Martin Kettle's Blog, page 6

After Southport, Westminster is floundering. It should look to Idris Elba | Martin Kettle

The Home Office has some good ideas, but a documentary on knife crime by the actor offers the template for a new approach

The list of painful questions left behind for a wounded Britain by the trauma of the Southport stabbings is a long one. It starts with asking why Axel Rudakubana, jailed last week with a 52-year minimum prison sentence, did it. But that soon segues into wider issues of statecraft and policy. In particular, it asks whether there are measures we could now take that might, just possibly, contribute to stopping some future Rudakubana from doing the same thing.

Here the issues become more substantive. Problems of family support and parenting. The too ready availability of knives. The influence of social media. The impact of poverty. The role of schools and of exclusions. The place of policing. The repercussion of imprisonment. The effectiveness of youth services. The relevance, if any, of ideology. All these, and more. And they are merely subject headings, the doors to more detailed responses.

Continue reading...

It’s the reign of King Donald: now a people who fled cruel monarchs have their own | Martin Kettle

We see untrammelled power with fawning courtiers. George Washington would have recognised the new system at the White House

Donald Trump’s triumphal return to the White House was American political theatre on steroids. This was, of course, exactly the returning president’s intention. “Shock and awe” was the en vogue phrase in the Trump camp to describe it, as the president sought to obliterate the Biden era in a blizzard of executive presidential orders and day-one Maga movement payoffs.

Trump’s second inauguration was exceptionally well worked. Where or whether it all lands in the form of delivered policy is a different issue. To some, it may feel petty to note that the last US “shock and awe” exercise – the Iraq invasion of 2003 – also generated a feast of indelible images of American power. But that one certainly did not end well.

Continue reading...

Jenůfa review – this opera is in Hrůša’s DNA, his account is not to be missed

Royal Opera House, London
The Royal Opera’s incoming music director conducts a performance of rare intensity and authority, with Corrine Winters and Karita Mattila compelling in the two central roles

Antonio Pappano’s 23-year reign as the Royal Opera’s music director is a dauntingly hard act to follow. Yet there could be no mistaking the support and enthusiasm with which the Covent Garden audience greeted Pappano’s successor-designate Jakub Hrůša for the first time before he takes over the reins officially in the autumn. This was, one sensed, a big moment for modern Britain’s responsibilities towards this so often and so unfairly traduced art form.

We were not to be disappointed. It helped enormously that the Czech conductor was on home musical territory. Janáček’s searingly contemporary Jenůfa, the composer’s 1904 tale of village violence, shame and forgiveness, is in Hrůša’s DNA, and he conducted it in Chicago a year ago. The Covent Garden orchestra has also played Jenůfa recently, when Claus Guth’s production was launched in 2021. Yet, with the art form itself on the line and the orchestra keen to show the new boss its mettle, Hrůša gave an account of rare intensity and authority, not to be missed.

Continue reading...

Keir Starmer’s handling of the Tulip Siddiq affair forms part of a worrying pattern | Martin Kettle

A blind spot on standards has marked the new government’s early days – but it’s not too late for Labour to restore trust in politics

In theory, Tulip Siddiq’s resignation as a junior Treasury minister ought to be a political bump in the road for Keir Starmer, not a pothole crash. Siddiq is a moderately interesting politician, but not a major one. She is not a household name. She is therefore expendable. The government’s direction is unaffected by her departure.

Naturally it is a grim personal moment for Siddiq. But it is mostly a matter of indifference to the British public. This is as it should be. Few ministers ever cut through widely. Even fewer resignations stand out – Geoffrey Howe, Robin Cook and Sajid Javid are among the exceptions, perhaps. Most ministers who resign, though, are simply washed away with the political tide. This is likely to be Siddiq’s fate.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Elon Musk is a monster bully on the loose, but he can only get his way if we let him | Martin Kettle

The democratic order has faced down tyrants and megalomaniacs before. The name of the game for liberals for 2025 and beyond must be survival

They can smell the fear. And they are thrilled by what they can smell. Fanned by a mesmerised media at home and abroad, the thrill excites them into fresh provocations. Donald Trump knows the US’s allies’ nerves are jangling as his second presidency approaches – and he wants to keep it that way. Elon Musk is similarly glorying in his power to provoke and misinform without suffering penalty or reprimand – least of all from most of Britain’s politicians and press.

