Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 36

Only by forgiving – and forgetting – can Ireland move on from its past | Simon Jenkins

Boris Johnson’s lie that there was no need for a border in the Irish Sea may be a chance, at last, for reconciliation

If I had lost a family member on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972, I am sure I would want someone brought to justice. Nor would I care when. Indeed, though ardent about forgiveness and rehabilitation, in such a case I am sure I would want punishment. I am human, and revenge is a human emotion – though I would call it “justice”. But such justice must be subject to two limi...

Boris Johnson's Euros bandwagon-jumping won't get him far | Simon Jenkins

The quiet dignity of England’s football team was in marked contrast to the prime minister’s cynical opportunism

By any normal standards, England’s performance in the European Championship was outstanding. The team reached heights it hadn’t for over half a century – and its off-field behaviour was dignified and sportsmanlike, a credit to England’s remarkable leader, Gareth Southgate. At the final whistle, the contest was a draw. The aftermath was a tragedy, requiring a “result” from a penalty shoo...

We need a revolution in university teaching – and online-only lectures could start it | Simon Jenkins

The idea has met with uproar from Manchester students, but if it results in more teaching hours, all the better

Lectures are rubbish education. They should have gone out when printing was invented and students learned to read. The vanity of monks and preachers kept them going and set them up for university education ever since. Lectures have nothing to do with teaching, which is an interactive process. They are academic showbusiness.

Yet 3,000 Manchester University students have signed a petition ...

The UK government is shirking its duty in the cladding scandal | Simon Jenkins

The Grenfell inquiry made it clear that private companies, not residents, should pay to make high-rise towers safe

For the 72 people who died in the Grenfell Tower fire four years ago, the cladding scandal was fatal. For thousands more, it is becoming a nightmare. The government is removing the deadly cladding from some 500 of the most at-risk towers, but beyond that, the residents of an estimated 1,500 high-rise buildings in England considered unsafe – and therefore unsellable, unmortgageable an...

Liverpool deserves better than the humiliation of losing its Unesco status | Simon Jenkins

The city’s historic waterfront is at risk of being overshadowed by banal flats and offices. National government must step in

Britain could next month become only the second country in the world to have a monument stripped of world heritage status by Unesco. That monument is Liverpool’s magnificent waterfront. And, as if to brush off this shame, Boris Johnson and his government intend to put another site in danger too, at Stonehenge. Does anyone care?

Stonehenge is merely the symbol of a minor but ...

A Labour/Lib Dems alliance could defeat the Tories in seat after seat | Simon Jenkins

The Lib Dems are a nuisance party. They should disband, or step aside in winnable seats in return for a government role

Anyone who predicts the outcome of general elections from byelections should stick to the horses. This applies especially to periodic Liberal Democrat upsets such as last week’s at Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire, where they overturned a blue majority. This was nothing to do with choosing a government, rather it was passing judgment on Johnson’s “algorithmic” deregulatio...

Public inquiries are institutionally corrupt, we should just give the money to victims | Simon Jenkins

Be it the Manchester bombing, children’s homes or Daniel Morgan, millions are squandered on probes that merely enrich lawyers

There should be an inquiry into inquiries. They are institutionally corrupt. The latest, the fifth into the 1987 Daniel Morgan murder, justified itself this week with 1,200 pages and the headline-grabbing epithet “institutional”. We are no nearer the truth of this single unsolved killing, and the home secretary has merely announced another inquiry into police oversight. Fo...

Behind the spectacle of the G7 summit, global tax reform was the big event | Simon Jenkins

Before world leaders met in Cornwall, finance ministers had made an agreement that could spell the end of tax havens

G7 summits nowadays are mostly fields of the cloth of gold. They are about showing off, with Boris Johnson in full Henry VIII rig. He staged beach parties, hired cruise ships, dug up trees, summoned royals and organised worship of David Attenborough. The planet was saved, the world cleansed and the poor vaccinated. Johnson got through £70m in policing for a three-day event.

Most im...

Drug reform is the holy grail – but don’t expect answers at the G7 | Simon Jenkins

If Boris Johnson were to raise the issue with Joe Biden, the US president might reply that at least he is trying. Britain is not

Joe Biden is a fine one to lecture Boris Johnson on trade with his neighbours. Johnson could well retort: what about the US and Mexico? What about the $88bn Biden spends trying and failing to police his shambolic drugs trade with Latin America, and its related market in anarchy, refugees, gangsterism and death, not to mention the resulting US crime wave?

Last week the F...

Pressured by Biden, Johnson may finally face reality on Northern Ireland | Simon Jenkins

The US president should tell the British prime minister to honour the protocol or take the whole UK into the EU’s trading standards regime

This week’s planned G7 chat on Northern Ireland between the US president, Joe Biden, and British prime minister, Boris Johnson, can be brief. Biden should tell Johnson to stop being an idiot and honour the protocol.

Everyone knows there can be no erecting of a border across the fields of Ireland. Johnson knew that when he campaigned for Brexit. He knew it when ...