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From James Naughtie:
It was odd to come back from holiday last week to find the Hutton Inquiry proceeding rather in the same way as my 鈥渆ntertainment鈥 of the week before, Wagner鈥檚 Ring cycle. I was lucky enough to see Scottish Opera鈥檚 extraordinary production in Edinburgh and I found my mind making the inevitable connections, almost without trying. The story, after all, is about power and ambition. The cursed Ring, which destroys those who insist on having it, creates a kind of political havoc in the world, culminating in the immolation of Brunnehilde in Valhalla, the home of the Gods. The Scottish Opera production, forsaking all the horned helmets and nonsensical Nordic landscapes of long ago, tells the story of real people who are caught up in events which they tried but failed to control. Through four long nights, the terrible destructiveness of power is revealed. Now, it would be daft to say that Downing Street is Valhalla, Tony Blair is Wotan, the ruler of the Gods, Alistair Campbell is Lo! ge, the God of Fire...but鈥
Listening to the evidence in the Today office, with the special interest which the circumstances demand, all of us are aware that although the inquiry is focussing on the circumstances surrounding one tragic episode 鈥 Dr David Kelly鈥檚 death 鈥 the panorama unfolding at the Royal Courts of Justice is one of the great political tableaux of our time.
Dr Anthony Seldon, John Major鈥檚 biographer who is working on a ten-years-on book about Blair鈥檚 leadership of Labour, was right to say on the programme that the revelation of emails may be more significant in describing an atmosphere than in giving us the stuff of history 鈥 but as an historian he was nonetheless drooling at the insight into particular relationships which the Hutton documents are giving us all. A veil is being lifted. Behind it, there is still quite a bit of darkness but the picture that is taking shape in the gloom is detailed and memorable. We all know, too, that there is much more to come.
The arguments swirling around the inquiry are a prelude to the party conference season for which we鈥檙e all preparing, starting with the Liberal Democrats in the last week of September and Labour and the Conservatives in the two succeeding weeks. Since Blair鈥檚 election in 1997 there has not been such an uncertain and potentially explosive set of conferences, with the opposition sensing for the first time that the Government is struggling to hold its balance, and the Labour Party profoundly divided over war in Iraq and its aftermath. By common consent Blair鈥檚 speech to his conference in Bournemouth will be the most difficult he has made since he became leader nine years ago.
So the end-of-summer feeling is prickling with anticipation and with the unknown. What will happen in Baghdad as the United States and the United Nations try to rework a relationship as a result of the murderous attack last Tuesday? Will the cycle of violence in Israel-Palestine continue without breaking? Will George W Bush鈥檚 political difficulties 鈥 unemployment and the economy, Iraq, and the looming sense of insecurity among Americans 鈥 make his re-election campaign a more hazardous and intriguing affair than once seemed likely? And at home, how will the Government respond to the crisis brought on by what Blair admits himself to have been a breakdown in trust with the people.
These are huge questions. As we鈥檝e been pointing out on the programme in our series about How August Changed History - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/misc/august_20030730.shtml (this week 鈥 the event that sparked our compensation culture), history is often being made around us without our noticing. The events of this autumn will certainly leave their mark on the Blair Government one way or the other. It may be a season of recovery for the Prime Minister after one of the wildest summers of discontent I can remember, or it could be the prelude to a long dark winter.
I can鈥檛 recall a time when so many events have seemed pregnant with such uncertainty. Speaking to an old friend, Shashi Tharoor, Kofi Annan鈥檚 under secretary general in New York, I was struck by the way he immediately placed the murder of Sergio Viera de Mello, his colleague in Iraq, in the context of the great disasters in UN history 鈥 for example the death in a plane crash of Dag Hammerskjold, the secretary general, in 1962. This wasn鈥檛 simply an awful tragedy, another violent pinprick in a chaotic world, but a moment which caught the tenor of these times: insistently bloody and violent, and sometimes verging on anarchy.
As a result it was a marvellous relief on Friday night to go to the Royal Albert Hall to talk to Daniel Barenboim. With his Palestinian friend, the writer Edward Said, he鈥檚 put together an orchestra of brilliant young players from both sides of the divide: Israelis and Palestinians playing together. And you can hear Barenboim talking about that concert on Saturday鈥檚 programme by clicking here.
It was an emotional night, for reasons all of us can understand.
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