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Archive for August, 2014

What makes a perfect Ukip target seat?

Wednesday, August 27th, 2014

Nigel Farage has earmarked 12 constituencies for takeover at the 2015 general election from marginalised east-coast boroughs to a Tory stronghold on the HS2 route

Nigel Farage is fond of talking about the prospect of a "political earthquake". He reckoned that Ukip coming first in this year’s European elections was worthy of the higher end of the Richter scale, and we now know where the next tremors might originate: 12 constituencies targeted by Ukip for the 2015 general election, a list of which has been seen by Sky News.

Looking through them, a couple of thoughts spring quickly to mind. First, the fact that nine of the 12 are Tory-held seems to belie all that Ukip chat about how the party now represents just as much of a threat to Labour (something underlined by the lack of seats in the post-industrial north). Second, though past election results and local demographics have obviously been considered by Ukip strategists, so has the looming retirement of sitting MPs, which Farage and co obviously think might leave certain seats wide open. Such is the art of intelligent political opportunism: you look for cracks in the ground sorry, more seismology and then try to prise them open.

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On terrorism, David Cameron is reading from the Blair script | John Harris

Wednesday, August 27th, 2014

Yet again our leaders are warning of the threat to our way of life while simultaneously chipping away at its foundations

Britains response to the rise of Islamic State may look like a mess of ambivalence, hesitation and all-round cluelessness for which the prime ministers antics with that surfboard probably stand as some kind of grim metaphor. But at the core of our politicians reaction to events in Syria and Iraq and the recruitment of British-born fighters, there are the remains of a familiar script: the one written by Tony Blair 13 years ago, when the events of 11 September 2001 began the disastrous phase of geopolitical history in which the then prime minister believed his moment had arrived.

Strange, perhaps, that when the awful consequences are now so obvious, the basics of his approach should linger on. First, there is the idea that British military intervention will ideally be part of what happens in the coming months which David Cameron must know will be a difficult political sell, though his recent claim that the UKs military prowess will be part of any solution surely indicates where his heart lies. Second, note the PMs rhetoric: his claims that Britain itself is under threat and faces a generational struggle which we will be fighting for the rest of my political lifetime are Blair redux, once again echoing the jihadists own vanities. Third, on the domestic front, policy looks to have been polluted by classical Blairite doublethink, whereby our adversaries are said to represent the antithesis of democracy and the rule of law, but if they are to be defeated, the fundamentals of our liberty British values, you could call them will have to be set aside.

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Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany by David Stubbs review

Thursday, August 21st, 2014

The emergence of krautrock was one of postwar culture’s most spectacular blossomings

It is a truth too little acknowledged, but surely incontestable: rock music, during its 40-year era (1954 to 1994, roughly its most obvious bookends are the first Elvis Presley single and the suicide of Kurt Cobain), had its roots in the second world war. Certainly, in Britain, its pioneers members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who were almost all war babies, driven to break out of austerity by embracing and then developing an art form that represented its complete antithesis.

Jeff Nuttall’s 1968 book Bomb Culture makes the argument that the accelerated, in-the-moment ways of pop were driven by the threat of imminent extinction revealed at Hiroshima. Whether that’s true or not, duty and conformism were threatened by forces embodied in music: to the right ears, a record as unhinged as, say, Little Richard’s "Tutti Frutti" ("Awopbopaloobop alopbamboom!") served notice that tomorrow barely mattered and the idea of being stuffed into a military uniform as happened to Elvis in 1958 was reprehensible.

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Kate Bush makes a valiant stand in the battle of transcendence v smartphones | John Harris

Thursday, August 21st, 2014

Argument is raging between those who see concerts as collective film shoots and those who just want to lose themselves. I know whose side Im on

On 1 June 1993, I was fortunate enough to be at the first public performance by the reunited Velvet Underground, at the Edinburgh Playhouse. Within months, Lou Reed would be leading his old comrades into support slots with U2 and giving the impression of a man with an amazingly cavalier attitude to his own history. But that night, I managed to have a life-affirming, moving, frequently joyous experience.

It was sullied by only one irritant: a trio of leather-jacketed rock blokes (they were French, for what its worth), who greeted the start of each song with hugs and bursts of high-fiving Pale Blue Eyes! Yowza!, Waiting For The Man! Formidable! and passed between them a smuggled-in Dictaphone, whose operations they carefully monitored throughout the gig. At one point, a security guard spotted its flickering LED light and confiscated the device. But, once he had gone, another was produced, leading to a particularly frantic fit of man-hugs and exaggerated hand gestures. Meanwhile, those of us who had to suffer these interruptions got on with our evening and the quest to somehow immerse ourselves in the occasion.

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Ukip has not gone away dont be fooled by the lull | John Harris

Friday, August 8th, 2014

Labour has a very real problem with Farages party, but posturing on immigration will do little to win back supporters

David Cameron is pursuing his interest in fish markets; Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have been acting up about Gaza. Where is Nigel Farage? After Ukips spectacular showing in Mays local and European elections, one might have expected it to leap into a frantic summer. Instead, it has gone quiet, feeding an uneasy sense outside Scotland anyway of politics unexpectedly returning to normal.

As holidays are taken and the inane rituals of party conferences loom, too many politicians and commentators seem to have fallen for a comfy bit of groupthink: that what with the odd poor poll showing and this sudden outbreak of silence, the menace has receded and we have passed peak Ukip. In other words, to quote the wisdom of four-year-olds and people on bad acid, if they cant see the monster, the monster cant see them.

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