Martin Kettle's Blog, page 58
March 9, 2017
Brexit stage left: how theatre became the best way to understand today’s Britain | Martin Kettle
Our political class is still struggling to make sense of the EU referendum. But thankfully our playwrights are finding the words
The Brexit referendum asked voters to make a simple choice. But, as we are still discovering, many other national fractures came together last June. Dislike of migration, impatience with the political class and resentment of London all figured heavily in the mix. Most of us are still trying to absorb the lessons and to find adequate ways to address them.
That undoubtedly still goes for most politicians. It was easy to say Brexit meant Brexit. But, nine months on, the political class is still groping towards a fuller and wiser understanding of what the June 2016 vote means. The House of Lords began to get its act together this week when it debated the article 50 bill. But the Commons still seems traumatised whenever the decision to leave Europe comes up.
Related: Brexit is Theresa May’s Falklands war: a weapon of mass distraction | Zoe Williams
Related: Should today’s Labour pick up where the SDP left off? This play makes you wonder | Polly Toynbee
Continue reading...
March 2, 2017
Labour leapt into Brexit’s fires – and now the party is burning | Martin Kettle
The party’s supporters voted two to one to remain, so why does Jeremy Corbyn kowtow to the leavers?
If you are unfortunate enough to be standing on a burning drilling platform in the North Sea, you face an unenviable choice. Stay on the platform and the blaze will kill you; leap into the sea and, if you are still alive after you hit the water, you risk a rapid death from exposure.
This dramatic image has become fashionable in the world of management theory, where it crystalises the obligation to take radical action in dreadful circumstances. Yesterday the chief inspector of England’s hospitals, Mike Richards, invoked it when he said that the National Health Service “stands on a burning platform”. The need for change is clear, he said, but finding the resources and energy to make the necessary changes without harming patients seems almost impossible.
Related: I was wrong to defend Jeremy Corbyn. He has betrayed us over Brexit | Ed Vuilliamy
Continue reading...February 23, 2017
Cressida Dick’s appointment is an advance for equality - even more so for policing | Martin Kettle
When I first started writing about politics it was already likely that Britain would soon have a woman prime minister. Margaret Thatcher had become leader of the Conservatives in 1975, and on the Labour side Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams had been talked about as potential national leaders too.
Yet it was inconceivable back then that the nation’s top police officer might ever be a woman. Cressida Dick is the first to be the boss of Scotland Yard, and her historic appointment is the most dramatic evidence so far of a transformational change in the sociology and direction of British policing.
One senior police source told me that Dick was the most impressive officer they had ever met
Related: Cressida Dick appointed first female Met police commissioner
Continue reading...LPO/Jurowski review – looking death in the face with unflinching intensity
Royal Festival Hall, London
Patricia Kopatchinskaja brought tenderness to the heartbreak of Berg’s violin concerto, and the London Philharmonic were outstanding in Shostakovich’s 15th
Even in the week of radio presenter Steve Hewlett’s very public passing, death is still often the last taboo. Vladimir Jurowski’s latest themed concert with the London Philharmonic looked the grim reaper straight in the eye from start to finish. It consisted of three works, all written in death’s shadow and all of which are tempting to read in the light of their composers’ deaths soon afterwards.
Jurowski started with the least familiar, Edison Denisov’s second symphony, composed in 1996, his final year. The symphony, in two movements played without a break and much influenced by modernist aesthetics, begins with translucent liquidity in the winds that is gradually overwhelmed by more emphatic writing, so that it seems almost like a journey from light into darkness.
Continue reading...February 16, 2017
Brexit Britain’s Nato strategy is fatally flawed | Martin Kettle
Theresa May wants to engage with our European neighbours to secure our defences, but her government’s most pressing policy is to shun them
The phrase, in different forms, is as familiar as any in politics. “The first duty of government is to protect the security of the country and its people.” All prime ministers of all parties say words of this kind. All of them mean it. And in most cases the words weigh on them, too, because however pompous they sometimes sound, they are true.
