Martin Kettle's Blog, page 80
April 9, 2015
Boris Johnson isn’t the magic bullet the Tories imagine | Martin Kettle
Scotland is getting a lion’s share of attention in this election, and with excellent reason. Yet London, with its 73 seats, will send more MPs to Westminster in a month’s time than Scotland with its 59. And party politics is changing pretty fast in London too, with consequences that could be almost as significant for Britain as those in Scotland.
Related: Why Boris Johnson could be bailing out as London mayor on Bonfire Night
Surveys put Johnson behind Ed Miliband, not ahead of him, on whether he understands ordinary people
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April 2, 2015
Wanted: a British leader who sees the world as voters see it | Martin Kettle
Nothing that has happened in the opening days shakes the view that this election will turn on economic confidence and political leadership. Most of the early skirmishes have been about the former. Last night, in the seven-party leaders’ debate, it was the turn of the latter. What has been shaken, however, is the assumption about how these issues would play.
For months, the Conservatives have assumed that both would work in their favour. That may indeed prove true in the end. But it doesn’t feel that way at this early stage. A week in, it is Labour who are feeling chipper about the early salvoes, even affecting pleasure at the massed ranks of business backers for the Conservatives on Wednesday. Conversely it is the Tories who are already getting tetchy. There may not be many facts to support either mood, but if Thursday night’s debate fails to shift it, a serious Tory wobble may not be long in coming.
Continue reading...March 26, 2015
The ruling on Prince Charles’s letters is a huge victory for freedom of information | Martin Kettle
Secret correspondence with ministers will be now made public. The separation of powers our ancestors fought for has been upheld
The crown is the embodiment of English law. So it is pretty hard to bring a case against the monarch, and almost as difficult to bring a case against the monarch’s heir. Very occasionally, however, it happens. And the courts have made such a ruling today, permitting the publication of Prince Charles’s letters to ministers. The judgment doesn’t shatter the state in the way that the decision to execute Charles I did in 1649. But it opens a surprising number of similar questions.
Related: Prince Charles memos: supreme court rules in favour of the Guardian - live
Continue reading...March 24, 2015
David Cameron's third-term renunciation is an act of weakness
Cameron’s command of the Tory party remains flimsier than outsiders imagine, and this attempt to control the succession process will come at a price
Prime ministers don’t like talking about resigning or retiring, least of all when they are running for re-election. Thus, when a prime minister does talk about quitting, he does it for a reason and because he thinks he is in a tight spot. So, to what question is Cameron’s surprise mid-campaign announcement that he will not run for a third term the answer?
The explanation lies in internal Conservative party politics. Not for the first time in his leadership, Cameron’s action is a reminder of the importance he attaches to managing his often angry party. As the Guardian reported at the weekend, Cameron is worried about a leadership challenge after 7 May if the Conservatives fail to win a decisive lead in seats. His supporters have been contacting loyalists to ask them to form a “praetorian guard” around the prime minister to prevent a challenge.
March 19, 2015
I see the future of British politics – it belongs to the wheeler dealers | Martin Kettle
Winston Churchill was wrong about a lot of things. But he was right about the need for a leader to do what it takes to win. When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, Britain’s wartime prime minister put his qualms aside and embraced the alliance with the Soviet Union. The Russian struggle was our struggle, Churchill announced, adding: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”
If the opinion polls are right, Britain is about to elect another hung parliament. The dilemmas that would then face David Cameron and Ed Miliband are not of the same life-or-death order as those of 1941. But they will call for the same kind of clarity and pragmatism that Churchill managed. Cameron and Miliband will also have to do what it takes. It’s what they are there for as party leaders. It’s what Cameron did, brilliantly, in 2010 after the voters delivered a hung parliament. And it is what he and Miliband will have to do if a similar avenue to power opens up in May.
Related: Budget 2015: beneath George Osborne’s performance was a party on the defensive | Jonathan Freedland
Continue reading...March 12, 2015
For Britain’s armed forces it’s ludicrous to fetishise this 2% spending target | Martin Kettle
It isn’t just military planners who seem happier refighting the last war. Politicians are too. David Cameron chooses to stay tactically quiet about defence because he was humbled by losing the Syria vote in 2013. But Ed Miliband, who won that vote, is just as cautious. Labour remains haunted by its own defence ghosts, many dating back to the unilateralist 1980s.
