Simon Jenkins's Blog

With British industry faltering, the excuse that the public wants this is risible. Parliament must force Starmer to act

While Keir Starmer fiddles in India, Rome burns. The British steel industry now faces a calamity so severe, insiders say it could be “terminal”. The vast majority – 80% – of its output is exported to the EU, which this week revealed plans to cut tariff-free steel import quotas by almost half. The remainder will be subject to a 50% tariff. The UK steel industry will be butchered....

They wrote off Margaret Thatcher in 1981 when the SDP – like Reform today – was ascendant. They were wrong about her; they could also be about Starmer

Party conference time is when British politics goes berserk. Leaders soar and crash in a morass of cliches. Polls go mad and cataclysm always delivers the best copy.

Thus, back in 1981, Margaret Thatcher was at her Blackpool conference, two years into office. Brixton was rioting, inflation was 11% and the Tories were polling at 23%. The Labour oppos...

The grandeur and pageantry surrounding the state visit cannot disguise the fact that we have absolutely no vision for our future

Britain has made its point. We can do the past. The rest of the world may be more powerful and richer than we are, but only Britain can embody statehood in a banquet. Only Britain can force the titans of the digital age into white tie and tails, and reduce an American president to quivering admiration.

The question is where now? Trump’s itinerary mostly avoided central L...

With the world in crisis, the PM is spending billions to back his posturing. But he has no clout over Gaza or Ukraine, and it’s time he acted accordingly

Each night we wonder where we are. We sit in comfort watching death and destruction fall on thousands in Gaza and Ukraine. Each night we see buildings exploding, people screaming and children starving. Statesmen stand around and deplore. There is anxious talk of what next – another 9/11 perhaps, or a Cuba 1962? Or is it, as some say, a 1939 or 1...

The former PM’s leaked visit to the White House is concerning. This scheme is an outrage that no other Arab – or western – state could back

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Tony Blair’s leaked presence at the recent White House discussion of Donald Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” plan is either good news or outrageous. Good news if he used his influence with Trump to termin...

By eschewing living in Buckingham Palace and suggesting ‘the firm’ be heavily scaled back, the prince has a survival plan that might work

This was a good week to bury bad news. But why bury good news? No banner headline announced that the Prince of Wales is to move house. He is to go from Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Home Park to the nearby Forest Lodge.

That was not the real news. “Sources” said the switch was the outcome of Prince William’s “brutal” past year, in which both his wife and his fathe...

Student debt increasing, graduate salaries dropping, high-skilled jobs thin on the ground – higher education in the UK is a mess

A Chinese economist once asked me to explain British universities. “Why do you take your young,” he said, “at their most creative age, lock them in a monastery for three years and make them drunk?” Each August I recall this question when hundreds of thousands of British teenagers scramble to enter university. They must perform utterly archaic feats of memory in their ex...

Angela Rayner’s proposed reforms are ill-conceived and fail to address the system’s inherent unfairness

At last a Labour government has found itself a wealth tax – or thinks it has. Its proposed adjustment to council tax in England is crude and possibly cruel, and does nothing to help with Rachel Reeves’s “missing £40bn”. It is designed merely to shift money from rich regions to poor ones, and thus correct an imbalance in Britain’s regional wealth. As such it is overdue and welcome.

British budget...

The US president promotes classical architecture and loathes ‘ugly’ wind turbines. Keir Starmer would dismiss him as a nimby, but on this Trump has a point

Trigger warning. Some readers may find this disturbing. Not everything Donald Trump says is mad and a lie. Not all of it is about money. Some of it is even worth saying. When he came to office, one of Trump’s first actions was extraordinary. He directed his fire at what he saw as the ugliness of American architecture. He demanded that at least...

The PM promised to prioritise oracy, but has failed to do so. Set against tests and exams, it is seen as a luxury: in fact it is essential

The greatest failing of Britain’s schools is to teach children to read, write and count, but not to speak. They teach what technology can increasingly do for them, but not what it cannot. A regular complaint of today’s employers is that applicants for jobs lack social skills or work ethic.

Pupils are rarely taught how to present themselves, handle arguments or...