Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 22

Bright lights, big cities: cash and HS2 are not the only keys to renewing the north, Andy Burnham | Simon Jenkins

The Greater Manchester mayor was lured by the prospect of a better London link. But civic magnetism depends on creativity, glamour and tourist appeal

The championing of the north by the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, is a noble cause, but his past support for HS2 was a dreadful mistake. From the start, it was clear that the staggering £100bn cost – more than all other rail projects put together – would cripple all British rail investments everywhere. So it has proved.

The latest rumoured ...

Message to Olaf Scholz: send tanks to Ukraine now – and lay the path for a negotiated peace | Simon Jenkins

The German chancellor should be bold, but even then there will never be ‘total victory’: the best hope is a ceasefire and a deal

A German reluctance to fan the flames of war in Europe would, in the past, have been widely welcomed. So much for the past. The hesitation of the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to send his Leopard tanks to Ukraine for a spring battle in Donbas now looks alarmingly like a peace offering to Vladimir Putin.

A large western armoury has already been built up in Ukraine, but ...

RIP ‘levelling up’ – another Johnson catchphrase that failed to deliver | Simon Jenkins

The shocking north-south divide will never be rebalanced by ministers doling out centralised funds to favourite projects

Levelling up is cancelled. It is so yesterday, past its sell-by date, rather Boris Johnson, defunct. Tory MPs have been given orders to drop it as a mere soundbite since “nobody knows what it means”. Instead they should use “community enhancing” and something called “gauging up”.

There is no limit to the linguistic banality of modern British government. The proof is in this wee...

The police don’t need powers to further curtail our right to protest. Just teach them the law | Simon Jenkins

These measures are born of culture wars, rather than the need to balance the freedom to disrupt with maintenance of order

John Stuart Mill on liberty is a famous cop-out. Everybody has rights, he said, except the right to harm the interests of others. That exception had to be policed by authority. Welcome to philosophy’s most celebrated can of worms.

The government’s attempt this week to strengthen police powers in England and Wales over disruptive protest is a classic of Mill’s cop-out. It is the...

Voters know that Brexit was a mistake, so when will our politicians admit it? | Simon Jenkins

A glimmer of hope over the Northern Ireland protocol shows what can happen if we stop being embarrassed by the B-word

Brexit has become the banned word of British politics. Rishi Sunak never breathes it. Say it to Keir Starmer and he affects not to hear. Brexit is axed, cancelled, forbidden, dismissed as boring. Not just that, but YouGov reports that 56% of the public regrets the country ever having voted for it, with just 32% still in favour. Brexit, the great self-harm, has become the Great Mis...

Finally, some sense on the NHS: Wes Streeting recognises more money is not the only answer | Simon Jenkins

The shadow health secretary wants to scrap GPs and give patients more control. It would be a welcome, practical step

At last a glimmer of light on the NHS horizon. Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, clearly smarting from his brush with cancer two years ago, has realised that the problem with the NHS is not just cash but structure. Above all, it lies in the costs and delays of an archaic network of occupational demarcations seizing up surgeries and hospitals alike.

The sheer lumberin...

The cult of maths has brainwashed our schools – and Rishi Sunak has fallen for it too | Simon Jenkins

The arts, sport, acquisition of complex life skills: all must be sacrificed on the altar of the easily measurable

Which item from his most important speech as prime minister did Rishi Sunak decided to leak on Monday? Would it be the NHS crisis, rail strikes, inflation or Ukraine? None of the above: instead it was maths. Why maths? What on earth went through his mind?

The cult of maths knows no bounds. It rules global education like no other subject, its status akin to medieval Latin. The reason is...

This NHS crisis is historic – a war footing is the only way to deal with it | Simon Jenkins

The situation is now as bad as it was in the pandemic. What’s needed is a parliamentary coalition to confront the chaos

The gap between order and chaos is narrow. A Swindon patient waits 99 hours for a hospital bed. A Gwynedd woman lies screaming for 25 hours for an ambulance to arrive. It is said 500 people a week are dying for want of emergency care. Britain’s much-vaunted NHS appears to have hit a wall. Winter after winter it has cried crisis as numbers have surged towards capacity. Now everyt...

For Vermeer fanatics like me, 2023 will be a year when dreams come true | Simon Jenkins

An exhibition in Amsterdam will gather most of his masterpieces in one place – with a notable English exception

One night, a girl was stolen from her home on Hampstead Heath. A ransom was demanded but no reward offered. Three months later she was found in St Bartholomew’s churchyard in Smithfield. She was returned home to an attic at Kenwood House, where I was then allowed to visit her. She was Vermeer’s painting The Guitar Player, and she had long fascinated me.

For Vermeer obsessives, next year ...

Even England's police want to decriminalise hard drugs – but our posturing politicians won’t listen | Simon Jenkins

Police chiefs’ plan to recommend addiction services would be far more effective than this futile ‘war on drugs’

The best social reform starts on the frontline. The news that the National Police Chiefs’ Council has decided to effectively decriminalise cannabis and cocaine in England is, for drugs reformers, sensational. It intends to extend nationwide the warning and treatment schemes that have already been piloted in Durham and Thames Valley. Instead of prosecuting users of hard drugs such as her...