Martin Kettle's Blog, page 46
October 3, 2018
Why taking a chance on Theresa May is still the Tories’ best bet | Martin Kettle
Dance moves aside, memorable moments in her speech were few and far between. But who could do a better job?
In an image that will endure for as long as she is remembered, Theresa May danced in to deliver her conference speech in Birmingham. Wisely, she chose Dancing Queen to show off her moves rather than Waterloo, which would have sent the wrong message. But the deeper message to her party was to get behind her. It was Take a Chance On Me – the remix.
Related: Theresa May’s conference speech: what’s the verdict? | Matthew d’Ancona and others
Related: Theresa May v the 'Great Twatsby' at the Tories’ Groundhog conference
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September 26, 2018
Could Corbyn solve Brexit and save Britain? I can almost imagine it now | Martin Kettle
The Labour leader knows he must keep the party together – and that allows space for the European cause to advance
As Jeremy Corbyn gazed out over the 2018 Labour conference on Wednesday, after the most confident and relaxed speech of his time as leader, he will have seen an energised party about which two apparently incompatible generalisations can be made. The first is that, three years into the Corbyn revolution, Labour has now been radically transformed into a party in the leader’s own far-left political image. The second is that Labour’s many factions, interest groups and traditions are nevertheless mostly managing to work together in a surprisingly pragmatic way.
There was evidence for each of these claims in Corbyn’s speech. The left radicalism was there in the attacks on privatisation and outsourcing – the “racket” on which a Corbyn government would call time. It was there in the enormous list of uncosted government spending commitments, which covered housing, police, childcare, public sector pay, universal benefits for older people, and investment in transport and green energy. And it was there in the well-trailed section denouncing the political and economic elite (by implication New Labour as well as Conservative) that kept the banking system afloat after the financial crisis a decade ago.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech – what’s the verdict? | Gaby Hinsliff and others
Continue reading...September 25, 2018
Keir Starmer launched an unexpected Brexit zinger – and it hit the spot | Martin Kettle
Labour’s Brexit boss set the conference alight when he revealed that remain could still be an option on a people’s vote
Keir Starmer’s speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool was significant for two reasons: for what it said, and for how it went down. As usual, time will tell; but both the speech and the response have the potential to push Labour, and Britain, towards the eventual, but still improbable, reopening of the entire Brexit issue.
Starmer isn’t one of the great natural party conference orators. You still feel that he is learning how to perform some of the baser political skills that don’t always come naturally to a senior barrister. But there was no missing the zinger that he launched into the Liverpool hall towards the end of a well-argued speech about Brexit – or its effect.
Related: Starmer opens Labour's Brexit debate and says 'nobody is ruling out remain' - Politics live
Related: Labour must not betray leave voters over Brexit | Gisela Stuart
Continue reading...August 29, 2018
Corbyn and Salmond’s deep-state fears are a very British fantasy | Martin Kettle
Blaming failures on Zinoviev-letter-style conspiracies is understandable. But radical movements should look to their own failings
Alex Salmond and Jeremy Corbyn may seem strange political bedfellows. But the movements with which each is associated have something in common. Each is sustained in part by powerful myths, turbo-charged by social media, of betrayal and conspiracy. If things go right for their movements, they say the people have spoken. But if things go wrong, their supporters’ first response is too often to cry foul.
For some, the clincher was that Leslie Evans is married to a former head of MI5. She isn't
Related: Holyrood must focus on the Alex Salmond harassment claims, not point-scoring | Dani Garavelli
Continue reading...August 22, 2018
Impeaching Donald Trump is not the way to defeat Trumpism | Martin Kettle
Donald Trump’s iniquities need no rehearsing here. The US would be better off without him as president. His departure would be good news for the rest of the world. Even more importantly, his removal might be pivotal in a larger endeavour – the rebuilding of confidence in the world’s democracies. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to impeach him.
Related: Senior Republicans hesitate to criticise Trump after Manafort and Cohen verdicts
Continue reading...August 15, 2018
Will a second referendum be just another Brexit fantasy? | Martin Kettle
Support is growing for a People’s Vote. It could backfire spectacularly
At every turn, the politics of the Brexit process have been riddled with disastrous illusions: the referendum would settle the issue once and for all; leaving would mean a cash harvest for the NHS; an early general election would give the government a mandate; no deal would be better than a bad deal; as Brexit neared, the country would come together.
It was all wishful thinking, as most illusions are. We are now up to our collective necks in the consequences. Most of the wishfulness was on the side of the leavers and of the two most recent Conservative leaders. Now, though, it is the remainers who have to ask themselves whether they, in their turn, are not falling for another Brexit illusion – this time in the shape of a second referendum, or the so-called People’s Vote.
