Columns

Here’s something that continues to perplex me. Here’s something that continues to perplex me. How is it that the best of American cinema and theatre is so often simultaneously sharp, sophisticated — and trite? I’ve just been to see a tremendous new play at the Almeida in Islington, whose run ends this week. Becky Shaw has been a hit on Broadway and has enjoyed instant appeal in London too. It certainly appealed to me. Gina Gionfriddo has written a mordant, mostly cruel comedy of modern American manners, and the action and the repartee rattle along, intense, quickfire and merciless, with a brutality that leaves you breathless.

Referendums are a very un-British device. Referendums are a very un-British device. They are, as Clement Attlee said, ‘alien to all our traditions’ of parliamentary democracy. Yet in 12 weeks’ time, we are to have the second nationwide plebiscite in our history. Unlike the 1975 vote on whether Britain should stay in the European Economic Community, this one will not exercise the nation. This year’s referendum will be on the alternative vote, a subject that only excites politics lecturers. But the AV vote could have just as profound an effect on our politics as the EEC referendum. If the people chose alternative voting, Britain will be heading for an era of lowest-common-denominator politics. Parties will shy away from bold leaders who divide opinion.

The coalition’s approach to foreign policy is not to have a foreign policy. The coalition’s approach to foreign policy is not to have a foreign policy. There is no Cameron doctrine. As events unfold in Egypt, the government does not even know what it wants to happen. Alistair Burt, the Middle East minister, summed up this position rather brilliantly when he said ‘the tide is turning very strongly. It’s not for us to sit here in London and work out where that tide is going to go.’ History had reached a turning point but the coalition wasn’t sure which way it wanted it to turn. It is strange to think that in 2005 David Cameron ran for the Tory leadership as the neoconservative candidate.

The night Ed Miliband was elected leader of the Labour party, his advisers sent him to bed before midnight and confiscated his mobile phone. The night Ed Miliband was elected leader of the Labour party, his advisers sent him to bed before midnight and confiscated his mobile phone. Half a mile away from where the new leader was sleeping, Ed Balls was holding a wake with his closely knit, leadership campaign team. Here, no one was going to tell him what to do. He was going to sing, sup and speechify for as long as he wanted. In the wee small hours of the morning, Balls kept rallying his troops. His wife Yvette Cooper, her voice shot from the evening’s karaoke, had retreated to the couple’s room at the conference hotel hours earlier. But Balls just carried on.

The Liberal Democrats’ current problems can be traced back to 28 October 1943. The Liberal Democrats’ current problems can be traced back to 28 October 1943. On that day, the House of Commons decided that the bombed Commons chamber should be rebuilt and its oblong structure preserved. This ensured that the British tradition of confrontational politics — and with it the pull towards a two-party system — would continue into the post-war era. Winston Churchill understood what was at stake in the debate. He knew that ‘we shape our buildings, and our buildings shape us’. As he told the House, the chamber’s shape ‘is a very potent factor in our political life’.

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are locked in a political duel, and only one of them can survive. Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are locked in a political duel, and only one of them can survive. In the new politics, what helps Clegg hurts Miliband and vice versa. This unusual dynamic makes next week’s by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth especially important: it is, in effect, the first electoral clash between the two men. The result will determine which leader spends the first part of the year fending off questions about their future. It is coalition politics that has created this clash between Miliband and Clegg.