Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 43

London is the wild west of the global property market – and it needs a sheriff | Simon Jenkins

We must legislate to curb the overseas tycoons buying up apartments and leaving them empty

One of the biggest property tycoons in London is the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Guardian revealed last week that he owned around £5.5bn of real estate in the city. This covers streets and buildings in Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Kensington, and may be more valuable even than the London holdings of the Grosvenor Estate, surpassed only by the Crown.

For a fore...

Judges are fighting back against Boris Johnson - and they're right | Simon Jenkins

Supreme court justice Lord Kerr has condemned the government’s ‘unbridled power’. Who can disagree with him?

Boris Johnson is said to be bad at making friends, but he is good at making enemies. This week he has added judges and bishops to his lengthening list. The departing and longest-serving supreme court justice, Lord Kerr, has condemned the prime minister’s persistent abuse of the judiciary as “unbridled power” and a “slippery slope to dictatorship”. This comes on top of a statement from the ...

This pandemic has been the making of England's elected mayors | Simon Jenkins

Despite the government doing its best to ignore local expertise on Covid, mayors are showing how democracy should work

Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage

Suddenly mayors matter. The 20 years since elected mayors were introduced half-heartedly by Tony Blair in 2000 had been years of obscurity. Now coronavirus has thrust them into the spotlight. We hear daily from Andy Burnham, “leader of the north”, from Liverpool’s Steve Rotheram, Birmingham’s Andy Street, Sheffield’s Dan...

When handouts go straight to ministers' constituencies, it's time for local control | Simon Jenkins

Councils are forced to come cap in hand for funds, while the favouritism of MPs such as Robert Jenrick is given free rein

Before last year’s election, Boris Johnson’s local government minister, Robert Jenrick, announced a massive £3.6bn of handouts to 101 “left-behind” towns across England. Forty of these were defined by Whitehall as most in need. The remainder were allegedly chosen by two ministers, Jenrick and his number two, Jake Berry. Most were marginal seats, all but one of which voted Tory...

Johnson and Sturgeon will need a better philosophy than precaution to rid us of Covid | Simon Jenkins

When they’re dicing with our lives, politicians must fully explain the reasoning for their decisions

‘You cannot put people out of a job on a hunch,” a Glasgow restaurant owner said of Nicola Sturgeon’s new drinking restrictions in Scotland, which have forbidden the sale of alcohol in licensed premises and closed pubs and restaurants across the country’s central belt for 16 days. “I genuinely do not understand it – and we’re not being told why.”

Related: Pubs and restaurants: do scientists think ...

People don't trust the facts about Trump's coronavirus. Is it any wonder? | Simon Jenkins

An unregulated internet was always likely to breed confusion, denial and conspiracy theories. This is its nadir

The president is not really sick. He is very sick. He is pretending. He is not pretending. That was his body double in the car. He may die. The illness is a fake to win Christian sympathy.

To QAnon’s followers, Covid is a deep-state Democrat trick to enslave the US and Trump’s “illness” is tactical. So don’t trust anything any more. We are in a maelstrom of information, spin and lies. No...

Let's seize this rare chance to abolish school exams and league tables

The regime of perennial assessment so beloved of our politicians is an absurdity that actively damages young people

Hope springs eternal. The government was this week pressed to cancel school examinations for a second year in a row. One in six state secondary schools are not fully open, and thousands of pupils are being excluded under quarantine measures – even those who are well. So the government should ease the exam burden and let schools catch up. As the Sheffield educationist Sir Chris Husba...

The Tory revolt against new coronavirus rules shows Johnson is not secure | Simon Jenkins

With a leadership vacuum at the top of government, parliament is trying to take back some control

For rule of six read rule of 50. It is hard to believe that the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, will appease Boris Johnson and refuse this week’s amendment to the Covid lockdown bill from the Tory backbench leader Graham Brady. Brady wants parliament to be free to monitor Johnson’s six-month emergency pandemic bill of unprecedented curbs on personal liberty. He claims to have 50 Tory MPs behind him, ...

Why do students travel to university? Covid has proved they don't need to | Simon Jenkins

Freshers’ week in Glasgow has turned into a fiasco. But tech advances mean most students can become digital commuters

Who ever thought it a good idea to disperse 2 million Covid super-spreaders across British cities this month? One hundred and twenty-four returning Glasgow students have already tested positive, with dozens more at Aberdeen, St Andrews and elsewhere. Six hundred are now confined to their Glasgow lodgings and told they may have to stay there through Christmas. Now this fiasco is to...

Britain needs to live with coronavirus, not in fear of it | Simon Jenkins

Vallance and Whitty spoke reasonably and sincerely in their press conference. But their data was selective, and they seem determined to cause alarm

Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage

Thank goodness for scientists talking about coronavirus rather than politicians. They speak English and sound sincere. Today’s presentation by Whitehall’s Sir Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty was devoid of slogan and cliche. They just wanted to say that the virus was back, Covid-19 numbers w...