Both men are bullies. And this is what bullies do. However, there is no disputing that this is also their moment. The Trump inauguration on 20 January will be an in-your-face celebration of America First power. It will also be a requiem that consigns large parts of the rules-based postwar global settlement to the grave.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Millions of Britons want a fresh start and a new life. But they will find it at home, not in Australia | Martin Kettle

We must turn our backs on this imperial fantasy of neo-Britains with better climates – and find our clean slates here in the UK

In Chris Bush and Richard Hawley’s musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, there’s an exchange that has stuck in my mind. The scene is Sheffield’s Park Hill housing estate at Christmas 2002. The postwar estate was once a place of modernity, civic pride and hope, but it is now run down and decaying. There are rats in the flats.

Jimmy, a young security guard, and Joy, a nurse, still live in Park Hill. They talk constantly about finding a better future and a fresh start for themselves. But where could they go to do that, Joy asks? To Mars? “No,” Jimmy insists: “A proper fresh start. Clean slate. Australia.”

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

We now have a plan to make England's local government work – but I fear party politics will trash it | Martin Kettle

Angela Rayner’s white paper on reform in this vital area is well-intentioned. The problems will be funding and sabotage

I am under no illusions about this. Compared with Prince Andrew’s latest disgrace or with Keely Hodgkinson’s latest glittering prize, the reform of English local government is no one’s clickbait subject, not even mine, least of all in the run-up to Christmas.

But it is a vitally important subject all the same. Local government that works is indispensable to the wider renewal of the state. It is also a rock without which the vital rebuilding of trust in politics is made altogether more difficult. Yet this cannot just be left to the political class, because their first instincts will be to create a system that works for them, but not necessarily for citizens.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

La Bohème review – action rather than angst in lively revival

Royal Opera House, London
Richard Jones’s 2017 staging returns to Covent Garden with a young and light-hearted group of bohemians. In the pit Speranza Scappucci keeps things moving musically

Few operas plunge in so directly as La Bohème. One is immediately transported to Paris – or at least to Puccini’s version of it. The opening hits the spot in this revival of Covent Garden’s most frequently performed opera of all time, with the house’s principal guest conductor designate Speranza Scappucci setting a cracking tempo, and the bohemians playing it for laughs even when the love interest kicks in.

Richard Jones’s 2017 production, revived here by Ben Mills, keeps its distance from the score’s emotions. It focuses instead on getting the maximum action out of designer Stewart Laing’s striking settings. Snow falls throughout, to remind us this is Christmas. The first and last acts occur in what looks like a self-assembly rooftop garret, the second in a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic street and cafe scene (surely too bourgeois for the Latin Quarter in those Balzacian days), and the musically masterly third in a stark dark dawn setting, with only a small hut for cheer.

Continue reading...

Starmer’s Labour knows the kind of Britain it wants – it just doesn’t know how to build it | Martin Kettle

Ministers are right to want to reform the state: it’s crucial to their project. But simply telling civil servants to work harder won’t achieve it

After five months in office, Labour knows where it wants to take the country; but it does not know how to get there. In this, and despite radically different priorities, the Labour government resembles the Conservative one that preceded it. Boris Johnson found in the end that he could not make modern Britain work in the way he wanted. Now, today, it is Keir Starmer’s turn.

Starmer’s “plan for change” speech at Pinewood Studios last week was a recognition of the problem. British government, said Starmer, is “broken”. It was a striking admission, but also true in many ways, prisons and social care prominent among them. Starmer responded by announcing five-year targets in key policy areas – the economy, housing, health, policing, early years and energy. But this was not enough. Starmer’s answer does not measure up to the problem that confronts him.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

Tosca review – Bryn Terfel’s lustful Scarpia returns to intimidate and compel

Royal Opera House, London
Natalya Romaniw brings vulnerability and depth to Tosca and, in the pit, Eun Sun Kim conducts with subtlety and delicacy in this revival of Jonathan Kent’s staging

‘Where would the opera houses be without Puccini?”, a friend observed during this latest Royal Ballet and Opera revival of Tosca. It is 100 years this Friday since Puccini died, but he does more of the Covent Garden box office’s heavy lifting than ever. Tosca, La Bohème and Turandot are all slated for runs this season.

A revival like this one tells you why. With the three principal roles strongly cast, and the orchestra in buoyant form, only the hardest of critical hearts can resist. Yes, Tosca is a crude and melodramatic opera. And, no, the third act does not quite measure up to the first two. But Puccini’s musical ambition and his theatrical punch are masterly.

Continue reading...