Martin Kettle's Blog, page 52
December 8, 2017
Is the pride of a nation misplaced – how Finnish was Sibelius after all?
As shown at two concerts marking Finnish independence day, Sibelius remains his country’s national composer. But the relationship is complicated
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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December 7, 2017
How can the Tories lead Britain when they barely understand it? | Martin Kettle
No mainstream British political party is more comfortable with the rhetoric of unionism than the Conservatives. It never takes long before Tory ministers, confronted with some challenge or other from Irish, Scottish or Welsh nationalists, fall back on the mantra that they represent the Conservative and Unionist party. Theresa May does this all the time. The implication is always the same. The union is axiomatically safe in Tory hands, because they, the Tories, uniquely understand and are uniquely committed to it.
Related: Hard Brexiters have just discovered Britain is weaker than Ireland | Fintan O’Toole
Counties and customs
Continue reading...November 30, 2017
Britain should demand an apology from Trump and cancel his state visit | Martin Kettle
Winston Churchill once wrote that the balances of world history can sometimes turn on what he called “small agate points”. Churchill had in mind the accidental shooting of the American civil war general Stonewall Jackson by his own men in 1863, without which, he speculated, the Confederate armies might have captured Washington DC, and the United States might have split into two. But he could have been talking of Donald Trump’s latest tweets and their implications for British foreign policy after Brexit.
Related: Special relationship? Theresa May discovers she has no friend in Donald Trump | Julian Borger
Related: By retweeting Britain First, Trump offends a decency he cannot understand | Brendan Cox
Continue reading...November 23, 2017
Brexit has created a political climate no budget can fix | Martin Kettle
Former chancellor Ken Clarke writes in his memoirs that in British political history there is nothing so dead and forgotten as old budgets. That must be reassuring news for Philip Hammond. The current chancellor’s sticking plasters this week are best understood as a far from glorious 21st-century application of Harold Macmillan’s advice to Tory chancellors that “we must do something, or else the socialists will promise everything”.
This short-term approach lay behind the measures on stamp duty, universal credit, the NHS and the regions. But Wednesday’s modest handouts were dwarfed by the historic slowing of growth, and the consequently falling real wages and living standards over which Hammond presides. These will shape British life in the coming decade far more than any of this week’s budget measures. None of Britain’s political parties have the measure of this yet.
Related: Corbyn has seen the light on Brexit. Now he’s taking the fight to the Tories | Polly Toynbee
The Tory right are in fanatical mood. They don’t care much who gets in their way or who they offend
Related: The ‘millennial railcard’ shows the utter disdain the Tories hold us in | Ellie Mae O’Hagan
Continue reading...November 20, 2017
What does Germany’s political crisis mean for Brexit? | Martin Kettle
The British political class, like much of the British media, remains foolishly obsessed with America to the exclusion of all other foreign countries. As a result, both refuse to pay consistent attention to German politics, or indeed to the internal politics of any other European country at all. So the news that Angela Merkel may not, after all, continue in office as Germany’s chancellor will have come as a rude shock to many of them.
The British have always blithely assumed that Merkel would somehow ride to the UK’s rescue over Brexit like the Prussians at the battle of Waterloo. David Cameron thought this would happen in the negotiations preceding the referendum in 2015-16. Now Theresa May, and certainly David Davis, seem to have a similar hope over Brexit. It is a foolish error.
Related: Markets rattled as German coalition talks collapse – business live
Related: German coalition talks collapse after deadlock on migration and energy
Continue reading...November 16, 2017
This budget is the Tories’ big chance. Watch them waste it | Martin Kettle
History has few iron laws. Yet a reading of British history suggests at least one exception. Those who are at first described as mutineers invariably win the argument. Mutinies happen because a system has reached breaking point and cannot continue.
The 15 Conservative MPs whom the Daily Telegraph dubbed “The Brexit mutineers” this week can therefore take comfort. They are winning the Brexit argument. They are right to try to strike the Brexit deadline date from the bill, and right to demand proper legislative power over the final deal. These are preconditions for avoiding a hard Brexit that Britain cannot afford.
Related: McDonnell says big business sees Labour as government in waiting
If there is to be a moment at which the May project can free itself from the Brexit forcefield, this is it
Related: The ‘economicky words’ you need to bluff your way into No 11 Downing Street | Stefan Stern
Continue reading...November 9, 2017
Trump ridiculed the losers. Now, at home and abroad, he is one of them | Martin Kettle
It is one of Donald Trump’s favourite and most sneering insults. He has used it publicly about such people as Cher, John McCain, Rosie O’Donnell and Jeb Bush. In Trumpworld, all these people have been dismissed in tweets as “losers”. Right now, though, there is only one big loser in Trumpworld, and that loser is President Trump himself.
Related: One year on, Donald Trump is still an illegitimate president | Rebecca Solnit
Trump’s strategy of reaching out to a left-behind industrial base with a racial message is not sustaining itself
(November 5, 2017) Japan
Related: Don't get carried away – Trump is as popular today as he was last year
Continue reading...November 2, 2017
If Fallon-style scandal drives our politics, Theresa May cannot survive | Martin Kettle
In one of his many invaluable books on British politics, the great Sir David Butler – 93 last month and still following politics like a hawk – lists every significant ministerial resignation from British governments since the end of the Victorian era, along with a note of the reason for the minister’s departure. The roll call marks some of the great divisive events of the last century – entry into the first world war, the Irish rebellion, Munich, prescription charges, Suez, the Falklands invasion, Iraq.
It is not until 1958 that the first resignation due to a “private scandal” rather than a public issue is noted – the Conservative foreign office minister, charged with gross indecency after being caught in a gay sexual encounter, then illegal, in the bushes in St James’s Park. It is not, of course, that the first half of the 20th century was scandal-free – merely that the public knew nothing of such scandals, and so there were no demands that “something must be done”.
Related: Are the Tories reliving the John Major years? No. It’s much worse than that | Ian Birrell
Continue reading...October 26, 2017
How the Reformation sowed the seeds of Brexit | Martin Kettle
The 500th anniversary of Lutheranism will pass unmarked in Britain. But it left a toxic and destructive legacy
Five hundred years after he challenged the authority of the papacy by nailing his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther no longer means much in the UK, this still supposedly Protestant country. The anniversary of Luther’s historic act of defiance on 31 October will pass mostly unremarked, certain to be eclipsed by the autumn trashfest that is the Americanised version of Halloween.
These days, the name Luther is more likely to invoke a TV detective series starring Idris Elba than the monk from a Saxon coalmining family who rocked Europe to its core half a millennium ago. The words Martin Luther are more associated with the great American civil rights leader than the man after whom Dr King was named.
Related: After 500 years, Europe’s Reformation scars have all but healed, study finds
It used to be common in England to believe that the Reformation had given this country a special advantage in the world
Related: The Reformation should have been a warning to Remainers
Continue reading...October 25, 2017
No final Brexit vote? David Davis has pulled the rug from under parliament’s feet | Martin Kettle
David Davis has dropped the government into another crisis of credibility by saying that parliament may not be able to vote on the final Brexit deal until after the UK has left the EU in March 2019.
Related: David Davis: MPs might not get vote on final deal until after Brexit
If this was a football match, the crowd would now be starting to chant
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