Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 3

Trump’s tariffs are ruinous, but are western sanctions any better? Just look at Syria | Simon Jenkins

Sanctions as a form of economic aggression are macho and myopic, yet countries including the UK refuse to call a halt

Among the more improbable countries that Donald Trump punished most severely last week was Syria, with a 41% tariff in retaliation for its part in the “raping and plundering” of the US economy. That should teach it a lesson for toppling Bashar al-Assad last year.

The Damascus regime that subsequently came to power is pleading for help in keeping order and restoring its economy. But...

The tariffs are bad, but Britain should remember this: Trump will be gone in four years | Simon Jenkins

The UK is among those least hit by the US president’s war on the world economy. Retaliation at this point makes no sense

The tirade was astonishing. On Wednesday afternoon the world watched as the leader of its most powerful nation accused friends and foes alike of having “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered”, and simultaneously waved a bogus list of tariff imbalances. The playground paranoia was cringeworthy. What on earth was going on?

The answer can only be that Donald Trump is America’s elected...

Donald Trump is moving fast and breaking things, but that may result in a better US | Simon Jenkins

The chance of the president succeeding in his radicalism is small, but amid the chaos are challenges to convention that were overdue

“Move fast and break things” was Mark Zuckerberg’s motto in launching Facebook 20 years ago. It seemed the antithesis of management-school custom and practice. But it worked, to be imitated after a fashion by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other digital tycoons with similar success. Donald Trump is now seeing if it works in government.

The smart money in Washington was th...

GCSEs harm our young people. Ministers should have the guts to abolish them – and start again | Simon Jenkins

A report out this week highlights how destructive the cult of the exam is in Britain’s schools. But it doesn’t go far enough

Just say it. Spit it out. Abolish GCSE. It has nothing to do with young people or their advancement. It has everything to do with quantifying, measuring, controlling and governing their preparation for life.

Last year, Prof Becky Francis was asked by the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, to draw up proposals for the curriculum in England’s secondary schools. In her in...

Keir Starmer is having his chainsaw moment – but all he will slash is democracy | Simon Jenkins

The PM sounds like Elon Musk when promising to fight the ‘blockers’, but his government’s plans will weaken the link between peoples and politics

Every new prime minister has an Elon Musk moment. A sudden attack of frustration leads to a burst of machismo, a chainsaw response. The system stinks. Slash the bureaucrats. Smash the machine.

Thatcher had her “subversives”, Tony Blair his “scars on my back”, David Cameron his “enemies of enterprise”. Now Sir Keir Starmer claims to be haunted by the bloc...

When the horror stops, the key to peace in Gaza and Ukraine will be how power is shared | Simon Jenkins

Constitution-building offers no headlines – but what it can do, history tells us, is stop hundreds of thousands of people dying

Syria is reportedly sliding back towards civil war, as its various factions demand devolved authority. It is at root the same issue, that of local autonomy, that led to regional unrest in Ukraine and splintered leadership in Palestine. It underlies the devastating conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All these places are flush with guns, allies an...

Putin is not Hitler. His actions in Ukraine are horrific enough to need no exaggeration | Simon Jenkins

Keir Starmer has said we face the greatest threat to our national security since the cold war. Such hyperbole helps nobody

Is Vladimir Putin another Adolf Hitler? The western world seems to think so. In which case is Donald Trump another Neville Chamberlain and Ukraine another Czechoslovakia? Is history bunk, or is it a wise old man leaning on the gate as Europe storms into its latest crisis?

Godwin’s law holds that the longer a political argument continues, the nearer it gets to Hitler. This redu...

No matter how distasteful we find Trump and Vance over Europe, they speak a blunt truth | Simon Jenkins

The US has chosen the worst possible moment and the worst possible way to say it, but it is right to call for a realignment

It’s tough being rightwing these days. You have to find something nice to say about Donald Trump. That is hard. He thinks Kyiv started the Ukraine war and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a “dictator”. But what about JD Vance? The US vice-president thinks that Europe’s “threat from within”, which is putting “free speech … in retreat”, is worse than any threat from Russ...

Even Prince William doesn’t attend church – it’s time for a new Reformation | Simon Jenkins

The UK is now a secular nation and the Church of England should no longer be one of the central pillars of state

The national church “of England” has been meeting this week in London and is in turmoil. Does it matter, other than to the 1.7% of the population of England who still worship under its roofs? Since the Church of England continues with an “established” role in the life of the nation, the answer is yes.

The argument within the C of E over safeguarding seems endless. It has brought the dow...

If Trump really cared about his ‘favourite’ US president, he would leave Gaza and Greenland alone | Simon Jenkins

He eulogises the 25th incumbent, William McKinley, but on tariffs and imperialism, Trump is learning the wrong lessons

Donald Trump’s favourite US president was William McKinley. Who he? In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to restore the name Mount McKinley to North America’s highest peak. It was an anti-woke dig at Barack Obama, who had given it the Alaskan native name of Denali. But why this idolatry?

The answer has since become clear. McKinley was the president (1897-1901) who introduced su...