Jeremy corbyn

Friday

Ross Clark

Snatching state pensions back from the rich would end in disaster

From our UK edition

While Theresa May makes her mind up over the triple lock on state pensions the OECD has come up with an altogether more radical suggestion: that the state pension be withdrawn entirely from the richest five to 10 per cent of the population, in order that more money be available for the poor. I am not sure that the purpose of the OECD ought to be to try to micromanage the fiscal policies of member states, but let’s treat it seriously nonetheless. Snatching the pensions of the better-off would be disastrous policy which, by destroying the disincentive to save, would achieve nothing other than to boost the numbers of poor people requiring assistance.

Steerpike

Watch: Giles Fraser’s awkward Corbyn interview

From our UK edition

Oh dear. With few MPs in the Labour party keen to take to the airwaves and wax lyrical about the pros of their leader as PM, Jeremy Corbyn must have thought he'd got lucky when Giles Fraser appeared on BBC's This Week to do exactly this. In an interview with Andrew Neil, the Church of England priest tried to explain why only Corbyn could offer real change. "I think he is the person that can do it...there is not anybody quite like Jeremy Corbyn, I don't think" @giles_fraser tells @afneil #bbctw pic.twitter.com/6WYtOCPytd — BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) April 27, 2017 AN: Where has Mr Corbyn's brand of socialism worked? GF: Err... well I hope it's going to work here. AN: But where has it worked elsewhere? GF: Well, I think it's a brand for the future actually.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 April 2017

From our UK edition

Home Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, cheered the United Kingdom by promising four new bank holidays for the whole country when he becomes prime minister, for the patronal days of St David, St Patrick, St George and St Andrew. Asked about the replacement for the Trident nuclear deterrent, he said: ‘I’ve made clear any use of nuclear weapons would be a disaster for the whole world.’ Three hours later, the Labour party put out a statement saying: ‘The decision to renew Trident has been taken and Labour supports that.’ The Communist Party decided not to field candidates against Labour.

Toby Young

A progressive alliance? It’s more a coalition of chaos

From our UK edition

My heart soared when I first heard the phrase ‘progressive alliance’ in this election campaign. Not the reaction you’d expect, perhaps, but any attempt to persuade people to vote tactically on the eve of a general election is doomed to failure. A complete waste of time. I should know because I tried to get a similar venture off the ground three years ago. Mine was a conservative version, obviously. In 2014 I was worried that the split on the right would enable Ed Miliband to become our next prime minister. So I launched a Unite the Right campaign and set about trying to persuade supporters of Ukip and the Tories to vote for which-ever candidate in their constituency was best placed to defeat the Labour candidate. Our slogan was ‘Country Before Party’.

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn’s ex-spinner exposes an irreconcilably divided Labour

From our UK edition

One of the favourite tenets of Jeremy Corbyn supporters is that their movement is persecuted by the ‘mainstream media’ and that if only there were a fair, left-wing-friendly press in this country, then the public would be flocking to JC’s hugely popular policies. This debate has trudged its way through many acres of print already, but the insight into how Corbyn’s own team dealt with the media from former Labour spinner Matt Zarb-Cousin in an interview this week is very interesting indeed. Zarb-Cousin was, like his former colleague Kevin Slocombe, respected by many lobby journalists as someone who dealt with their queries as efficiently as possible.

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn forgets to face the camera

From our UK edition

Boris Johnson has stolen the show this morning by calling Jeremy Corbyn a ‘mugwump’. But the Labour leader is making a pretty miserable attempt at trying to recapture the limelight. During a campaign speech in Essex, Corbyn had a golden moment to set out Labour’s pitch to voters. The Sky News camera was rolling, with hundreds of thousands of viewers watching at home to hear what Corbyn had to say. The only problem? Corbyn started his speech with his back to the camera. Thankfully, an aide stepped in to put Jezza right before people got bored of the sight of his back. His blunder might have slightly undermined his introduction to the audience as ‘the future Prime Minister’ though.

