Martin Kettle's Blog, page 51
January 24, 2018
Don’t mention the civil war: the English are still fighting it | Martin Kettle
The Charles I exhibition at the Royal Academy has a historical hole at its heart, as does our nation
It is commonplace for writers on American politics to observe that, more than 150 years on, the United States is in various ways still fighting its civil war between the slavery-supporting south and the more liberal and urban industrial north. It is far less common for writers on British politics to make an equivalent observation about the enduring tenacity of the much older divides of England’s 17th-century civil conflict. Yet England’s civil war is still with us.
The 1640s battles between authority and liberty may not have produced another civil war. But iterations of the divide have resonated down the centuries – from the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, through the Whig-Tory rivalry of the 18th century, the advance of liberalism and reform in the 19th century, and of labourism and equalities in the 20th. It is not hard to see, in the contrast between a privileged and dissipated political figure such as Boris Johnson and a puritanical one such as Jeremy Corbyn, that there are 17th-century echoes in our own binary times too.
This country’s blundering quest for republican-style common values is unsolved.
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January 17, 2018
Emmanuel Macron’s Bayeux tapestry loan is one in the eye for Brexiters | Martin Kettle
France’s gesture, which will allow most Britons to see the work for the first time, is every bit as political as it is generous
Although the word occasionally pops up in Tintin adventures, normally in the mouth of Captain Haddock, there are obvious reasons why a columnist shouldn’t utter the antique French cry of Saperlipopette! very often. It’s a bit like using “gadzooks”, which is one of its approximate English equivalents. But today is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so here goes. The news that Emmanuel Macron is proposing to loan the Bayeux tapestry to Britain is étonnant, extraordinaire and incroyable. In fact, all one can say is … Monsieur le Président, saperlipopette!
Well, actually, not quite all. “Thank you” follows very close behind. The Bayeux tapestry is an astonishingly direct and vivid depiction of a pivotal event in Anglo-French history. The story of Duke William’s successful invasion of England in 1066 is told with a clarity that crosses the centuries. Its historic importance is beyond measure and its survival something close to a miracle. Though Bayeux itself is not far away, too few people in this country have had the chance to see the tapestry close up, all 70 metres of it. Allowing it to travel here is a historic cultural gesture on a par with Egypt’s loan of the Tutankhamun treasures a generation ago.
The Bayeux tapestry is a graphic depiction of the Norman buildup to, and success in, the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In a series of scenes told in 70m of coloured embroidery and Latin inscriptions, it shows how William the Conquerer crossed the Channel to seize the English crown from King Harold.
Related: Macron had a good year. In 2018, he could even stop Brexit | Natalie Nougayrède
Continue reading...January 11, 2018
On Europe, Labour was right to be cautious. No longer | Martin Kettle
Labour’s dilemma about how to proceed in 2018’s Brexit endgame is genuine. It should be taken seriously and not dismissed. The underlying issue is easily stated. Two-thirds of Labour voters supported remaining in the EU in 2016. Nineteen of every 20 Labour MPs were themselves remainers. Yet two-thirds of Labour constituencies voted to leave.
Related: Farage wants a second referendum. Bring it on | Andrew Adonis
To obsess about a second referendum is to put the cart before the horse. The decision depends on the terms
Related: No-deal is a disaster. The government must tell us the truth about Brexit | Sadiq Khan
Continue reading...January 8, 2018
Peter Preston: politicians, readers and colleagues remember the former Guardian editor
Tributes have been paid to Preston, who edited the paper between 1975 and 1995, from around the media and political world
Peter Preston obituaryGuardian readers, politicians, media figures and former colleagues have paid extensive tributes to the former Guardian editor Peter Preston, who died at the weekend, aged 79. Preston oversaw significant changes to the newspaper while in the role between 1975 and 1995, including a move to Farringdon, the addition of the G2 daily supplement, the famous Hillman redesign, and an early decision to publish on the web. He guided the title to record circulation figures, and was editor when the paper alleged that then-MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith had been paid to ask questions in parliament. Hamilton launched a libel action against the Guardian but eventually dropped his case in 1996.
Continue reading...January 4, 2018
Tony Blair’s a flawed messenger – but he’s worth listening to on Brexit | Martin Kettle
Tony Blair will be 65 this year. In the Britain he grew up in, that used to mean the male retirement age. Bring it on, many will say. But these once-immovable milestones no longer exist. They certainly do not apply to the former prime minister. For Blair has made it crystal clear in his new year intervention on Brexit that he has absolutely no intention of quitting the public stage any time soon.
This of course appals many people for serious reasons that do not need to be re-rehearsed here. Even those who continue to think well of him have their doubts. Blair is a permanently damaged figure. Whenever he enters the public arena, he always risks making himself, not what he says, into the issue – John Humphrys’ self-important aggression against Blair on the Today programme on Thursday showed this process at its most depressing. But there are three serious reasons why the rest of us should make the effort to focus on what he says, rather than on him.
