Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 90

Even Tory councillors are up in arms. Osborne should leave schools alone | Simon Jenkins

The planned national schools service is England’s biggest nationalisation project since the NHS – and a gesture of contempt for local democracy

Now for the next revolt. The real news in George Osborne’s budget was not disability benefit cuts. It was the surreptitious launch of England’s biggest nationalisation project since the NHS in 1948.

Related: 'They’ve gone bonkers': Tory councillors angry with academy plans

Osborne should back off now. This is a nationalisation too far

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The scariest thing about Brussels is our reaction to it | Simon Jenkins

Paranoid politicians, sensational journalists – the Isis recruiting officers will be thrilled at how things have gone since their atrocity in Belgium

Think like the enemy. Let’s suppose I am an Islamic State terrorist. I don’t do bombs or bullets. I leave the dirty work to the crazies in the basement. My job is what happens next. It is to turn carnage into consequences, body parts into politics. I am a consultant terrorist. I wear a suit, not explosives. A blood-stained concourse is a means to...

Our response to the Brussels bombings requires patience and restraint | Simon Jenkins

Blanket media coverage and calls for revenge just fuel the cycle of violence

The purpose of terrorism is not to destroy or kill. It is to pursue a political cause through the massive publicity that is attached to terrifying incidents. Today’s bombs in Brussels, apparently related to the attacks in Paris last year and the capture of Salah Abdeslam last Friday, are patently intended to do just that. Merely killing passers-by serves no warlike purpose in itself. The explosive force derives from o...

How convincing was David Cameron’s Commons statement? | Rafael Behr, Anne Perkins, Simon Jenkins and Martin Kettle

The prime minister attempted to call a truce between the warring flanks of his party. It wasn’t an unqualified success

Related: With the Tory party imploding, Labour needs to reinvent itself – fast | Paul Mason

Related: Iain Duncan Smith has revealed the empty truth of compassionate conservatism | Suzanne Moore

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Migration is a fact of life – yet our deluded leaders try and turn back the tide | Simon Jenkins

David Cameron’s inhumane plan to send refugees back to Libya won’t work. Movement of people can’t be stopped, it has to be managed

It is all for show. The EU plan to limit migrants flowing into Europe might cut numbers by a few thousand. Subsidising Turkey’s refugee camps might hold a few back. David Cameron’s “Australia” plan to seize and return migrant boats might cut a few more. News of horrors on the Macedonian border might deter some from making the desperate bid to escape present danger...

George Osborne is a Roman emperor indulged in all his follies and fads | Simon Jenkins

As the chancellor delivered his eighth budget, we saw the hazards of a politician grown overmighty

The chancellor, George Osborne, is monarch of the political glen. From his Treasury fastness he commands all he sees. Those he favours prosper, those who displease him die. But in today’sbudget we saw him in more cautious mode. Last year he boasted of “a budget that takes Britain one more big step on the road from austerity to prosperity”. This year, with Britain’s growth forecasts slashed, neith...

There’s no such thing as imperialism-lite, Obama. Libya has shown that once again | Simon Jenkins

The US president thinks Britain’s to blame for not doing enough in 2011. But while David Cameron and Obama make up, chaos continues in the Middle East

So Barack Obama thinks Britain in 2011 left Libya in chaos – and besides it does not pull its weight in the world. Britain thinks that a bit rich, given the shambles America left in Iraq. Then both sides say sorry. They did not mean to be rude.

Thus do we wander across the ethical wasteland of the west’s wars of intervention. We blame and we name...

Our fixation with maths doesn’t add up | Simon Jenkins

Politicians tell us it is the pre-eminent subject. Nonsense. They’re just obsessed with measuring, targetry and control

Who will win the Varkey Foundation’s million-dollar “best teacher” prize this week in Dubai? Hot favourite is Britain’s star maths teacher, Colin Hegarty, whose videos are followed by a million viewers worldwide. Hegarty has been hailed as the great hope for British maths.

Like much of the public realm, British maths is “in crisis”. The country is languishing alongside America...

The EU referendum has given the Tories a nasty attack of the Trumps | Simon Jenkins

David Cameron was meant to have detoxified his party of its Brussels plague. But the disease is back – and it’s worse than ever

Name-calling, rubbishing, fearmongering, mendacity, xenophobia, talk of building walls and destroying reputations: that is just the Tory party.

At least America has seven months to recover from Trumpitis. Britain has to compress the modern politician’s instinct to polarise into four.

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Healthy towns alone won’t cure the ills of urban planning | Simon Jenkins

Forget the concept of 10 new wellness communities – we should be improving life in the cities we’ve already got

The strain of running the NHS is clearly getting to its boss, Simon Stevens. With daily headlines of woe perhaps it is understandable that he should have lost the plot. Stevens has given his imprimatur to the phoney “garden city” movement, by redubbing its estates “healthy towns” and offering to send in his apparatchiks.

Related: Ten new 'healthy' towns to be built in England

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