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Simon JenkinsThe Guardian |
You can damn oil companies, abuse cars, insult nimbys, kill cows, befoul art galleries. But you must never, ever criticise the worst offender of all....
First the good news. The US is talking to Russia. Then the bad. Vladimir Putin has been phoned not by the current US president, but by a known admirer...
Yes, we all know it looks terrible. We have heard what Donald Trump has promised. But could there be silver linings to these ominous clouds? The...
The Grenfell Tower fire of 2017 was a tragedy. Preventing its repetition is a fiasco. The latest National Audit Office (NAO) report suggests that 60%...
The face said it all. As Rachel Reeves listed the infrastructure projects being funded by her first budget, she could not even say how much the...
Is it wise for Britons to heap abuse on Donald Trump? At present he is the marginal favourite to win next week’s US presidential election – with...
The Church of England is in a state of “panic and fear”, of “deep anxiety”, and should stop being obsessed with numbers and face the reality...
We can all sympathise with Chris Hoy for his terminal cancer, and admire the manner in which he revealed it. Dignity so rarely goes with celebrity. We...
Does Labour believe in beauty? The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, celebrated his arrival in office this summer by permitting three of the largest...
Nothing reveals Britain’s aversion to change quite like its failure to reform the House of Lords. Since the turn of the 21st century, almost...
It is the most sickening league table on Earth. Which of the world’s three current major wars has resulted in the most deaths? On the latest...
The British empire still sends governments mad. Labour’s Foreign Office minister in charge of its lasting shreds, Stephen Doughty, has granted the...
Why is William Hague not standing as Tory leader rather than mere chancellor of Oxford? He is hale and hearty at 63. Is David Cameron also over the...
What can a German do but a Briton cannot? What can a New Yorker, a Chicagoan and a San Franciscan do, but a Londoner cannot? What can Canadians,...
What’s not to like about working from home? No commuting. More flexibility. Wear jeans. The boss can’t pester you. It’s a social revolution and...
The most remarkable feature of the Sue Gray saga is not how much the Downing Street chief of staff earns, but how little Britain’s prime minister...
The greatest disaster to emerge from the war in Ukraine would be a collapsed Nato. For the prime minister, Keir Starmer, to be signalling confusion...
Forget the NHS for a minute – and look to Britain’s universities, another institution in urgent need of fixing. A number are on the brink of...
Should the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance be cut? For most people it’s a simple question, though most people’s opinion is of no account. For...
What is justice for Grenfell? After seven years of public inquiry we have a 1,700-page report and a cost of more than £200m. We have had...
What can Keir Starmer learn from Tony Blair? He hit the ground running in handling last month’s rightwing riots over immigration. He rolled the...
Politics never ends. Today the selection begins of the leader of the opposition and thus possibly the next British prime minister. The pollsters’...
Boring. That was the universal response to Wednesday’s first prime minister’s questions of the new parliament. Where was the screaming, yelling,...
Kamala Harris is now the frontrunner to be the Democratic party’s candidate for the most powerful job in the world. She appears sorely...
Outside Glastonbury last month, festivalgoers might have caught sight of David Cameron’s- policy of planning de-regulation in action, sprawling...
When Keir Starmer entered Downing Street, a few foreign events were arranged to glamorise his arrival. He visited a Nato summit and promised to spend...
You can grieve over the bodies, the coffins, the funeral rites, but the worst aftermath of death is the autopsy. Who, or what, was to blame? Focus...
For the next two years, the best job in British politics will be leader of the opposition. The first two years is usually the honeymoon period for an...
To tax or not to tax? Labour’s plan to impose VAT on private schools seemed a good idea at the time. Its programme was bereft of leftist clout. The...
Is Nigel Farage guilty as charged? An appeaser, a disgrace, an apologist for Putin, an insult to Ukraine, says a chorus of British party leaders on...
What do Britons most love about Britain? At the last count it was still the NHS. After that it was not the royal family, the army or democracy....
Smash him. Go for the jugular. Take the gloves off and hit him with the big one. We have nothing to lose. A sure sign of political panic is when the...
A Japanese developer has announced it will demolish a new tower of luxury flats in Tokyo it was weeks from completing. The reason? The 10-storey...
Attacks on Rishi Sunak for cutting short his attendance at the D-day commemoration have been overblown. His early return home was a presentational...
This is the wail of the floating voter. I start every election a deliberate floater. An open mind staves off tedium. The only alternative is going on...
“Guilty”, screamed the one-word headline in the New York Times last week, dripping with undisguised glee. Howls of contempt descended on Donald...
They could as well have felled Big Ben, drained the Serpentine or butchered the ravens in the Tower. No more daily print edition of the Evening...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
England’s 12 “metro mayors” should be abolished. Metro mayorships are artificial creations whose regional geography rarely reflects any civic...
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...
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...
Venice has had enough. It is sinking beneath the twin assaults of tourism and the sea and believes the answer lies in fending off visitors by charging...
Almost everyone agrees the government’s Rwanda bill is a bad idea. Its effects on deterring immigration will be trivial. It fails to show that...