I am sure Prince William knows how to knot his own bow-tie when he dons a tuxedo but this is not his only similarity with James Bond.
Ian Fleming’s saga of the super-spy gave austerity-squeezed Britons a glimpse of a jet-setting life in which champagne flowed and fine food was devoured.
Now, with the UK economy growing at a slower speed than the grass in parliament square, a third of the world is expected to watch Friday’s wedding celebrations and see a vision of a glittering Britain revelling in an outpouring of pomp.
The Prime Minister should add a note of thanks to any congratulatory message he pens the young prince this week.
The chief economist at the Institute for Public Policy Research said yesterday’s GDP growth figure of 0.5% showed the UK was “as close as it is possible to come to a recession without actually being in one.” But instead of putting on sackcloth, the cream of the British establishment will shortly slip into morning dress and the nation’s thoughts will focus on a future king and queen.
Professional politicians will attack the PM and the Chancellor over the state of the recovery but in Westminster the GDP is overshadowed by the human drama surrounding the AV referendum. A cynic would argue coalition colleagues would rather make headlines about the tensions around their cabinet table than have attention concentrated on the spluttering economy.
Similarly, the crisis in Libya has transformed David Cameron into a wartime leader and also helped demonstrate that Britain, for all its creaking joints, remains one of the few countries in the world capable of taking such decisive action overseas.
Together, these three factors have ensured that the absence of a roaring recovery is not the only story in town. Inevitably, each will also shape the way Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish voters think through their choices on May 5.
Optimists will hope that Prince William’s rebranding of Britain will inject a new confidence into the nation’s entrepreneurs and that celebratory consumers will be ready to part with cash.
But public sector workers remain deeply troubled by the prospect of the cuts and many English employees in healthcare and education have zero confidence in the UK Government’s reform programme.
The construction sector remains locked in a quite dire condition and a country so long enthralled by property speculation and energised by the balance-sheet acrobatics of the City has yet to find a new avenue for wealth creation.
This means that when the royal couple return from their honeymoon they may find that the country is reeling from an almighty hangover as we squint at the glaring economic reality.
A Thursday column
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Everything that's happened since
If you'd told me 15 years ago how much fun you could have wandering around Kew Gardens...
I don't know quite what I'd have said.
But my great friend Ali and I, we took the Tube over to Kew. It's a gem of a district and the gardens are, well, so un-British.
It's not some Edwardian enterprise kept alive for tourists. Its best days are not behind it. It's home to great glades of beauty beneath a flight path.
There's art, ancient and modern, but the place feels as young as its flowers.
I don't know the names of many of these wonderful multi-petal'd things, but my my liking for a colourful garden has been a long time growing. One of my favourite songs is Nick Cave's Nature Boy:
I was walking around the flower show like a leper
Coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair
Up against the pink and purple wisteria
Kew is an overland stop on the Tube and a delightful outpost with a small square that has a gem of a bookshop and a selection of gentle cafes and florists outside the station. The place has the atmosphere of a small college town by a railway.
Annual membership at the gardens costs less than the monthy fee at many a London gym. If I lived around the corner and my knees were up to it, I might even take up jogging.
I don't live around the corner. But you may have gathered that I now live in London.
Moving to a city just as spring cracks through is a lovely way to turn up in a new place.
You don't expect life to be a bed of roses, but you might get a bowl of sparkly blue things.
For all Britain's reputation as a class-bound country, when you wake up in London there's a great sense of a few other million people also falling out of bed, reaching for the toothbrush and going on the same journey into the day. And the common experience of Oyster-carding your way through the tunnels or marching over one of the bridges that cross the Thames is a great leveller.
It's also a place where magical things happen. One evening after work I called in on the Tate Modern and saw the millions of handpainted sunflower seeds that fill the Turbine Hall in Ai Weiwei's giant sculpture. He had just been arrested by the Chinese authorities. An already haunting beauty work now had a new poignancy. People sat down on the great long slope leading into the hall and a little later Daniel Barenboim sat in front of a piano and started to play. It was the 60th anniversary of his first public performance. I got a hint of what the atmosphere at the feeding of the 5,000 might have been like.
