Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 22

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...

It’s not enough for Labour to be a nicer version of the Tories. It must take risks for what is right | Simon Jenkins

Instead of fighting for the centre ground, Keir Starmer should look to the radical changes pushed through under Harold Wilson

The pitch is being rolled for Keir Starmer’s entry to No 10. Titles on the prospect of a Labour Britain already line the bookshop shelves, from Oliver Eagleton’s The Starmer Project to Lisa Nandy’s All In. Who is he really? Is he a socialist in sheep’s clothing, or just another moderate, pragmatic, oh-so-hesitant Labour leader trapped in an ideological no-man’s-land betwee...

Ministers think trains are just too much bother. That’s why they are so relaxed about the strikes | Simon Jenkins

As fewer and fewer people use them, it seems railways are regarded as no longer essential – especially in the north

Of all Britain’s looming strikes, ministers seem least worried by the trains. When last week the Treasury and the transport secretary, Mark Harper, reportedly stopped the rail companies from upping their pay offer to the unions, they would have known the strike was on. They would have known that demanding new work practices alongside a fall in real-terms pay was never going to work....

Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on windfarms reflects the Tories’ failure to protect rural England | Simon Jenkins

As the Conservatives squabble over planning and housing targets, England’s countryside is being destroyed

The English countryside is sick. It can feel as though a day never passes without its green and pleasant land falling victim to the threat of windfarms, coalmines, solar arrays and housing estates. Boris Johnson seemed to want a turbine in every field. Liz Truss wanted “investment zones” even in protected areas. Rishi Sunak called for 300,000 new houses a year – until he didn’t.

This week the ...

Will Labour really axe the Lords, that laughing stock of democracy? I’ll believe it when I see it | Simon Jenkins

It is time for this institution to be replaced by a council of the people, but Starmer may not have the stomach for reform

The most telling fact about the House of Lords is that not one living prime minister has deigned to darken its door. They know too much of its deals, kickbacks and cronyism to be reminded of them round every corner. Yes, there are impressive peers, but they are captives of a roughly 800-member club that has become the laughing stock of British democracy. Revelations such as t...

According to the census, we’re now a land of many faiths. There is no place for an established church | Simon Jenkins

The king and Anglican leaders should take note that if the country is changing, so should its institutions

England and Wales are no longer Christian: shock. Christians a minority for the first time since the dark ages. We are among the most godless nations on Earth. According to the 2021 census, the number of us ticking the Christian box has fallen to less than 48%. While Christian Pentecostalism is booming, barely 12% are members of the national Church of England. More of us now go to a mosque e...