Jeremy corbyn

After finding himself accused of putting forward a half-hearted case for Remain, tonight Jeremy Corbyn had the chance to prove the naysayers wrong in his first -- and final -- live television debate of the referendum. Yet instead of making a passionate plea for In, Corbyn used the Sky News debate to raise some of his own reservations with the EU. While Corbyn admitted that he is not a 'lover of the European Union', he argued that it is better to stay and fight from within than to leave and be left with greater economic problems. However, it's his answers dwelling on the EU's flaws which are most likely to be remembered.

Jeremy Corbyn went on The Marr Show this morning to talk about Jo Cox’s tragic death and the EU referendum. Corbyn talked movingly about Cox and how MPs don’t want to be cut off from the communities that they serve. The conversation then moved on to the EU referendum. Andrew Marr asked Corbyn if he thought there should be an upper limit on immigration. Corbyn replied, rightly, 'I don't think you can have one while you have free movement of labour'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6joUzXHwE8 Now, this is true. But it very much isn’t the Remain campaign script; David Cameron has even refused to admit that his ambition to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands is undeliverable while Britain is in the EU.

There are few moments in politics when parties put aside their differences to come together. Yesterday’s tragic events in Birstall has brought about one such occasion. After the terrible killing of Labour MP Jo Cox, the Conservatives have said they will not be contesting the by-election held in Batley and Spen.

The Remain campaign takes as its model the ‘No’ one in the 2014 Scottish referendum. First and last — hence the Osborne/Darling fantasy horror Budget on Wednesday — inspire fear. Second, late in the day, leave it all to Labour and get Gordon Brown to make a passionate speech (Mr Brown took this too literally and made almost exactly the same passionate speech). Finally, shortly before polling, get leaders of all stripes to make a solemn ‘vow’ to win over the doubters. I am trying to work out what that vow could be. All 27 other member states promising some guarantee of Britain’s independence within the EU?

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn surprised everyone by using his first question at PMQs to ask for an update on Leveson and phone hacking. In doing this, he took a swipe at both Cameron and Rupert Murdoch, arguing that the Prime Minister's Tory Brexit colleagues were guilty of 'cosying up to Murdoch' at the moment. Well, perhaps Corbyn should pay heed to the saying 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'. Mr S can disclose that one of Corbyn's top colleagues was in attendance at Rupert Murdoch's summer drinks party last night. Sadiq Khan attended media mogul's exclusive drinks bash alongside the likes of Jerry Hall, Bob Geldof and Bill Wyman.

Gordon Brown is busy trying to reset the Remain campaign with a rather leftier tone today. As Tom writes, Labour voters are far less solid in their support for Britain staying in the European Union than the party had hoped, and so the campaign is being handed over to the party so that it can have a proper go at telling its voters that it supports staying in (something not all of them have yet noticed). A group of 20 Labour MPs has also penned a letter pleading for more airtime for Labour voices. It argues: ‘The impact of a leave vote will be catastrophic for the British people. Mainstream Labour voices in the debate must be given more airtime if this catastrophe is to be avoided.’ So whose fault is it that Labour voices have been frozen out?

Weary that his republican views could put-off some Labour voters, Jeremy Corbyn has been keen to make clear that he won't fight to scrap the monarchy -- 'it's not the fight I'm interested in' -- if elected Prime Minister. So, what of his rumoured successor John McDonnell and his team? Just in time for the Queen's birthday celebrations, Steerpike has been passed an article that the shadow Chancellor's media advisor penned back in 2011.

The only arguments that matter in politics today are the arguments on the right. The only futures that are possible to imagine are those offered by the different strands of right-wing thought. The right’s arguments are not good to my mind. Nor are the futures it offers desirable. It is just that the right’s opponents are all but absent from the debate. The future of the country is up for grabs, but only the right hand of England is reaching up to seize it. The journalist in me almost hopes that the ‘leave’ campaign wins. The lies it has told will then be clear, and the liberal press will have years of fun tearing into Johnson, Gove and Farage.

As polling day draws closer there have been cross-party concerns that the Leader of the Opposition is yet to get properly behind the Remain campaign. While this has been put down to his Eurosceptic tendencies, his colleagues can at least take heart that he has found time for... Joey Essex. Yes, the Labour leader will appear alongside the reality star in Essex's upcoming referendum programme for ITV. To tantalise viewers, produced a clip of Essex and Corbyn warping their faces with an app: In an upcoming documentary from Joey Essex on the EU referendum, Corbyn meets with the reality star: https://twitter.com/educatejoey/status/740886860562567168 Don't expect to see Cameron face-swapping with Essex anytime soon.

Is Corbo working for the Tories? The Labour leader was such a pushover today that Cameron turned what should have been a televised monstering into a party political broadcast on behalf of left-wing Conservatism. Corbyn raised tax-avoidance, the minimum wage, and short-term contracts -- three of Cameron’s strongest issues. The PM boasted that prosecutions of minimum wage defaulters have leaped fifteen-fold since 2010. On tax evasion, he trilled, ‘I made it the centrepiece of my G8’. And on short-term contracts he reminded the droopy-shouldered Mr Corbyn that exclusivity clauses had been outlawed under the Coalition. Is Corbyn seriously trying to ambush the PM with arguments that were settled a parliament-and-a-half ago?

It is difficult not to be Eurosceptic. The euro is in trouble, Greece has been bankrupted by Angela Merkel’s fiscal rules, and the Schengen agreement on open borders is collapsing as economic migration seems impossible to stop. Genuine refugees are sadly lost in the human tide of misery landing on the shores of Greece and Italy. And the democratic deficit which allows the European Union to be so unaccountable is leading to the rise of extreme nationalist political parties all over Europe. The result – Bulgaria has a lamentable justice system, Poland has introduced illiberal media laws and Hungary’s constitution has been hijacked. The EU is in danger of collapse unless it undertakes serious reform.

The first of the BBC’s series of prime-time EU referendum events took place this evening, with Andrew Neil interviewing Hilary Benn. The programme highlighted both the uneasy relationship between Benn and his leader Jeremy Corbyn and the Remain campaign’s difficulty in dealing with the immigration issue. Andrew Neil began by putting to Hilary Benn a very Eurosceptic quote from Jeremy Corbyn about the EU from the Maastricht debate of the 1990s and asking Benn what Corbyn got wrong. To which Benn replied, rather uncomfortably, that the ‘Jeremy of today’ supports Britain staying in the EU.

After the recent local elections, John McDonnell put Labour's 'better-than-expected' results in part down to the efforts of Momentum activists. Alas, it seems that not everyone involved with the hard-left campaign group is so in chime with the party when it comes to Labour values. Mr S understands that Momentum's Marlene Ellis has been suspended by the party over an open letter to Corbyn from the Momentum Black ConneXions group. Ellis -- who previously made the news after she was accused of labelling Chuka Umunna as not 'politically black' -- co-signed the blog post which calls on Corbyn to reverse the 'unjustified suspension of Ken Livingstone' after the former mayor was suspended over his Hitler comments.