Blair and accusations of Blairism have been cynically and very successfully exploited
Counties and customs
Staying in the single market and customs union
Related: Tony Blair: ‘The whole country has been pulled into this Tory psychodrama over Europe’
Continue reading...December 28, 2017
My advice to Jeremy Corbyn: create a Labour of all the talents | Martin Kettle
In a distinctively Conservative context, Michael Heseltine has posed an important question for all those who reject the doctrinaire extremes. The most important liberal Tory of the Thatcher era asked this week whether the national interest of preventing or softening Brexit should override any partisan anxiety about what a Jeremy Corbyn government might mean. You do not have to be a pro-European Conservative like Heseltine to see that the answer to that question is now yes.
Heseltine’s dilemma is an academic one at present. Corbyn may have said recently that he expects Labour to be in power by the end of 2018. Yet that seems unlikely. The problem is not that Labour might not win a general election in 2018. If there is one, Labour’s chances of winning it are reasonably high. The problem is that there is an obstacle: the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
Related: Theresa May urged to withdraw Tory whip from Michael Heseltine
Staying in the single market and customs union
Fanaticism is fatal for Labour, whether it is fanaticism of the right, the centre or the left
Continue reading...December 21, 2017
Damian Green’s fall shows that politics needs cleaning up, but so does the web | Martin Kettle
To lose one cabinet minister in two months may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two may look like carelessness. To lose three strongly suggests downright incompetence. Yet as Damian Green follows Michael Fallon (remember him?) and Priti Patel (and her?) out of the cabinet room door this week, Theresa May is still very much in charge. To say she has never been stronger would be an exaggeration. But, like Forrest Gump or the Duracell bunny, the prime minister just keeps on running.
Related: If Damian Green can’t be a minister, he shouldn’t be an MP either | Sophie Walker
Green’s lie is more trivial than Profumo’s, but it could have the same origin: embarrassment, then shame about illicit behaviour
Related: The Guardian view on Damian Green’s sacking: taking back control – ineffectively | Editorial
Continue reading...December 20, 2017
Leonidas Kavakos/Yuja Wang review – high-level collaboration brings formidable interplay
Wigmore Hall, London
The two soloists are very different musical personalities but their programme - of Janáçek, Debussy, Bartók and Schubert - allowed them to share musical space to fluent and irresistible effect
The pairing of violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Yuja Wang is a promoter’s dream – two big instrumentalist names on one concert billing. But such a combination does not guarantee an artistic slam dunk. Though each boasts technique to die for, Kavakos is essentially an introspective musician, Wang his polar opposite. Neither of these styles is any more valid than the other, but the enticing question in this Wigmore recital was how these musical personalities would combine in some of the most important works in the violin and piano repertoire.
The answer was dictated by the programme. Three of the four items – the sonatas by Janáček and Debussy, along with Bartók’s first sonata – were completed within a five-year span at the end of the first world war. The exception, Schubert’s C major Fantasy D934, needs no apology whatsoever and Kavakos and Wang played what is sometimes regarded as a purely lyrical work with considerable interpretative weight. It felt, nevertheless, as if the duo would have made greater impact with a contrasting violin sonata from the same darkly fruitful postwar period for the form (of which there are many, from Fauré to Hindemith) instead.
Continue reading...December 14, 2017
After this week, I refuse to believe that Brexit is unstoppable | Martin Kettle
The government’s Commons defeat opens up new and far-reaching possibilities – of a second referendum and of the leaving process coming off the rails
Appearances matter a lot in politics. But in the end, the numbers matter more. On Brexit as on everything else, Theresa May has always behaved as if she is a prime minister with a clear parliamentary majority, a united party and a reconciled country behind her. But the reality is that she is none of these things, and Wednesday’s four-vote Commons defeat has found her out.
Related: Proud of themselves? The Tory Brexit rebels certainly should be | Polly Toynbee
Related: Newspapers react to May's Commons defeat by Tory Brexit rebels
Continue reading...December 8, 2017
The spirit of Sibelius is summoned to celebrate Finland's centenary
Two of the UK’s major orchestras are conducted by Finns, and both men this week turned to their country’s national composer to mark the 100th anniversary of its independence
Finland won its independence 100 years ago this week. The new nation in the north of Europe was created by a pragmatic first world wartime agreement between two extremely different socialist governments: Finland’s democratically elected one (the first of its kind in the world) under Oskari Tokoi, and Russia’s new revolutionary regime under Lenin, which would change the world in more violent ways.
Classical music likes an anniversary, and Finland’s centenary was marked by two fine concerts on successive days in London, one in the Barbican Hall, the other in the Royal Festival Hall. Two of the most notable of Finland’s many great orchestral conductors presided over the occasions: Sakari Oramo with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first, Esa-Pekka Salonen with the Philharmonia in the second.
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