Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 138

A British FBI has no chance against London's very own KGB | Simon Jenkins

Theresa May's desire to nationalise crimebusting will always founder on a far more powerful force: the Metropolitan police

Police protesting in London on Thursday should relax. They have won a great victory. The government is doing what governments always do in trouble. They flex their pectorals, kick sand in the opposition's face and invent "a British FBI". Tony Blair did it twice. Now David Cameron is doing likewise. It is a great headline but it never works.

Cameron clearly feels he must soo...

George Osborne's growth policy is turning British cities into Detroit UK | Simon Jenkins

Britain's economy needs smart growth, not dumb policies that have delivered a double-dip recession

Europe's collective response to the 2008 credit crunch ranks with the treaty of Versailles and German reparations among the great follies of history. While the peoples of Greece, Spain, Italy and France wrestle with counter-productive austerity policies, Britain's rulers have no more idea of what to do next. On Tuesday David Cameron and Nick Clegg renewed the coalition marriage vow of two years a...

2012 Olympics: Kabul. Baghdad. London. Three to avoid this summer | Simon Jenkins

The missile batteries, fighter jets and VIP lanes are what happens when a world agency blackmails a city aching for prestige

There seems to be no limit to the efforts of Lord Coe and his friends at the International Olympic Committee to bring this summer's London Games into ridicule and contempt. A week-long "military exercise" is currently under way in the capital. RAF Typhoon jets are to scream back and forth over the Thames. Starstreak surface-to-air missile batteries are being set up...

David Cameron has only just learned what government is about

The Jeremy Hunt crisis has again taken Cameron by surprise. He doesn't lack belief, just a brain that can join political dots

A politician in the wrong is like a cornered stoat. The survival instinct brings on a surge of wild, furious aggression. The prime minister knew this week that a Commons select committee would revive the News of the World phone-hacking affair just as his culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, had a prima facie case to answer over his handling of the News Corp bid for BSkyB. Ev...

Now everyone is connected, is this the death of conversation? | Simon Jenkins

As our meeting places fall silent, save for tapping on screens, it seems we have mistaken ubiquitous connection for the real thing

I first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was strangely quiet, and at one table a group seemed deep in prayer. Their heads were bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, young and old, was gazing at a handheld phone. People strolled the street outside likewise, with arms crooked at right angles, necks bent and heads...

Europe's terrible blunder can be rectified. Remember 1931

The euro was a blood sacrifice to the Eurocrats' fanaticism. But Europe's democracy may save us from Europe's single currency

I write from America, where those who care about Europe ask one question only. What the hell is going on? What is this "euro crisis" that never seems to end? What has happened to Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Holland and now France? Have we all gone insane?

The economist Paul Krugman has one answer. He suggests that Europe is now replicating the 1930s "in ever more fai...

Elected mayors will destroy our shadowy civic mafias | Simon Jenkins

Mayors can be the local champions needed to revive cities held back by party complacency and Whitehall's dead hand

Localism is starting to bite. In three weeks' time mayoral elections will take place in London, Liverpool and Salford, and referendums are being held for mayors in 10 other cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Bristol. Those who see this as a crucial step to pluralising British democracy will be delighted – and delighted that the Labour party is trying to...

The war on terror is corrupting all it touches | Simon Jenkins

Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader

On Monday the BBC Panorama programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into legal abyss. The claim was that MI6 rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Gaddafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in...

Ignore the pasties and the petrol stories: it was a good fortnight for the government | Simon Jenkins

The volume of noise from a cynical news storm drowns out any sentient analysis of the budget and its aftermath

Look at it this way. Britain has been quite well governed this past two weeks. George Osborne's budget was mildly reflationary and progressive, which is about right as the economy emerges from recession. Freezing the pensions tax threshold was not unreasonable, given how relatively well pensioners have done of late. Ending the 50p band undid a pointless Labour gesture whose revenue...

Falklands war 30 years on and how it turned Thatcher into a world celebrity

British PM's lucky gamble not only repelled the Argentinian invasion but also paved way for her ideological reforms

Thirty years ago on 2 April 1982, 130 Argentinian commandos landed under cover of darkness on the British Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, 1,100 miles from Buenos Aires. They seized the airfield, the marine barracks and, after a brief firefight, government house. This was followed by a full infantry landing in the harbour of Port Stanley.

By 8.30am, the islands were no...