Jeremy corbyn

Sunday

Ben Sixsmith

Is it God’s will that President Trump will meet with Prime Minister Corbyn?

Perhaps it truly will take place. Maybe it will happen.Imagine the scene. President Trump sits with his nose upturned as if a member of his entourage is suffering the effects of an enormous curry. Prime Minister Corbyn sits with a look of vague discomfort, as if he is meeting a friend's drunkenly abrasive wife. Their handshake is tense and their words are limited. (They have some common ground. As someone else — not me — suggested they are both unfriendly if not hostile towards the idea of Nato.)Afterwards, Trump says ‘Grandpa Jez’ is a ‘crazy guy’. ‘But we have to work together,’ he shrugs diplomatically. Corbyn tells the British press that he grilled the president on his sexism, racism and Islamophobia.

jeremy corbyn
John Keiger

France’s doomed socialist project should make Corbyn voters think twice

From our UK edition

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 levels and a special wealth tax.

Isabel Hardman

Tories benefit from no-show at chaotic TV debate as election enters final days

From our UK edition

Believe it or not, there was yet another televised election debate tonight, this time on Channel 4, called the 'Everything But Brexit' debate. The Tories had refused to take part, and while their decision will have been partly down to their ongoing battle with the broadcaster, which they have accused of being biased, they will also have viewed tonight's programme as an opportunity for them to make their central election pitch without even turning up. This debate worked in the Conservatives' favour because it was chaotic, with the representatives of the five parties who did turn up constantly talking and even shouting over each other and the presenter Cathy Newman. At times it sounded like a school playground at the end of term when everyone is tired, including the teacher.

Friday

Thursday

Dominic Green

Bernie Sanders leans into anti-Semitism

Just as Hollywood's racist liberals love a Magical Negro, so young socialists love a Magic Grandpa who promises to shake the money tree, annul student debt and hand out free subsidies to the kulaks. Not all socialism is the same, though, and not just because some of it is national socialism. The Chinese communists under Deng Xiaoping declared ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. America's Magic Grandpa, Bernie Sanders, is a socialist with American characteristics, a millionaire whose life was recently saved by the insertion of an ingeniously capitalist heart stent into his clogged arteries. Being rich, Bernie could, if he needed it, expect to receive a replacement kidney without it first being cut out of a tax defaulter.

bernie sanders
Maurice Mcleod

What the Tories don’t understand about Corbyn voters

From our UK edition

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 of politics most of my adult life.

James Forsyth

The Tories are right to be nervous

From our UK edition

Despite their consistent poll lead, the Tories are anxious. There is only a week to go and in many seats the race is far too tight for comfort. Because they have no potential partners in a hung parliament, if the Tories win, it will be by the ‘skin of their teeth’, I’m told. ‘There’s quite a lot of nervousness at CCHQ,’ says one cabinet minister sounding decidedly nervous. The big Tory concern is that the Remain vote is beginning to coalesce around Labour. To date, the Tories have benefitted from the fact they’re uniting the Leave vote, while Remain is split. If that changes, the likelihood of a majority will be greatly reduced.

Rod Liddle

Who are we kidding – of course terror is a political issue

From our UK edition

It was pleasing to see that old clip of Gerry Adams endorsing Jeremy Corbyn re-emerge, just before the acts of carnage were carried out at London Bridge. It reminded us all, should we have needed to be reminded, of Jeremy’s genial relationship with terrorists who murder British citizens (or indeed Israeli citizens). The question, I suppose, is: will it sway any opinions? You would doubt it, such is the kind of deranged certitude in which the his supporters bask, where everything bad about Mr Corbyn has actually been made up by Boris Johnson, or people like me. Even as the first reports of the atrocity were coming in, Corbyn’s Momentum acolytes were all over social media suggesting that it was an establishment plot to scupper Labour’s chances at the election.

Martin Vander Weyer

The RMT strike is a demonstration of what to expect in a Corbyn-McDonnell regime

From our UK edition

It’s unusual for a Governor of the Bank of England to announce his next job before Downing Street has named his successor. In Mark Carney’s case, the new role turns out to be an unpaid, part-time one as the UN’s special envoy for climate action and finance, so no protocol has been breached — though the announcement will serve as a reminder to Chancellor Sajid Javid or whoever succeeds him to let the long--suffering Canadian escape his Threadneedle Street prison as swiftly as dignity allows after election day. What’s significant is the confirmation this news offers that ‘climate risk’ has moved into the mainstream of financial and corporate life.

Wednesday

Steven Fielding

We are witnessing the death throes of Corbynism

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn has given up on winning this election and is currently struggling to ensure that on 12 December Boris Johnson will be denied a Commons majority.  Last week Labour’s campaign strategy switched from trying to win seats to trying not to lose them, reflecting just how badly things are going. With polling day just around the corner, the party has been reduced to sending its chair Ian Lavery to visit once rock-sold northern seats to try and win back former miners to Labour. It should not have been this way. Indeed, according to John McDonnell, Corbyn was just a week away from becoming Prime Minister in 2017. If only that election campaign had lasted just a little bit longer he would have entered Downing Street as the victor.

Thursday

Peter Jones

Socrates would have made the leaders’ debates real interrogations

From our UK edition

There is something deeply unsatisfying about the debates featuring party leaders. The questions put to them, whether by an audience or presenter, are the routine ones that they face every day and therefore draw routine responses. What they never get is an interrogation. Enter Socrates, licking his lips. He once described how a friend of his had asked the oracle at Delphi whether there was anyone wiser than he. The Pythia answered ‘No’. Baffled by this, Socrates set about to prove her wrong. He failed. After interrogating a wide range of people he concluded that he was wiser, but only in this respect, that he knew he was ignorant, whereas they did not. How, then, to put his ignorance to good use?

