The current state of British politics
February 9th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Today, the “Observer” newspaper carries the results of a political opinion poll just carried out by Opinium. The results are disturbing.
The poll shows Labour on 27%, Reform UK on 26% and the Tories on 22%. The Liberal Democrats are on 11% and the Greens on 8%. Reform has risen from about 20% since shortly after the last General Election.
Of course, the next General Election does not need to be held for over four years, but it is is remarkable that, just seven months after Labour stormed to victory with a huge majority, the Party and Reform are effectively (allowing for the margin of error) neck-and-neck.
In fact, roughy speaking, we have three political parties with around a quarter of the electorate supporting them and the remaining quarter split between various smaller parties.
Since we have a first-past-the-post system of election, this effectively means that anything could happen in an election now: it would depend where party supporters were geographically and what was their commitment to actually turning out and voting.
In recent elections, both in the UK and in other democratic countries, voters have shown an astonishing capacity to switch their votes so, in short, everything is still to play for.
The Opinium poll suggests that, among those backing Reform, 37% say that they do so because of its hardline policies on immigration and border controls.
If this is true, it begs the questions: What would a Labour Government need to do in order to win over voters worried about immigration? Would any level of illegal or even legal migration satisfy them? How much does it matter if these migrants are from countries where the majority is Muslim or Black?
But maybe anger about immigration is not the real cause of Reform’s rise in the polls. Maybe it is that migrants are a convenient scapegoat for a deeper concern about declining living standards, poor housing and a general feeling of disempowerment.
In which case, the performance of the economy – or at least how that performance is perceived by swing voters – will be crucial. Currently the economy seems to be stagnating, but there’s time for it to become better – or worse.
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A review of the new film “The Brutalist”
February 4th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is not the film that I was expecting. I thought it was about an actual architect and would narrate his career designing a series of dramatic buildings across post-war America. Instead it features a fictional architect and his travails in constructing one specific project.
Or maybe the architect and the project are not fictional at all. It would appear that Brady Corbet, who co-wrote (with his wife), produced and directed this grandiose film was inspired by the life of Marcel Lajos Breuer and his experience of building a particular church on a hill.
I thought the movie would be about brutalist architecture, but maybe it is more about brutalist behaviour. In which case, who is the brutalist? The architect who rages against everyone and everything or his wealthy benefactor who screws him over in one way or another?
At times, the film seems rather pompous with the architect spouting meaningless platitudes, such as: “Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?” To which his wealthy industrialist client replies: “I find our conversations intellectually stimulating.” Who’s kidding whom here?
Adrien Brody, himself of Hungarian Jewish extraction, plays Hungarian Jewish architect Lasló Tóth in an award-winning central performance. Guy Pearce is terrific as his rich benefactor. Felicity Jones does well affecting an Hungarian accent in her role as the architect’s wife. The cinematography is often stunning and the sound is invariably striking. So there is a great deal to admire here.
The film is quite heavy going with a running time of three and a half hours (with a 15 minute interval. Corbet chose to shoot the work in VistaVision which has an aspect ratio of only 1.66 : 1 and is a format popular in the 1950s, the time period for much of the film, but now long dormant. I saw it at the British Film Institute which had a 70 mm print.
There are unusually long stretches of conversation with significant jumps in time and some things are deliberately left obscure.
So it is a challenging film which asks the viewer for patience and endurance but it is never less than fascinating and absorbing.
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A review of the new film “A Complete Unknown”
February 2nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This bio-pic of the emergence of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan between 1961-1965 has been a critical and commercial success with no less than eight Academy Award nominations and six BAFTA nominations. The acting and singing by Timothée Chalamet in the eponymous role and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez are simply magnificent and Edward Norton and Elle Fanning in support roles are excellent.
My problem is that I’m not a fan of folk music: I find too much of it conservative and maudlin. And I’m not keen on Bob Dylan either: I think his lyrics are moaning, his singing is whinny and his character is unpleasant. As Joan Baez puts it in the movie: “You know, you’re kind of an asshole Bob” and “You are so completely full of shit”.
