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Oh, my Lord! - political sketch

With everything else going on in the world right now spending half a day of valuable government time in the House of Commons yesterday debating a relatively minor reform of the House of Lords might seem a self-indulgence. Well, removing the remaining hereditary peers from the Upper House was in the Labour Party election manifesto so it seemed a perfectly legitimate debate to have. However, many speakers debating the second reading of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill questioned whether it might have made more sense for the government to bring forward a substantive abolition motion rather than what was dismissed by some as mere tinkering.  A suspicion was voiced that the bigger issue of abolition would be kicked into the long grass. (Surely not!) For its part, the government responded that as the reform process would inevitably be a lengthy one it had to start somewhere, and where better than with the indefensible retention of the ninety-two hereditary peers decades after refo
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The rain in Spain

Storm Berenice dumped a load of water on Madrid earlier today and the timing could hardly have been more apposite. Celebrations were being held to mark Fiesta Nacional España (Spanish National Day), with a full military parade attended by King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, Leonora, Princess of Asturias, the Prime Minister and a host of politicians. Unfortunately, it rained on their parade. In British terms the ceremony is a cross between Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Sunday, with full royal and military panoply, but is much more problematic than either of those occasions. The British equivalents are not without their controversies, of course, but the Spanish event, a relatively modern successor (2019) to the original Día de la Hispanidad (Hispanic Day) held to mark the arrival of Columbus in the Americas on 12 October 1492, carries with it a lot of colonial baggage. Columbus Day is still marked in the USA but, with civic statues of Christopher Columbus increasingly becoming the focus
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The day the earth stood still

Today, 7th October 2024, marks the first anniversary of Hamas' shock attack on the Nova Music Festival in Israel, as a result of which 1,200 Israeli civilians were massacred and some 250 taken hostage. In the intervening year the situation has deteriorated to the point where an all-out regional conflict appears not merely likely but almost inevitable. This is why the world now looks on with bated breath to see how the Israeli government will respond on the anniversary of the attack, with a major assault on Iran expected imminently. While the Pentagon in Washington has supported Israel in intercepting missiles fired into the country recently by Iran, President Joe Biden has warned Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against attempting a retaliatory strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Indeed, for an Israeli strike to successfully penetrate those targets, buried deep underground, it would require large US bombers to deliver massive American-made GBU-57A/B bombs weighing 1
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The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

We often hear about the importance of 'the Jewish vote' in US elections and its influence on America's Middle-East policy stance, but what does it actually mean in practice? 'The Jewish vote' (loosely defined) constitutes around 2% of the US electorate but punches disproportionately above its weight due to its active engagement in the democratic process. This means all US politicians ignore its influence at their peril but, collectively, its vote has gone substantially to the Democratic Party for generations and the 2024 Presidential election looks set to be no exception. It tends to be a more progressive voting cohort and the latest polls show some 68% of Jewish voters favouring Kamala Harris, with 25% planning to support Donald Trump.  This broadly follows the long-established voting pattern and the growing conflict in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, with the very real danger of a widening conflict in the region, seems not to have moved the dial. Or not yet at le
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Withering hates

News of a new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Emerald Fennell (of Saltburn fame) led me to re-read Emily Brontë's classic novel. It brought back many memories. I was raised close to 'Brontë Country' in the 1960s when that area of the West Riding of Yorkshire (as it still was then) remained very much as the Brontës would have known it: remote, bleak, inaccessible and inhospitable. Today, while the moors, apart from a few jarring wind turbines, remain as ruggedly magnificent as ever, the gaunt 17th and 18th century millstone grit farmhouses have been transformed. Fifty years ago, their cold, stone-flagged floors, rattling sash windows and smoking chimneys made comfort hard to find. Only the main living room, t' house in dialect (in Brontë's text as in my youth), had a constantly-burning range, while rag rugs helped keep the chill off our feet. Almost all have been modernised, if not outright suburbanised. Paved driveways, landscaped gardens, double
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Outclassed

Polly Toynbee writes compellingly about class and did so again this week in The Guardian in relation to politicians proclaiming their working-class roots, often tenuously and usually tendentiously. Toynbee, who has always been open about her own privileged middle-class origins, praised Sir Keir Starmer, who often refers to his working-class upbringing, for acknowledging that he is now, self-evidently, middle-class. As a millionaire he has just paid off his £2million mortgage but it is not just his wealth that makes him middle-class; his education (University of Leeds), his profession as a barrister-at-law and now his status as Prime Minister, would make any claim to the contrary preposterous. Roughly 46% of Starmer's cabinet had parents with working-class occupations and only 4% were privately educated, compared with 63% of Rishi Sunak's. This entitles them to lay claim to working-class roots, but to describe themselves as such would be  disingenuous; although, as Toynbee point
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The art of the matter

It was inspiring to hear Sir Keir Starmer, in his keynote speech to Labour's Party Conference 2024 in Liverpool today, speak of his support for the arts. Starmer doesn't often inspire but his acknowledgement of the importance of arts and culture in our society and his personal story of playing the flute in the Croydon Youth Philharmonic Orchestra as a fifteen year-old, which enabled him to enjoy a school trip to Malta, was as uplifting as it was unexpected. During fourteen years of relentless Tory philistinism we have become accustomed to the arts, if mentioned at all, only being the subject of financial cuts and anti-woke culture wars. In an interview with the Guardian, Labour's Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, said: “Over the last fourteen years, there’s been a vandalism of the arts. Violent indifference to areas of the country that are becoming arts deserts. They were just not interested in arts everywhere, for everyone.”  To someone like me who worked in local government
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