Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 66

Theresa May has run out of road. This week she must face down Tory Brexit rebels | Simon Jenkins

The Norway model has always been the only sane option and the cabinet must accept it or resign

There is no more road. This week the can hits the wall. Theresa May must present her Brussels negotiators with an agreed cabinet template for Brexit, or they, and she, will slither into chaos. She must end the intransigence of her rebel cabinet members, who must accept her leadership or go. The public interest requires that this week be Boris Johnson’s last as foreign secretary.

May’s negotiators unde...

It’s delusional to think Britain should be a global military power | Simon Jenkins

The armed forces want a big increase in defence spending. They are dreaming up threats

The generals don’t know whether to cheer or cry. This time each year, they restage the battle of Waterloo, with the Treasury as the dastardly French. Old comrades and chiefs of staff are summoned to the colours, to gallop through the letters pages and on to the BBC. This month the call is to increase defence spending from 2.1% of GDP to 2.5%, or even 3%. Suddenly to their rescue have come, of all people, Vla...

Bravo, amateur statue restorer in Spain. Originals are so overrated | Simon Jenkins

It is fitting that fading works of art such as the effigy of St George in Estella are maintained by local people

All hail the primitivists of Pamplona and their vivid and controversial restoration of a statue of St George: colourful, poignant, simplistic. The 16th-century effigy in a church in Estella has incurred the fury of the mayor for its unauthorised execution by “a local handicrafts teacher”.

The incident recalls the scandal six years ago when a 20th-century fresco of Christ in the Spani...

Blame liberal democracy’s flaws for Erdoğan’s win, not the voters | Simon Jenkins

Hurling abuse at the Turkish electorate will not have the desired effect. The fault lies with democratic institutions

How many warnings do liberals need? The victory of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, hands power, virtually for ever, to a ruler of 80 million people on Europe’s southern border. His opponents are jailed, his press is censored, his promised reforms give him unlimited control. He is undeniably popular.

Related: Bully-boy Erdoğan is a threat to Turkey – and the world | Si...

Scandals like Gosport will be repeated until government targets are banned | Simon Jenkins

Something is rotten when lone whistleblowers are relied on to enforce good behaviour in the NHS

Who should have blown the whistle at Gosport? Nurses, managers, other doctors, relatives or hospital inspectors? Who was in charge of 456 premature deaths, and what does “in charge” mean in the elephantine bureaucracy that is Britain’s National Health Service?

The answer is it means nothing. It cannot be otherwise in an institution bigger than any other public or private corporation in Europe. Stagge...

Britain’s drug laws are in the dark ages. Billy Caldwell’s case proves it | Simon Jenkins

How can Sajid Javid deny long-term access to the cannabis oil that would control this boy’s epilepsy? This cruelty must end

What kind of country gets a politician rather than a doctor to prescribe medicine for a sick child? When the home secretary, Sajid Javid, decided at the weekend to allow 12-year-old Billy Caldwell “one bottle” of cannabis oil, his spokeswoman said it was an exceptional case to meet “a short-term emergency”. The only emergency was to the home secretary’s reputation. Britai...

Once children were birched at school. Now they are taught maths | Simon Jenkins

Modern education’s obsession with rankings blights the lives of intelligent pupils – never more so than at exam time

I used to long to be a child again. Not any more. British children seem under perpetual assault from the three horsemen of the apocalypse: obesity, social media and the manic gods of examination. Of these the most needless, and clearly dangerous, is the exam. The signs of stress are blatant. One in 10 schoolchildren now has a “clinically diagnosable mental illness”. Rates of tee...

Trump’s vulgarity could be the one diplomatic style Kim Jong-un understands | Simon Jenkins

With North Korea backed into a corner, Trump must pander to Kim’s vanity. The meeting could redefine international relations

A battered phoenix is struggling to rise from the ashes of the G7 fiasco. It is diplomacy, Trump-style. The American president in Singapore today appears determined, against all odds, to cut some sort of deal to denuclearise North Korea. To him, the G7 summit in Canada was a pointless gathering of political toffs. North Korea is different. He has made it his own. Having...

Heathrow airport’s polluting new runway is a macho folly | Simon Jenkins

This go-ahead is the worst decision taken by a UK government in modern times

The building of a third runway at Heathrow must be the worst decision taken by a British government in modern times. There is nothing in it but private profit for a Spanish company that appears to have the British cabinet in thrall. That a rich European city should expand rather than contract a major airport in a built-up area defies belief.

For half a century successive governments have refused to contemplate such exp...

Sajid Javid’s counter-terrorism plans risk Britain’s freedom | Simon Jenkins

The new home secretary is close to capitulating to terrorism’s prime goal – undermining the liberties and dignities of the state

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has made an astonishing proposal among his raft of strategies to be unveiled today. It is that personal information possessed by MI5 on some 20,000 British “suspected” citizens be declassified and shared with local authorities, police “and others”. This is in order to “counter terrorism”. There is no way such material can possibly sta...