David Butterfield

Labour is full of mugwumps – but Corbyn is not one of them

From our UK edition

Trust Boris to dominate the headlines by reopening that most famous of books, Johnson’s Dictionary. Writing in the Sun, our effortlessly provocative Foreign Secretary swiped at Jeremy Corbyn with this colourful barb: ‘He may be a mutton-headed old mugwump, but he is probably harmless.’ Couched rather incongruously as the reflections of ‘the people’, this comment has left many laughing, but more still scratching their heads. In fact, there’s more to being a ‘mugwump’ than a throw-away jibe. The word comes from the original New Englanders, the Algonquians, for whom mugquomp meant ‘great chief’. It was a term of respect laden with connotations of nobility. But that presumably wasn't what Boris had in mind.

Tom Goodenough

There’s more to Boris’s ‘mugwump’ insult than meets the eye

From our UK edition

Boris Johnson has entered the election campaign with a bang. The Foreign Secretary was being squirrelled away, some were saying, after a number of ministers apparently suggested to Theresa May that she should sideline Boris to avoid alienating voters. It’s clear that’s not going to be happening. Today, Boris is front and centre calling the leader of the opposition a ‘mugwump’. In the Sun, Boris said that some may think Corbyn is harmless - a ‘mutton-headed old mugwump’ - but they’d be wrong to hold that view. The po-faced will say this is proof that Johnson is up to his old tricks and we shouldn’t fall for it; shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has done just that, calling the comments ‘crass’.

Steerpike

Corbynites left out in the cold in Hull

From our UK edition

Oh dear. With Jeremy Corbyn's future as Labour leader looking, at best, a challenge after the snap election, it ought to come as little surprise that some of his comrades are hoping to trade the struggle for a safe seat come June 8. Alas the Corbynistas have been thwarted once again. With a Labour safe seat now hard to find, both John Prescott's son David -- who helps Corbyn with speech writing -- and Sam Tarry -- Corbyn's former leadership campaign director of 'Traingate' fame -- had their sights set up on Alan Johnson's old seat, Hull West and Hessle. Alas they have been left disappointed. Last night, Emma Hardy, a local former teacher, won the selection.

Nick Cohen

J. K. Rowling and the curse of the left

From our UK edition

How people who want a fairer society should vote at this election is causing agonies across the liberal-left. It is easy to mock the torn activists. Why do they bother? One vote is worth next to nothing under a PR system. Under first past the post there are hundreds of safe seats where there’s no point in voting, let alone worrying about how you vote. The number of safe Tory seats is likely to grow after this election. Indeed, if you believe the opinion polls, it is likely to rocket. The futility of casting a token anti-Tory vote is more apparent than ever. For all that, those who laugh at conscientious leftists are laughing at democracy. How can you justify it unless voters care about who they vote for?

James Forsyth

Why Tories are talking up Labour

From our UK edition

Considering that their party is expected to win by a landslide, the Tory spin doctors sound unusually panicked. They are keen to point out that the polls aren’t always right, and the pollsters are still trying to correct what they got wrong at the last general election. They insist that national voting tells you little about what will happen in the key marginal seats. These are normally the pleas of a party that is failing, and trying to persuade voters that it is still in the race. But Labour isn’t doing a good job of spinning its own prospects — so the Tories are doing it for them. This is not as odd as it first sounds. The Tories are worried about complacency, about their vote not turning out.

Theo Hobson

Do do God

From our UK edition

This election was won two days before it was announced, on Easter Sunday. Theresa May put out an Easter message in which she suggested that British values had a Christian basis. It was her version of David Cameron’s message two years before, in which he said that Britain is a Christian country. She was rather more convincing. I don’t know whether Cameron is sincerely religious, but he didn’t seem it. He didn’t even seem to try very hard to seem it, as if fearing that his metropolitan support might weaken, and perhaps that George Osborne would make a snarky jibe about it at cabinet. But it still did him good to make those pro-religious noises. St Theresa should keep her piety out of politics, said a few pundits.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Parliament’s departing greybeards enjoy one final waffle at PMQs

From our UK edition

There was astonishment at the start of PMQs as Michael Fabricant’s wig flew up into the air. Fortunately its owner was rising to speak at the same time so no embarrassment was suffered. John Bercow indulged the house in this last session before the election and let MPs give speeches rather than ask questions. The results were mixed. Was it classic Westminster-in-action? Or classic Westminster inaction? The exchanges lasted twice as long as normal and were less than half as informative. Theresa May crammed every sentence with Crosby buzz-phrases. ‘Strong economy’, ‘stable Conservative leadership’ she said about a zillion times. Her remote-controlled backbenchers followed suit.