Related: Theresa May shows British poodle can lead the way for erratic new master
'There is a real danger that this largely imaginary outward-facing Britain simply looks to others like an irrelevance'
Continue reading...February 10, 2017
British officials drop plans for Donald Trump to address parliament
UK state visit will take place during recess to avoid snub by MPs – and president’s exposure to public protests will be limited
The government has abandoned the idea of Donald Trump addressing the joint Houses of Parliament when he comes to Britain for a state visit later this year after objections by MPs led by the Commons Speaker John Bercow.
The US president’s controversial visit is now expected to run from a Thursday to a Sunday in late summer or early autumn, with officials trying to ensure that Trump is not in London at a time when parliament is sitting, in order to avoid a formal snub.
Related: Tory MPs planning no-confidence vote over Speaker's Trump comments
Related: Reformist Speaker John Bercow places himself in eye of another storm
Continue reading...Reformist Speaker John Bercow places himself in eye of another storm
To supporters, the intervention on Donald Trump’s UK visit was bold and brave; to critics it was the latest step too far
To say that John Bercow divides opinion at Westminster seems altogether inadequate. This week Bercow found himself in the eye of the biggest political storm of the many that have marred his eight years in the Speaker’s chair of the House of Commons. Or, rather, in this case he very deliberately placed himself there.
On Monday afternoon Bercow stood up in parliament and, for two and a half minutes, explained to MPs why he would oppose any proposal to invite Donald Trump to address parliament during the US president’s planned state visit later this year. It was an explosive act. The Speaker, whose office is historically impartial, distant and above controversy, was plunging into the political fray to take sides on a challenge to Britain’s most important international relationship.
Related: John Bercow: forthright Speaker who regularly raises hackles of Tories
Continue reading...February 9, 2017
An Emmanuel Macron victory would give the EU a chance to save itself | Martin Kettle
Most British politicians are blissfully ignorant about French politics. Fixated by events in Washington, they rarely think about those just across the Channel. Every Whitehall spad will know the name of the mayor of New York; perhaps only one in a hundred could identify the mayor of Paris.
Related: There will be no President Le Pen | Catherine Fieschi
Related: Scandal, radicals and insurgencies – all bets are off for the French presidency | Pierre Haski
Continue reading...February 2, 2017
David Cameron battled the Daily Mail for national mastery, and lost | Martin Kettle
When the then prime minister fought the Mail’s editor Paul Dacre, he underestimated the destructive power the Eurosceptic press would draw from the Brexit vote
If anyone was still in the slightest doubt about why David Cameron might have tried to get Paul Dacre sacked as editor of the Daily Mail during the Brexit referendum campaign, as alleged by the BBC’s Newsnight this week, they only had to pick up a copy of Dacre’s paper on Thursday morning.
Seven months on from the result that brought Cameron’s prime ministership crashing down, Dacre’s Brexiteering triumphalism is undiminished. “Momentous day for Britain – we have lift-off!” shouted the headline on a front page that contained no fewer than three union jacks and an image of Winston Churchill, all triggered by Wednesday’s crushing Commons vote to trigger Brexit. Only 114 MPs “betray will of the people”, said the paper, exuding joy and menace.
Our politicians still belve that the press still rules the political ring. It’s as if the digital age never existed
Related: David Cameron asked Daily Mail owner to sack Paul Dacre over Brexit
Continue reading...February 1, 2017
EU will demand UK pays multi-billion euro bill for Brexit, says former UK ambassador to Brussels - Politics live
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs and MPs debating and voting on the the Brexit bill allowing the government to trigger article 50
11.32am GMT
Labour’s Kate Hoey goes next.
Q: In the period before the referendum, did you ever tell other EU countries there was a real chance the UK might vote to leave?
11.22am GMT
Rogers says other EU countries are trying to include things in EU directives now that they know will cause difficulty for the UK.
