Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 26

In Taiwan, as in Ukraine, the west is flirting with disaster | Simon Jenkins

It’s one thing to declare yourself ‘rather dead than red’, quite another to inflict that decision on the rest of us

Arguments in the foothills of war are always the same. Those for war shout loudest and beat their chests, eager for tanks to rumble and jets to roar. Those against are dismissed as wimps, appeasers and defeatists. When the trumpets sound and the drums beat, reason runs for cover.

The visit to Taiwan of the US congressional speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has been so blatantly provocative it s...

Liz Truss’s Oxbridge proposal is the latest vacuous idea from a slapstick Tory race | Simon Jenkins

The ill-thought-out ideas issuing daily from the candidates to be the UK’s prime minister are a cause for alarm

The Tory leadership race has descended into slapstick politics, and it seems to have no boundaries. In the past week the two candidates have behaved like cliche-spouting populists on the stump, rather than responsible members of a party still in office. The latest excursion of the frontrunner Liz Truss – supposedly the nation’s foreign secretary – into education policy defies belief.

She...

The rouble is soaring and Putin is stronger than ever - our sanctions have backfired | Simon Jenkins

Energy prices are rocketing, inflation is soaring and millions are being starved of grain. Surely Johnson knew this would happen?

Western sanctions against Russia are the most ill-conceived and counterproductive policy in recent international history. Military aid to Ukraine is justified, but the economic war is ineffective against the regime in Moscow, and devastating for its unintended targets. World energy prices are rocketing, inflation is soaring, supply chains are chaotic and millions are b...

The ruble is soaring and Putin is stronger than ever - our sanctions have backfired | Simon Jenkins

Energy prices are rocketing, inflation is soaring and millions are being starved of grain. Surely Johnson knew this would happen?

Western sanctions against Russia are the most ill-conceived and counterproductive policy in recent international history. Military aid to Ukraine is justified, but the economic war is ineffective against the regime in Moscow, and devastating for its unintended targets. World energy prices are rocketing, inflation is soaring, supply chains are chaotic and millions are b...

There is one man to blame for the lorries backed up in Dover: Boris Johnson | Simon Jenkins

Tory leadership candidates, as they spout their pseudo-Thatcherite cliches, lack the guts to admit Brexit is not working

The Brexit slogan “Take back control” was always a lie. Boris Johnson, in a long boast about his so-called achievements in the Sunday Express yesterday, wrote that he “took back control of our borders”. Perhaps he should have visited the M20 in Dover, where thousands of immobile lorries are stacked up, and repeated this claim to their drivers. Under the EU, Britain’s borders we...

Being ‘economical with the truth’ has a long history in British politics – but enough is enough | Simon Jenkins

Liz Truss’s claim that tax cuts will reduce inflation are eerily reminiscent of Boris Johnson’s infamous style

Boris Johnson was a liar and had to go. It appears they are allowed to say that even in the Palace of Westminster, in certain circumstances, where dignity has traditionally banned such offensive words. Johnson might have thought he could roar and primp and bluster a few more months into the safety zone of another general election, as he half-implied at his last, raucous question time in ...

Who will be Britain’s next prime minister, Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss? | The panel

Only two candidates are left in the race to be next leader of the Conservative party. Our panellists tell us who they think will win

I could always tell we’d miss Penny Mordaunt when she was out. No, just kidding. There was a sliver of danger, had she or Tom Tugendhat taken the leadership, that they’d make a plausible discontinuity argument, and all parties would walk into the next election as if the smouldering ruins of the past 12 years were no one’s fault. The injustice would have choked us. S...

Why the Labour party is praying for the Tories not to vote for Rishi Sunak | Simon Jenkins

In the race for the top job there’s the alumni of Academy Boris – and then there’s the former chancellor, Keir Starmer’s biggest headache

There could be no grimmer epitaph for Boris Johnson’s Tory leadership than the list of his aspiring successors. On coming to power three years ago, he decapitated his party of talent. Like a new emperor fearful of rivals, he threw out the Hammonds, Rudds, Gaukes, Clarks and Greenings – anyone who offered an ounce of competence and dignity to his administration....

The public saw Boris Johnson as warmly authentic, then devious and corrupt | Simon Jenkins

He faced phenomenal challenges but had a disrespect for parliament and the public that finally caught up with him

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it. It was chaotic. Boris Johnson’s last hours in office were palpably staged, not to ease his party’s torrid history or respect the dignity of his office. They were fashioned as the opening chapter of his memoirs: “How the bastards tried to oust me.” It has been Boris in full flow, two fingers to his colleagues, rhubarb to parliament an...

Johnson’s terrible legacy: the PM who held his party and his country hostage | Simon Jenkins

The public, MPs and one-time allies in cabinet want him out. Johnson’s decision to face them all down is a landmark in our political history

It was meant to be a mafia death, with no need for a 1922 Committee manoeuvre or an MPs’ vote.

When the men in grey suits left Downing Street on Tuesday night, they put on the table the requisite revolver and bottle of whisky. Boris Johnson apparently tossed them in the bin. Michael Gove, very much a cabinet big beast was one of those urging the PM to resign....