Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 136

The eurozone's people are like prisoners in Colditz | Simon Jenkins

Incarcerated in a citadel of currency union with the flexibility of granite, their governments give them no chance to escape

It's not working, is it? No matter how many summits there are, no matter how many times the Greeks vote or Barack Obama pleads or David Cameron lectures from on high, nothing happens. The yield on Spanish bonds, that beckoning finger of apocalypse, goes relentlessly upwards. All we do is howl, simper and plead for Germany to do something, even just kick the can down the...

The 'Isles of Wonder' Olympic opening ceremony: I smell a rat | Simon Jenkins

Is Danny Boyle's vision of England's green and pleasant land all that it seems?

Something has happened on the way to the Olympics. On Tuesday morning the opening ceremony was launched as a vision of rural Britain, a land of fields and ploughmen, cottages, cows, sheep and horses, of Glastonbury, cricket and the Proms. According to its impresario, Danny Boyle, the title of the show, Isles of Wonder – a metaphor for Olympian Britain – was "inspired by" Shakespeare's The Tempest, sp...

The marriage of church and state is anything but gay | Simon Jenkins

Anglicans emerge from this row looking absurdly pedantic. It's time to disestablish the Church of England

The relationship was never on. The two of them hated each other and bickered from the start. There have been rows, bust-ups, trial separations and expensive lawyers, but they are irreconcilable. It is time to call a halt. The marriage of England's church and state is anything but gay.

Henry VIII's leadership of the church made sense at the time. It freed England from the religious bonds of...

The euro gets off scot-free in this debacle – just like the black rat | Simon Jenkins

The eurozone suffers from the same folly that, in the 14th century, saw the Black Death blamed on everything bar its cause

The coming of the Black Death to 14th-century Europe meant the church needed someone to blame. Since God was exonerated ex officio, the obvious culprit was human sin, though some theologians favoured Mongol hordes, the waning power of Rome, not enough austerity and the alarming junction of Mars and Saturn in Aquarius. No one thought it was just a plague.

The same is true of...

A royal jubilee of bread and circuses, maybe, but the country needed it | Simon Jenkins

The wet, over-policed pageant couldn't eclipse the triumphal concert. This jubilee provided us with a collective buzz

So how was it, the day after the weekend before? Putting on bread and circuses in the depths of a recession is a risk, especially with not much bread on offer. Exposing an 86-year-old monarch to rain and wind for hours on end is even more so. Of the four landmark jubilee events, the Derby, the Thames pageant, the concert and the service in St Paul's, only the last was...

All tribes have bonding rituals, often absurd to outsiders. This is what the royals give us | Simon Jenkins

Britain would be gloomier without the monarchy – it offers an emotional salve in a troubled world

Sit back, relax and enjoy it. The cost is minimal and the show will be good. That is what monarchy is about, a really good show. To will a British republic on the weekend of the Queen's diamond jubilee is like asking the pope to renounce God at Easter, or a field marshal to turn pacifist. Opinion polls persistently give the monarchy at least two-thirds popular support. This beats any politica...

From secret justice to VAT, coalition U-turns take us in the right direction | Simon Jenkins

Whether it's the Cornish pasty or the Caravan Club, the politics of the climbdown show the strength of coalition government

Better a U-turn than a brick wall. Better a Whitehall stained with burnt rubber than one running with blood. One man's complete shambles – as Labour called the latest batch of coalition U-turns – is another's "outcome of further consultations". What is new? Political rectitude, like treason, is essentially a matter of dates.

What should matter is whether a U-turn is in the...

Cameron should know that money in pockets, not austerity, brings growth | Simon Jenkins

David Cameron's idea for lifting Britain harks back to 1930s Bank of England dogma. What we need is a cash injection

David Cameron is right. The government must tackle the deficit while securing growth. The G8 in Washington agrees with him, so do Europe's finance ministers, so does the IMF's Christine Lagarde, so intermittently does the Labour party. If so many people agree, what is the problem?

In reality Britain, and much of Europe, is chasing deficit reduction so hard that growth eludes...

British energy policy is a dark underworld of fanatics | Simon Jenkins

The government's decision to direct resources to nuclear and wind is typical of an institution befuddled and beset by lobbyists

Anyone who claims to understand energy policy is either mad or subsidised. Last week I wrote that politics is seldom rational. It is more often based on intuition and tribal prejudice. This week we have a thundering example: the government's new policy on nuclear energy.

Do not read on if you want a conclusion on this subject. For years I have read papers, books, surve...

So, you think reason guides your politics? Think again | Simon Jenkins

I thought I could see tribal bigotry at 100 paces and fell it with a Socratic blow, but I was deluding myself – and so are you

Are you for growth or austerity? Do you sympathise with the Greeks, or regard them as getting what they deserve? If you disagree with something you read, do you ever change your mind, or do you shout rubbish and chuck it in the bin? Since the days of Socrates, civilisation has honed the art of reason to resolve conflict and deliver harmony. Yet people of like background and...