Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 77

The rise of the remainers is about to begin. May’s Brexit strategy lies in ruins | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister called this election to strengthen her EU negotiating hand. With just 10 days before urgent talks, these results could prove a Brexit blessing

The new Tory “bastards”. Never take the electors for granted. Never believe what they tell pollsters. They have left Theresa May’s government clinging to office, devastated and in disarray. They have left Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition defeated yet cock-a-hoop. Scottish nationalism has been dealt a blow. The Liberal Democrats have...

I can’t believe in May or Corbyn, but the ballot is sacred. How to vote? | Simon Jenkins

In an era of post-tribal politics, personalities have failed to convince me. Going into this election, the pain of choice is unavoidable

Today is election day, and agony. I was brought up to treat the ballot as sacramental. That stubby pencil on its greasy string was democracy’s Excalibur, the magic sword that tamed the game of thrones, and won power for the people. If we dared ask my father how he voted, he would say men had fought and died for the secrecy of the ballot. He would no...

Trump wants to shut out the world. Ditching the Paris deal proves it | Simon Jenkins

The president’s decision to withdraw from the climate agreement reflects his contempt for internationalism – and the rise of a newly isolationist US

So we do have a new US – for the present. In the jargon of Trumpology, the president has tossed a sop to his climate-change denying chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and disappointed his green daughter, Ivanka. Or at least he is withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord in three years (Bannon) but “renegotiating” it (Ivanka).

Related: Preside...

We all want to live longer. But someone must pay | Simon Jenkins

Theresa May was quite right to ask who should bear the burden that increased longevity is putting on social care. But then she lost her nerve

The Oxford professor of gerontology Sarah Harper this week declared that the life expectancy of a British baby born today is an astonishing 104 years. Modern medicine is lengthening the average life span by 15 minutes with every passing hour. Seventy is the new 50. Pensioner marriages are soaring.

As a result, Harper points out, we are in “the crazy...

Corbyn is right: of course Manchester was linked to British foreign policy | Simon Jenkins

We committed armed aggression against sovereign peoples who had not attacked us, claiming our motive was ‘to keep terror off the streets of Britain’

Jeremy Corbyn is perfectly right to relate this week’s Manchester terrorist atrocity to British foreign policy in the Middle East. Whenever Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron struggled to explain why British blood and finance had to go on toppling regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, they were explicit: it was “to prevent terrorism in t...

Enough of Theresa May’s outrage. We need a tough response to terror | Simon Jenkins

The prime minister is playing into the hands of terrorists by politicising the Manchester attack. Her job is to allay public anxiety, not promote it

What public purpose is served by the prime minister declaring she has raised Britain’s “threat level” to “critical”? Before she thought another terrorist attack was “highly likely”. It is now “expected immediately”.

What are we supposed to do with this information, other than feel vaguely alarmed? The words can have meaning only in the wa...

What did the first TV leaders’ debate reveal? Toryism’s useful idiots | Simon Jenkins

May and Corbyn were not there, but they were represented. For the Tories, it was a bonanza – with four left-of-centre parties all out to take votes from Labour

It is not true that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May were not present at last night’s minority party debate on television. They were not there in person, but they were well represented by those who were.

A grand fiction of British general elections is that they are multi-party affairs. Since the dawn of the universal franchise they have bee...

Why the Oxford stabbing student really is too talented for jail | Simon Jenkins

The scandal is not that Lavinia Woodwarde could be spared prison for stabbing her boyfriend. It is that so many others are denied the same understanding

The way to stay out of prison in today’s Britain is to go to Oxford University. Christ Church college undergraduate Lavinia Woodward, 24, dosed on drugs, punched her boyfriend in the face, stabbed him with a bread knife, hurled a laptop at him, then followed up with a glass and a jam jar. They do nothing by halves at Christ Church.

Her defence...

To jail Lavinia Woodward would have ruined her prospects for no purpose | Simon Jenkins

The scandal is not that the Oxford student was spared prison for stabbing her boyfriend. It is that so many others are denied the same understanding

The way to stay out of prison in today’s Britain is to go to Oxford University. Christ Church college undergraduate Lavinia Woodward, 24, dosed on drugs, punched her boyfriend in the face, stabbed him with a bread knife, hurled a laptop at him, then followed up with a glass and a jam jar. They do nothing by halves at Christ Church.

Her defence coun...

Mice benefit from research into cannabis. Why not us? | Simon Jenkins

Instead of forging ahead with research on the benefits of cannabis, the UK criminalises millions

Reports in Tuesday’s Guardian were little short of sensational. Cannabis use dramatically improves memory capacity in older brains. German research suggests that small doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) produced “profound, long-lasting improvement in cognitive performance”.

The results indicated that this could possibly stave off dementia for five to 10 years, the reverse of the impact cannabi...