Not even the world's greatest mechanic would have a wrench as great as the one I experienced leaving Cardiff - especially as I knew I'd be missing out on the performances of an amazing double-act who had just arrived in town.
But one of the greatest joys of London life has been collisions with friends who defined past chapters and have brought their glory back into the present...
With the addition of some startling new cast members.
And the terrific thing about London is that it's not off the beaten track. There's an open blue door for Welsh adventurers.
I've traditionally seen myself as an autumnal kind of guy. But this spring I've really enjoyed sitting in the sun at the mad-dogs-and-Englishmen hour talking about the Alternative Vote.
There's a lovely square just around the corner where guys wearing berets and French rugby jerseys play boules. There's also a perfect pub and right outside is a grand place to shoot the breeze.
And these days, thank goodness, there is a lot of breeze to be shot.
But this weekend I'm back somewhere less sweltering.
Dad and I took the 15min ferry to Donegal to Greencastle.
Since the recession hit, there's a sense things are grounded. We couldn't find a cup of coffee, but there are dozens of unsold apartments looking out across waters which once separated two counties but now divide two countries.
The partition of Ireland is only nine decades old. On days like today, when you catch the ferry by the Martello tower to the dock and the gorse-autographed hills on the other side, it's doesn't seem like a journey between two states.
It more like moving from one side to the other of a very rural version of a divided Berlin. The division is real - you pay in euros at the chip shop - but the ruins of castles stand on either side and the folklore of each terrain is filled with tales of earls.
The story of this ancient island with its beauties and troubles is far from finished and I'm not sure this a permanent divorce; Ireland, north and south, is one narrative that's just growing in complexity, branching out, and, I'd like to think, reaching skywards.
I don't know quite what I'd have said.
But my great friend Ali and I, we took the Tube over to Kew. It's a gem of a district and the gardens are, well, so un-British.
It's not some Edwardian enterprise kept alive for tourists. Its best days are not behind it. It's home to great glades of beauty beneath a flight path.
There's art, ancient and modern, but the place feels as young as its flowers.
I don't know the names of many of these wonderful multi-petal'd things, but my my liking for a colourful garden has been a long time growing. One of my favourite songs is Nick Cave's Nature Boy:
I was walking around the flower show like a leper
Coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair
Up against the pink and purple wisteria
Kew is an overland stop on the Tube and a delightful outpost with a small square that has a gem of a bookshop and a selection of gentle cafes and florists outside the station. The place has the atmosphere of a small college town by a railway.
Annual membership at the gardens costs less than the monthy fee at many a London gym. If I lived around the corner and my knees were up to it, I might even take up jogging.
I don't live around the corner. But you may have gathered that I now live in London.
Moving to a city just as spring cracks through is a lovely way to turn up in a new place.
You don't expect life to be a bed of roses, but you might get a bowl of sparkly blue things.
For all Britain's reputation as a class-bound country, when you wake up in London there's a great sense of a few other million people also falling out of bed, reaching for the toothbrush and going on the same journey into the day. And the common experience of Oyster-carding your way through the tunnels or marching over one of the bridges that cross the Thames is a great leveller.
It's also a place where magical things happen. One evening after work I called in on the Tate Modern and saw the millions of handpainted sunflower seeds that fill the Turbine Hall in Ai Weiwei's giant sculpture. He had just been arrested by the Chinese authorities. An already haunting beauty work now had a new poignancy. People sat down on the great long slope leading into the hall and a little later Daniel Barenboim sat in front of a piano and started to play. It was the 60th anniversary of his first public performance. I got a hint of what the atmosphere at the feeding of the 5,000 might have been like.
Not even the world's greatest mechanic would have a wrench as great as the one I experienced leaving Cardiff - especially as I knew I'd be missing out on the performances of an amazing double-act who had just arrived in town.