Few would go so far as to claim that defence is the paramount question facing Britain in the coming general election. Yet few would deny it is now genuinely one of the most important. This will be the first election since the 1980s in which defence may – and should – occupy a significant part of the political debate. But it is also in danger of being sidetracked.
Related: What the armed forces can expect from the defence review
Greece is one of four Nato members meeting the target, but only because its GDP has collapsed by a quarter
Continue reading...March 5, 2015
To save the union, Britain will have to find its own Abraham Lincoln | Martin Kettle
Enter the special exhibition room at the Morgan Library in New York between now and June and, if you are a British visitor, you will immediately be struck by something that our own increasingly petulant and divided little country lacks. Lincoln Speaks: Words That Transformed a Nation is the title of an exhibition highlighting Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable oratory. Even the insular British know a bit about the importance of the two inaugural speeches Lincoln delivered in 1861 and 1865, at the dawn and the close of his nation’s civil war, and at the dedication of the Gettysburg war graveyard midway through the conflict. Thanks to Daniel Day-Lewis, we may even imagine we can hear the tone of voice in which those words were delivered.
What this superb exhibition in New York brings home, however, is the sheer importance to America’s survival of Lincoln’s hard-honed talent with words, not just on those great oratorical occasions but day to day, in his private discourse with his generals, political allies and rivals. In today’s argot, he was a brilliant communicator, and it is no surprise that the film that accompanies the New York exhibition soon features another skilled, though unquestionably lesser, practitioner of the art – Bill Clinton.
Neither David Cameron nor Ed Miliband has displayed any talent for the job of national orator
Continue reading...February 20, 2015
Aimard/Nylund/Philharmonia/Salonen review – a beautifully restrained and exceptionally played showcase
Royal Festival Hall, London It was hard to imagine Ravel’s wrist-wrecking and finger-crunching solo part being better played than this
The Philharmonia Orchestra’s current series of 20th-century, Paris-themed concerts are a must-hear highlight of this London orchestral season. Each one has been scrupulously prepared by the orchestra’s meticulous principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and in this latest concert, devoted to the music of Ravel and Stravinsky, the standards of playing stood out, often quite exceptionally, even for ears still beguiled by the memory of the Berlin Philharmonic’s recent concerts.
Salonen began with the Pavane pour une Infante Défunte, as cool and beautifully restrained a performance as one could wish. Here, as in the song cycle Shéhérazade and the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand that followed, Salonen’s attention to orchestral balance and detail, allowing individual instrumental colours to blossom without disturbing the ensemble, was of the highest order.
Continue reading...February 19, 2015
How do we reform Britain? Wales may have the answer | Martin Kettle
In the coming general election, the parties and the commentators will fan out across Britain as never before. This general election will not be won and lost at the national level, as such contests normally were in the second half of the 20th century, when there was a standard Conservative-Labour battle in most constituencies, and when a broadly uniform national swing between the big two parties shaped the final verdict.
Instead, as Prof Vernon Bogdanor puts it in his new pamphlet for the Constitution Society, the 2015 election will be fought within regional enclaves – the nations and regions, cities and countryside of Britain – that reflect the country’s ever-growing fragmentation. The result, too, seems likely to reflect this fragmented Britain, with the new government – whether single party or coalition – having to rely on a network of regional mandates rather than on a national mandate of the kind that marked the postwar era. Whereas past governments relied broadly on nationwide social class for a mandate, the next one may represent one group of geographical regions.
Related: The Guardian view on the Welsh NHS: all in it together | Editorial
Continue reading...February 12, 2015
Act now and call the anti-Europeans’ bluff – they look absurd and weak | Martin Kettle
It makes a good headline, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Downing Street, we were told at the start of this week, is plotting an early vote on Europe in 2016. Cue loud cheering on the Tory right, another leap on to a passing bandwagon by Boris Johnson, and much excitement in the anti-EU press.
Now comes a second wave of headlines. Yesterday Nigel Farage said the promise of an immediate vote on Europe – and 2016 is hardly immediate – was the only thing that would persuade Ukip to support any government after May. But as soon as you think about any of this with any care, the conclusion becomes obvious: this is a fantasy. It ain’t going to happen.
It is high time that the pro-European parties took up the cudgels on Europe. This country badly needs a reality check
Cameron is on the lookout to make concessions to the anti-Europeans in a bid to weaken Ukip
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