Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 59

With Brexit now on hold, there’s only one option left: compromise | Simon Jenkins

The referendum vote must be honoured, but Theresa May’s red lines will have to fade. It’s time to reach out to Labour

The Brexit chasm has seemed unbridgeable. No path has appeared through the impasse. Tonight a glimmer of a route came into view. Parliament decided to ask the EU to postpone Brexit day and extend the negotiating phase, probably for three months. It did so, shamelessly, because it could not agree on what on earth to do next.

The EU, reasonably, asks why. If the UK could not decid...

If May loses Tuesday’s Brexit vote, she must back a customs union or go | Simon Jenkins

A soft Brexit is the only option left for the prime minister. If she won’t back it, she should step aside

Theresa May has only one way forward tomorrow. If she loses yet another Brexit vote, she must immediately offer one she can win. She knows well what that is, as Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has left her in no doubt. It would propose leaving the EU on 29 March, in accordance with the referendum result, but remain in Europe’s customs union. If doing so requires a suspension of article 50 of the EU...

Would you like your Brexit vanilla or Marmite? It’s time to choose | Simon Jenkins

There can be no ducking the choice facing the country

This is it. Next week sees the end of the beginning of Brexit – and the beginning of the end. Theresa May is determined to offer herself for ritual lynching by her mob of free-trade anarchists, having spent two years failing to face them down. Parliament will then liberate itself from her torture, and seek a new way forward. The plan is for May’s defeat on Tuesday to be followed by a vote against no deal, and then by its only sane consequen...

May’s Brexit bung to the north is pathetic. It changes nothing | Simon Jenkins

The £1.6bn the PM has promised to secure Labour support for her deal is no match for years of systematic neglect

Theresa May’s bung is like Donald Trump’s wall. You give me my Northern Ireland border deal, she says to Labour, and I will give your people oodles of cash. Except that May has blown it. She has promised Labour MPs in the Midlands and north £1.6bn, but they have not promised her the deal. She is apparently relying on the kindness of their hearts. How stupid is that? She is even offe...

Sex education is not a matter for ministers | Simon Jenkins

It should be for individual schools to decide how and what they teach their children about relationships

Who should teach children about sex? The education secretary, Damian Hinds, must be desperate for attention. This week of all weeks, he has taken the government into battle with Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, probably half the Conservative party and 100,000 petitioners to parliament. Hinds wants instruction in LGBT “sensitivity and inclusiveness” to be “integral throughout the program...

Brexit is too important to be rushed. Let’s calm down and press ‘pause’ | Simon Jenkins

The UK’s future depends on a sensible compromise being reached. To achieve it, we will have to delay our departure date

Delay, delay, delay. Today’s parliament well mirrors the nation. It is implacably split. It cannot make up its mind on how to leave the EU next month. So it should just stop, calm down and think.

There is a sensible way forward into the two-year transition period, and it is called Theresa May’s deal with the EU. But since some 80 Tory fundamentalists will not have it and hold...

The City may thrive despite Brexit, but the rest of us won’t | Simon Jenkins

With a ‘free port’ deal negotiated behind closed doors, the financial sector will be fine. Meanwhile, others face ruin

An iron law of modern British government says that whatever London wants, London gets. On Monday, with no fuss or publicity, the Bank of England and a group of City interests reached an apparently boring deal in Paris with the European Security and Markets Authority. It follows a similar deal with the European commission last December. Both state, in effect, that, as far as th...

Facebook is out of control and politicians have no idea what to do | Simon Jenkins

A Commons report lays bare horrifying abuses. But the UK is no closer to regulating the far-too-powerful tech industry

Death threats, bullying, mental torture, privacy invasion, election rigging, fake news, monopoly abuse: as was said of a medieval pope, this is merely to suppress more serious charges. It is hard to recall the social media of 15 years ago and its offer of universal love, democracy and global peace. Britain’s parliament has finally caught up, and today’s Commons report is at le...

The Churchill row is part of the glib approach to history that gave us Brexit | Simon Jenkins

John McDonnell is entitled to dislike Britain’s wartime leader. But simplistic views of the past are at the root of many woes

Churchill, hero or villain? Prince Charles, goodie or baddie? Jesus Christ, yes or no? John McDonnell, modern Herodotus or fool? Tick the boxes and pass the GCSE. Welcome to the new history. McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, is entitled to dislike Winston Churchill, but why for Tonypandy? Churchill happened to be Liberal home secretary in 1910 and was asked to authorise...

British ‘lethality’? Gavin Williamson’s brain has gone absent without leave | Simon Jenkins

The defence secretary’s big talk about boosting the UK’s ‘global presence’ and ‘hard power’ proves he’s lost touch with reality

The defence secretary’s brain has gone absent without leave. Gavin Williamson said in a speech today that he intends to send his new aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, round the world to frighten China. He will equip it with a squadron of F-35 fighter jets, purchased from America. In addition he wants to build two British military bases, one in Asia and the ot...