But one of the greatest joys of London life has been collisions with friends who defined past chapters and have brought their glory back into the present...
With the addition of some startling new cast members.
And the terrific thing about London is that it's not off the beaten track. There's an open blue door for Welsh adventurers.
I've traditionally seen myself as an autumnal kind of guy. But this spring I've really enjoyed sitting in the sun at the mad-dogs-and-Englishmen hour talking about the Alternative Vote.
There's a lovely square just around the corner where guys wearing berets and French rugby jerseys play boules. There's also a perfect pub and right outside is a grand place to shoot the breeze.
And these days, thank goodness, there is a lot of breeze to be shot.
But this weekend I'm back somewhere less sweltering.
Dad and I took the 15min ferry to Donegal to Greencastle.
Since the recession hit, there's a sense things are grounded. We couldn't find a cup of coffee, but there are dozens of unsold apartments looking out across waters which once separated two counties but now divide two countries.
The partition of Ireland is only nine decades old. On days like today, when you catch the ferry by the Martello tower to the dock and the gorse-autographed hills on the other side, it's doesn't seem like a journey between two states.
It more like moving from one side to the other of a very rural version of a divided Berlin. The division is real - you pay in euros at the chip shop - but the ruins of castles stand on either side and the folklore of each terrain is filled with tales of earls.
The story of this ancient island with its beauties and troubles is far from finished and I'm not sure this a permanent divorce; Ireland, north and south, is one narrative that's just growing in complexity, branching out, and, I'd like to think, reaching skywards.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
A Fate Worse than Deaths
If the invasion of Iraq was exceptional because it tore up the diplomatic rule-book, the UK’s action in Libya is remarkable because it abandons the lessons of war post-Vietnam.
Britain’s humiliation in Suez, the US catastrophe in Vietnam and the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan humbled the victors of World War II. It was not until the 1990-91 Gulf War that the West discovered it could win apparently decisive victories if it followed a code constructed by Vietnam veteran General Colin Powell.
Before armed forces are sent into action, he argued, it must be clear vital national security interests are threatened and there is strong domestic support; there is a clear attainable objective and a plausible exit strategy; and all other non-violent means have been fully exhausted. Then, and only then, overwhelming military force should be used to ensure a swift victory.
There are ethical problems here. This code would not compel a superpower to intervene to stop genocide in a distant land, and is one reason why the West stood by as at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered in 1994.
Since then, tough-minded diplomats, strategists and political scientists have wrestled over when and how countries have a “responsibility to protect”.
And when it appeared that Libyan government forces and mercenaries were on the verge of committing mass slaughter in Benghazi, the UK and France scrambled to gain United Nations authorisation to enforce a no-fly zone. Historians may conclude this was one of Europe’s finest hours.
The coalition is now in a quandary. Dropping bombs and shooting missiles is clearly a military act and we are involved in some form of war.
This emerging conflict meets few of the tick-boxes of the Powell doctrine and there are frightening echoes of Vietnam.
We learned this week that British military advisers are off to Benghazi. This triggers memories of September 1950 when the United States Military Assistance Advisory Group was established in Saigon; by 1963 there were 16,000 “military advisers” in Vietnam and the stage was set for a deep and tragic conflict.
Nobody is suggesting that the UK is on the verge of making such a commitment to Libya but it is clear mass protests and regional insurgencies have spiralled into a state of civil war and there is no doubt which side we are on.
It would be embarrassing and expensive if a hastily-constructed ceasefire leaves a chastened Gaddafi in control of a swathe of Libya while our air force protects Kurdish-style democratic enclaves. But such a peace would not be a worse fate than the deaths on every side which unbridled war would bring.
A Thursday column
Britain’s humiliation in Suez, the US catastrophe in Vietnam and the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan humbled the victors of World War II. It was not until the 1990-91 Gulf War that the West discovered it could win apparently decisive victories if it followed a code constructed by Vietnam veteran General Colin Powell.
