-wattage personality. Many will feel that they know too much about him rather than too little.
But there is a danger that politics may not be keeping up with the way he is evolving as prime minister. On the right, Johnson is still the conquering hero. He won the Brexit battle, trounced the liberal establishment and has led the Conservatives back to a level of power they have not known for 30 years. On the left, Johnson is the villain of the era. He has hitched his ambition to a rightwing nationalist deregulatory project, and he is a Trump admirer who does not care what gets in his way, or who suffers, as long as he wins.
Related: Johnson must satisfy new Tory voters by unifying NHS and social care systems
Continue reading...January 4, 2020
Profumo: a scandal that keeps giving, even after 50 years
The Trial of Christine Keeler shows that even those of us alive in 1963 have much still to learn
You might not think, more than 50 years after it all happened, that there would be much more to say about the Profumo scandal of 1963. But you would be wrong, as a fresh generation has been learning this week. And, believe it or not, there is a lot more still to come.
The latest episode of The Trial of Christine Keeler, BBC One’s dramatisation of the scandal, airs on Sunday. The central achievement of the series is to place three confident but exploited women – Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies and John Profumo’s wife, Valerie Hobson – at the heart of the story. The performances of Sophie Cookson, Ellie Bamber and Emilia Fox are the reason why even those of us who lived through the events now have something new to learn.
Continue reading...January 1, 2020
These are the questions Labour must answer if it is ever to win again | Martin Kettle
There can be no quick fixes. The party needs to take time for judgments to settle about its descent into the electoral abyss
Nearly a month ago Jeremy Corbyn announced he would step down after a period of reflection. This week he offered the first fruits of that process: 2019, Corbyn announced, had been “quite the year for our country and our labour movement”. Nevertheless, he added: “We have built a movement. We are the resistance to Boris Johnson.”
It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. But Labour is unquestionably going to have to do very much better than this if it is to climb out of the electoral abyss into which Corbyn led it in December. Talking about resistance to Johnson is simply displacement activity. The central truth is that Labour has to make itself the electable alternative that it failed to be in 2019. It needs to have a strategy for power. In the real world, power is hope, not the other way round.
Related: The only way Labour can win is by ditching ‘Labourism’ | Jeremy Gilbert
Continue reading...December 18, 2019
Forget Labour’s troubles: the Tories are the ones to watch | Martin Kettle
The opposition’s internal struggles are insignificant when we remember they won’t hold power for five years – at least
Judging by the column inches being devoted to it, you might suppose that the future of the Labour party is the most important political question in Britain today. Maybe that is understandable if you are Labour member. After all, it is only human, when you have had a traumatic setback, to take refuge in the familiar.
Yet the most important and interesting story in British politics today is the future of the Conservative party. The main reason for this is simple. The Tories won the 2019 election. Labour lost it. Victors have power. They set the terms. They have to make choices. They are more interesting as a result. Journalists should instinctively gravitate towards the biggest story; to treat Labour rather than the Conservatives as the biggest story in town is at best perverse and at worst a form of denial.
The Tories' newly won voters could prove to be on permanent loan, and any new Labour leader will have their work cut out to win them back
Related: How long will it take Boris Johnson to betray his new friends in the north? | Rafael Behr
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