Martin Kettle's Blog, page 44
January 9, 2019
This was the great political power struggle of our times – and ministers lost | Martin Kettle
John Bercow can sometimes seem to be auditioning to play Shakespeare’s Malvolio. The House of Commons Speaker has at times a comic degree of self-esteem that is the equal of the arrogant steward in Twelfth Night. Like Malvolio, Bercow can also drive colleagues to distraction, as he did today. Today, though, Bercow took a brave stand to empower Britain’s parliament against Britain’s government on Brexit. And that qualifies him to be considered the most radical holder of his office in generations. Like Malvolio, a version of greatness has been thrust upon him.
The vast majority of people are understandably not well versed in Commons procedure. So it may seem strange to claim that a decision to allow an amendment to be moved on a Commons timetable motion – and with no debate – is in any way immense. Nevertheless, Bercow’s decision to allow the all-party effort, led by the Conservative former attorney general Dominic Grieve, to tie the government’s hands – it must come back with a plan B within three days if the Brexit deal is defeated next week – deserves such accolades.
Theresa May is increasingly having her Brexit options shaped for her by a cross-party alliance of MPs
Related: John Bercow's decision endangers the office of Speaker, and our democracy | Anne Perkins
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January 3, 2019
Fiona Onasanya is lucky. She’d be out of a job were it not for Brexit | Martin Kettle
The disgraced MP has pledged to carry on despite her conviction. And Westminster is too preoccupied to remove her
It seems a strange thing to say about the disgraced Labour MP for Peterborough, but Fiona Onasanya is a lucky woman. Onasanya was found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice last month. She faces a prison sentence. She is contemplating the ruin of a career that included her public aspiration to become Britain’s first black female prime minister. I’m not sticking my neck out very far to say that this last is not now going to happen.
Onasanya’s offence: she repeatedly denied to police that she was behind the wheel when her car was caught speeding in Cambridgeshire in 2017. She refused to say who was driving. In fact it was Onasanya, who is a qualified solicitor as well as an MP. After a first trial failed to agree a verdict, Onasanya was found guilty at the retrial. She will be sentenced soon.
Related: Convicted MP Fiona Onasanya intends to stay in parliament
Continue reading...December 26, 2018
Sylvia Pankhurst’s popularity shows the shifting nature of politics | Martin Kettle
She was not the most celebrated suffragette at the time. History is as much about the present as the past
Newspapers are about the present not the past. It’s rare for a long-dead historical figure to make it into them, let alone twice in just a few days. That’s the sort of feat that only someone with instant name recognition like Winston Churchill would normally achieve. So when, just before Christmas, there were two separate news stories about Sylvia Pankhurst, it got me thinking about how we make use of our history nowadays and what it says about us.
The first Pankhurst story revealed that the former suffragette had written to the postmaster general in 1934 to complain about government phone-tapping. There was no firm suggestion that Pankhurst’s own phone might have been tapped. But her eye had been caught by a contemporary news report about post office eavesdropping, and she wrote to protest at an activity she felt was “opposed to the very best interests of the community and contrary to public policy”.
Perhaps we shouldn’t focus so much on knocking statues down or building new ones
Continue reading...December 19, 2018
This epic fight in parliament could lead to a new, better democracy | Martin Kettle
Over-mighty ministers and party whips are about to have their power challenged as never before over Brexit
Revolutions do not always take place violently in public squares, in the streets around the bourses or in front of the palaces. Sometimes they take place quietly, slowly, unobserved and indoors. Sometimes they even happen without the revolutionaries themselves quite understanding what they are doing that is so transformative.
It may seem hard to believe, and there is undoubtedly a seasonal element of hope exceeding expectation in saying this, but something of this kind may be happening in front of our Brexit-battered eyes. As the Brexit argument grinds on into Christmas and the new year, we may in fact be living through the start of a quiet constitutional revolution.
Related: Theresa May makes plea for Labour to back her Brexit deal
Related: The people can prevent a no-deal Brexit – with a general strike | Jolyon Maugham
Continue reading...December 12, 2018
Theresa May is now a lame duck – too weak to take back control of her party | Martin Kettle
The Tories remain bitterly divided and will not learn the lessons of this hopeless leadership challenge
So, Steve Baker, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest of you, was that really worth it? After the day of folly it doesn’t look that way. In the end, the interminably long-discussed Conservative leadership challenge to Theresa May has come to nothing. When it came to it – even in a secret ballot where MPs could set their public protestations of loyalty to one side – it proved to be more mouth than trousers, a scary firework banger, but a one-day wonder, a brief distraction from the serious business of Brexit. Tomorrow, grownup politics, damned difficult politics, resumes after today’s hiatus.