Before armed forces are sent into action, he argued, it must be clear vital national security interests are threatened and there is strong domestic support; there is a clear attainable objective and a plausible exit strategy; and all other non-violent means have been fully exhausted. Then, and only then, overwhelming military force should be used to ensure a swift victory.
There are ethical problems here. This code would not compel a superpower to intervene to stop genocide in a distant land, and is one reason why the West stood by as at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered in 1994.
Since then, tough-minded diplomats, strategists and political scientists have wrestled over when and how countries have a “responsibility to protect”.
And when it appeared that Libyan government forces and mercenaries were on the verge of committing mass slaughter in Benghazi, the UK and France scrambled to gain United Nations authorisation to enforce a no-fly zone. Historians may conclude this was one of Europe’s finest hours.
The coalition is now in a quandary. Dropping bombs and shooting missiles is clearly a military act and we are involved in some form of war.
This emerging conflict meets few of the tick-boxes of the Powell doctrine and there are frightening echoes of Vietnam.
We learned this week that British military advisers are off to Benghazi. This triggers memories of September 1950 when the United States Military Assistance Advisory Group was established in Saigon; by 1963 there were 16,000 “military advisers” in Vietnam and the stage was set for a deep and tragic conflict.
Nobody is suggesting that the UK is on the verge of making such a commitment to Libya but it is clear mass protests and regional insurgencies have spiralled into a state of civil war and there is no doubt which side we are on.
It would be embarrassing and expensive if a hastily-constructed ceasefire leaves a chastened Gaddafi in control of a swathe of Libya while our air force protects Kurdish-style democratic enclaves. But such a peace would not be a worse fate than the deaths on every side which unbridled war would bring.
A Thursday column
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Jury Room and the Debating Chamber
Cinema lost a legend last Saturday with the passing of Sidney Lumet whose 1957 classic Twelve Angry Men captured the drama of jury room.
Politicians who want to enjoy an equally admired legacy could do worse this weekend than watch Lumet’s best-known movie.
The story of how 12 characters shuffle into a room with their different prejudices and pedigrees and somehow perform the work of justice has gripped audiences over the past half-century. On the Internet Movie Database it ranks number seven in the top 250 films of all time, behind Schindler’s List and ahead of last year’s Inception.
The drama hinges on how a lone dissenter (wonderfully played by Henry Fonda) in an apparently clear cut murder case turns around the opinions of his hard-boiled peers. This film is inspiring because it shows that with a combination of courage and logic people from radically different walks of life can reason together on the most vexing issues.
In modern politics even the most subtle shift in policy is condemned as a u-turn. Faith in dogmatic ideologies has withered but tribalism remains entrenched. Candidates may wrestle in the mainstream of politics but it is against the rules of the electoral game to acknowledge you share common ground with your opponent.
In the Commons it is almost obligatory to talk to a member on the other side of the House as if he or she is the emissary of an enemy. In Assembly politics, potential coalition partners talk with pride of how the “gloves come off” during an election. But the challenges confronting Wales and the UK are so vexing it seems tragic that the finest minds in politics are barred from reasoning together on the best way forward.
Of course, we do not want a Government which functions through backroom deals. There is an important role for a strong opposition and a chamber defined by stultifying and apathetic consensus would be just as bad for democracy.
But, especially in a 60-seat Assembly, we need to find a way for people to talk about healthcare and youth unemployment as men and women on the same mission – delivering a better Wales. These are genuinely matters of life and death.
As a first step, all vestiges of whipping in committees should go. Amendments to Government legislation should not be dismissed out of hand.
Anyone who has been elected by constituents already possesses a honour which shines brighter than a peerage.
They owe it to their electors in a time of fiscal fear to pursue reason with honesty and independence of mind. Otherwise, the public will have good reason to be very angry.
A Thursday column
Politicians who want to enjoy an equally admired legacy could do worse this weekend than watch Lumet’s best-known movie.
The story of how 12 characters shuffle into a room with their different prejudices and pedigrees and somehow perform the work of justice has gripped audiences over the past half-century. On the Internet Movie Database it ranks number seven in the top 250 films of all time, behind Schindler’s List and ahead of last year’s Inception.
