Martin Kettle's Blog, page 57
April 13, 2017
Theresa May must now build the cabinet she really wants | Martin Kettle
After exactly nine months as prime minister, Theresa May commands British politics to a degree few would have predicted when she took office. The latest Guardian-ICM opinion poll gives the Conservatives an 18-point lead over Labour. In next month’s local elections, the Conservative party is predicted to make a net gain of around 50 seats – a rare achievement for a government party in midterm. Not since Tony Blair and, before him, Margaret Thatcher, has British politics known such a dominant figure.
Inevitably, such statistics trigger talk of an early general election. But the consistent word out of Downing Street is that it won’t happen, not just because the Fixed Term Parliament Act makes such a thing more difficult, but also because that isn’t the style of someone who prides herself on just getting on with the job.
Related: If Theresa May really wants to protect refugees why does she fuel such hatred? | Aditya Chakrabortty
Get rid of the worst offenders, like Chris Grayling and Liam Fox. Swap Justine Greening and Jeremy Hunt
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April 12, 2017
Bavarian RSO/Jansons review – a brilliantly engineered affair
Barbican Hall, London
Like a sleekly upholstered car, the Munich orchestra toured an all-Russian programme with exquisite ease, but only their reading of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances was truly authoritative
London’s own top orchestras are on a high at the moment. So the old implicit idea that visiting orchestras, especially from Germany, provide an opportunity to hear how the core repertoire really ought to be done no longer washes. Mariss Jansons’ Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra concert at the Barbican underlined the point.
Don’t get me wrong. The Munich-based orchestra is a band of fabulous quality. The weight of their sound, the sheen of the strings and the technical ability of their principals are all beyond question, as is Jansons’s famous control and touch. But this all-Russian programme, with one wonderful exception, was not revelatory, let alone definitive. The Bavarians gave us one way of doing these pieces – a very good way and always exceptionally well played – but it’s not the only way.
Continue reading...April 11, 2017
Boris Johnson is largely toothless. And that’s just how Theresa May likes it | Martin Kettle
Boris Johnson is incapable of flying below the radar. So the cancellation of his visit to Moscow last weekend, which would barely have been noticed if Britain possessed a greyer foreign secretary, is being seen by some as another career crisis for this emotionally neediest of politicians. True, it is a tad embarrassing for the foreign secretary to be pulled off the plane to Russia as if he was some surplus United Airlines passenger on an overbooked flight. But let’s not exaggerate it by being wedded to the worn-out narrative that everything that Johnson does is always either fascinating or important.
Related: Boris Johnson asks G7 to consider fresh sanctions against Russia and Syria
Continue reading...April 9, 2017
LPO/Jurowski review – a daring, outstanding Mahler 8th
Royal Festival Hall, London
With 400 performers under his command, Vladimir Jurowski lavished care, attention and intelligence on the sonic enormity of Mahler’s symphony
Performances of Gustav Mahler’s most ambitious symphony remain big events in every sense. Nothing Mahler wrote exhibits his claim that a symphony must contain the world more overtly. The annoying “Symphony of a Thousand” tag was early promotional hyperbole, but Vladimir Jurowski had at least 400 performers, including four choirs, eight soloists and the London Philharmonic under his control for this daringly conceived and outstandingly executed rendering of Mahler’s 8th.
Related: Big bang theory: discovering Mahler
Continue reading...April 6, 2017
Forget the waffle of ‘global’ Britain – and learn to hug Germany close | Martin Kettle
At the end of last week I sat in the spacious and splendidly restored country home of a former prime minister of Prussia, some 50 kilometres from the German-Polish border, and listened to two speeches in English. The first was given by Philip Hammond. The second, a couple of hours later, was given by Boris Johnson. Both professed undying friendship, respect and regard for Germany. Johnson even paraded a hitherto concealed family connection with the city of Stuttgart.
Related: Gibraltar sovereignty not up for negotiation, May tells Tusk
Related: Crashing out of the EU without a deal would be a disaster | Nicky Morgan
Continue reading...March 30, 2017
May and Sturgeon have set a wheel of fire rolling, and both will struggle to stop it |
Martin Kettle
In the pivotal scene of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, the heroine Tatyana writes a disastrously counterproductive love letter to the aloof hero. Mistaking Onegin’s reserve for nobility of character, Tatyana throws herself upon him. The scene that follows is one of the most touching in all of European opera.