I tried to separate my views on the music from my assessment of the film as cinema. Even then, I thought too many scenes were dark and the colours bleached and much of the dialogue mumbled or snatched. I remember a lot of the music – I was a teenager at the time – but there was just so much of it in this film that it made the work – sorry about this – kinda boring.
I may be one of the few people in my friendship group who doesn’t like Dylan and was not keen on this film, but I have to call it as I see it.
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Where the Trump presidency came from and where it might go to
January 31st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This week, Mark Malcolmson, the Director of the City Literary Institute in London gave one of his popular online lectures on the current political scene in the United States. Here are some take-away points with a bit of extra information from me.
- Donald Trump is both the 45th and the 47th president. The only previous time in history when one man – there’s never been a female president – had two non-consecutive terms of office was Grover Cleveland who was president in 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.
- Trump won both the Electoral College vote and the popular vote, but he still failed to win a plurality – that is, over 50% – of the votes cast. Then, of course, 36% of the electorate did not vote. So Trump’s mandate is not that total.
- Trump improved his share of the vote, compared to 2020, in every state and in almost every demographic (there was a particular increase among Latino voters).
- Money did not play a decisive role in the result. Overall expenditure on this round of elections fell, mainly because Republicans spent less than Democrats on the presidential election.
- Incumbency was a major factor. In almost every democratic country where there was a national election in 2024, the party in power lost votes and often lost power. Everywhere voters are punishing the incumbent – whether in the US or the UK.
- Biden achieved an incredible amount domestically, especially in terms of economic recovery and infrastructure investment. But he should never have run for a second term and, having finally decided not to do so, he left it too late for Kamala Harris who did exceptionally well in all the circumstances.
- Already Trump is having problems, with some of his executive orders being challenged in the courts and some of his Cabinet nominations being challenged in committees of the House of Representatives. He has promised that prices will come down: whereas the rate of inflation could fall, prices will not reduce. It could not be long before Trump breaks with Elon Musk.
- Trump’s main problem is that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is so small and the Republican House speaker is so weak that Trump is not guaranteed a majority in the lower chamber for his legislation or expenditure.
- Looking to the near future, there are two vacant House seats so those elections might give a first indication of how the political wind is now blowing. This year – an off-year for elections – the only interesting ballots are for the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia.
- 2026 will see the mid-term elections when usually the party of the incumbent president does badly. The Republicans will hold the Senate, but they could well lose the House which would stimy Trump’s last two years in the White House.
- Meanwhile the composition of the Supreme Court will remain Trump’s most long-lasting legacy. In his first term of office, he was able to nominate three ultra-conservatives. Two current older conservatives might retire on age grounds, allowing Trump to appoint younger replacements. One liberal member might have to resign for reasons of ill-health which would enable Trump to appoint another conservative that would change the balance from 6-3 to 7-2.
- Don’t forget Kamala Harris. She is still comparatively young and popular. She is unlikely to run again for the Democratic candidacy for the presidency, but she might well run for governor of California (her strongly Democratic home state) because the current governor is term-limited. Remember where you heard it first.
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A review of the new book “Naples 1944” by Keith Lowe
January 21st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
My Italian mother was born in Naples in 1920 and lived there until she married my British father – an RAF fighter pilot – in 1946. So she lived through all the events described in this fascinating book. She died in 1999 and how I would have loved to discuss with her the contents of this history published in 2024. However, she barely talked about her time in Naples.
Lowe is a British historian who, over some 400 pages, provides a meticulously researched, well-written and balanced account of a theatre of war relatively neglected by English-language works.
Most books about war take a military perspective and concentrate on battles against the enemy, but Lowe’s work focuses on civilians and explores how they coped in the face of the many deprivations occasioned by war. His subject is Naples in World War Two, at the time the most populous city and the largest port in wartime Italy and the first European city to be liberated by the Allies.
The time period is predominately 1944, but he provides useful background information from before and during the war and takes the story up to the early post-war experience. Indeed, if there is a criticism to be made of this impressive and moving book, it is that it might have been better to adopt a more strictly chronological approach to the narrative.
