Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 63

Make mine a glass of cannabis wine, thank you | Simon Jenkins

As Canada becomes the first country in the G7 to legalise marijuana, Sajid Javid wants a clampdown on UK users

Are you an interpener, a budtender or just a cannasseur? Do you go for indica or ruderalis? How do like your trichomes? Would you give Dad a cannador, or marry a weed sommelier? Do you read Weed Spectator? The jargon of America’s now-booming marijuana industry took a boost this week as Canada became the first G7 nation to legalise cannabis nationwide. Shops opened their doors and inve...

Don’t let Johnson and Rees-Mogg hold the UK to ransom | Simon Jenkins

Post-Brexit Britain will be better off if it continues to trade with the EU. To claim otherwise puts tens of thousands of jobs at risk

Brinkmanship needs a brink. Britain’s EU brink comes as border gates slam shut at Dover, the M20 jams and the French visa office is besieged. That prospect may delight Boris Johnson, David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg, but even the deepest cynic must assume those elected to lead the country will not let it happen.

Related: Theresa May’s reward for a Brexit deal? P...

London remains a safe haven for the world’s dirty cash | Simon Jenkins

The government’s new unexplained wealth orders are a hopelessly weak weapon against money laundering

Britain’s denial that it launders money is like Russia’s denial that it poisons spies. No one believes a word of it. If I walked into my bank and tried to deposit £55m, I would be asked to see the manager, if not the police. But if I were to shift such sums through a Belgravia flat or a West End jeweller or an offshore tax haven, I would be offered a tier 1 golden visa and honoured status as an...

Why you shouldn’t believe that ‘police aren’t investigating half of crimes’ | Simon Jenkins

Police forces are under huge pressure, but their crime reports require a pinch of salt – including this latest scare story

The Home Office is trying to scare the public, so it can squeeze more money out of the Treasury. Hardly a day passes without “news” of soaring knife crime, rampant sex offences, computer fraud and, on tonight’s Channel 4 Dispatches, the revelation that there are too few police to follow up half of all offences.

West Yorkshire reported an 11% crime rise last year, yet it has...

Banging your head over Brexit? Despite all the fury, we have to stay engaged | Simon Jenkins

If we really have to leave the EU, voters must force MPs to come together on the things that matter

Dear Mariella, I have a problem.

I can’t stand any more Brexit. I tear up newspapers. I scream and dive for the TV off button. I have already smashed one radio. I crouch in a foetal position, banging my head against the wall. I fear my wife will leave me. And politics is my business. What can I do?

Related: The Tories lack any vision – they can see nothing but Brexit | Rafael Behr

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Hysterical, alcoholic and cut-throat: party conferences should be banned | Simon Jenkins

These events are utterly detached from reality. To draw any conclusions from what happens at them is pointless

Don’t go to party conferences. Ignore them. They should be banned. When blind loyalty meets crazed dissent fuelled by personal ambition, the result is a disease, a ghastly rash on the body politic. The overheated, hysterical, alcoholic, distorting atmosphere of these events leads to misjudgment – not least by journalists disoriented by being corralled for weeks far from London.

After l...

Yes we must take back control, not from Brussels – from Whitehall | Simon Jenkins

While local council budgets plummet, centralised government gains ever more power

Take back control. After two bloodstained years in British politics, it remains the one Brexit slogan with a modicum of potency. It drips with self-righteous empowerment. It depicts remainers as shiftily in thrall to Brussels, while shielding Brexiters from the charge of mere xenophobia. It is also utterly cynical.

In a recent series of interviews for this paper, John Harris travelled the country, going “anywhere...

Sajid Javid’s immigration proposal exposes the insanity of Brexit | Simon Jenkins

The home secretary knows he has to keep Britain’s borders open, despite migration being the key driver of the Brexit vote

Reality is at last dawning. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, is reportedly to propose that EU passport holders will be waved through immigration “for 30 months”, in the event of a no-deal Brexit next March. They will only need to apply for visas later, if they wish to stay permanently.

This is reportedly a concession to business, employers and the chancellor, Philip Hammond....

Walking in Benjamin Britten's footsteps, Suffolk

Simon Jenkins walks from the Snape Maltings concert hall to Aldeburgh beach, under the vast skies and through the marshland that so inspired the composer

Just a few yards separate the doors of Snape Maltings from the Alde marshes. They pass from modern concert hall to utter serenity. Music and place do not always make happy partners, but the music of Benjamin Britten is infused with this Suffolk coast. I once heard the high-pitched chords of his Sea Interludes drift out of a rehearsal and sett...

Fragmented railways will never work, public or private | Simon Jenkins

As long as Britain’s trains and infrastructure are run as separate entities, the chaos will continue

Imagine going into a restaurant, sitting down and giving your order to the waiter. The order is then passed into a back kitchen, where someone employed by a different owner is contracted to cook it, arguing all the time with his lawyers and accountants over the recipe and the price. That is Britain’s rail system, born of idiocy and ideology in Whitehall 25 years ago. It is demoralised and it i...