Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 44

Hitachi failed its nuclear test. If only it had the vanity of HS2 | Simon Jenkins

It seems there’s cash only for the trophy projects that feed politicians’ egos, no matter how wasteful they are

Poor Wylfa. The nuclear power station nestles in a landscape of bliss in north Wales, but it was never glamorous enough for Westminster. This week the Japanese firm Hitachi failed to get sufficient government subsidy for its rebuilding, and pulled out. Wylfa lacks the political magnetism of the only other spearhead into Britain’s new nuclear age, Hinkley Point.

Related: HS2: constructio...

Why isn't Starmer standing up to Johnson over Brexit? | Simon Jenkins

No deal would be a disaster for the British economy. The Labour leader should be doing everything in his power to avert it

Why is the opposition leader, Keir Starmer, being so kind to Boris Johnson over Brexit? In the Commons last week he decorously downplayed the prime minister’s conversion to law-breaking. At the weekend he gently told Telegraph readers it was “wrong” but pleaded for everyone to “stop banging on about Europe”. Tory grandees and backbenchers are left howling for Johnson’s blood ...

Johnson's hard Brexit is about to deliver a devastating hit to our Covid-struck economy | Simon Jenkins

With its international reputation in tatters and businesses in despair, Britain has painted itself deeper into a corner

No one I know has a clue what the current row over last year’s Brexit withdrawal deal really means. All they see is another mess from a dysfunctional Downing Street.

One thing should be clear. The argument has nothing to do with the UK leaving the EU, which has already happened. It has to do with a different but related decision, Boris Johnson’s belief that the UK should also lea...

These U-turns show Johnson is not informed by science but scared witless by it | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister blames ‘mutant’ algorithms but it’s increasingly clear his government is not up to the job

Boris Johnson has found a new role for Britain’s most endangered transport mode, the bus. He throws civil servants under it. After decapitating the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office, he has rid himself of Public Health England and those he regards as to blame for recent exam U-turns, Sally Collier of Ofqual and Jonathan Slater of the Department for Education. They have gone to save the sk...

Why are parents still scared to send their children back to school? Ask Boris Johnson | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister’s bluster, deception and bombast have ill-prepared the nation for recovery from the coronavirus pandemic

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England’s schools must reopen. That is abundantly clear. The medical advice is that this is safe, within all reasonable bounds of risk, and that keeping children out of school is the true harm. Throughout the pandemic, more have died in suicides, fights and accidents at home than of Covid-19. Infection passed to old...

The revolving door between City banks and Westminster is distorting our economy | Simon Jenkins

It cannot be right for the former chancellor to ‘advise’ an industry that massively overlaps with government

It’s a nice job, chancellor of the exchequer. Sets you up well, should things not go right. The recently deposed Sajid Javid was a simple banker until in 2010 he got bored and entered politics. Within a decade, the Tory party’s slaughter of the talents shot him through five cabinet posts in as many years until as chancellor he fell foul of Johnson-Cummings syndrome. He is now nursing his w...

The links between politics and banking are desperately unhealthy, for all of us | Simon Jenkins

Between Whitehall and the City there is a revolving door of co-dependency

It’s a nice job, chancellor of the exchequer. Sets you up well, should things not go right. The recently deposed Sajid Javid was a simple banker until in 2010 he got bored and entered politics. Within a decade, the Tory party’s slaughter of the talents shot him through five cabinet posts in as many years until as chancellor he fell foul of Johnson-Cummings syndrome. He is now nursing his wounds on the backbenches and return...

What to learn from A-level chaos? GCSE results should now be thrown in the bin | Simon Jenkins

The introduction of an algorithm ignored the fact that losers shout louder than winners

Poor Gavin Williamson. This year should have been his dream. More British students than ever will go on to university. More than ever will be from disadvantaged backgrounds. And their unexamined A-levels will stand to their credit, with 2% more getting A and A* grades. Pupils everywhere would be pictured “jumping for joy” in the time-honoured newspaper fashion.

But these are facts and facts make poor headlines....

The age of the office is over – the future lies in Britain's commuter towns | Simon Jenkins

The rise in home working has thrown city centres into crisis. If I were in the property game, I’d buy anywhere with a cathedral

Is the office dead? Not an office, which everyone needs, but “the office”, the institution, the corporate HQ, the great overhead in the sky. Just as once the farm gave way to the factory and the factory to the desk, so technology transforms the nature of work. At the turn of the 21st century the digital revolution shrank offices to tiny screens. From then on offices have...

Dive for cover – Boris Johnson is invoking 'morality' in his Covid policies | Simon Jenkins

Yes, the schools should reopen next month – but where was the talk of morality at the height of the first wave?

We should beware. The prime minister has recovered from Covid-19 only to be struck down by a new ailment: morality.

Not reopening schools next month, says Boris Johnson, would be “socially intolerable, economically unsustainable and morally indefensible”. The harm done to children’s prospects and mental health would be “far more damaging” than any risk from the virus. “We have a moral du...