James Forsyth

Ditching the triple-lock pensions bung is a risk May can afford

From our UK edition

PMQs went on for an almost an hour today as John Bercow attempted to get in as many valedictories from retiring MPs as possible. But there were two significant pieces of news made in today’s session. First, in answer to Angus Robertson, Theresa May refused to say that the triple lock would continue if the Tories win this election. This is the clearest indication we have had yet that it won’t be in the manifesto and will, sensibly, be jettisoned after the next election. The Tories are 20-odd points clear and have an even bigger lead among the over 65s, jettisoning this expensive electoral bung is a risk that May can afford to take.  The second piece of news was Theresa May not repeating the line that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ with the EU.

Tuesday

Steerpike

News from Labour: Corbyn held ‘transition’ talks with Whitehall

From our UK edition

Of late, Labour's press releases haven't offered much cause for amusement. But today's was a turn up for the books. With Labour currently predicted a catastrophic defeat come June 8, a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn emailed to say the Labour leader had met with Sir Jeremy Heywood to discuss the transition to government if Labour wins the General Election: 'The Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, today met the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to discuss the transition to government if Labour wins the General Election. The meeting, with the support of staff and colleagues, was detailed and productive, and will now be followed by departmental discussions.

Steerpike

Corbyn wins his first celebrity endorsement of the snap election

From our UK edition

In recent months, Corbyn-mania has appeared to be on the wane. From Charlotte Church to Glenda Jackson, former cheerleaders for the Labour leader have gone cold on the one-time left wing messiah. However, Jeremy Corbyn can take heart that he has now received his first celebrity endorsement of the snap election. Step forward Ronnie O'Sullivan. Yes, the champion snooker player says he has joined the Labour party in a bid to help Corbyn become prime minister -- asking others to do the same: Let's hope for Corbyn's sake that O'Sullivan's endorsement lends him more luck than it did Ed Miliband back in 2015...

Monday

James Forsyth

Can Labour become a truly national party again?

From our UK edition

The latest polling marmalade dropper comes from Wales. Labour have won a majority of Welsh seats in every general election for the past eighty-odd years. But the latest Welsh Political Barometer, the most respected poll there, has the Tories on 40 per cent and on course to win 21 seats to Labour’s 15. This poll combined with the fact that Labour is now down to one MP in Scotland shows how difficult it will be for the party to win a UK-wide majority again. They will have to do it without the inbuilt advantage that their Celtic strength used to provide them with. If May can succeed in realigning British politics in this election and flip lots of Labour seats in the North and the Midlands, then it will become even harder for Labour.

Brendan O’Neill

Tony Blair is the messianic Remainer here to save us from ourselves

From our UK edition

Here they come, Tony Blair and his tragic chattering-class army. The former PM, whose rictus grin and glottal stops still haunt the nation’s dreams (well, mine anyway), is on the march with his pleb-allergic mates in business and the media. Blair and the Twitterati, linking arms, united in their horror at the incalculable stupidity of northerners and Welsh people and Essex men and women and other Brexiteers, their aim as clear as it is foul. They’re here to save us from ourselves. ‘Tony Blair is trying to save Britain from itself’, as one report put it. Excuse me while I pop an anti-nausea pill. Yes, Blair, the political version of Michael Myers, the nutter in the Halloween movies who just cannot be slain, is back. Again.

Ross Clark

Corbyn’s bank holiday plan misunderstands modern work

From our UK edition

Next Monday, while the village fair is raging outside, I will be inside working as on any other Monday morning. Will I be disappointed to miss out on a day of Mayday fun? Not a bit of it. There are only so many steam rallies one wants to attend, only so many seaside-bound traffic jams one can bear to join. I would far rather work through every bank holiday and take time off when I feel like it, when the roads aren’t full of bikers and there are fewer people out and about trying to force themselves to have fun.

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday political interviews round-up: Labour may scrap Trident, Corbyn says

From our UK edition

Corbyn – Labour may scrap Trident nuclear deterrent Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn occupied the prime slot on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, and he told Marr that he wants to see ‘a very different country’. But how different? He was asked what he would say to the captains of the Trident submarines about whether to use their missiles in the event of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom. ‘What I will be saying is that I want us to achieve a nuclear free world. What I want us to do is adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and take part in negotiations surrounding that, and crucially... immediately promote the six party talks on the Korean peninsula as a way of de-escalating nuclear tensions around the world...