Martin Kettle's Blog, page 43
March 6, 2019
Britain has cut itself adrift from Europe. I fear we may sink | Martin Kettle
In his novel The Stone Raft, the Portuguese writer José Saramago imagines that the Iberian peninsula breaks away physically from the rest of the European continent at the Pyrenees. The peninsula and its peoples detach from Europe and drift across the oceans, seemingly in search of a new home and contentment, which – spoiler alert – they never quite find.
Related: The truth is out about Brexit – but there is a narrow road back to sanity | Andrew Graham
Related: We’re divorcing the EU. So why do hard Brexiteers still feel jilted? | Rafael Behr
Continue reading...
February 27, 2019
Time is on the side of remainers amid Brexit’s smoke and mirrors | Martin Kettle
Ever since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, two things have been clear. No serious attempt to reverse or even moderate the leave decision would ever be uncontroversial. And any such attempt would require a degree of present legitimacy that could be acquired only in the light of new events and with the passing of time. The question today is whether we have now reached such a moment.
Related: Another referendum has edged closer. With Labour behind it, remain can win | Zoe Williams
Continue reading...February 20, 2019
The splitting of the Tories and Labour could redefine British politics | Martin Kettle
Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston are not the first MPs to break away from the Conservative party. The list of Tory resigners goes back to Winston Churchill in 1904 and beyond. And they are unlikely to be the last. Back in October I had a coffee at the Tory conference with a cabinet minister who confessed: “Part of me is longing for Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg to become leader so the rest of us can just leave and join a new party.”
Wednesday’s departure of “the three amigos”, as Allen called them at their press conference, does not make that much larger Tory fissure a certainty – much will depend on the Brexit endgame. But it makes it more likely. It also marks a potential watershed for the 21st-century Conservative party. When the three former Tory female MPs - and their gender is definitely part of the story -crossed the floor of the House of Commons this morning, they threw down the gauntlet to an entire generation of 21st-century Tory modernisers to either stand up or stand down.
Related: Tory modernising wing has been destroyed, say defecting trio of MPs
Related: The Independent Group will at last give us real opposition to Brexit | Gina Miller
Continue reading...February 13, 2019
Remainers, hold your nerve. May is no nearer to her Brexit deal | Martin Kettle
Although some plans are being talked up and others talked down, Theresa May knows everything is still to play for
Even at the best of times, politics can be a place of deception and a hall of mirrors. High politics and low calculation are inseparable in the way MPs cast their votes. For some of us, that’s part of what makes politics so fascinating. But, over Brexit, the mirrors glint and deceive more than ever.
As the Commons prepares for yet another day’s voting on Brexit today, with more votes to come later this month and in March, this always needs remembering. Today’s votes are skirmishes in a campaign of positioning, not the full battle. Thus far, none of the big Commons votes have meant precisely what they may appear to mean.
Related: Brexit: no deal still on table, says No 10, as ERG refuses to back government motion – Politics live
Continue reading...February 12, 2019
Akhnaten review – Glass's pharaoh casts his spell once more
Coliseum, London
Stage pictures are painted with balletic poise in this revival of Phelim McDermott’s inventive production
Few operas can cast such a spell as Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. Glass’s music insinuates itself into the ear and stays there. The unfolding of a visionary Egyptian pharaoh’s rise and fall lodges in the mind’s eye. Akhnaten has almost achieved classic status now, but it still delivers the haunting impact that made its British premiere, 34 years ago, one of English National Opera’s most memorable nights.
Phelim McDermott’s 2016 production, now in its first revival, lives up to that company inheritance. His staging captures the attention from the start, as the shadows of Egyptian wall paintings come gradually alive on Tom Pye’s multitiered set. The production’s discipline – essential to the work’s aesthetic – rarely falters as the funerary and coronation rituals take human, but expressionless, shape and the pharaoh becomes transported by his new, monotheistic sun-god worship.
