Martin Kettle's Blog, page 78
May 21, 2015
David Cameron faces sudden death over Europe. He cannot fail | Martin Kettle
In Goethe’s Faust, the devil makes a wager with the hero. I will do everything you want, the devil says. But if you ever say that you wish that a moment could last forever, you will die. Faust signs the deal, and seals his fate.
David Cameron, so far as we know, has not made a pact with the devil. But for the past two weeks, the Tory party has certainly been savouring its moment. And with good reason. It doesn’t get much better than this for a re-elected prime minister and his victorious party. But the moment will not last forever.
Everything in British politics now hinges on the Europe issue, including the union with Scotland
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Carmen review – strong revival of Bieito's tough and intelligent production
Coliseum, London
Mezzo soprano Justina Gringyte captures Carmen’s reckless vulnerability superbly, Richard Armstrong handles the score with real authority
Calixto Bieito’s take on Bizet’s Carmen is tough, dark, spare and intelligent. There’s little of the vulgarity that can make Bieito’s shows annoyingly embarrassing. But there’s absolutely no Andalucian kitsch either. A Spanish flag in act one, a looming Osborne bull ad backdrop in act three and, at the last, Escamillo dressed for the corrida are just about the only reminders of where we are. Almost all the dialogue has been cut and although there are striking visual moments, it is the threat and reality of male sexual violence that dominates this Carmen.
Vocally it is a strong revival, too. Justina Gringyte commands the title role. She looks, and is, more eastern European than Spanish, and in the act-three card scene she sounds as if she is singing Tchaikovsky rather than Bizet. But she has a vibrant mezzo with a strong top, as well as stage presence to spare, and she is good at capturing Carmen’s reckless vulnerability. Eric Cutler’s Don José is musically and theatrically an even more impressive achievement. He moves more convincingly than many Josés from mummy’s boy to violent abuser, and he has the measure of the role’s many vocal challenges, too, passing the test of his act-two aria in style.
Continue reading...May 14, 2015
It’s vital to know why Labour lost – yet more so to know why the Tories won | Martin Kettle
Like many commentators, I got the general election wrong. I thought Labour would finish narrowly behind the Conservatives but would form a government. Unlike most commentators, I feel a responsibility to admit this mistake in the public square. And I want to discuss why so many of us were mistaken this time.
There seems precious little chance of this generally. Too many commentators on the right have spent the last week in hero-worship mode towards David Cameron and, in particular, George Osborne. Meanwhile, way too many on the left have equally rapidly immersed themselves in a ridiculously premature Labour leadership election that provides a handy duvet beneath which to hide from electoral and political reality.
It is a mere eight days since Ladbrokes were offering 10-1 odds against a Conservative majority government
The left should remember Oliver Cromwell: ‘Think it possible you may be mistaken'
Continue reading...May 8, 2015
Cameron’s cabinet is a Rubik’s cube no amount of reshuffling will solve| Martin Kettle
A new prime minister is never stronger than in the hours after he takes office. So the period after he kissed hands at lunchtime to form his new single-party Conservative majority government are David Cameron’s hours of greatest power. He owes nothing to anyone and his patronage is at its apogee.
In this reshuffle he can reward, he can punish, he can uproot, he can promote and he can sideline. And no one can do anything to stop him.
Continue reading...David Cameron wins surprise majority in general election – Politics Weekly podcast
May 7, 2015
This 8 May is the beginning of the end of British politics as we know it | Martin Kettle
The certainties of the postwar myths that Churchill’s wartime leadership and his coalition government made possible have fallen away: it’s an irrevocable moment
There is a new political landscape in Britain. The two large parties that have dominated politics since the second world war no longer command the nation as they once did. Multiparty politics has simmered for decades, yet today it is the new reality, albeit distorted through the prism of an outmoded electoral system. There may not even be anything we can describe as British politics any longer.
