Jeremy corbyn

Jess Phillips is expected to launch her bid for Labour leader this evening, having only said up to this point that she is seriously considering a bid to take over from Jeremy Corbyn. She is both the candidate most identified with the ‘moderate’ side of the party and the most high-profile, but that doesn’t mean she is launching with a particularly well-formulated policy platform. In fact, while Phillips is well-known for her dislike of Corbyn and her altercation with Diane Abbott pretty early on as an MP, it’s not quite as easy to work out what she thinks. Phillips has largely exerted her influence in Parliament in two ways. The

The Conservative MP Tracey Crouch was invited to make the so-called ‘loyal address’, a parliamentary procedure used to formally open the debate on the Queen’s Speech. During her submissions to the Commons, Ms Crouch jokingly referred to a number of A Christmas Carol characters, comparing them (with various degrees of favourability) to past and former politicians. Both the ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond and former Speaker John Bercow were compared to Dickens’ Mr Scrooge, while the PM himself was likened to the Ghost of Christmas Present, all to much hilarity. The chuckles on the opposition benches quickly subsided, however, when the outgoing Labour leader was compared to Jacob Marley, the chained and tormented ghost of

On the morning of the election, we buried my lovely mum. I write this 24 hours later, now on a flight to the States, with the mud from her graveside still all over my shoes. This was just the ashes, because we had the funeral six weeks ago, but it was oddly fitting. The 1970 election was called a week before she married my father, who would go on to spend the bulk of his working life as a Tory MP, which meant they had to postpone their honeymoon and spend it canvassing the streets of Edinburgh instead. Four years later, the sudden second 1974 poll was held two days

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just faced one another in the Commons for the first time in this new Parliament, though it is highly unlikely to be the last. The pair were responding to the election of the new Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, and both chose to use their statements to make a few remarks about the election itself. Naturally, Johnson was greeted with a huge cheer from his MPs when he rose, and told the Speaker that ‘I mean absolutely no disrespect to those who are no longer with us – but I think this Parliament is a vast improvement on its predecessor’. He then promised that ‘this Parliament

Has Greta Thunberg been caught out repeating the same trick as Jeremy Corbyn? Thunberg tweeted an image of herself sitting on the floor of what she described as an ‘overcrowded’ train on her way back to Sweden: https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1205969006982815751?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw However, the tweet quickly sparked controversy with German train operator Deutsche Bahn appearing to derail Greta’s suggestion that she had been forced to sit on the floor, claiming she had a ‘seat in first class’: Greta quickly hit back, claiming that ‘overcrowded trains’ are a ‘great sign’: https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1206203503363985408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Back in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn found himself in a similar situation after he published a video of him sitting on the floor of a

Labour’s defeat is so terrible that it provides the kind of creative destruction that could save the party. It will be extremely difficult for the Corbynites to argue with much authority that one more push or slightly nicer newspapers would have got them over the line when the party hasn’t had a result this bad since 1935. But does the failure of Jeremy Corbyn necessarily mean that the ‘moderates’ in the party are going to be able to rescue it? In 2015, centre-left Labour MPs were confident that the members were so bruised by what they’d heard on the doorstep that they would happily elect a leader who took the

Jeremy Corbyn held a small rally last night in east London, telling supporters to go and spread the message of ‘socialism, which is about hope’. Many British Jews will have woken up this morning feeling anything but hope. They have seen a Labour party led by a man who many consider to be a harbinger of left-wing anti-Semitism. A man who has found it hard to accept that there is even a problem within his own party. This is why almost half of British Jews have said they would consider leaving this country if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister on Friday. A truly appalling statistic. So how, then, might one expect some of the supporters of

As Brits head to the polls for the fourth general election this decade—a frequency of voting matched only in the 1920s and 1970s—there is a tendency amongst some commentators to underestimate how radically the democratic process has changed in the space of a century. Between Bonar Law and Boris Johnson, however, the public sphere has been revolutionised. In the 1920s, newspapers still dominated. In the 1970s, it was television. In the 2010s, it has been the Internet and, most recently, the network platforms we call “social media.” Most British political pundits act as if this latest change has not happened. They pore over opinion polls and scrutinise television interviews much

John McDonnell was insisting this morning that Labour was going to win a majority, but just in case, insiders are suggesting that the Shadow Chancellor is planning to take over as interim leader if Jeremy Corbyn resigns after a general election defeat. McDonnell has long championed Rebecca Long-Bailey as a future leader, and there is speculation that he could install her as his shadow chancellor in order to boost her credentials. This explains why those around Corbyn were so keen to try to abolish Tom Watson as deputy leader in September. They tried to force a rule change at the party’s ruling National Executive Committee meeting which would scrap the

What will happen if Jeremy Corbyn wins? Will it be a nightmare on Downing Street, as Liam Halligan suggests in this week’s Spectator? Or might Corbyn not be as bad as his critics fear? Helpfully, France provides a useful parallel of what prime minister Jeremy Corbyn might mean for Britain. And it doesn’t make happy reading for the Labour leader. It’s Spring 1981 and France, the fifth largest economy in the world, elects the most left-wing administration since before the Second World War following eight years of conservative rule. The government immediately begins implementing its radical manifesto: nationalisation of 11 industrial conglomerates and most private banks, higher tax-rates at the upper

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn clashed in a head-to-head in tonight’s live BBC debate. The two leaders faced off in front of a studio audience for their final clash before election day. Here is all the action as it unfolded:  

Until recently, the Tories seemed pretty confident about next week’s election. Despite spending three and a half years blundering over Brexit, they were still comfortably ahead of Labour in the polls. In Jeremy Corbyn, they had an opposition leader denounced as a terrorist sympathiser, an unreconstructed communist, a rabid anti-Semite and — in general — an enemy of Britain. You might regard Corbyn this way yourself. If so, then it’s worth asking: if he really is so bad, why has support for Labour been steadily increasing since the election was called? Is the nation going mad — or might there be more to it? I’ve supported and campaigned for Corbyn’s type