Related: Behold, the naked Pharaoh: singing Philip Glass's Akhnaten
Continue reading...February 6, 2019
A special place in hell? Donald Tusk didn’t go far enough | Martin Kettle
Donald Tusk should be criticised not for his malice, but his moderation. The European council president triggered a tsunami of confected outrage from leavers today when he observed, with some justice, that there should be a special place in hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan. But he should have said far more. He should have added that, within that special place, there should be an executive suite of sleepless torment for those politicians who promoted Brexit without ever giving a stuff about Ireland.
Related: Dear Theresa May, your Brexit plan is doomed. Here’s a deal that will work | Gina Miller
Continue reading...January 31, 2019
The Brexit delusion: May to demand the impossible? – Politics Weekly podcast
Jessica Elgot is joined by Polly Toynbee, Martin Kettle and Aarti Shankar to discuss the latest round of fantasy Brexit. Plus: a short history of Brexit, and why MPs should pay their speeding fines
The Tory party has finally decided what sort of Brexit it wants. The Brady amendment, which was passed on Tuesday, demands the replacement of the Northern Irish backstop with “alternative arrangements”.
But just six minutes after the vote was counted, Brussels reminded everyone that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation”. Undaunted, Theresa May is set to head to Brussels to demand what looks impossible.
January 30, 2019
If Corbyn gets his hands dirty he can avert a hard Brexit | Martin Kettle
In spite of the upbeat signals that came from Jeremy Corbyn’s meeting with Theresa May on Wednesday, experience suggests that it will not prove a turning point on Brexit. Neither of them is a natural negotiator or conciliator. These gifts are not part of their skill sets. Of the friendship that can sometimes exist between rival leaders there is no sign. Corbyn’s public sanctimony towards May can make Victor Hugo’s Inspector Javert look like a libertine. May’s default mode towards Corbyn, on show again at question time this week, is to give him her full Lady Disdain.
Related: Labour can’t be held responsible for the Brexit fiasco | Owen Jones
Continue reading...January 23, 2019
The only Brexit compromise I can see coming is a bad one | Martin Kettle
Brexit is a reminder that two connected things need to happen in order for a political compromise to stick. First, partisan leaders must decide that it is better than any other achievable outcome. Second, the public must also converge to give it their backing. One movement towards the treaty table without the other doesn’t cut it.
The Northern Ireland peace process was a classic example of this dual process. It took many years before mutually antagonistic political leaders decided that a peace deal was better than an unwinnable war. But it took even longer for the two communities in Northern Ireland to begin to make the same move. The peace process only worked because the political deal was followed by referendums that endorsed it.
Related: Think another general election is unlikely? Think again | Owen Jones
Continue reading...January 16, 2019
It’s now or never for May. Time to compromise on Brexit | Martin Kettle
The prime minister has survived a vote of no confidence. Her fate now rests on how flexible she is prepared to be
It is said that the past is a foreign country. But after the Brexit referendum, it is the present, not the past, where we do things differently. No government in British history has taken such a Commons beating as Theresa May suffered on Tuesday. Yet, 24 hours later, the selfsame MPs who had thrown out her UK-EU Brexit deal by 432 votes to 202 now handed her premiership a fresh lifeline. The 118 Conservative MPs who voted her policy down on Tuesday backed her on Wednesday, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
By voting by 325 to 306 that they still had confidence in May’s government, the House of Commons turned the ordinary meaning of words on their head. But this wasn’t a vote of confidence in any normal sense. It was a suboptimal tribal choice between a government led by May and one led by Jeremy Corbyn. It was a knockabout partisan diversion from the main national issue, which now resumes. The loss leaves Corbyn with fewer defences against Labour’s second-vote campaigners. But the victory also finds May still wedded to her defeated Brexit policy, and settled in for another year in Downing Street.
She may be the least worst leader the Tory party has on offer, but she’s no Ole Gunnar Solskjær with the magic touch
Related: Labour must pursue a new Brexit deal, not a second referendum | Owen Jones
Continue reading...Martin Kettle's Blog
- Martin Kettle's profile
- 2 followers