That we are marking this moment on 8 May has a powerful resonance and symbolism. There is no date in the history of modern Britain that has a resonance like today’s. The arc of the Britain we inhabit today started long ago on one 8 May, reached its apotheosis a few years later on a second 8 May and, as the implications of the general election sink in, may now be at a point of no return on yet another 8 May.
Membership Event: Guardian Live: Election results special
This election has been a contest between parties which dream of a revived Churchillism
Continue reading...In Scotland, the nationalist tide has swept all before it | Martin Kettle
In the 2010 general election, every parliamentary seat in Scotland re-elected the same party it had elected in 2005. But that was then and this is now – and there is an absolute chasm between them. Last night, in the 2015 election, the overwhelming majority of Scottish seats sent a new Scottish Nationalist face to Westminster. It is the biggest electoral revolution in the British Isles since Sinn Féin obliterated the Irish home rulers in 1918. And the message for the United Kingdom is every bit as threatening.
The SNP said during the campaign that it wanted a Labour win south of the border bolstered by an SNP win in Scotland. But in truth this election was an each-way bet for the SNP. A Conservative win in England offers an even tastier prospect for Nicola Sturgeon’s party – an ancient and visceral dividing line which allows the SNP to stand tall both as Scotland’s champion and the defender of the postwar settlement.
Related: Election results live: Cameron on course to remain PM as Labour left stunned
Related: The government no one’s talking about: the Tories propped up by the SNP | Randeep Ramesh
Continue reading...Labour’s election strategy utterly failed, and it has to admit as much | Martin Kettle
When Ed Miliband was elected leader of the Labour party in 2010, a delighted Neil Kinnock was famously reported as saying, “I’ve got my party back.” As the results of the 2015 election began coming in, it was clear that Kinnock was disastrously right. The man who led Labour to two defeats in 1987 and 1992 now has a party with which he can be comfortably familiar, after notching up another pair of nationwide election losses under Gordon Brown in 2010 and now Miliband in 2015.
It has always been clear that Miliband has been following a targeted electoral strategy. The generous view is that he believes that, after the financial crisis, there is a winning coalition to be built from core Labour voters, disillusioned Liberal Democrats and middle-class sympathisers with the poor. But last night it became clear that this strategy has quite simply failed.
Continue reading...May 5, 2015
Orchestra of the ROH/Pappano review – enjoying the chance to be seen and heard
Royal Opera House, London
With repertoire that played to his musicians’ strengths as colourists, accompanists and as a dance orchestra, Pappano showed the excellence of his ROH ensemble
Other major opera house orchestras have a life in the concert hall. So why not London too? After 13 years as Covent Garden’s music director, Antonio Pappano has decided to dip a toe in the water. “It’s been my dream to get my orchestra up here from down there,” he said in a short speech from the stage, pointing down to the pit before this inaugural annual venture.
Playing on the stage, the orchestra of the Royal Opera House looked a bit boxed in by the imported wooden backdrops and ceilings, installed to help push the sound outwards. It came over bright and well balanced in the rear stalls, but this opera house has acoustic Bermuda triangles, so it is hard to know if the sound worked as well higher up and further away.
Related: Pappano puts his Royal Opera House orchestra centre stage
Continue reading...April 30, 2015
Minority government will allow Ed Miliband to call Nicola Sturgeon’s bluff | Martin Kettle
The fog of electoral battle is not an easy place to think clearly about strategy. But there is a lack of clear thinking about how the hung parliament that may be elected next week would work. Perhaps that explains why, even in politics, the arts can sometimes illuminate the big point in a way that reality fails to do.
Anyone who caught James Graham’s play This House at the National Theatre in 2012 will remember what drove this instant classic of a stage drama. The play is set at Westminster in the 1970s as James Callaghan’s Labour government struggled to survive. The central question at every turn is whether Labour will be able to put together a majority to win key votes.
It is sometimes easier to strike a big pragmatic bargain with your main political enemy
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