The result showed what we knew already. The Tories are a very divided party, of whom a clear majority supports May as leader even in a bad Brexit crisis. The critics went for the kill, but May’s 200-117 victory is a decisive one. It’s a better result for May than when she won the leadership against Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove in 2016 (she got 199 back then; against their 130). To coin a phrase, nothing has changed.
Related: Theresa May survives. Things are so bad we have to be grateful for that | Polly Toynbee
Related: What happened in previous Tory leadership challenges?
Related: The last-minute pledges and promises that helped May survive leadership challenge
Continue reading...December 11, 2018
‘Brexit plot twists to come’: after May’s vote meltdown, what should happen next? | Martin Kettle and others
December 10, 2018
Marx in London review – Dove's opera spins comic capital from revolutionary icon
Theater Bonn
The sexual tangles of Karl and his middle-class family make for a colourful if conventional show with a political message
An opera about Karl Marx? A comic opera about Karl Marx? Jonathan Dove has never been afraid to think outside the box, and his new piece, premiered at the Theater Bonn, does so again. Marx in London is set on a single day in 1871. It depicts the financial and sexual tangles of the middle-class emigre Marx household in London’s Kentish Town against the backdrop of his political squabbles and his efforts to get Das Kapital finally written.
If you are expecting an opera about dialectical materialism or the labour theory of value you will be disappointed. Dove’s opera, with a witty libretto by Charles Hart, is a genuine comedy, although in Jürgen Weber’s production it’s not without its underlying political messages. It is above all an operatic entertainment, and is full of reminders of why, according to a recent survey, Dove is the third-most performed living opera composer after Philip Glass and Jake Heggie. If London theatregoers find some echoes of Richard Bean’s recent play Young Marx, that’s because Dove and Bean began discussing the project before heading in different directions with it.
Continue reading...December 5, 2018
Parliament should use its power to give the voters another say on Brexit | Martin Kettle
Brexit silenced parliament. MPs have now seized back control, but will they dare use it to call a second referendum?
The three defeats that the House of Commons inflicted on the government this week are an enormous moment in the Brexit drama. They do far more than force the government to publish the attorney general’s legal advice, and ensure that MPs can stop a no-deal departure from the EU next March, important though both these things are. More than that, they toll the death knell for Theresa May’s Brexit deal, which now seems even more certain than before to be defeated next week – and they may toll the death knell for May’s premiership itself.
As ever, though, there is a tendency among politicians and the media alike to target only the low-hanging fruit in plain view. Some of that is indeed very tempting, so the focus is understandable, especially when events are now moving so swiftly. The prospect of the government’s flagship policy – its entire raison d’être – being defeated next Tuesday is high. So is the possibility that May will be gone before Christmas, with a leadership battle to follow.
Related: Britain can legally cancel Brexit. That’s EU advice – but will parliament agree? | Jolyon Maugham
Related: At last, parliament is taking back control of Brexit | Rafael Behr
Continue reading...December 4, 2018
Salonen's departure poses serious questions – and not just for the Philharmonia
With the Philharmonia and London Philharmonic searching for new leaders, will their London base – and the UK – still be able to lure international talent?
Fifty years ago, when classical music’s status within the performing arts in Britain was still more or less unchallenged, an event like Esa-Pekka Salonen’s decision to step down from his principal conductor’s role with the Philharmonia orchestra would have been one that the art form could take in its confident stride.
Even today, it is not in any way a crisis. After all, Salonen has been at the Philharmonia for a decade and will have notched up 13 years when he departs at the end of the 2020-21 season. He will be 63 then, and he has plenty of unfinished career business, above all as a composer, which he sees as his primary profession. He is also spending more time in his native Finland, to which he is gradually returning as a conductor, including a forthcoming Wagner Ring cycle in Helsinki.
Continue reading...November 28, 2018
May could have won support for a Brexit deal, but failed to reach out | Martin Kettle
Theresa May’s Brexit tour of Britain – she was in Scotland today promoting her EU deal – speaks simultaneously to her strengths and her weaknesses as a politician. The strengths are often too lightly dismissed, and not just by those who primly disdain her as simply an evil Tory. But it is May’s judgmental weaknesses that still shape the political landscape as she battles to carve out a Commons majority on 11 December.
Related: There can be no doubt any more: Brexit will make us poorer | Jonathan Portes
Related: Frictionless unicorns, ‘max fac’ and cake: your guide to Brexit lingo | Hannah Jane Parkinson
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