Whitehall has had a lot to do on Brexit, he says.
11.16am GMT
Rogers says at the EU other countries are now less willing to listen to what the UK wants, because they know it will be leaving.
11.15am GMT
Here is some Twitter comment on Sir Ivan Rogers’ evidence.
From Politico Europe’s Charlie Cooper
Anyone who thought Rogers resigned because he's a starry-eyed Europhile should watch this committee. Hard-headed, unsentimental about EU
Sir Ivan Rogers warnings about a "spine chilling" Hard Brexit is a gift to Tory rebels such as Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve
Listening to Sir Ivan Rogers brings home the huge complexity of our relationship with EU. Affects every aspect of UK economy. #brexit
11.14am GMT
Q: How robustly is the UK engaging in EU working groups at the moment?
Very robustly, says Rogers. He says this did not change after the referendum.
11.04am GMT
Q: How easy will it be to arrange a transitional deal?
Rogers says the appetite for a bespoke, interim deal will be limited. The EU may push for transitional arrangements that would be wholly unacceptable.
11.01am GMT
Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP, goes next.
Q: How legally binding are our financial obligations? If we don’t pay, will the EU take us to court?
10.55am GMT
Here is the start of the Press Association story about Sir Ivan Rogers’ evidence.
Negotiations to leave the European Union are likely to descend into “name-calling” and “fist-fighting” before any agreement can be found, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU has warned.
Sir Ivan Rogers, who quit in January after telling Prime Minister Theresa May that Brussels diplomats thought it might take 10 years to reach a deal, said there was a “humongous” amount of work to do in what would probably be the country’s largest ever negotiation.
10.55am GMT
Labour’s Graham Stringer is asking questions now. Stringer voted leave.
Q: The more I listen to you, the more I think we should leave now. What would you say to MPs who think we should leave without a deal?
10.49am GMT
Back in the European scrutiny committee Rogers says that, if the Trump administration rules out trade deals with blocs like the EU, that could lead to tensions, because the EU might resent the UK getting special treatment.
But we are not at that point yet, he says.
10.47am GMT
Elsewhere in the Commons Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, is giving evidence to the international trade committee. As my colleague Dan Roberts reports, Fox started by taking a swipe at the former cabinet secretary, Gus O’Donnell, who has said publicly that setting up the new department was a mistake.
Liam Fox begins testimony to parliament by insisting that former cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell apologise for insulting his new trade dept.
10.45am GMT
Rogers is now setting out what would happen if the UK gave up single market membership.
City firms would not have passporting rights, he says. That would matter more to some than to others.
10.42am GMT
Rogers says he has heard Angela Merkel says repeatedly over the years that the four freedoms of the EU - freedom of movement for goods, capital, services and workers - cannot be unpicked.
10.39am GMT
Rogers says the UK will have exploded a bomb under the EU’s seven-year budget plan when it leaves. That is why getting the UK to pay a price for Brexit is so important to EU leaders, he says.
10.36am GMT
Q: EU leaders are briefing that the UK will be required to pay billions when it leaves. Is that a real threat, or is it unreasonable?
Rogers says it can be both.
Rogers says walking away with no deal will be 'so unpalatable that we won't do it' but suggests it will be around as a poss during talks
10.29am GMT
Rogers says the EU will not be able to draw up a withdrawal treaty unless it knows where the UK is heading.
So he thinks the EU will have to negotiate the UK’s withdrawal, and a future trade deal, at the same time.
10.25am GMT
Rogers says he has no doubt that the UK will be able to negotiate trade deals with other countries more quickly than the EU.
But there is also an issue about how much negotiating “heft” the UK would have on its own, he says.
10.22am GMT
Q: Did you really say getting a trade deal could take 10 years?
Rogers says he never said getting a trade deal with the EU would take 10 years.
Ivan Rogers: "I never leak, I never have, never would, never have under any government."
