Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 32

Pity a public that has so many questions about Covid. Who should be believed? | Simon Jenkins

People need evidence if they are to accept more curbs on their liberties, but all we get are bland, unqualified statistics

British politics this week faces an intellectual crisis. It is one of whom to believe. With yet another wave of Covid at full throttle, the cabinet is reportedly split on whether to rely on its one “winner” from the pandemic, vaccination, or whether to return to mass lockdown. There is no disputing that the Omicron variant is highly infectious. There is bitter argument about ...

Weak, crumbling and falling apart – parliament is a lot like Boris Johnson | Simon Jenkins

This endless aggression is a tired way of conducting democracy. As we rebuild the House of Commons, let’s remake politics too

Can there be a silver lining to the disaster that is Covid? It happens in wars when societies shift focus and priority. It should happen in pandemics, too.

Boris Johnson has adopted a presidential style of government. He rules, as we saw on Sunday, by television performance and press conferences during which he is in control. Apart from his weekly fisticuffs with Keir Starm...

If no one listens to Johnson over Omicron, that’s his fault. But listen to him we must | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister is unable to invest his office with any dignity, but this is an emergency and he should have the benefit of the doubt

Just now, Boris Johnson matters. He matters because he is Britain’s prime minister at a critical moment in the pandemic. The authority of his office should be directed at achieving the one reasonably sure defence against it: mass vaccination. Sunday night’s announcement that the vaccination programme is being stepped up to get third doses to all adults by the en...

Britain’s record on drugs is stuck on a loop. ‘Crackdowns’ simply don’t work | Simon Jenkins

After 50 years of costly failure it’s clear that punishment is no deterrent, yet Boris Johnson is not to be dissuaded

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 must be the worst law ever passed by a modern parliament. Its purpose was “to prevent the misuse of controlled drugs” by means of “a complete ban on their possession, supply, manufacture, import and export”. It has plainly failed.

Fifty years on, the act is variously credited with a soaring prison population, the devastation of working-class communities...

Johnson’s imperial bombast could suck Britain into more deadly interventions | Simon Jenkins

As tensions with Russia and China increase, the prime minister meddles in foreign policy to distract from domestic woes

Relations between the world’s great powers are tenser than ever since the cold war. Troops are massing along Russia’s border with Ukraine. Chinese ships and planes are openly threatening Taiwan. Japan is rearming in response. Turkey is renewing its belligerence towards its neighbours. Russia is backing east-west fragmentation in Bosnia.

Where Britain stands in all this is danger...

Johnson insulting France over Channel crossings will only make things worse | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister’s pointlessly macho stance is putting the UK ever more at odds with its closest neighbour

France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, is a sensitive soul. He dislikes British politicians saying nice things to him in private, then turning round and using “insulting” and “strongly unfriendly” language in the House of Commons and the press. He is particularly upset by his British opposite number, Priti Patel, and her boss, Boris Johnson, doing this on the topic of immigration.

We ...

Opportunity knocks for Michael Gove – but will he take it? | Simon Jenkins

The keys to No 10 may be the reward if the ‘levelling up’ secretary can deliver on housing and give new hope to the north

The whale is wounded. The sharks smell blood and start to circle. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is in the lead. The rest thrash about, still disoriented by Covid. That is, except for Michael Gove. Last September, in an unguarded moment, Boris Johnson handed Gove the opportunity of a lifetime: to chart a path out of the ideological chaos of lockdown towards a 21st-century Tory d...

Britain is in desperate need of workers. So why is it trying to keep them out? | Simon Jenkins

While ministers panic about small boats crossing the Channel, the economy is struggling without people to pick fruit or staff hotels

Nothing makes sense. Along the east coast of England, British employers scan the horizon. They are desperate for any migrant workers whom Boris Johnson will bless with visas to pick fruit, kill turkeys, staff hotels or care for elderly people. At the same time along the south coast British politicians howl with horror at boatloads of just such people as they come as...

Give the Parthenon marbles back to Greece – tech advances mean there are no more excuses | Simon Jenkins

Artefacts can now be replicated with microscopic accuracy. Will the British Museum, and our prime minister, see sense?

One day a British government will return the Parthenon marbles to Athens. The only question is: who will obtain Greece’s undying credit and thanks?

The obvious candidate was surely Boris Johnson. In 1986, the classics scholar invited the Greek culture minister Melina Mercouri to speak at Oxford University, pledging to help her restore the Parthenon’s glory. Yet this week it became...

Even if part of HS2 is cancelled, UK transport policy is a high-speed route to chaos | Simon Jenkins

I’m glad the folly that is HS2 is being scaled back, but the schemes replacing it are not much better

This week, a rare outbreak of sanity is predicted in British government rail policy. The eastern branch of David Cameron’s HS2 vanity railway is likely to be cancelled in favour of a flurry of other improvements to rail services. Rather than whingeing, red-wall Tories should be cheering. Their constituents should be getting about sooner and faster, rather than merely getting more swiftly to Londo...