Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 33

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...

The towers and the glory: Simon Jenkins’ favourite cathedrals in Europe

Surviving bombs, fires and even secularism, Europe’s great cathedrals stand defiant. Here are 11 ‘masterpieces of art and architecture’

Europe’s cathedrals are its wonders of the world. From Salisbury to Seville, Moscow to Palermo, Trondheim to Istanbul, they tower over its cities, masterpieces of art and architecture whose popularity increases by the generation. Even as religious worship continues to decline, attendance at cathedral services has risen by a third in 20 years.

What is it that still...

To rid Britain of corruption, start by reforming the House of Lords | Simon Jenkins

The row over peerages for Tory donors is yet more proof that radical overhaul is essential – and now is the perfect time

“Britain is not remotely a corrupt country,” declared the prime minister in Glasgow this week. So what did he mean by remotely? He had just been accused of selling peerages to party donors. In 2006, Boris Johnson called such abuses of the House of Lords a “putrefaction … a quintessentially British crime”. Back then it was Tony Blair he was attacking. We know Johnson’s ethics va...

Northern Ireland is the loser in Boris Johnson’s badly played Brexit game | Simon Jenkins

Relying only on machismo, the prime minister has no alternative border mechanism for trade with the EU

This year, Boris Johnson craved the titles of champion of Cop26 and star of G7. He saw something called “global Britain” and hoped it would crown his Brexit triumph, leading the world into a new age of peace and prosperity like a 21st-century Churchill. Instead, Johnson now finds himself in a morass of sleazy MPs, dodgy peers and Covid contracts. More seriously, he is about to plunge once more i...

The Paterson debacle shows that Johnson no longer has advisers - he has courtiers | Simon Jenkins

After months of purges, there is no one left in the cabinet who is willing to hold the prime minister to account

No one doubted it, not even Boris Johnson. The attempt to rescue his friend Owen Paterson from a mild penalty for a breach of the parliamentary code was an abject failure.

The Tories’ short-lived attempt to tear up the independent system for combating parliamentary sleaze has been scrapped. After the government’s U-turn, MPs were due a fresh vote over whether to suspend Paterson from th...

This fish spat with France is just another product of Johnson’s broken Brexit | Simon Jenkins

The PM’s push to quit the European single market has proved disastrous for Britain’s standing at the key moment of Cop26

As Boris Johnson stumbles from cliche to cliche in Glasgow, a boatload of French fishers are making a fool of him. Posing as a world leader, he pleads that the Earth is “at one minute to midnight”, and should raise its game in the last chance saloon. Yet he cannot stop France’s Emmanuel Macron taunting him over a few boat licences, any more than he can handle the consequences o...