Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 38

Johnson’s voter ID checks are not about electoral fraud, they’re about power | Simon Jenkins

Britain’s elections have a clean bill of health, and yet the government is wilfully hindering people’s right to vote

The government’s voter identity scheme should be abandoned. It is unnecessary, inconvenient and a disincentive to vote. More serious, voter cards for those without a current form of photo ID would be another step, however modest, towards the regulation and surveillance of daily life, an obsession of governments worldwide since the digital revolution.

A classic test of state liberali...

London’s pain could become the north’s gain, but Johnson isn’t up to the job | Simon Jenkins

Stemming the ‘brain drain’ to London is a vast undertaking that will take a lot more than political gimmicks

Modern British government is a lurch from catchphrase to cliche. Policy is rarely in sight. Following the Tories’ remarkable success in the local elections, Boris Johnson will today announce a new campaign to “stop the brain drain” from northern cities. Bitten by Covid’s big spending bug, he will tip cash into infrastructure to get people to “live local and prosper”.

Two consequences follow...

Away from TV’s Line of Duty the police have a long, tawdry history of corruption | Simon Jenkins

Without transparent and independent oversight, every organisation ultimately proves vulnerable to the lure of money

As a young journalist, I remember looking across the news desk one night at a row of brown envelopes awaiting a messenger. Each was addressed to a central London police station. It was, apparently, for the “police benevolent fund” and was for “tip-offs”. But tip-offs of what? I was shocked.

Related: Undercover officer ‘rose to top of campaign group he infiltrated’

Simon Jenkins is ...

Plaid Cymru has a mountain to climb, but Welsh independence is no pipe dream | Simon Jenkins

Wales has gone from ‘indy curious’ to ‘indy plausible’, and nationalists should look to Ireland for inspiration

Next year is the centenary of the founding of the Irish Free State and the path to full independence. It is just conceivable that Scotland could celebrate by striking out alone too. But Wales? Surely not.

The Welsh Senedd elections on 6 May seem likely to confirm Labour’s Mark Drakeford in office in Cardiff. But he may have to rely on Welsh nationalist backing from Plaid Cymru. That part...

Johnson’s renovations are immaterial – unlike the other sleaze allegations | Simon Jenkins

The government may ride out all the embarrassing inquiries, but at what cost?

Vain, mendacious, inattentive, conflicts of interest, unfaithful with wives and incapable of keeping his staff. And that is just the last US president. When Boris Johnson should be attending to the nation’s affairs, he mimics Donald Trump as a daily fount of salaciousness and scandal. Most of it is his fault, if not all.

Related: Tories are wrong to think that they will never face a day of reckoning for sleaze | Andrew ...

Johnson can thwart the SNP if he offers Scotland single market access | Simon Jenkins

If the Scottish economy aligned with the EU, it could bring financial benefits and slow down the independence movement

In two weeks’ time Scotland will likely re-elect a government committed to dismantling the United Kingdom. It has been doing so, overwhelmingly, since 2007. Though the Scottish people did not say yes to independence in 2014, the past year’s opinion polls suggest that they would do so now, the margin in favour sometimes as high as 12 percentage points. The prospect seems to leave ...

What did 20 years of western intervention in Afghanistan achieve? Ruination | Simon Jenkins

Britain’s justifications for invading were having influence and deterring terror. They are just neo-imperialist platitudes

The longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years – its intervention in Afghanistan – is to end in September. I doubt anyone will notice. Nations celebrate victories, not defeats.

Twenty years ago the United States decided to relieve its 9/11 agony not just by blasting Osama bin Laden’s base in the Afghan mountains, but by toppling t...

Boris Johnson was not honest about the Irish border. What is he going to do about it? | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister’s bluster is meeting head-on with the complex reality of Northern Irish politics

Apologies make cynical history, but Boris Johnson has a big one to make, and fast. He must apologise to Northern Ireland’s unionists that he did not mean it last year when he pledged “no border” down the Irish Sea. As the Good Friday agreement negotiator, Jonathan Powell, wrote on Sunday, this was a lie. Johnson had just told the Irish government that the Good Friday deal held and there would be no...

Prince Philip had a walk-on part in the royal drama, but he played it to perfection | Simon Jenkins

There must have been intense frustration at the limitations of his role, but he was a rock for his hardworking wife

It is not disparaging of Prince Philip, who has died aged 99, to say he was always a walk-on part in the pantomime of monarchy. It was a part in which he was a star. Plucked from the ranks of lesser European royalty as the “suitable” husband for a queen, he was perfectly cast. Nephew of the king of Greece, safely naval and effortlessly gracious, he took to his assigned role as if to...

Pub Covid checks shouldn't be a big deal – as long as they are temporary | Simon Jenkins

Boris Johnson says vaccine passports may in fact be necessary, but can we trust him to return our freedom afterwards?

You can tell when Boris Johnson is telling a whopper. He waves his arms and rolls his eyes. When he sits tight and mutters, “Um, er, well, y’know”, we see truth struggling to escape the ectoplasm of his ego.

This week the prime minister ummed and err-ed his way through an answer to the Commons liaison committee on the question of pub vaccination passports, which he has long opposed...