A significant shift from leave to remain since 2016 among voters in 100 Labour seats could be a game-changer
Related: Brexit: now it’s a battle over who governs Britain | Martin Kettle
The consequences could be as complex and difficult as the consequences of the first vote have proved to be
Continue reading...August 14, 2018
Prom 42: Estonian Festival Orchestra/Järvi review – Pärt grips but Buniatishvili disappoints
Royal Albert Hall, London
Making their Proms debut, the Estonian Orchestra showed their quality in an all-Nordic programme, marred by Khatia Buniatishvili’s theatrical performance
This all-Nordic programme, performed by the excellent Estonian Festival Orchestra under one of the most admired conductors of the day, Paavo Järvi, had long promised to be one of this season’s special Proms. And in many ways it turned out that way, with a gripping performance of Arvo Pärt’s third symphony to begin and a beautifully played Sibelius’s Fifth to finish – its climax expertly held back by Järvi until the closing page.
The problem with the evening came with Khatia Buniatishvili’s account of the Grieg piano concerto in between the two symphonies. There has never been any question that Buniatishvili has technique to spare, and the fluid touch she adopted in the first movement emphasised the debts that Grieg owed to Schumann’s concerto. Yet with her playing there is always a “but”, and there was a mounting sense that Grieg’s voice was being sacrificed to Buniatishvili’s technique and keyboard theatricality. That fear became flesh in the final movement, which Buniatishvili seemed intent on playing as fast as possible. When she returned to play the world’s slowest and least idiomatic performance of Debussy’s Clair de Lune as an encore, it triggered, for me, that most unexpected of concert hall emotions – anger.
Continue reading...Estonian Festival Orchestra/Järvi review – Pärt grips but Buniatishvili disappoints
Royal Albert Hall, London
Making their Proms debut, the Estonian Orchestra showed their quality in an all-Nordic programme, marred by Khatia Buniatishvili’s theatrical performance
This all-Nordic programme, performed by the excellent Estonian Festival Orchestra under one of the most admired conductors of the day, Paavo Järvi, had long promised to be one of this season’s special Proms. And in many ways it turned out that way, with a gripping performance of Arvo Pärt’s third symphony to begin and a beautifully played Sibelius’s Fifth to finish – its climax expertly held back by Järvi until the closing page.
The problem with the evening came with Khatia Buniatishvili’s account of the Grieg piano concerto in between the two symphonies. There has never been any question that Buniatishvili has technique to spare, and the fluid touch she adopted in the first movement emphasised the debts that Grieg owed to Schumann’s concerto. Yet with her playing there is always a “but”, and there was a mounting sense that Grieg’s voice was being sacrificed to Buniatishvili’s technique and keyboard theatricality. That fear became flesh in the final movement, which Buniatishvili seemed intent on playing as fast as possible. When she returned to play the world’s slowest and least idiomatic performance of Debussy’s Clair de Lune as an encore, it triggered that most unexpected of concert hall emotions – anger.
Continue reading...August 8, 2018
Boris Johnson is auditioning to lead a grim, insular Britain | Martin Kettle
Ambition has shifted Johnson ever further to the right as he seeks to emulate Donald Trump’s route to power
For many years it struck me as amusing rather than ominous that the place where I first spent any time with Boris Johnson was a Munich beerhall. We were journalists covering a defence summit in the 1990s. We’d both filed our pieces – he to the Telegraph, me to the Guardian – and we were bored. So, along with the man from the Times, we took a taxi into the city centre and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and chatting. Johnson made a lot of good jokes, and one or two rather loud and tasteless ones about Hitler and Munich beerhalls.
Related: Boris Johnson’s contempt for Muslim women is part of a dangerous pattern | Sayeeda Warsi
Related: May must learn from Labour mistakes and stamp out Tory Islamophobia | Jonathan Freedland
Continue reading...August 1, 2018
England must start to listen to its neighbours on these troubled isles | Martin Kettle
As Brexit looms, humility and respect are required to see us through this crisis together
As you drive south from Derry and turn right to cross the Foyle river by the Asda outside Strabane, nothing tells you that you are about to leave one country and enter another. There are no signs, no flags, no police and, though I may have missed them, no security cameras either. It’s only when you see the words Bus Éireann on the stop on the far side of the bridge that you get any inkling that you have left the United Kingdom and are now in the Irish Republic.
A couple of weeks ago I took a road trip around the British Isles. We went from London up to southwest Scotland, then on through Northern Ireland – via Derry and Strabane – to County Sligo, before returning via Dublin and Holyhead and home through north Wales. We took in five countries in six days, crossed five borders, and I never once had to show my passport at any of them. I hadn’t expected to do so. But for how much longer will this be so?
Related: Scotland's Brexit bill is 'perfectly practical', supreme court told
Related: To break the Irish backstop deadlock, May needs her biggest fudge yet | Marley Morris
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