Martin Kettle's Blog, page 74
October 9, 2015
Michael Gove is a true reformer. Liberals should be cheering him on | Martin Kettle
The first Conservative party conference debate on law and order I covered as a journalist was in Blackpool in 1981. It was the one at which Margaret Thatcher vigorously applauded a delegate from Crewe who called for Tory MPs to be deselected for voting against hanging, and at which a delegate who warned the Tories against flirting with racism was howled down by the audience.
It was also the conference at which, in a moment that will never be forgotten by anyone who was present, Edwina Currie, in those days merely a publicity-crazed Birmingham councillor in search of a safe Tory seat, came to the rostrum, waved a set of handcuffs at home secretary William Whitelaw, aroused a bat’s squeak of desire in the watching Lord Gowrie, and said, to wild applause: “Let me make one thing clear. I’m not concerned about prisoners’ welfare. You know, perhaps I should be, but I’m not.”
Related: Michael Gove should take this opportunity to give prisoners a vote | Joshua Rozenberg
Related: Tory conference: 10 things you may have missed
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October 8, 2015
Berlin's opera weekend: tradition, innovation and orientalism
Berlin’s three opera houses united to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall and open their seasons with a trio of new productions by Wagner, Offenbach and Meyerbeer
Plenty of great cities do not have an opera house at all. Others, from Milan to Manaus, get by very well with just the one. A few have enough money and public support for two; though, as London knows and New York has discovered, that can prove a struggle. Almost alone in the world, Berlin maintains three opera houses, and all three of them remain companies that cut a dash on the international stage.
Berlin’s state opera, the Staatsoper, is the descendant of the 18th century Prussian court opera and has long been one of the premiere houses of the world. The Komische Oper, founded in the 19th century, has always promoted operetta and innovative ideas, with a global artistic influence out of all proportion to its size. Meanwhile the Deutsche Oper, established after 1945 to bring opera to west Berlin – the other two houses were in the communist east – straddles both traditions while aping neither.
With Wolfgang Koch, great Wagnerian singing may be re-entering a golden age
The staging was … a triumph, with brilliant theatrical effects and stage pictures as Hoffmann’s dreams fall to pieces
The production struggles to energise a work every diligent operagoer will want to see but is unlikely to wish to revisit
Continue reading...October 1, 2015
Watch Nigel Lawson: he is a safer bet than Ukip for Eurosceptics | Martin Kettle
On the eve of the Conservative conference in Manchester, opinion polls have begun to shift towards UK withdrawal from the European Union in the approaching referendum. The shift is not yet conclusive, but it is stronger than for a long time. On Monday, YouGov recorded its first Brexit majority for almost a year, with “remain” on 38% and “leave” on 40%, while the Daily Telegraph tracker poll on the issue shows a dramatic narrowing between “stay in” and “get out” since the summer.
After the election debacle, it is understandable that not many people are plugged into the polls; but the polls on Britain in Europe are another matter altogether. They need to be watched with hawk-like attention because, right now, they are pointing Britain out of Europe. The trend towards “leave” or “get out” seems to coincide with Europe’s failure to cope with its refugee and migration crisis. Like it or not, public attitudes toward Europe have become deeply entwined with public attitudes toward migrants. Since the referendum is due within the next two years, this is not going to change much before polling day.
Related: Lord Lawson to lead Conservative movement to leave EU
George Osborne, acting in David Cameron’s interests and his own, is becoming the enforcer for the Tory ‘in’ campaign
Continue reading...September 30, 2015
Seven final thoughts on the Labour party conference | Gaby Hinsliff, Jonathan Freedland, John Harris, Matthew d’Ancona, Owen Jones, Rafael Behr, Martin Kettle
There’s been a niggling question in the background at Brighton; call it the Ben Okri question. Jeremy Corbyn quoted the novelist and poet (along with Maya Angelou) and the audience loved it; one fan told me how blissful it was to be led by someone who loved writers like that too. Then an MP told me the response in their constituency would be “who the fuck is Ben Okri?”.
Related: Maria Eagle says Corbyn's comment on not pressing nuclear button unhelpful – Politics live
Continue reading...September 29, 2015
Five things we’ve learned from the Labour party conference | Matthew d’Ancona, Tom Clark, Polly Toynbee, Martin Kettle and Aditya Chakrabortty
“This lot aren’t full of fear. That’s the real difference”: thus muses one of the most intelligent veterans of Labour’s battles since 2010. The observation is both simple and acute. New Labour always claimed to be brave, radical, “best when at our boldest” (Tony Blair, Labour conference, Blackpool 2002). Gordon Brown wrote a (rather good) book called, simply, Courage. Yet the modernisation project was essentially the product of fear: fear of defeat was its core motive, just as soothing the fear of the voters was its primary objective. In 1997, the late Philip Gould’s mantra was: “Reassurance, reassurance, reassurance.” Of course, Corbyn and John McDonnell have sought to dispel some aspects of their tabloid image and to soothe the anxieties of middle Britain. But the deeper impression left by the new leader’s nonchalant style and the shadow chancellor’s confidence is of a party no longer apologising for its instincts, its history and its idealistic plans, no longer playing by the old rules. Remember the Democrat super-strategist, Bruno Gianelli, in The West Wing? “I’m tired of working for candidates who make me think that I should be embarrassed to believe what I believe, Sam! … We cowered in the corner, and said, ‘Please. Don’t. Hurt. Me.’ No more.”
