Jeremy corbyn

Usually when an official party spokesman has to issue a statement 'clarifying' what a politician meant to say in a radio interview, you can take it as a sign that something has gone wrong. However, not for Jeremy Corbyn – who appears to have mastered the art of clever* misspeaking Appearing on The World At One this afternoon, the Labour leader appeared to shed some light on his party's ever-changing Brexit position. With Labour MPs broadly united behind a transition period in which the UK remains a member of the single market, Corbyn suggested that they could go one step further: the UK could continue to be a member even after Britain has properly left the EU. Martha Kearney:  The TUC wants the UK to stay in the single market permanently.

Up to now, Labour have managed to have their cake and eat it on Brexit. At the election, Labour MPs in Brexit-backing seats could say their party didn’t oppose leaving the EU and had voted for Article 50. At the same time, Labour hoovered up votes elsewhere in the country from those angry at Brexit. Remarkably, 39 percent of Financial Times readers voted for the party despite Jeremy Corbyn’s hostility to high earners and the City. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, Labour are threatening this coalition by voting against the EU withdrawal bill. Already, Tory MPs are excited at the prospect of being able to attack Labour for trying to block Brexit. So, why are Labour taking this risk? One reason is that it is good chance to cause trouble for the government.

Jeremy Corbyn’s interest in veganism has excited far more interest than is necessary, given most people probably assumed the Labour leader was already a follower of this plant-based diet (in between the odd pleasurable shortbread). It has gone down particularly well with the ‘clean eating’ lobby, who hope that the endorsement of a Labour leader who was cheered at Glastonbury will boost the appeal of their trendy diets.

The victims of foreign dictatorships have become chips in our political games. In our corner of the rich world, for instance, the suffering of Venezuela matters only because Jeremy’s Corbyn’s enemies can use it to attack his support for the Chavist regime when it was unchallengeable, and his cowardly equivocation when the inevitable catastrophe followed. Saudi Arabia matters only because leftists can use it to damn the British establishment’s bootlicking support for the House of Saud and its suppression of democratic, women’s and minority rights. Yet the smallest concern of the Venezuelans is the praise the western far left lavished on their corrupt and massively incompetent dictators.

I've been arguing since June that it is at least possible that Theresa May could remain in office longer than the Westminster village consensus dictated, so I'm not too surprised by her statement of intent in Japan. Besides, what else could she say? Like most people, I still don't expect her to fight the next election, but if she does manage the sort of transformative dogged resurrection I wrote about in June, it could just be possible. For now though, what will hold her in place will be not so much her own talents (whatever they may be) but her party's fear of confronting the huge and possibly existential questions that will come with the choice of a new leader.

Even in Scotland, ‘Name the post-devolution leaders of the Scottish Labour party’ is a pretty decent pub quiz question. There have been so many and so few of them left much of a legacy. The people’s standard has been borne by Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish, Jack McConnell, Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray, Johann Lamont, Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale. Eight leaders in eighteen years. (In the same period, the SNP and the Tories have each only had three leaders.) And now there will be a ninth. Kezia Dugdale’s resignation as leader of the Scottish Labour party surprised even some of her closest allies and senior aides. Many of them are, not to put too fine a point on it, furious, seeing her resignation as something close to an abdication of responsibility.

Jeremy Corbyn did better than many expected in the general election, but while some of his allies might not like it, he still lost. Or at least he did unless you’re looking at things from where Labour frontbencher Chris Williamson is sitting. Fresh from coming under fire for suggesting women-only train carriages were a good idea, the Labour MP has now been claiming that Corbyn won a landslide election victory on June 8th. Here's what he told the Guardian's Rowena Mason in an interview today: Mr S would be interested to know where Williamson is getting his numbers from...

For months, Labour has been moving ever closer to the Tory position on Brexit while pretending that it isn’t. First, it backed Brexit. Then in June, John McDonnell told Robert Peston that he couldn’t see continued membership of the single market being 'on the table' in Brexit negotiations. He added that people would interpret membership of the single market as 'not respecting that referendum.' In July, Jeremy Corbyn told Andrew Marr that single market membership is 'dependent on membership of the EU.' Barry Gardiner has even suggested that the UK would become a 'vassal state' if it were to remain in the single market after Brexit.

It's safe to say that Chris Williamson is not the most popular MP in his party right now, after the Labour frontbencher suggested women-only carriages were a good idea – in order to stop women falling victim to sexual assault on public transport. Since then, several Labour MPs have criticised his comments – with Jess Phillips suggesting Williamson was taking tips on feminism from Saudi Arabia. Now one resident of the Palace of Westminster has taken matters into their own hands. A notice has been placed on the door of Williamson's office in response to his suggestion: 'Woman? Sexually harassed at work? How about working on your own floor?' https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/900361676863700992 The next PLP meeting should be fun...

Ever since the snap election, Jeremy Corbyn has been in campaign mode – claiming Theresa May's minority government is on the verge of collapse and that there will be another election within months. Tomorrow, the Labour leader kicks off a summer tour of Scotland, which he claims 'holds the keys' to getting his party back in power: 'We have stayed on an election footing all summer, and nowhere is more important to delivering another Labour government than Scotland. The only way to deliver the truly radical change that Scotland needs is to back Labour in Scotland.' Much to the upset of the Nats, the 18 seats Corbyn will be targeting on the trip are all held by the SNP – rather than the common enemy of the Tories.

Would a Labour government take Britain out of the customs union after Brexit? It’s a simple enough question - but not it seems if you’re the shadow international trade minister, Bill Esterson. The Labour MP has been busy touring the airwaves this morning, criticising the government for its Brexit transition period plans. While Esterson is quick to find fault with the Tory approach, he is less keen to answer questions on what the plan would be if Jeremy Corbyn made it to Downing Street. On the Today programme, he refused repeatedly to say where Labour stood on the issue: Justin Webb: ...does that mean being in the customs union or out? Bill Esterson: Well I think lurid headlines in tabloids don’t really deal with substance.

When you tweet as often as I do, you learn to take the rough with the smooth. Even though it has led to death threats (dealt with by the police) I overwhelmingly enjoy it. I like the immediacy of it and I like the interaction. Best of all, I learn from it. And yesterday I learned something loud and clear. To be accurate, I had something confirmed that I and many others have long thought: that, at least on social media, much of the support for Jeremy Corbyn is akin to a cult, with the Labour leader worshipped as a god-like creature who cannot be criticised. Yesterday morning, I read President Trump’s statement in reaction to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which he condemned 'this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.

Home British negotiators are prepared to pay up to £36 billion to the EU to settle the so-called divorce bill for Brexit, according to the Sunday Telegraph. By voting for Brexit, ‘the old have comprehensively shafted the young’, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Vince Cable, aged 74, wrote in the Mail on Sunday, ‘imposing a world view coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past on a younger generation much more comfortable with modern Europe.’ Lord Neuberger, who will retire as president of the Supreme Court next month, said that the government should ‘express clearly what the judges should do about decisions of the European Court of Justice after Brexit.