Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 24

Electing a new leader would be risky – but these are desperate times for the Tories | Simon Jenkins

Getting rid of Truss would lead to a nasty few months. But it may be the only way for Conservative MPs to save their skins

Is it enough to save her? Jeremy Hunt’s rescue package for Britain’s battered economy was announced today, but its subplot is a rescue package for a battered prime minister. The fate of the economy hangs on the markets and may take weeks to resolve. The fate of the prime minister, her economic policy devastated to the point of ridicule by Hunt, could be a matter of days. Rare...

Only proper online regulation can stop poisonous conspiracists like Alex Jones | Simon Jenkins

A US court has imposed a huge fine for lies he spread about a school shooting. But he and others like him will continue to sow mayhem

I assume every reader of the Guardian will cheer the news of a $965m (£860m) fine imposed on Alex Jones, the rightwing American conspiracist. A Connecticut court fined him for disseminating the cruel lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was staged with actors by the anti-gun lobby. Justice is now done. Up to a point.

One of the most unfortunate pi...

Liz Truss says she ‘gets it’ – but how many more U-turns can she stomach? | Simon Jenkins

A disastrous conference may force the prime minister into a humiliating return to the moderate Toryism she rejected

There are two phases to any project, launch and relaunch. After the wreckage of her party conference last week, few relaunches are more urgent than that signalled by Liz Truss’s cry that she “gets it”. Forget any charm offensive. She must dismantle – call it redefine – her rejection of Boris Johnson’s moderate Toryism, approved by the electorate in 2019, and must do it fast.

Truss ha...

The best course left to the Tories is to oust Liz Truss – and install a caretaker leader | Simon Jenkins

It may be too late to save the next election. But a unifier like Michael Gove could prepare the party for effective opposition

Never underestimate the Tory party. It has confined Labour to just 13 of the past 43 years in office. It never gives in without a fight and is unafraid of ruthlessly toppling leaders. The latest, Liz Truss, has shown herself in just four weeks to have been a major mistake. The party has two years to correct that mistake before facing the electorate.

The Tories have been he...

Truss U-turned on tax cuts for the super-rich – now she can axe the rest of her disastrous budget | Simon Jenkins

The PM and Kwasi Kwarteng have been forced into a humiliating reverse. If they want to stem public fury, they must go further

Good news. The lady is for turning. Liz Truss has had a nightmare week. She galvanised her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, to produce a crazily ideological budget shorn of the normal checks and balances. The head of the Treasury was sacked, the Bank of England ignored, Whitehall’s official factcheckers stifled and the cabinet left in the dark. It was 2012’s “omnishambles” budg...

Trussonomics has been exposed as a childish absurdity. Trussopolitics is even worse | Simon Jenkins

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng must now eat humble pie and try to steer Britain out of the crisis they created

Anyone who heard Liz Truss on her leadership election trail sensed the Tory party was going to make a mistake. Now we know. It is inconceivable that Britain would be where it is today had Rishi Sunak become prime minister. Even so, few could have imagined the scale of this disaster. A cabinet drunk on the billions it had spent fighting Covid thought it could spend the same again on a gratu...

Pouring cash into London to solve regional inequality? That's trickle-down Trussonomics | Simon Jenkins

The UK economy needs the rest of the country to help reverse decades of decline – even Boris Johnson knew that

Traders in the City of London were punching the air at Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget last week. It was small wonder. He had granted some of them hundreds of thousands of pounds. By way of contrast, “red wall” Tory MPs’ hearts were sinking. Kwarteng’s new tax measures might have had one aim in view: to benefit London’s economy at the expense of the rest of the country. His former boss Bori...

Putin’s nuclear threat shows a desperate man out of options | Simon Jenkins

Using such weapons has no tactical purpose – it would only lose the Russian president support at home and abroad

Vladimir Putin is ready to use a nuclear weapon in his ongoing attempt to conquer Ukraine. Or so says Vladimir Putin. The reason is that his conquest has been justly defeated so far and he sees no other way forward. The prospect of such an escalation is appalling. A line would be crossed. Nuclear-armed powers round the world would regard it as a licence. It might not be the end of the ...

All this pomp and splendour proves it: without our support the royals can’t survive | Simon Jenkins

The public mourning for the Queen has been a PR triumph for the royal family. But this shouldn’t disguise the need for reform

Ten days of mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II reached their climax at Westminster Abbey today, with a tear in the eye of the nation and hundreds of world leaders in attendance. They came to honour not power or achievement but a ceremony of nationhood in one person. They have witnessed an extraordinary week of recent British history, a week in which nothing else ...

Why is Liz Truss sacking top civil servants? Because she wants to suppress dissent | Simon Jenkins

This is government Trump-style – the PM would rather lose the benefits of insight and experience than tolerate opposing views

The prime minister’s peremptory sacking of the head of the Treasury, Tom Scholar, is ominous. It was one of her first decisions and cannot have been anything he said or did. She had already let it be known, through “allies”, that she also intended to sack the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, but apparently changed her mind. Scholar’s sin was that he supposedly embodied the “...