Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 72

Of course Russian sport is corrupt, but then so are the Olympics | Simon Jenkins

The whole project needs a rethink. Scrap all the flags: let athletes compete as citizens of the world

I have some sympathy for Vladimir Putin. For years, he was playing footsie with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC had surely known perfectly well, and for decades, that Russian athletes, like many others, were doped to the eyeballs. It turned a deaf ear to all whistleblowers and journalists on the subject, even when clear evidence was privately submitted to it and its laughabl...

Theresa May must call the DUP’s bluff – this EU deal has to happen | Simon Jenkins

A minority party has humiliated the British government by wielding a veto over the Irish border. May needs to garner all-party support to push through this deal

Fudge is good only if it tastes sweet. Theresa May’s deal with the EU on Irish border trade is apparently too bitter for Ulster’s Democratic Unionist party to stomach. Yesterday they wielded a veto. A British government at an international summit was humiliated by a minority party pursuing a minority point of view. It is why government...

If Damian Green looked at porn at work, that’s not a police matter | Simon Jenkins

Raiding an MP’s office – on the orders of a rival political party – in the hope of finding reputation-damaging material is worthy of a totalitarian regime

Is everything an MP sees on his office computer a matter of public interest? That phrase in law does not mean public prurience or gossip or fascination, but what impinges on his or her public duties. Nine years ago police were sent, on the initiative of the then Labour government, to raid the office of a Tory MP, Damian Green, now deputy pri...

This is not a strategy – it’s a fast track to the dark ages of rail | Simon Jenkins

As transport secretary, Chris Grayling should be investing in the northern axis, not vanity projects like the Oxbridge line

The transport secretary Chris Grayling announced this week that he plans to reopen five, possibly eight, railway lines closed by Richard Beeching, to cut overcrowding and increase capacity. Beeching, who wrote a report back in the 1960s that identified 5,000 miles of railway line for closure, has been dead for a quarter of a century. The lines he closed are reopening all...

The Irish border problem is the ultimate barrier to hard Brexit | Simon Jenkins

Any sort of border in Ireland, whether physical or regulatory, is politically impossible and publicly unpopular. That’s bad news for hard Brexiteers

Is Northern Ireland the first crack in the dam? There is no solution to hard Brexit along the Irish border. Negotiators have been chasing this will-o-the-wisp for over a year. They have not found it because it does not exist. A border is a border, it is not “not-a-border”. It means barriers, checks, queues, papers, regulations, tariffs. No one wan...

Europe needs a leader. Who will step up if Merkel goes? | Simon Jenkins

The German leader’s departure could bring crisis to the EU. Britain could have helped if it hadn’t jumped ship

Suddenly Brexit matters, a lot. Until recently I had regarded it as one of those crises that we muddle through somehow, like the bank collapse or the winter of discontent. Time is the great compromiser. Project fear would turn out to be project not-quite-as-bad-as-we-thought.

Related: What does Germany’s political crisis mean for Brexit? | Martin Kettle

Related: Merkel hints fresh el...

Blaming baby boomers won’t put roofs over young people’s heads, Sajid | Simon Jenkins

He’s taken sides with millennials, in a debate that has become about avocados. If he wanted to solve the housing ‘crisis’ he would boost social housing

If in doubt, blame someone else. Sajid Javid’s solution to the “housing crisis” is to accuse the baby-boomer bourgeoisie of south-east England of antagonising “avocado-eating millennials”. He says the baby boomers are impeding new houses in the countryside and rendering his Tory-deserting millennials “rootless and resentful of both capitalism a...

May needed to master the new politics that Brexit demands. But she’s failed | Simon Jenkins

Britain needed a prime minister to fight for what the public truly wants. Instead, she has driven all sides to extremes

Bastards, mutineers, saboteurs, enemies of the people. As the Brexit debate approaches climax, it is running short of terms of abuse. It reverts to the language politics knows best, of the bully in the playground. But this gives it a problem. Today’s bastards are not the Brexiters of old: they are yesterday’s moderates and pragmatists. Yesterday’s wildcats of hard Brexit have...

May must pay up and clear out the Brexit rebels. All else is madness | Simon Jenkins

Hardcore Brexiteers are in the minority – the prime minister must stand up to them. Talk of ‘no deal’ is illiterate, playing politics with other people’s lives

Why does Theresa May keep telling us what we already know? She says she will not “tolerate” Brexit backsliding from rebel remainer MPs. What we actually want to know she’s not tolerating is a much smaller group of flat-Earth rebels backsliding from a sensible Brexit. It is that madness she cannot fudge.

Related: Get Brexit deal fast, bu...

No more remembrance days – let’s consign the 20th century to history | Simon Jenkins

Almost all the conflicts in the world are caused by too much remembering: Britain should stop wallowing in past traumas and move on

Enough of Remembrance Day. This weekend’s memorial to “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” has become a synthetic festival whose time has passed. The wars of the 20th century are beyond the experience of the overwhelming majority of Britons. The composite of the Last Post, “lest we forget” and Oh! What a Lovely War is impregnated with enmity, atonemen...