Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 76

Parliament needs to leave London and reconnect with the people | Simon Jenkins

MPs know they have to leave the crumbling Palace of Westminster. Where better to go during the restoration than the provinces they have neglected for so long?

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

‘Ye are a factious crew and enemies to all good government … lock up the doors. In the name of God, go.” As MPs retreat this week from a tempestuous session of parliament, Oliver Cromwell’s expulsion of their predecessors in 1653 is about to haunt them.

An urgent decision will be required this a...

China is giving Trump a lesson in how to handle Kim Jong-un | Simon Jenkins

Rather than getting embroiled in a petty feud over an exaggerated threat from North Korea, Beijing is playing the long game

Is my missile as big as yours? I bet it goes farther and makes a bigger bang. Anything you can do I can do better. Don’t push me too far. I could lose my temper.

The fallout over North Korea’s missile test marks a return to the diplomacy of dumb. The news that its infantile leader, Kim Jong-un, had fired a long-range missile “with the possible potential to reach Alaska”, i...

Soft Brexit is the only sane option. This is no time for partisan politics | Simon Jenkins

Voter fantasy and economic reality can’t be squared. As compromise will be needed, our political parties will need to work together in the national interest

Goodbye, Glastonbury; hello, House of Commons. As the tide of Jeremy Corbyn’s glory recedes, the familiar rubble of Labour disunity once again litters the beach, notably in the rebellious person of Chuka Umunna. The cause appears to be an angels-on-a-pinhead dispute among Labour soft Brexiters, between those who want to stay in the single...

Theresa May’s DUP deal could put confidence back into provincial Britain | Simon Jenkins

If the prime minister can borrow for Ulster for two years in government, then she must now extend her largess to the rest of the union

Can anything rescue Theresa May’s reputation from this week’s DUP fiasco? There is not the remotest public interest in political blackmail and bribery, in grinding self-interest, in the dollop of £540 a head to Ulster voters who are already subsidy addicts. It merely tells us what two years in No 10 costs these days: a billion pounds of other peo...

Hinkley Point is a terrible deal. May must show courage and cancel it | Simon Jenkins

The era of the dinosaur vanity project is over – money is desperately needed to redress the effects of austerity. Tough decisions are needed

They haven’t gone away. The great spending dinosaurs of the political dark ages, back before June 2017, are still roaming the jungle. Theresa May’s first decision as prime minister, to approve the £18bn Hinkley Point nuclear power station, is still crashing about Whitehall. Now the national audit office (NAO) has added its voice to those calling it a real...

A lesson from Grenfell Tower: mourn in public, but grieve in private | Simon Jenkins

The collective response demanded by disasters on this scale must not deny us the space to move on. Life must be lived forwards

Are you grief or rage? Three days ago I watched a news crew at work outside Grenfell Tower. They were interviewing an elderly Muslim woman and needed a composite shot of the blackened tower, her face and a picture she was holding. They clearly wanted her to cry. I sensed her dignity in being unable to oblige. Amid the overwhelming sadness of the place, I felt fury at s...

A lesson from Grenfell Park: mourn in public, but grieve in private | Simon Jenkins

The collective response demanded by disasters on this scale must not deny us the space to move on. Life must be lived forwards

Are you grief or rage? Three days ago I watched a news crew at work outside Grenfell Tower. They were interviewing an elderly Muslim woman and needed a composite shot of the blackened tower, her face and a picture she was holding. They clearly wanted her to cry. I sensed her dignity in being unable to oblige. Amid the overwhelming sadness of the place, I felt fury at s...

What’s our priority now? Not politics but to help a neighbourhood hit by catastrophe | Simon Jenkins

Let’s not waste millions of pounds trying to find one culprit for Grenfell. We must accept there will be degrees of responsibility – and perhaps degrees of penalty

• Grenfell Tower fire - latest updates

All disasters can be politicised, but it does not always help. When emotions run high, the craving is for someone to blame. When lives are lost, if not through malice then possibly through negligence, we want to point the finger. But making us somehow feel better must be beside the point. The...

The lesson from Grenfell is simple: stop building residential towers | Simon Jenkins

High-rise blocks are wholly out of place and character. Rather, a modern, sociable city needs neighbourhoods
• Grenfell Tower fire: six victims provisionally identified, say police – latest updates

How many times should we say it? Don’t build residential towers. Don’t make or let people live in them, least of all families. They are antisocial, high-maintenance, disempowering, unnecessary, mostly ugly, and they can never be truly safe. No tower is fireproof. No fire engine can reach up 20 storey...

London’s MPs have the power to change the course of Brexit | Simon Jenkins

Hard Brexit would be disastrous for the capital’s economy. The city’s 73 MPs need to start making demands, for the sake of national prosperity

Londoners, arise! Not since Cromwell’s civil war has the capital been in a stronger position to hold parliament to ransom. But does it know it? Already Irish and Scottish MPs are marching on the capital, laying down terms for supporting Theresa May’s crippled regime as it embarks on the Brexit adventure. London is far more powerful. It was for remain, a...