Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 9

Our schools don’t prepare young people for life. National service could change that | Simon Jenkins

Forget the military, but working under supervision in the NHS, care sector or for a charity could be hugely beneficial for many

Rishi Sunak’s reinvention of national service is a desperate, last-minute election gimmick. But that does not make it a bad idea. If there is one phase in education across Britain that is way off course, it is the higher teens. Sixth-form, higher and further education are deeply reactionary, more plagued than ever by introverted academic syllabuses and obsessive testin...

Memo to Keir Starmer: say change, change, change all you want, but soon our problems will be yours to fix | Simon Jenkins

Labour’s pitch is basically ‘elect us, we’re not Tory’, but people will quickly demand real improvements

We are told the focus groups are clear as a bell. No, Labour’s Keir Starmer is not exhilarating. No, the economy is not screaming for new management. Yes, the world is a mess. But one message for sure was splashed across Starmer’s lectern on Wednesday: give us “change”.

Rishi Sunak has not been a signally worse prime minister than his recent predecessors. Eighteen months ago he was handed a tou...

Julian Assange has paid a heavy price for his leaks – the US should let him go home | Simon Jenkins

From Joe Biden’s point of view, returning the WikiLeaks founder to Australia and consigning him to history may be the wisest move

The Julian Assange farce has run its time. He should be left to return to his homeland of Australia. Yet another appeal against successive British court decisions to extradite him to the US has been allowed. It merely prolongs the tedium. Washington should consider Assange’s more than a decade on the run to be penalty enough for his past sins. It should not want to see...

For a bird’s eye view of British conservatism, look at sport. No wonder VAR in football is in trouble | Simon Jenkins

Once we create rules and customs, it’s a devil’s job to change them. The debate about video refereeing will be a mighty test

There is one test of a true radical. It is not a quest for revolution in politics, philosophy, art or religion. The challenge lies in the realm of sport. Sport alone is immune to reform. It is enslaved to the past.

Olympic athletes wield the weapons of ancient Athens. The golf club dates from the hundred years war. The size of a football goal was fixed in a Holborn pub in 18...

Britain’s ‘most dangerous’ years lie ahead, warns Sunak. It’s cheap politics from a floundering PM | Simon Jenkins

Beleaguered British leaders have always resorted to shielding their belligerence behind a wall of ‘values’. That’s what today’s speech was about

Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish to win votes. He warns today that the next few years will be among the most terrifying and “transformative” the country has ever known. Britain faces the “most dangerous threat” to its security from “colluding authoritarian states” since the end of the cold war.

Such threats are politics at its cheapest. Every war indulged i...

It’s as if misogyny was the vice that dared not speak its name at the Garrick. That cloud has now lifted | Simon Jenkins

I saw a voting process that was both dignified and moving – and as a member of long standing, I welcome this change

The Garrick Club’s vote this week in favour of admitting women as members mattered. It mattered – and was the subject of widespread public debate – because the club’s prominence in London’s establishment landscape made its exclusion of women seem unjust and wrong. With a large number of senior judges and other public servants as members, it simply could not pass as just another club...

England’s metro mayors make a farce of local democracy. They must be scrapped | Simon Jenkins

They were meant to refresh local politics, not confuse it. Starmer must devolve proper powers to every city and town

England’s 12 “metro mayors” should be abolished. Metro mayorships are artificial creations whose regional geography rarely reflects any civic identity or pride. Towns and cities should have properly elected mayors, as is common in other democracies. These regional entities were invented by Whitehall in the 2010s, supposedly to order transport and investment. Their boundaries were c...

Schools should bond communities: faith schools divide them. Why are ministers making that worse? | Simon Jenkins

The government wants to scrap England’s 50% cap on ‘faith admissions’. It will just lead to religious discrimination

To gain admission to the local church school near my home, parents were always advised to attend church. Otherwise, they were told, they should try elsewhere. The result was local antagonism: cars and buses filled with local children were ferried to more distant schools. It was a bad system in every sense.

In 2010, in an attempt to stem the growth of sectarian free schools, the Came...

Patients maimed by infected blood, innocents jailed, lives ruined. We want real justice – not inquiries| Simon Jenkins

The contaminated blood and Post Office scandals demand accountability and speedy redress for victims. We’re getting neither

How much money should go to those given infected blood in the 1970s and 80s? And how much to the wronged subpost office operators? Such questions surge periodically into the daylight and then subside. Last month it was the subpost office operators’ turn, stirring a burst of public rage. Today, an amendment to a bill demanding expanded compensation for victims of infected blo...

After years of inquiries, why are victims of gross errors by public bodies still waiting for proper compensation? | Simon Jenkins

The contaminated blood and Post Office scandals have resulted in politicians and Whitehall both dodging accountability

How much money should go to those given infected blood in the 1970s and 80s? And how much to the wronged subpost office operators? Such questions surge periodically into the daylight and then subside. Last month it was the subpost office operators’ turn, stirring a burst of public rage. Today, an amendment to a bill demanding expanded compensation for victims of infected blood is...