Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 34

Boris Johnson’s Tory party conference speech – the panel verdict | Justine Greening and others

How was the prime minister’s keynote address received? Our experts give their view

Boris Johnson arrived in Manchester needing to move beyond the idea of “levelling up” and finding a way towards setting out a clear plan. He acknowledged that talent is spread evenly in Britain but opportunity is not. It is clear he has understood that levelling up is the greatest project any government can embark on.

Justine Greening was the Conservative MP for Putney from 2005 to 2019

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Tory ideals count for nothing in the kneejerk era of Boris Johnson | Simon Jenkins

Britain is no longer being run to any political programme, but according to its prime minister’s impulsive responses to events

Who would be a Tory ideologue? One minute you must favour a private-sector, low-tax, deregulated economy, basking in the glories of free trade. The next you must favour state spending, corporate taxes, regulated energy prices, trade barriers and restricted labour markets. One minute, queues at petrol stations are nothing to do with Brexit. The next they can be eased by Br...

Privatisation may be on its knees, but ministers can make a mess of the railways too | Simon Jenkins

Whoever owns the rail companies, they work best when they are under one management with no meddling

The collapse this week of Southeastern trains and the investigation of its accounts by the Serious Fraud Office signals the death knell of rail privatisation, after a quarter century of ideological turmoil, political interference and waste. Passengers have surged, until now. Trains have run, some of them on time. Subsidies have trebled in real terms. But the model is a shambles. Railways north, sou...

Care homes are desperately short of staff - why no emergency UK visas for them? | Simon Jenkins

As the government hastily arranges visas for truck drivers, its lack of regard for the care sector crisis is clear

Despite all the panic in government and at the petrol station forecourt, there is another urgent question: what about the care homes? The government is hastily attempting to give three-month visas to 5,000 foreign truck drivers to “save Christmas”. It is also allowing 5,000 visas for farm workers to gather in the winter harvest. But, in the face of widespread personnel shortages, the...

Ever-changing dialects keep English moving – but grammar is its north star | Simon Jenkins

Protesting that ‘bad’ grammar should not hold someone back will not stop it from doing so. Accuracy is in everyone’s interest

I say tomahto and you say tomayto. My wife says dahrling and I say my dear. We all speak differently, and some of us speak different. Does it really matter?

Things matter if people think they do. I remember being with a group of Manchester businessmen whose bitterest complaint was that London stole their brightest young people and carried them off south. And not just that. ...

Boris Johnson’s military alliance in the Pacific is reckless post-imperial nostalgia | Simon Jenkins

The Aukus deal has enraged China and humiliated France, when British diplomacy should be concentrated on Europe

The Aukus defence deal between Britain, the US and Australia grows murkier by the day. Essentially it is the outcome of an industrial dispute over who will build eight submarines for the Australian military. Australia ordered £48bn-worth of diesel-powered ones from France and then changed its mind, reneging on the deal. It now wants nuclear-powered ones from the US and Britain.

Crewed su...

Jeremy Clarkson’s Cotswolds farm is an ill omen for the countryside | Simon Jenkins

Rural England may be a far cry from the Klondike. But there’s a gold rush going on out there

In 2008 Jeremy Clarkson thought a little agriculture on the side might do him good. He bought a farm in fashionable Cotswold country, acquired a Lamborghini tractor and a handful of local workers and found the experience deeply satisfying. The farm was earning so little income – just £140 last year – that he named it Diddly Squat. With a personal fortune estimated in the millions, this seemed hardly to ma...

UK and EU urged to stop blocking vaccine patent waiver – as it happened

Thanks for following along – this blog is now closed. You can catch up with the latest coronavirus coverage here.

Scotland’s deputy first minister has said there are no plans to introduce vaccination certificates for public services or for cafes and restaurants, but that they will be required for a “limited number of sectors” including nightclubs.

John Swinney told BBC Radio 4’s Today:

There will be no question that vaccine certificates will be applicable to any public services whatsoever, under a...

Boris Johnson is right that we have to live with Covid, but he’s not making it easy | Simon Jenkins

Managing the pandemic is a balance of personal liberty and public safety, and the government needs to tread a fine line

Eighteen months is a long time in Covid politics. Boris Johnson’s much-flagged series of announcements this week for the UK will mark his route “back to normal” and to “learning to live with the disease”. Like most people, he has matured over the past year, a journey from carelessness to panic to pragmatism. The journey was never about “following the science”. It was following t...

A new planning reform could mean the death of England's high streets | Simon Jenkins

Robert Jenrick’s madcap policy will hand shops over to developers motivated by profit, not community

The summer of 2021 may be remembered for Covid and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But another lasting and insidious change took place: the death of the high street. By approving the building of residential homes on ailing shopping streets, planning minister Robert Jenrick effectively allowed any shop, restaurant, cafe or business premise in England to become a house. Since almost everywhere hous...