Martin Kettle's Blog, page 65
July 10, 2016
Brexit vote paves way for federal union to save UK, says all-party group
Exclusive: Proposed constitutional reform would give each nation and region of the UK full sovereignty over its own affairs
The governance of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be reinvented within a new voluntary union in a bid to save the UK from disintegration, an independent all-party group of experts will argue this week.
The Constitution Reform Group, convened by former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Salisbury, is to make the the case for radical constitutional change in the UK by claiming the need has been boosted by the vote to leave the European Union.
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July 7, 2016
As Chilcot showed, Tony Blair was a 20th-century leader in a 21st-century world | Martin Kettle
King Philip II of Spain, the dominant ruler of 16th-century Europe, sent the armada to its defeat, lost the Spanish Netherlands to the Dutch and spent large parts of his reign persecuting heretics. Yet it was said of him that “no experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence”.
Related: Tony Blair unrepentant as Chilcot gives crushing Iraq war verdict
Related: How the Bush administration sold the war – and we bought it | Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson
Continue reading...Iraq, Blair and Chilcot – Politics Weekly podcast
Martin Kettle, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr join Tom Clark to discuss the Chilcot report on the Iraq war and the Conservative leadership race. Plus Steven Thrasher on how Brexit looks from the US
After seven years of his inquiry into the Iraq war, Sir John Chilcot’s verdict on Tony Blair was devastating: he said Blair led Britain into war of choice, before peaceful options had been exhausted using flawed intelligence after an unsatisfactory legal process. Soldiers went into war ill-equipped and the plan for rebuilding Iraq was “wholly inadequate”.
Joining Tom Clark to discuss it all are Guardian columnists Martin Kettle, Rafael Behr and Polly Toynbee. We also hear from Chris Ames, the man behind the Iraq Inquiry Digest.
Continue reading...July 6, 2016
Tony Blair's statement on Chilcot – what he said and what he meant
Martin Kettle reads between the lines of Blair’s statement on the publication of the Iraq war report
Tony Blair: The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit.
Martin Kettle: The crucial Chilcot finding from Blair’s perspective, so not surprisingly it’s placed right at the top of his response. The report does not say Blair lied, so Blair is insisting the discussion should focus on his judgment and the decisions he made, not his honesty.
Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein, I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.
I note that the report finds clearly:
– That there was no falsification or improper use of intelligence (para 876 vol 4)
- No deception of cabinet (para 953, vol 5)
- No secret commitment to war whether at Crawford Texas in April 2002 or elsewhere (para 572 onwards, vol 1)
The inquiry does not make a finding on the legal basis for military action but finds that the attorney general had concluded there was such a lawful basis by 13th March 2003 (para 933, vol 5).
However, the report does make real and material criticisms of preparation, planning, process and of the relationship with the United States.
These are serious criticisms and they require serious answers. I will respond in detail to them later this afternoon.
I will take full responsibility for any mistakes without exception or excuse.
I will at the same time say why, nonetheless, I believe that it was better to remove Saddam Hussein and why I do not believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.
Above all I will pay tribute to our armed forces.
I will express my profound regret at the loss of life and the grief it has caused the families, and I will set out the lessons I believe future leaders can learn from my experience.
Continue reading...Blair was wrong on Iraq – and he should have the humility to admit it | Martin Kettle
Thirteen years have not dimmed the urgency of doing better, and the Chilcot report’s emphasis on UK government and state failure should be taken seriously
The invasion of Iraq was, as Sir John Chilcot put it today, the first invasion of a sovereign state by the UK since the second world war. It was also, as Chilcot said, in his dry, meticulous terms, a failure which went badly wrong.
Those words “failure” and “badly wrong” will sound like a weak and feeble form of condemnation to the many who feel the Iraq war should be condemned as a crime, a moral outrage, a terrible deception or as simply unforgivable. But “failure” in fact goes to the absolute heart of what was so very wrong about Tony Blair’s policy, way of governing and premiership.
