Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 73

Is violent crime on the rise – or do the latest figures mask a different story? | Simon Jenkins

The unbelievable ONS statistics scream of an alarming crime surge, but they only reflect reporting activity. These misleading figures should be banned

The Home Office should ban the Office for National Statistics from issuing “police-recorded crime figures”, the latest batch of which were published yesterday. These statistics are part of a concerted campaign by police forces in England and Wales to resist cuts, boost budgets and bias workloads. Headlines indicate knife crime “highest for six y...

The head of MI5 has lost the plot. Britain is safer than ever in its history | Simon Jenkins

Andrew Parker seems to have suffered a panic attack this week. Random acts of terror don’t threaten the UK’s existence

Oh my God, the Muslims are going to get us. Watch out. Our national security is “more under threat than ever”. Our lives are seeing a “dramatic upshift” in threat levels, with “plots from overseas, plots online, complex scheming and crude stabbings, lengthy planning but also spontaneous attacks”. MI5 boss Andrew Parker seemed close to a panic attack on Tuesday. He found threat...

Theresa May needs a ‘coalition of the sane’ to stave off Brexit calamity | Simon Jenkins

There is no public or business demand for a cliff-edge Brexit. The prime minister has to work with other parties to sideline the Tories’ extremist minority

So high are the Brexit stakes that divorce talks were always likely to go to the line. After yesterday’s “deadlock”, this appears to be the case. There must surely be an urgent heads of government session, at least involving Britain, France and Germany, to cut a deal on cash and talks on trade. It is time to bring on the grownups.

Related:...

The tech giants operate like cars without brakes. They must be reined in | Simon Jenkins

Intimidation, grooming, exploitation: we pay too high a price for the internet’s wonders. The state has to introduce far tougher regulation

The stupidest article I ever wrote, in the 1990s, forecast that the internet would benefit just two groups of people: lawyers and pornographers. I was wrong. I and millions of others have benefited vastly from this innovation. But I was right in one respect: that its blessings would be mixed.

Not a day passes without apocalyptic wails against the internet....

In Manchester, May showed that her nerve – if not her voice – holds firm | Simon Jenkins

I suspect the prime minister will emerge curiously strengthened by her speech. She may be unpopular, but survive she will. For the time being

Gone by the autumn: that was the conventional wisdom when Theresa May failed to win her election majority last summer. She was a dead woman walking. She would not even make it to her party conference, let alone survive it.

She is still there, and shows no signs of leaving. So much for the conventional wisdom, biased always to apocalypse and bored by conti...

10 of the best railway stations in Britain

Simon Jenkins’ new book tells the history of Britain’s railways through the island’s 100 best stations. We pick 10 gems, from grand old York to a Highland outpost

Nowhere is British railway architecture so honoured as in Huddersfield, one of the few stations fit to rank with the great union terminuses of the continent. Sir John Betjeman declared it “the most splendid facade in England”. The main entrance presides over St George’s Square with a princely confidence, focus of what is a rare survi...

From Spain to Iraq, states have to see that suppressing secession won’t work | Simon Jenkins

Madrid’s heavy-handed approach to Catalonian independence is a mistake. It’s better to compromise and allow a degree of ‘autonomy-lite’

Forget Brexit. The referendum that really matter is this Sunday in the wealthy Spanish province of Catalonia and its great city of Barcelona. A Catalan vote for independence from Spain would trigger a similar vote in Euskal Herria, the Basque country, and start Spain down the road to disintegration. The outcome of the referendum is considered too close to call...

Corbyn’s man of the future act is hooked on dogmas of the past | Simon Jenkins

Look behind the slogans and Labour’s new project reeks of pre-Blair revivalism, not the radicalism of the left

Jeremy Corbyn’s passage from antihero to premier-in-waiting is the phenomenon of modern politics. Three months ago the idea was absurd that a gauche, accident-prone backbench grump might plausibly stand before cheering supporters and declare himself “in the political mainstream … on the threshold of power and ready for government”. Yet so it is. Were Theresa May’s Tories to implode, w...

May has to take back control of Brexit from the hard-liners and the plotters | Simon Jenkins

Florence is the prime minister’s chance to build bridges with EU negotiators and quell the revolt from within her party

At last Theresa May will make the speech she should have made a year ago. Her Florence proposals are clearly intended to decontaminate the polluted air round the Brexit talks. She hopes for concord with EU negotiators on a compromise first step towards British departure, on a reasonable timetable. There has to be a deal on this. There has to be a move back from the “cliff-edg...

Ignore Trump’s lies. North Korea is no threat to Britain | Simon Jenkins

Kim Jong-un does not present an existential threat, and in the end it will be up to China to cut him down to size

Donald Trump’s United Nations performance on Tuesday was dangerous. It was dangerous not for the testosterone tub-thumping and infantile imagery. It was dangerous for being based on a lie. Trump said: “If forced to defend ourselves and our allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

Related: Is Trump about to repeat George W Bush's worst mistake? | Michael F...