The drama hinges on how a lone dissenter (wonderfully played by Henry Fonda) in an apparently clear cut murder case turns around the opinions of his hard-boiled peers. This film is inspiring because it shows that with a combination of courage and logic people from radically different walks of life can reason together on the most vexing issues.
In modern politics even the most subtle shift in policy is condemned as a u-turn. Faith in dogmatic ideologies has withered but tribalism remains entrenched. Candidates may wrestle in the mainstream of politics but it is against the rules of the electoral game to acknowledge you share common ground with your opponent.
In the Commons it is almost obligatory to talk to a member on the other side of the House as if he or she is the emissary of an enemy. In Assembly politics, potential coalition partners talk with pride of how the “gloves come off” during an election. But the challenges confronting Wales and the UK are so vexing it seems tragic that the finest minds in politics are barred from reasoning together on the best way forward.
Of course, we do not want a Government which functions through backroom deals. There is an important role for a strong opposition and a chamber defined by stultifying and apathetic consensus would be just as bad for democracy.
But, especially in a 60-seat Assembly, we need to find a way for people to talk about healthcare and youth unemployment as men and women on the same mission – delivering a better Wales. These are genuinely matters of life and death.
As a first step, all vestiges of whipping in committees should go. Amendments to Government legislation should not be dismissed out of hand.
Anyone who has been elected by constituents already possesses a honour which shines brighter than a peerage.
They owe it to their electors in a time of fiscal fear to pursue reason with honesty and independence of mind. Otherwise, the public will have good reason to be very angry.
A Thursday column
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Goodbye Sidney
Sidney Lumet's Twelve Angry Men is probably my dad's favourite film and its tale of men in white shirts with unbuttoned collars in a jury room is timeless. One of the things I liked most about the director was that he didn't didn't hang up his lens and rest on this fantastic laurel. Instead, he plunged into cinema which documented urban decline and, like fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, didn't retire when it looked like his best work was behind him. He passed away at the age of 86 on Saturday and the New York Times' s AO Scott has written a brilliant work which gets to the nub of what makes Lumet's fragmented canon so oddly consistent.:
Fascinatingly, Scott draws a line between Lumet and Spike Lee:In the history of American movie realism, you might place Mr. Lumet between Elia Kazan and Martin Scorsese. To some extent, this is a matter of chronological happenstance: Kazan was born in 1909, Mr. Lumet in 1924 and Mr. Scorsese in 1942. Mr. Lumet’s career overlapped with both of theirs. Mr. Lumet and Mr. Scorsese in particular were professional contemporaries. They both seem to belong to, and to have defined, the 1970s — the era of “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Network” and also of “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver.” But the differences between those studies in urban dysfunction and modern existential woe are not just temperamental or stylistic. They are generational as well. The city in Mr. Scorsese’s early films is one from which hope has largely fled, and in which heroism and nihilism are for the most part indistinguishable. Johnny Boy, the character played by Robert De Niro in “Mean Streets,” represents an anarchic, disruptive criminality unconstrained by the codes and customs of organized crime. The vigilantism of Mr. De Niro’s Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” is, if anything, even more pathological: his idea of justice is paranoid, apocalyptic and bloody, and it may be the only justice the city has to offer.
In Mr. Lumet’s universe, however, a shadow of the old hope persists, a residual but still potent faith in the possibility of something better. The tired old warhorses — Holden and Durning in “Network” and “Dog Day,” Paul Newman in “The Verdict” — are like creatures from the world of Kazan and Clifford Odets who have somehow survived into the age of Travis Bickle.
New York realism was revived in the ’80s and after by Spike Lee, whose debt to Mr. Lumet is most apparent in “Clockers,” “Summer of Sam” and “The 25th Hour.” And while ethically engaged, sprawling city dramas may be rarer on the big screen, they can still be found on television. “The Wire,” with its complicated tableaus of commitment and corruption, and its inexhaustible fascination with men at work and with the flawed, vital institutions they work in, is perhaps the most powerful recent evidence that the wise, stubborn, angry humanism Mr. Lumet celebrated and exemplified is still alive.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
A Better Tomorrow?