Related: The Iraq war inquiry has left the door open for Tony Blair to be prosecuted | Joshua Rozenberg
Continue reading...July 4, 2016
Siegfried/ Götterdämmerung review – not just praiseworthy but wonderful
Opera North, Royal Festival Hall, London
The epic power of Wagner’s Ring has rarely rung more true than in this imaginatively staged and beautifully played production
As Richard Farnes urged his Opera North orchestra into the final redemptive bars of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, one half expected the Festival Hall to burst into flames, the Thames to flood its banks and the lofty City of London Valhalla across the river to crumble to the ground as the composer more or less intended. Rarely can the worldly context of a Ring Cycle performance have better matched Wagner’s epic of power, greed and expiation than in these lurching catastrophic days of economic and political crisis. Wagner’s incomparable achievement felt more genuinely contemporary and immediate than ever.
Yet Opera North’s central achievement in this semi-staged concert hall cycle is to bring the focus emphatically back to Wagner’s music, not to his literary ideas. By the second half of the cycle, the rippling video backdrops that had seemed a promising expressive device in Das Rheingold had run out of originality. One was left to focus on the words (though there were complaints about the legibility of the surtitles), on the pared-back but imaginative staging by Peter Mumford and, above everything else, on the music, in particular the orchestral writing.
Continue reading...Vote that could make Andrea Leadsom a Tory outlier – like Corbyn
Theresa May seems in a commanding position but the Tory leadership race is fraught with uncertainty
It is beginning to dawn that in the wake of the Brexit vote there will be no such thing as a return to business as usual in British politics. But that’s not just because a prime minister has resigned, important though that is. Much more, it is because the full shock waves of the Brexit win have barely started to be felt.
We won’t see the same kind of drama this week that we saw two weeks ago when David Cameron quit after the referendum vote, or last week when Michael Gove turned against Boris Johnson in the fight to be Cameron’s successor. But the dynamics of the Conservative leadership race are not settled yet.
Continue reading...July 3, 2016
Il Trovatore review – tanks, selfies and operatic teamwork
Royal Opera House, London
David Bösch’s production, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, commendably looks to its ensemble to bring connection and drama to Verdi’s blood-curdling tragedy
Of the three all-conquering operas that Verdi wrote in quick succession in the early 1850s, Il Trovatore has become a bit of a Cinderella piece. While Rigoletto and La Traviata are pillars of every opera house’s repertoire, Trovatore has been reducing to a more problematic status than it once enjoyed.
It used to be said that all Trovatore needs is the four best singers in the world to perform it. But the real Trovatore problem is the difficulty of making a contemporary emotional connection to the opera’s blood-curdling story of cruelty, catastrophe and revenge in 16th-century Spain. You might think, in view of some of the world’s recent conflicts and wars, that this might not be hard, yet Azucena’s traumatic killing of her own child, which drives Verdi’s tragedy, somehow fails to connect as instantly as Rigoletto’s paranoia or Violetta’s victimhood.
Continue reading...July 1, 2016
Michael Gove’s pitch for the Tory leadership: our writers’ verdict | Hugh Muir, Martin Kettle, Frances Ryan and Alan Travis
He launched his bid with Tory blood on his hands and Brexit promises to work around. But how did Michael Gove get on?
He pitched to the left of Andrea Leadsom – and Theresa May
Related: Theresa May launches Tory leadership bid with pledge to unite country
Continue reading...June 30, 2016
Boris Johnson would have been a disaster. Bring on Theresa May | Martin Kettle
Once again the Conservative party has proved why it has a PhD qualification in political ruthlessness, while at the same time the Labour party is struggling to even manage a GCSE retake. When most of us were cleaning our teeth this morning, Boris Johnson was still the bookies’ favourite to win the Tory leadership and succeed David Cameron as prime minister. Yet by lunchtime Johnson – I absolutely refuse ever to call him just by his first name in print – was a political corpse with Michael Gove’s lethal stiletto between his substantial shoulder blades. How ghoulishly appropriate that today is the anniversary of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives.
You simply have to hand it to Tory MPs. They are professionals. A generation ago they took down Margaret Thatcher, disposing of her in a way that the Tory grassroots would never have allowed but which enabled John Major to win a general election. Now they have taken down Johnson in order to ensure that a new generation of credulous Tory activists don’t put the party’s election chances at risk by selecting him as leader. An already ghastly week for Labour just got a bit worse as a result.
Continue reading...Martin Kettle's Blog
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