In the years before the Allies entered Naples, the city had suffered “eight decades of political and economic neglect by the Italian state”, “twenty years of repression by the Fascists”, and “three years of continual bombing by the Allies”. When Mussolini was overthrown and Italy suddenly switched sides, the Germans stripped the city of absolutely everything before withdrawing and then started their own bombing campaign.
The Neapolitans themselves liberated the city in an uprising known as ‘The Forty-Five Days’ and then the Allies marched in on 2 October 1943. In the days, weeks and months that followed, the local population suffered an initial absence of water and electricity, a sustained shortage of food and housing, rampant inflation and a huge black market, a huge lack infrastructure and jobs, widespread hunger and prostitution, serious crime and ubiquitous corruption plus – could there really be more? – an epidemic of typhoid and the eruption of Vesuvius.
For each of these tribulations, Lowe provides the raw statistics and the personal testimonies in a grim catalogue that seems never-ending.
The central lesson of the book is that, in a war of liberation, the invaders have to plan for the period after the conquest – what contemporary media call ‘the day after’. How difficult it is to allocate the necessary attention to peace-building during a total war is recognised by Lowe: “All resources had to be directed at one thing only – the prosecution of the war.”
But it is a lesson that has been forgotten time after time, including the US invasion of Iraq and the Israeli attack on Gaza.
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What is incoming President Trump up to with all his Executive Orders?
January 21st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
In a posting on this blog just over four years ago, I explained the nature of executive orders in the American political system and provided some data on their historical use. I’m reproducing that posting here:
“This time of year four years ago, I was on a flight to Washington DC. The Americans had just had their four-yearly presidential election and, to the amazement of the world, Donald Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College although not in the popular vote.
By chance, I was seated next to an American who had voted for Trump. He was young, educated and articulate, so I was surprised at his choice. In conversation, I learned that he had two particular gripes with the Democrats: first, he had a visceral hatred of Clinton (which I did not understand) and, second, he believed that as president Barack Obama had made hugely excessive use of Executive Orders (which I contested).
An executive order is a means of issuing federal directives and it is used by a US president to manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources, but they are sometimes criticised for being an abuse of power or simply as a show of activity without real change. Any executive order can be revoked by another president.
Executive orders were used very sparingly until Abraham Lincoln who issued 48. Theodore Roosevelt issued 1,081, while Calvin Coolidge issued 1,203. The record, though, is held by Franklin D Roosevelt with 3,522. He served four terms and it was the Great Depression which explains this number.
So, was my American fellow flyer right to be angry at Barack Obama’s use of executive orders? Obama issued 276 during his eight years in office. That was actually a bit less than his Republican predecessor George W Bush who issued 291 in his eight years in the White House. And what about Donald Trump? In his four years in office, he has used executive orders 193 times. Although Trump has made a big show of signing such orders, his use of them has not been much more frequent than other recent presidents.
Remember all this early next year when President Joe Biden issues a flurry of executive orders to reverse some of Trump’s terrible decisions and to start the process of making America sane again. The Republicans will accuse him of abusing his powers but he will be acting constitutionally and in accordance with precedent.”
A key point to remember is that an executive order cannot authorise expenditure; only Congress can do that. So an executive order is a declaration of intent but, of itself, it cannot provide extra resources to bring the policy into force. Plus many of Trump executive orders will be challenged in the courts.
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What should we understand by President Trump’s references to American exceptionalism
January 20th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
In his inauguration speech today, Donald trump used the word ‘exceptional’ quite deliberately as a reference to the notion of ‘American exceptionsalism’. But what does this term mean?
In my website guide to the American political system, I provide this explanation:
“Reading this short essay, it will be evident to many (especially non-American) readers that the United States is different from other democracies. This observation has given rise to the notion of “American exceptionalism”. This is an ill-defined term which has been used differently at different times.