The Spectator

Does safety-first Boris Johnson have any ambitions on the world stage?

From our UK edition

There is a large vacuum at the heart of this general election campaign. Aside from the topic of our relations with the EU, and Nicola Sturgeon’s statement that she would decline to press a nuclear button which is never going to be hers to press in any case, no leader has had anything of interest to say on foreign policy. This is not for want of matters to discuss. The elections in Hong Kong at the weekend presented an ideal opportunity to bring up foreign policy. A small political earthquake occurred in a former British colony, with reformers triumphing at the polls just as they had drawn huge support on the streets.

Andy Coulson

‘For the Jenni, not the few’: the anti-Boris attack line Labour missed

From our UK edition

If the age of deference were still with us, the mortuary tag has now been tied to its toe following Prince Andrew’s Newsnight interview. I saw him a couple of weeks ago at a military charity event where he did a good job, showing how the royals frequently but quietly add value to important causes. His performance in front of Emily Maitlis, fast becoming Britain’s best interviewer, was (to put it politely) less impressive. As is often the case, the advisers get a good kicking when such moments go wrong. But it was the words that came out of His Royal Highness’s mouth that were the problem. Boris must be chuffed by the ongoing royal carriage crash.

James Forsyth & Katy Balls

‘Austerity was not the way forward’

From our UK edition

Only once in the post-war era has a British political party won a fourth term in office, but that is what the Conservative party are attempting to do in this election. It’s a tall order, but Boris Johnson has a plan: to make it clear that his is a new government — offering change, not simply more of the same. ‘I have great respect for my predecessors, it goes without saying, great respect, but this is a new government and we have a new agenda and it will be a different agenda,’ he insists, when we meet in an aircraft hangar in the marginal seat of Norwich North. ‘This is not a continuity government. This is a new government, we have a very different approach. If we can get in with a working majority, we will have a transformative agenda for the country.

Johan Norberg

The rise – and disastrous fall – of the kibbutz

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are part of a breed of socialists who argue that this time will be different. Socialism never failed, they insist: only the walls, barbed wire and jackboots did. So what they plan for Britain, while radical, is bound to work! True, it’s more radical than anything done in any European country today. Comparisons with Venezuela or Cuba or Soviet Russia are unfair, they say. But there is one model that today’s socialists talk fondly about: the Israeli kibbutz. Early versions of these communes were created by Zionist pioneers in the early 20th century, and they became popular after the foundation of the state of Israel. By 1950, 65,000 people lived in ‘kibbutzim’ — more than 5 per cent of the population.

Dominic Green

Allegations of anti-Semitism are damaging to Labour, but not toxic

From our UK edition

Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi, was right to take the unprecedented action of denouncing Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for endemic anti-Jewish prejudice. James Cleverly, the Conservative chairman, was right to draw attention to polls showing half of British Jews are contemplating emigration if Labour wins. The Jewish Chronicle was right to turn its cover into an unprecedented open letter, begging Britain’s non-Jews not to vote for Corbyn. But if support for Labour does not collapse as a result of all this condemnation, don’t be surprised. In fact, Labour is doing rather well. Before the Commons voted to hold an election, Labour averaged 23 per cent support in the polls.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn flounders on anti-Semitism, Brexit, tax and spending

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn's interview with Andrew Neil was one of the most uncomfortable half hours of the Labour leader's tenure. In contrast to the ITV debate, where he appeared confident and quick-witted, Corbyn struggled to answer questions on a number of different issues, complaining all the while that Neil wouldn't let him finish. By the end, he might have wished that he'd had more interruptions as this was a very poor interview. His refusal to apologise for the Labour party's handling of anti-Semitism has naturally attracted the most attention.

The Spectator

Full transcript: Jeremy Corbyn grilled by Andrew Neil

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn took part in The Andrew Neil Interviews on BBC One this evening. Neil grilled the Labour leader on everything from anti-Semitism to Vladimir Putin. You can read the full transcript from the interview here: AN: Jeremy Corbyn, the Chief Rabbi says a new poison of anti-Semitism, anti-Jewism, has taken root in the Labour Party and it’s sanctioned by you, he says. He questions you’re fit for office. What’s your response? JC: I’m looking forward to having a discussion with him because I want to hear why he would say such a thing. So far as I’m concerned anti-Semitism is not acceptable in any form anywhere in our society and obviously certainly not in my party, the Labour Party.

Saturday

Ross Clark

Britain is dangerously close to having an overtly anti-American prime minister

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. What have Fidel Castro, Nicolás Maduro, Hamas and the Khomeinist regime in Iran got in common? That the US has not exactly seen eye to eye with them over past years and decades? Well, yes. But there is another thing too: Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party leader who could soon be the British prime minister, has warmly praised them all. Castro, according to Corbyn on the occasion of the former Cuban leader’s death in 2016, was a ‘champion of social justice’. Corbyn rang in to a Venezuelan TV program in 2014 to praise Maduro, who introduced him as a ‘friend of Venezuela’.

jeremy corbyn

Friday

Steven Fielding

Jeremy Corbyn is a pale imitation of Clement Attlee

From our UK edition

To excited cheers, Angela Rayner last week promised Labour supporters that a Jeremy Corbyn-led government ‘would knock the socks off’ the one led by Clement Attlee. Given Attlee oversaw the creation of the NHS and the nationalisation of 20 per cent of the economy while establishing a universalist welfare state, not to mention building nearly one million homes – and all during a time of acute post-war shortages - Rayner’s claim was a brave one. Given its record, the government elected in 1945 is Labour’s version of Motherhood and Apple Pie. It has long enjoyed a revered status across the party. During the early 1980s, both those who left Labour to form the SDP and the Bennites who forced them out each claimed to be true heirs to Attlee.