10.14am GMT
Q: How important is confidentiality?
Rogers says he thinks quite a lot of the negotiations will take place in public.
10.12am GMT
Rogers says it is not fully appreciated how important it will be for the remaining 27 members of the EU to decide what they want themselves before they start negotiations with the UK.
10.11am GMT
Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s former ambassador to the EU, has just started giving evidence to the European scrutiny committee.
He says the Brexit negotiations will be “on a humongous scale”.
Sir Ivan Rogers in front of MPs: "This is a negotiation on a scale we haven't experienced since WW2. It's going to be on a humongous scale."
10.08am GMT
The UK in a Changing Europe, an academic research project, and the Mile End Institute have conducted some research about the attitude MPs have to Brexit. They polled 101 MPs and then weighted them, by party, to make them representative of the Commons.
And the conclusions are perhaps not that surprising; that there are significant differences between the views of leave and remain MPs.
Of leave MPs, 72% prioritise controlling immigration or not paying into the EU budget over retaining access to the single market. MPs who voted to remain in the EU, however, are more divided, with under half prioritising access to the single market over either immigration control or paying into the EU budget, with the rest taking a variety of different positions ...
A minority of MPs believe that the referendum result would not be honoured if Britain remained in the single market (just 26% think this would not honour the result) or continued to pay into the EU budget (35%). The latter contrasts with polling by Lord Ashcroft (in August) which found 81% of the public believed continuing to pay into the EU budget would not be compatible with leaving the EU.
9.56am GMT
Pro-European Tories want more concessions from the government over the Brexit process, but they seem reluctant to commit themselves to voting with Labour when MPs debate detailed amendments to the article 50 bill next week. Here is an extract from a story in the Times today (paywall) about their thinking.
Pro-European Tory MPs have warned ministers that they expect to see parliament given a “meaningful vote” on the outcome of Britain’s Brexit negotiations before a deal is ratified in Europe ..
The government has said that it will give parliament a vote on the final deal but has made clear it would not represent a chance to veto Brexit or call another referendum. Privately, pro-European MPs do not believe this promise is meaningful but, having won a concession over the publication of a white paper, they do not want to be seen as disloyal by siding with the opposition amendments. However, they have made clear to the whips that they expect further concessions: a proper debate and vote in parliament before any deal is finalised is their key demand.
9.39am GMT
The former head of NHS Digital has said he was put under “immense pressure” by the Home Office under Theresa May to release data on immigrants despite his concerns over its legality, the Press Association reports.
Kingsley Manning said he was challenged for “daring” to question if there was a legal basis for handing over confidential patient data that would help the Home Office trace suspected illegal immigrants.
We said to the Home Office: ‘We need to understand what the legal basis of this is.’
The Home Office response was: ‘How dare you even question our right to this information. This is data that belongs to the public. It is paid for by the taxpayer. We should use it for public policy’ ...
9.30am GMT
Sir Anthony Seldon, who has written the official history of Number 10 as well as books on the last four UK prime ministers, has come up with a list of the 10 most important things for a prime minister to do and the 10 to be most avoided. He offered the advice in a speech to the Institute for Government in Whitehall yesterday,
Professor Seldon was careful to avoid saying how Theresa May rated on these 10 yardsticks, but in questions after his lecture he said he was concerned that modern prime ministers travelled too much. Although he himself had favoured remaining in the European Union, the professor said that one advantage of Brexit would be that the prime minister would not have to travel to so many EU summits.
9.04am GMT
It’s the full Brexit again today. MPs will resume their debate on the second reading of the article 50 bill, or the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill, to give it its full title, and they will vote at 7pm. The bill is certain to be passed, but we will find out this evening how many Labour MPs are willing to defy Jeremy Corbyn and vote against it.
Here is our live blog from yesterday covering what happened in the debate until it ended at midnight.
Related: Brexit: MPs debate article 50 bill - as it happened
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