Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 46

Britain can't protect Hong Kong from China – but it can do right by its people | Simon Jenkins

To think we can sway authoritarian Beijing is fantasy. Instead we must make those who want freedom welcome in the UK

The sight of young people anywhere being brutally stripped of their freedom is depressing. When that freedom was a legacy, however brief, from the British crown, it is more so. The ban on dissent now imposed by China on Hong Kong smashes the spirit and letter of the Sino-British treaty of 1984. It shows China for what it is, an unprincipled dictatorship.

When I reported in 1997 on ...

Britain doesn't need buildings tomorrow, it needs jobs today | Simon Jenkins

Boris Johnson’s vanity projects are not going to reboot the economy. That takes cash

Build, build, build, says Boris Johnson. Building has been the vanity of the populist politician down the ages from Nero to Napoleon. Johnson is no exception. The hardest-hearted Tory may treat ordinary public spending as wasteful, but spending on capital projects is glorious.

This week history is to repeat itself. David Cameron and George Osborne answered the 2008-09 crisis by slashing spending on public and loca...

The Jenrick-Desmond row lays bare the rotten heart of the UK planning system | Simon Jenkins

The random luxury towers going up around Britain have everything to do with profits, nothing to do with housing

The law was broken. There is no argument. At a dinner, a planning minister, Robert Jenrick, sat next to a developer who attempted to lobby him to allow a gigantic £1bn project in London’s Docklands. He then reversed a public decision of his own department, and he expedited it to save the developer, Richard Desmond, some £40m in local levy. His party then accepted an admittedly paltry su...

We are quick to label the Reading attack terrorism – but there is little benefit in doing so | Simon Jenkins

In the current climate of fear, this horrific tragedy will be sucked into existing narratives. Let’s look at what we actually know

Nothing is yet known of any possible motives of the man arrested in connection with the Reading triple killing. The suspect, 25-year-old Khairi Saadallah, appears in various reports to be a gregarious figure, a Christian convert and regarded by friends as “essentially British”.

It seems this man had no link to any terror activity or network. He was never on the list of...

Boris Johnson loves U-turns. Let's hope this extends to a no-deal Brexits | Simon Jenkins

In his intransigence over EU trade talks, the prime minister is wilfully dragging us toward disaster. He must be stopped

Britain could be the first developed economy to be sabotaged by maths. Not by war, ideology or disease, but maths. The prime minister is said to be mesmerised by models.

Related: Failure of Brexit talks could lead to terrorism intelligence delays, say Lords

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To save the British economy, don't just open shops – give people the cash to spend | Simon Jenkins

Rishi Sunak needs to think radically by introducing a universal basic income until this crisis passes

Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage

My local high street has refitted itself for today’s reopening of non-essential shops, enabling customers to stay 2 metres apart. Businesses have spent thousands in a frantic attempt to stave off imminent bankruptcy. Yet within a week that money may have to be spent again, as Boris Johnson teases that he may change the distancing rule fr...

Protests aren't an affront to democracy – they're liberty rampant | Simon Jenkins

The greatest risk is not that a statue may be toppled, but that the authorities might overreact with curbs on civil liberty

Two widely reported acts of civil disobedience took place in Britain this past month. One was on the streets of Bristol and led to the toppling of a slave-trader’s statue. The other was on the Dorset coast at Bournemouth and Durdle Door, where thousands flagrantly breached the government’s social distancing law and, in the government’s words, “risked lives”. In both cases, t...

To prevent a chaotic end to lockdown, the public should be told the true risks | Simon Jenkins

Give us the facts. The government scared British people into their homes – now it must reassure them back out

See all our coronavirus coverageCoronavirus – latest updates

Just tell the truth. If the government is to get the country out of the mess of lockdown, it must take people into its confidence. It scared us into it, and must now reassure us out of it. 

This week children are returning to school in England, on the basis that the risk to them and their families from Covid-19 is “minuscule”. Wha...

Britain's double shame: coronavirus deaths and economic collapse | Simon Jenkins

Lockdown is likely to go down in history as the UK’s most costly policy failure of modern times

Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage

Quick. Open schools. Pull back the police. Roll out test and trace. Get the pubs working. Boris is in trouble. Help him out. Ensure daily good news.

Thank you, Dominic Cummings. Any pretence that lockdown is led by “the science” has always been rubbish. It has been an exercise in social control by an initially panic-driven government. However l...

Explain, apologise, move on: what Johnson should have said about Dominic Cummings | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister’s statement insulted public intelligence. It was about one thing – how does it make him look

Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage

Boris Johnson has seriously blown it. Usually he contrives himself to be his own worst enemy – now it seems to be Dominic Cummings, his chief adviser. In the affair of the Durham runner, a wise political strategist would have given simple advice. Prime Minister, just say sorry. Go before the cameras and declare:

“My fellow Brito...