From the creation of the Republic in 1776, there has been a sense that the United States has been exceptional in its commitment to freedom as expressed in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Even though today there are many challenges to freedom in the USA, many Americans still feel that their attachment to freedom – however defined – is a distinguishing feature of their nation as compared to all others.
Another important version of “American exceptionalism” revolves around the lack of a clear ideological or class-based division between the two major political parties. The USA has never had a credible socialist or anti-capitalist party; both the main parties are pro-capital and pro-business and speak largely to the ‘middle class’.
Other versions of the concept revolve around the alleged ‘superiority’ of the United States because of its history, size, wealth and global dominance plus the ‘sophistication’ of its constitution and power of its values such as individualism, innovation and entrepreneurship.
In perhaps its most extreme form, the concept has a religious dimension with the belief that God has especially chosen or blessed the country.
Of course, it is easy to view the American political system as exceptional in negative terms such as the unusual influence of race, religion and money as compared to other liberal democracies.
In truth, for all its special features, the American political system needs to be seen as one among many models of democracy with its own strengths and weaknesses that need to be assessed in comparison to those of other democracies.”
Trump also used the term ‘manifest destiny’ and several times referenced ‘God’ with the implication that such a supreme being specifically favours and supports the USA and even Trump personally. All these are dangerous and delusional concept that fly in the face of respect and equality for all nations and all peoples.
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A review of the new movie “Babygirl”
January 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is such a watchable film: glitzy (smart clothes, cutting-edge technology, pounding soundtrack) and erotic (solo sex, marital sex, transgressive sex). It is also such an interesting film, raising so many issues around relationships: age-inappropriateness, power and powerlessness, domination and submission.
I was struck by the number of young women at the screening I attended and I can understand why, since this is a movie that unusually adopts the female gaze and poses the kind of questions more usually in the minds of women: what is the role of fantasy in female desire? how acceptable is the orgasm gap? how does one move from faking it to making it?
Such a film could only be made by a woman and it comes – pardon the pun – from Dutch former actress Halina Reijn who wrote, directed and produced it. And the movie would only work with the right lead actors.
We are used to Nicole Kidman taking risks in her thespian roles and here she is simply wonderful as Romy, CEO of a high tech company who seemingly has it all in career and family terms. The revelation is Harris Dickinson (no jokes about his surname please) who is so convincing as Samuel, the young intern at the company who insists that Romy be his mentor. But who is teaching whom and who is consenting to what?
Throw in Antonio Banderas as Romy’s confused husband and Sophie Wilde as Romy’s ambitious aide and you have the perfect date movie. Just be ready for the conversations that follow.
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A review of the 1955 classic “Rebel Without A Cause”
January 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I confess that – other than clips on film courses – it took me 70 years finally to view this classic, but the delay meant that I caught it at the British Film Institute where I could view it in the original CinemaScope and Warnercolor. The work is famous as the third and last of the movies starring the charismatic James Dean who, at just 24, was dead by the time it was released.
In this coming-of-age movie, Dean plays Jim Stark, an angry young man full of teenage angst, searching for a sense of family. Early on, he cries out to his bickering parents: “You’re tearing me apart”. In the course of one day and night in Los Angeles, he has a knife fight outside the Griffith Observatory (much later to feature memorably in “La La Land”), he takes part in fatal ‘chickie run’, and he finds consolation of a sort with fellow high school students, Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo).
Although the messaging is not exactly subtle (especially in these more sophisticated times), the film is a triumph for Nicholas Ray who both originated the story and directed.
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When and where was the world’s first railway line?
January 18th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
The world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives ran between Stockton and Darlington in the north-east of England. Since my family name is Darlington (although I’ve only visited the town once – in 1983), this historical event has always had a special resonance for me.
The line was officially opened on 27 September 1825. Of course, that means that this autumn will see the 200th anniversary of the event. I’m sure that locally there will be some celebrations and it may even make the national and international news. Remember where you heard it first.
The Stockton & Darlington Railway Company operated until 1863, but much of the original route is still used today by the Tees Valley Line operated by Northern.
You can learn more about this historic development here.
Posted in British current affairs, History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)