Continue reading...September 28, 2015
Six things we’ve learned from the Labour party conference | Jonathan Freedland, Tom Clark, Rafael Behr, Matthew d’Ancona, Martin Kettle and Gaby Hinsliff
Remind me who’s the prime minister again? To judge from the speeches and fringe talk in Brighton, you’d think David Cameron retired long ago. His name is barely mentioned. Instead Labour speaker after Labour speaker concentrates their fire on George Osborne. The chancellor is the target of every jibe, the hate figure offered up for the audience’s guaranteed disapproval.
Related: A Corbyn who connects would really frighten the Tories | Matthew d’Ancona
Continue reading...September 24, 2015
Labour’s conference will crackle with ideas. But the party may not survive | Martin Kettle
In a more rational and ordered world, the Labour party would have responded to its defeat in May more logically. First it would have debated what had gone wrong and why. Then it would have settled on the new path it needed to take. Finally it would have chosen the leader to take it there. But as we all know, it didn’t happen like that. Thanks to Ed Miliband’s premature resignation, Labour has chosen the leader but not the path.
However, Labour is now beginning to have the debates that it ought, ideally, to have had at the start. Move to the centre or to the left? Balance the books or borrow? Renew or abandon UK nuclear weapons? And many more.
Related: Tom Watson urges Corbyn to hold Labour debate on Trident and Nato
The question that faces Labour in Brighton next week is not to hold a fight to the death about big and divisive issues
Related: Democratic mandates and the survival of Labour | Letters
Continue reading...September 21, 2015
Lib Dem faithful embrace Nick Clegg's message of hope
With both major parties turning to the extremes, the Lib Dems still have a big role to play, former leader tells conference
It couldn’t compare for loftiness or length with Fidel Castro’s “History will absolve me” speech from the Cuban dock in 1953. Nor, it can be said with some confidence, for historical importance either. But as a reasoned attempt to justify his actions and bring a bit of hope to his chastened followers in dark political times, Nick Clegg’s speech to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth was quietly effective, even if it carefully avoided anything that could be described as a difficult question.
Clegg has barely put his head above the parapet since the Lib Dems were all but swept away on 7 May. But he walked on to the stage to a standing ovation from the party he led into government and then led into the wilderness. That says a lot about the Lib Dems – smiling and whistling under all difficulties as if they were the Scout movement, which in some ways they rather resemble. But Clegg’s message – that in spite of the general election drubbing there is still a big role to play – was hugged close by a party that for the last five months has had little to hug except its memories.
Continue reading...September 17, 2015
Jeremy Corbyn will struggle to hold his line over Europe | Martin Kettle
The Labour party is not best understood as an old-fashioned struggle of left and right. It is better to see Labour as a permanently unresolved engagement between competing traditions. The three most important of these traditions are ethical socialism, labourism, and social democracy. The first emphasises the kind of person you wish to be, the second the kind of person you represent, and the third the kind of thing you seek to win support to do.
Most Labour MPs of modern times are a mix of the second and third traditions. But it is no accident, as the more doctrinaire Marxists say, that Jeremy Corbyn’s roots are in the first and second traditions, and not in the third. Social democracy’s priority is to fashion achievable compromises between capitalism and social justice. This places the emphasis on governing. But governing has never been Corbyn’s thing, as this week has shown.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn’s policies may be popular – but they don’t add up to a platform | Peter Hain
It suggests a hitherto extremely well concealed streak of pragmatism in the seemingly ascetic Corbyn
Continue reading...September 10, 2015
Face the facts, Labour: you’ll need help to oust the Tories | Martin Kettle
For more than a century of its history, an unanswered question has faced the Labour party. That same question will still apply tomorrow, no matter who is elected party leader. It will apply next week, next month, next year, and the year after, and it will continue to apply unless and until Labour can finally answer it better than it has managed to do in the past. The question is this: why is the British left so unsuccessful?
Much breath and ink has been expended on trying to find an answer, not least in the four months of the contest to succeed Ed Miliband. All too often, however, the answers have been far too limited in imagination. That’s because, whether they come from the Labour left, the Labour right or the Labour somewhere in between, they all share the assumption that only the Labour party can provide the true solution to the left’s problem. And that simply isn’t true.
Related: Labour leadership race: 15 key moments of a dramatic campaign – interactive
Related: To survive, Labour must pick a strong leader who wants to be prime minister | Michael Ashcroft
Related: Labour leadership: all eyes on Jeremy Corbyn as voting ends
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