Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 57

The EU election changes nothing. May’s deal is still the only way forward | Simon Jenkins

Forget these empty election results. There is only one solution to the Brexit challenge facing a new Tory prime minister

The European elections were meaningless. They can be read any way we want. Brexit won, but with a third of the vote, against anti-Brexit parties with much the same. Stir in a third of “others”, including Tories, Labour and nationalists, and soon all we get is noise. Britain still has a Tory government and a Labour opposition, both broken-backed. The vote was not for any ruli...

Without true friends or allies, Theresa May’s downfall was inevitable | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister’s failure to embrace pragmatism sealed her fate. Her successor will have to deploy very different skills

All political careers end in failure. Not all end in a punishment beating. The apparently imminent departure of Theresa May as Tory leader has seen a brutality rare even for the British Conservative party.

She was crowned with acclaim in 2016, and set the task of honouring the result of the Brexit referendum. In the 2017 election, she won almost as high a share of the popu...

Google’s Huawei ban is good news: tech giants shouldn’t always get their way | Simon Jenkins

Big tech has gone unchallenged for too long. Donald Trump’s decision to blacklist the Chinese company is changing that

The post-digital revolution starts here. Thank you, Donald Trump. The US president’s decision to blacklist Huawei, which has led to Google ending collaborating with the company, may have the worst of motives. It could have the best of consequences.

Related: Google blocks Huawei access to Android updates after blacklisting

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Venezuela’s dead revolution shows the limitations of the crowd | Simon Jenkins

From Caracas to Extinction Rebellion, the will of the masses doesn’t always triumph

Whatever happened to the Venezuelan revolution? Two weeks ago, we were assured by the media it was all over, bar the shouting. Television showed crowds controlling the streets of Caracas. A plane was on the tarmac and the decrepit regime of Nicolás Maduro was finished. He could not possibly survive, with his country in economic meltdown and only distant Russia on his side.

I know Venezuela and have watched its t...

The party leaders have failed on Brexit. The UK’s fate is now in MPs’ hands | Simon Jenkins

Last time round the Commons funked it. Now it must work across party lines to agree on a deal – and deliver it

An attempt to find a Tory-Labour compromise on Brexit was the right response to Brussels postponing the March date for the UK’s departure from the EU. Today it seems likely to fail. There is clearly no algorithm whereby Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn can agree on a mix of customs union and confirmatory referendum that might win a Commons majority. That being so, it is likely that there...

MPs plan to build themselves a palace. Have they lost all contact with reality? | Simon Jenkins

Parliament’s proposed ‘temporary accommodation’ is costly, unnecessary – and shows contempt for public opinion

You are an MP, staring glumly at the latest election results and wondering how to restore public respect. What is your first idea?

Incredibly, it is to dream up a palatial new debating chamber, vaguely costed at some half a billion, in the heart of the Westminster village. It will be lavishly furnished with sports facilities and guarded with a “security pavilion” inside an armed encamp...

Rat or stitch-up victim: how will history judge Gavin Williamson? | Simon Jenkins

The former defence secretary protests his innocence. But a sweary put-down of Theresa May can’t have helped his case

Is Gavin Williamson a disloyal rat, or is he a Tory Julian Assange, a valiant champion of open government in an age of secrecy? Is he a menace to national security, or is he the innocent victim of a toffs’ stitch-up? For an answer we may have to await a future memoir from one of the participants in this episode. But even then, the essence of a leak is deniability. The wink, the...

Some sort of Scottish independence is inevitable. May needs to face up to it | Simon Jenkins

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have never been in a stronger position. The future of the United Kingdom is in the balance

Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, yesterday reiterated her promise to give her country another referendum on independence within the next two years. After all, if there’s an argument for Britons having another Brexit referendum just three years after the last, Scotland can surely have another on independence after five years. Besides, Sturgeon must be thinking, was t...

To rage against Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK is simply childish | Simon Jenkins

No conceivable purpose is served by 200,000 people coming to London to shout insults at the US president

What is the matter with us? A US president has been invited to Britain on a state visit, and is coming in June. It is a state courtesy, between one democracy and another, on the occasion of a wartime anniversary. No conceivable purpose is served by 200,000 people coming to London to shout insults at him.

I cannot think what possessed Theresa May to invite Donald Trump in the first place, but...

What makes a great place to live? Answer: it’s not a shopping plaza | Simon Jenkins

Hipster watering holes in formerly run-down neighbourhoods are the new cathedrals

The best place to live in Britain today is Salisbury. So says the Sunday Times. The Office for National Statistics disagrees. It says the best place is Farnborough. No, says the Royal Mail, it is Winchester. The Provident says it is Worcester. The Halifax says it is Stornaway. And so it goes. This is listicle season, and not a magazine is without some daft “survey” of topographical superlatives. Each year groups...