Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 49

Flooding in the UK isn’t an act of God, it’s an act of government | Simon Jenkins

A 1.2bn supercomputer for the Met Office is no substitute for effective planning and proper wildlife management

Here we go again. It rains in Britain and an emergency is declared. Nearly 600 flood warnings are issued in England on a single day and the environment secretary, George Eustice, declares it impossible to “protect every single household”. But he can protect the Met Office. It is to get another 1.2bn of public money for a “supercomputer”, just six years after getting 97m for a...

After giving HS2 the go-ahead, Boris Johnson can never again say there’s no money | Simon Jenkins

If a few businessmen can claim 100bn of public money for a dud project, how can he refuse a new hospital or school?

Britain’s greatest white elephant, HS2, was always a dud railway. It has grazed for 10 years on the Treasury lawn, and has now has been told it can stay, more dud than ever. It was symbolic this week that Boris Johnson launched HS2 not in the north but in a giant patch of Birmingham mud. Next to him stood his chancellor, Sajid Javid. They already looked like executioner and...

After giving HS2 the go-head, Boris Johnson can never again say there’s no money | Simon Jenkins

If a few businessmen can claim 100bn of public money for a dud project, how can he refuse a new hospital or school?

Britain’s greatest white elephant, HS2, was always a dud railway. It has grazed for 10 years on the Treasury lawn, and has now has been told it can stay, more dud than ever. It was symbolic this week that Boris Johnson launched HS2 not in the north but in a giant patch of Birmingham mud. Next to him stood his chancellor, Sajid Javid. They already looked like executioner and...

It wasn’t the US Senate that saved Trump – it was the founding fathers | Simon Jenkins

The president’s impeachment acquittal was never in doubt, because that’s how the US constitution was meant to work

Donald Trump has not, as he claimed this week, been “fully vindicated and exonerated” of impeachment by the US Senate. Vindicated instead are the 63 million voters who backed him in 2016 and who have, in effect, terrorised their senators into keeping him in office. The issue is not whether Trump was innocent as charged, any more than was Bill Clinton in 1999. The Senate dismissed...

Boris Johnson is about to find out just how weak the UK is after Brexit | Simon Jenkins

Britain’s economic weight has diminished since leaving the EU. The government must acknowledge this in trade negotiations

Here we go again. Brexit did not end on Friday night. Formal divorce proceedings reached a messy conclusion, but the couple will cohabit for at least another 11 months. Nothing in practice has changed. No one is hurt, yet. Anything might still happen.

A helpful sign has been the hopes expressed by sensible Europeans such as the former EU president, Donald Tusk, for friendly...

Britain has failed the beauty test: in our cities and countryside, planners run amok | Simon Jenkins

If adopted, proposals for the rural and urban environment could see the greatest reordering of public space in 70 years

Seldom does a philosopher get to rule. Now one does – if, sadly, posthumously. The late Roger Scruton’s government-backed report on “building better, building beautiful” is political philosophy in the raw. It comes hot on the heels of the government’s agriculture bill proposing a complete shift in farm support away from food and into “public money for public goods”. If...

Boris Johnson’s ‘global talent visa’ ignores economics – and ethics | Simon Jenkins

Britain does not need more scientists. Yet the PM wants to poach them from poorer countries and turn away everyone else

Now we know. Boris Johnson’s exclusive “global talent visa”, to be launched in February, is aimed at “the world’s scientists and mathematicians”. It will prove, he says, that post-Brexit “the UK is open to the most talented minds in the world” – so long as they are scientists. As for entrepreneurs, economists, humanitarians, historians, artists, let alone mere caring human...

HS2 was only ever about politics. And the battle will reach the heart of No 10 | Simon Jenkins

On the one side, the lobbyists; on the other, Boris Johnson’s closest advisers. This will be a major test of his mettle

Will it be yes or no to HS2? Within the next fortnight the answer is due on whether Britain needs a fifth rail pathway to the north from London. At more than 100bn, it would be the country’s biggest peacetime infrastructure project. HS2 no longer has anything to do with trains, let alone economics, politics or the north-south balance. It is about Boris Johnson and what sort...

Shipping the House of Lords north is a great idea. Let’s send the MPs as well | Simon Jenkins

Why not shift the entire national debate away from London while the Palace of Westminster is restored?

Will we soon see ermine on the Ouse? The weekend’s report that the House of Lords might be moving, lock, stock and barrel, to York is radical, exciting and sensible. If this is the new Boris Johnson, all hail the chief. It is precisely the talisman needed of a government that has had enough of the southwards drift. Such ideas are often mooted but always crushed by a reactionary Westminster....

Banning cars from city centres will enable our roads to blossom | Simon Jenkins

By making inner Birmingham car-free, the city has the chance to make amends for the terrible mistakes made in the 1960s

The great god Car is dead. The former acolytes assembled in the British petrolhead’s chief city of Birmingham this week and announced they never want to see bumper, bonnet or wheel spoke again – with most cars to be banned from a centre they hope can become uncongested, unpolluted and green. This is true revolution.

But what about the mess left behind? Birmingham in the 1960s...