Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 66

Donald Trump is right. Nato is a costly white elephant | Simon Jenkins

Its founding mission to combat a Russian invasion has faded. Europe needs a much leaner fighting force

Donald Trump is a pig, a liar, a woman-hater, a racist, a monster of bombast – and did I mention a disrupter and total bastard as well? Does that feel better? Comment on the current US president seems to require a wallow in the pit of competitive contempt. But it just plays his game.

I regard Trump as an aberration, a temporary trauma afflicting US politics. He honours the thesis of the histor...

David Davis has thrown a spanner into May’s Brexit plans | Simon Jenkins

Common sense says the UK needs workable trade arrangements with the EU – but the PM still faces a battle

No sooner does Theresa May win her cabinet critics over to her Brexit compromise than David Davis rains on her parade. Her chief Brexit negotiator has had enough. His resignation letter suggests a long-disaffected colleague, sidelined from negotiations and fed up with being the butt of feuds. Quite what he wanted from his job that was remotely achievable remains obscure. Now he is yesterday...

If the novichok was planted by Russia, where’s the evidence? | Simon Jenkins

No one has a clue about the Wiltshire poisonings – though the most obvious motive is someone out to embarrass Vladimir Putin

I seem to be the only person alive with no clue as to who has poisoned four people in Wiltshire. I am told that only Russians have access to the poison, known as novichok – though the British research station of Porton Down, located ominously nearby, clearly knows a lot about it. Otherwise, I repeat, I have no clue. I suppose I can see why the Kremlin might want to kill...

How to improve the World Cup? Scrap penalties and move the goalposts | Simon Jenkins

There’s no need to settle matches with a lottery when football’s laws could be tweaked to make them more high scoring

Penalty shootouts are an offence against the greatest of team games, association football. They are a lottery, doctored to add tension, personal agony, group ecstasy and nationalist hysteria, for the benefit of television. They are to sport what Love Island is to Romeo and Juliet.

Related: England’s win shows you can shake off the past – and not just on the pitch | Jonathan Fre...

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...