Martin Kettle's Blog, page 83

Look at the polls: Britain is a Labour country, not a Tory one | Martin Kettle

George Osborne struggles because the post-Thatcherite mood that swept Tony Blair to power has still not receded

Gordon Brown and George Osborne have much more in common than either of them is happy to admit. Both have famously served as intensely political chancellors. Both are bywords among colleagues for big-picture thinking shot through with meanly partisan calculation. Osborne’s big setpiece speeches can often feel like a Brown tribute act with their rapid-fire delivery, deceptively partial information and love of rabbits pulled out of hats to wrongfoot the opposition.

There is, however, no direct connection between Brown’s retirement and Osborne’s autumn statement except that the two events both took place this week. Yet the coincidence is a dramatic reminder of what happens when the public turns against a government. It happened to Brown in 2010; and now he is gone. The same thing may well happen to Osborne in 2015; and he knows this better than anyone.

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LCO/Ashkenazy review – conductor and players in compelling rapport

Cadogan Hall, London
Every rhythmic detail from Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony was teased out, and cellist Alexey Stadler gave an expressive reading of Elgar

The London Chamber Orchestra has been an unassuming but popular fixture in the capital’s teeming musical life since 1921. A series of recent concerts at Cadogan Hall represents a conscious attempt to raise its profile, and this concert under Vladimir Ashkenazy, who is the LCO’s president, showed an ensemble which is well able to carve out a more ambitious niche.

It was perhaps foreseeable that the most consistently impressive musicianship came in Shostakovich’s so-called Chamber Symphony, Rudolf Barshai’s orchestration of the composer’s eighth string quartet, one of the defining Shostakovich works. Ashkenazy has this piece in his blood and the solemn and sustained fugato opening, followed by a frenzied allegro molto, showed conductor and players in compelling rapport. Barshai’s orchestration is a fine achievement, and Ashkenazy teased every rhythmic detail out of the piece, while the LCO’s playing of the final movement, with the spacious sweep of the violins against the dark intonings of the lower strings, delivered an authentic pulse of inner warmth beneath the music’s forbidding surface.

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Gordon Brown has one last service to perform for Labour | Martin Kettle

The former PM will have plenty of options when he leaves the Commons, but before that Scottish Labour needs his help

The idea of politics without Gordon Brown, never mind Gordon Brown without politics, takes some getting used to. With the exception of his brilliant saving-the-day cameo during the Scottish referendum campaign in September, the former prime minister has been out of the spotlight for more than four years now. Yet there are few modern politicians who have spent so many hours of every day of every year doing politics as he. For 40 years he was the Labour party’s equivalent of Dylan Thomas’s Organ Morgan, except that with Brown it was “Labour Labour” not “organ organ” all the time. It used to feel as if Brown had been like this from about the age of six.

Nevertheless in May, by which time he will be 64, Brown says he will be gone. On Monday he announced he would be leaving the House of Commons after a 32-year stint in which he has rarely been off the frontbenches, whether in opposition or in government. Yet Brown is still a relatively young man, and he is certainly still a big figure, both at home and abroad. It is hard to imagine that he will simply retreat to Dunruling and write his memoirs – though this man of parts could write one of the great political memoirs in British letters if he took the time and the trouble to do it properly.

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The SNP’s negative response to Smith could set it adrift from Scottish people | Martin Kettle

The report on Scotland speaks for the 75% who want more devolution. It may shift the political centre of gravity

Lord Smith’s commission was set up by David Cameron to consider the devolution of further powers to Scotland. In the light of some of the immediate responses, this rather basic point about the commission’s work seems to need stressing, especially south of the border.

Today’s Smith report is about Scotland, not England. It is a set of commitments that would radically change the nature of government in a Scotland that has recently voted decisively to remain in the United Kingdom. These changes do indeed have implications for the rest of the UK. But Scotland is where, after more than 40 years of argument, such issues are front and centre and in need of action.

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Go on, Theresa, surprise us with your Desert Island Discs

Most politicians opt to play it safe and choose something predictable, so what will the home secretary pick on Sunday

Will Theresa May toe party line on Desert Island Discs?

Politics must deal with the world as it is. Music imagines the world as it might be. Unlike some of their more intellectually self-confident continental counterparts, pragmatically inclined British politicians are naturally more at home with the former than the latter.

Ever sensitive to the brutality and philistinism of the British press, it is also little surprise that most British politicians view an invitation to appear on Desert Island Discs as an irresistible honour but also as something of a minefield.

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