Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 64

Michael Gove is right: it’s vital to get the Chequers deal through | Simon Jenkins

Hard-Brexit fantasists and deluded remainers who threaten to oppose the plan in parliament risk unleashing chaos

Sanity time is at hand. Michael Gove is right. The reckless, crash-bang-wallop of the hard-Brexit fantasists has had its day. They have not produced a plausible future for British trade with Europe. The default option is now “crashing out”, and that is infantile. Of course the Chequers proposal has problems. But it takes the UK out of the EU and keeps frictionless trade with EU memb...

God aside, for whom does Justin Welby speak? | Simon Jenkins

Even if you agree with the archbishop of Canterbury’s criticism of the gig economy, he has inappropriate power in a secular country

So it’s the Justin and Jezza show. The Church of England is no longer the Tory party at prayer, it is the Labour party. According to the archbishop of Canterbury, God is for higher taxes, trade union protection, a ban on the gig economy and a living wage of £8.75. He also wants universal credit to be abandoned. Or rather, if this is not God’s view, then why else i...

From Sweden to Brexit, immigration is the issue dividing Europe | Simon Jenkins

Xenophobia is sweeping the continent. European agreement to address migration is vital

The message is glaring from Sweden’s election result. There is one dominant issue in Europe’s politics at present, and it is immigration. It rules in Italy and Germany. It rules in Hungary and Austria. It rules from Serbia to Scandinavia. It dominates every meeting of the leaders of the EU. It obsesses the United Kingdom, except there it cloaks itself in the euphemism of “reaching trade agreements with the r...

Britain’s reaction to the Salisbury poisonings plays into Putin’s hands | Simon Jenkins

Secret agencies have their methods, unknown to their superiors, and no one’s hands are clean. The response to this attempted murder has been infantile

There is “no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality”. The poet Thomas Babington Macaulay might have had in mind the saga of the attempted killing last March of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and the subsequent death of a bystander. The reaction to the sad affair has been cynical, dis...

Boris Johnson’s latest Brexit outburst combines madness and mendacity | Simon Jenkins

This is the worst way to stage a Tory leadership challenge. The Chequers deal is not ‘humiliating’ or a scandal

Never trust a man who can’t master his metaphors. Boris Johnson’s latest outburst has Theresa May’s Brexit tank flying a white flag while losing a wrestling match after being locked in a car boot as it cherrypicks a magnetic field. Is this the scrambled mind that reportedly called the Chequers deal a triumph a month ago – before deciding that writing Telegraph columns was easier than...

Hooligan Brexiters now offer a mad, dystopian future nobody voted for | Simon Jenkins

A hard Brexit would entail years of chaos. But no deal would be far worse, whatever Dominic Raab says

I was awakened by the bedside radio coming to life, leaving me briefly lost between a bad dream and reality. Two BBC World Service reporters were calmly discussing a nation gone raving mad. Its food needed stockpiling. Medicines were running low. Ports were jammed and motorways were turning into vast lorry parks. Foreigners were fleeing, care homes emptying of staff, fruit lying unpicked. Wher...

Worrying about robots stealing our jobs? How silly | Simon Jenkins

The digital age will free us up not only for leisure activities but also to take on caring roles that can only be filled by humans

So we are doomed. Robots will steal our jobs. Algorithms will capture our children. Artificial intelligence will corrupt our free will. We are to be slaves to machines.

The Bank of England economist Andy Haldane warns today that “large swathes” of current labour will disappear as AI takes over. For a man who lives and breathes statistics, large swathes is a poor per...

Museums are not the proper home for our greatest works | Simon Jenkins

The permanent resting place for Stephenson’s Rocket should be a railway platform

What is the connection between an Ethiopian’s hair, a famous steam engine and a set of chess pieces? The answer is that all are topics of dispute in the murky world of museum politics. The hair was cut from the head of a dead emperor and brought to London by a victorious British general in 1868. Now in the army museum in Chelsea but regarded by Ethiopians as sacred, its return has long been requested by Addis Abab...

More British troops are being sent to Afghanistan – to appease Trump | Simon Jenkins

Why is no politician of any party brave enough to challenge the UK’s continued involvement in this distant and hopeless war?

Four hundred and forty British troops are about to leave for Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban. Could someone explain why? It is now four years since British troops “left” that country, after 13 long years and £40bn of fighting, culminating in defeat in Helmand. In 2014, Nato formally ended its retaliation for Afghanistan harbouring Osama bin Laden. It said it would...

The HS2 rail project is out of date and out of control. But it can still be halted | Simon Jenkins

Britain is cutting care homes and children’s centres, yet blowing £80bn on a railway line that has failed every viability test

Vanity projects are like foreign wars. They ensnare politicians and drive them mad. A high-speed rail track from London to Birmingham and beyond was first sold to David Cameron in 2009 as a glamorous alternative to a third runway at Heathrow, which he had pledged never to build. HS2 was stupid then, and has grown ever stupider ever since.

Related: HS2 is not a useless...