Americans have lived for generations with the faith that the country’s best years are ahead of it, which is not a commonly noted character trait of the nostalgia-blighted British.
The architecture and artwork of the Houses of Parliament glorifies a mythical age of chivalry. Post-war politics has been defined by the loss of empire and the awkward search for a new role and identity on the world stage.
The quite awesome significance of Tony Blair’s de-corking of the devolution genie is dawning on the British Establishment – and other currents of revolution are flowing through UK politics.
The May 5 referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) has the potential to transform the role of the third biggest party, a draft Bill on reform of the House of Lords is expected before the end of next month, a review of party funding which could herald significant changes is due in the spring and we are promised a commission on the vexing (to some) question of whether Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs should vote on English-only matters. There are also strong signals that the way the Assembly Government is funded could be changed and the Wales Office and Treasury are keen to talk about tax-varying powers.
Thus, by the time we get round to the next Assembly election in 2016 Britain may well be transformed.
The House of Lords could become a de facto Senate and MPs in the House of Commons (which will have lost 50 members) may have to stick to new rules to reflect the changes in post-devolution Britain.
Meanwhile, the Assembly will have had half a decade to adjust to new law-making powers. Perhaps someone will suggest that the time has come to use some of the free space in the Senedd’s debating chamber and add another 20 AMs – and who knows what the Scots will be thinking?
The UK is a radically different country to 1997, and the post-imperial transformation is not slowing.
And when we look at Northern Ireland there is real cause to hope that the society which emerges will be better than the one we’ve known so far.
The murder of 25-year-old Catholic policeman Ronan Kerr has been greeted with a condemnation that has transcended tribalism. Amid the mourning, expressions of unity have been made across divides few, if any of us, thought we would see bridged in our lifetimes.
The future of Ulster will almost certainly be brighter than its past. The goal of a Wales, and a UK, which is fairer and more prosperous than anything we know today is one we can work towards.
A Thursday column
The architecture and artwork of the Houses of Parliament glorifies a mythical age of chivalry. Post-war politics has been defined by the loss of empire and the awkward search for a new role and identity on the world stage.
The quite awesome significance of Tony Blair’s de-corking of the devolution genie is dawning on the British Establishment – and other currents of revolution are flowing through UK politics.
The May 5 referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) has the potential to transform the role of the third biggest party, a draft Bill on reform of the House of Lords is expected before the end of next month, a review of party funding which could herald significant changes is due in the spring and we are promised a commission on the vexing (to some) question of whether Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish MPs should vote on English-only matters. There are also strong signals that the way the Assembly Government is funded could be changed and the Wales Office and Treasury are keen to talk about tax-varying powers.
Thus, by the time we get round to the next Assembly election in 2016 Britain may well be transformed.
The House of Lords could become a de facto Senate and MPs in the House of Commons (which will have lost 50 members) may have to stick to new rules to reflect the changes in post-devolution Britain.
Meanwhile, the Assembly will have had half a decade to adjust to new law-making powers. Perhaps someone will suggest that the time has come to use some of the free space in the Senedd’s debating chamber and add another 20 AMs – and who knows what the Scots will be thinking?
The UK is a radically different country to 1997, and the post-imperial transformation is not slowing.
And when we look at Northern Ireland there is real cause to hope that the society which emerges will be better than the one we’ve known so far.
The murder of 25-year-old Catholic policeman Ronan Kerr has been greeted with a condemnation that has transcended tribalism. Amid the mourning, expressions of unity have been made across divides few, if any of us, thought we would see bridged in our lifetimes.
The future of Ulster will almost certainly be brighter than its past. The goal of a Wales, and a UK, which is fairer and more prosperous than anything we know today is one we can work towards.
A Thursday column
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