Britain leaving the European Union, set out in a letter from Theresa May to Donald Tusk this week, can hardly be described as touching. Yet, like Pushkin’s Tatyana, Theresa May is both an optimist and an idealist. Like Tatyana, she is prone to misread evidence and to prefer hope over experience. This is true of her approach to European. It is also true of the way she is trying to shape post-Brexit Britain.
Related: Scottish parliament votes for second independence referendum
Related: May triggers article 50 with warning of consequence for UK
Continue reading...March 29, 2017
There's no going back – May has burned the boats of a divided nation | Martin Kettle
The PM’s article 50 speech invoked a misty-eyed vision of a fairer Britain – but Brexit will not produce that kind of country
Like Aeneas fleeing from Troy on the shore of Italy, or Cortés on the coast of Mexico, it was a moment for the burning of the boats. On Wednesday Theresa May burned hers. But they were our boats too that she burned, Britain’s boats, boats in which, for half a century, postwar Britain has tried to reconcile its history and its future in Europe – and failed. For good or ill on both sides of the channel, Britain will not be returning to the European Union.
It doesn’t get more serious than that for this country. Yet it ended, as it began, with more of a whimper than a bang. As 1973 dawned, the Guardian reported that Britain had embarked on its membership of Europe without fireworks. “It was difficult to tell that anything of importance had occurred,” records the paper’s front page, “and a date which will be entered in the history books as long as histories of Britain are written, was taken by most people as a matter of course.”
Related: May wants security, free trade, liberal values: just what we’re throwing away | Jonathan Freedland
Continue reading...March 23, 2017
Theresa May talks the talk on British values, but that’s not enough | Martin Kettle
Modern politics is remorseless, and modern politicians cannot opt out. Even when life and limb are at stake, a political leader has always at some point to ask the vulgar question: how will this play?
Although it will not have been the most important thing on her mind in those lurching first minutes on Wednesday afternoon, Theresa May had to ask herself that question about the terror attack on Westminster. While her overriding task was to ensure that the incident was dealt with effectively and safely, she also had to send the right political signals to the terrorists, to parliament and to the public.
Newspapers that are too puffed up with their own importance got it badly wrong by demanding unspecified tough action
Related: London attack: what we know so far
Continue reading...March 20, 2017
Norwegian Chamber Orchestra/Andsnes review – quicksilver musical rapport
Cadogan Hall, London
This captivating ensemble offered a life-enhancing account of Prokofiev and danced their way through Grieg in what felt like a get-together of old friends
I defy, I absolutely defy, anyone not to feel unalloyed pleasure when the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra are playing at their best. Traditionalists get annoyed by “all that emoting”, as James Galway once called the visible mutual encouragement that accompanies the playing of ensembles like this. For most of us, though, troubles slip away and the quicksilver musical rapport is captivating, especially when the NCO produces life-enhancing accounts of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, with which this London visit started, or of Grieg’s Holberg Suite, which ended it.
Conventional accounts of the Prokofiev tend to emphasise clockwork precision and surface sheen. But playing standing up, and entirely from memory, the Norwegians found something different and new. It became an improvisatory conversation piece, with the inspirational Terje Tønnesen and Daniel Bard leading the first and second violins in a high-spirited conversation. Yes, there was the occasional error of ensemble, but that really was not the point. It was like being at a jovial get-together of old friends who happened to have brought their instruments along. That impression became reality in the orchestra’s Grieg party piece, when the players started to dance – as much as a double bass or a cello allows – as they played the final Rigaudon.
Continue reading...March 16, 2017
We used to think Theresa May was a safe pair of hands. We can no longer say that | Martin Kettle
From Brexit to Scotland, the prime minister has become one of modern politics’ greatest risk-takers. It could mean the end of the UK
When the horses line up for the Cheltenham Gold Cup this afternoon, it would be astonishing to learn that Theresa May had her feet up and was watching the race on television. Still less that she had put a pot of her money on a well-priced outsider.
Although May has been remarkably fortunate in her political career, and has ridden her luck with great nerve, she never gives the impression of loving a flutter. This week, adopting her most withering tone as she did it, she stressed once again her belief that “politics is not a game”.
Related: Theresa May is dragging the UK under. This time Scotland must cut the rope | George Monbiot
Related: Maybot stuck on repeat as Sturgeon lets rip over referendum
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