Jeremy corbyn

Corybn gave his wettest ever performance at PMQs. The party leaders had different theories about the authorship of the floods. Corbyn blamed Cameron. Cameron blamed the weather. Rainfall, he explained, had wept from the heavens in such unheralded quantities that a record-breaking dip-stick had to be lowered into the bucket to assess its full volume. Corbyn wouldn’t have this. He said government scrimping was at fault. He personified the issue with his usual set of hand-picked hankie-drenchers. He’d met a nice pair from Leeds, he said, called Chris and Victoria, whose holiday had been ruined by tides of sewage inundating their pressies. This prompted mystifying giggles from Tory backbenchers. Geography teacher Corbyn glared over his specs with his wintriest look.

By the end of the day, it will be quicker to count the number of Labour MPs - including members of the Shadow Cabinet - who have not expressed their sadness that Michael Dugher has been sacked. Even though the outpouring of anguish on social media is interesting and suggests that Jeremy Corbyn is not powerful enough to be able to demand loyalty even from those who will probably remain on the frontbench, it also shows how powerless those frontbenchers and their backbench colleagues who oppose Corbyn really are. Tom Watson and Andy Burnham, too, look powerless as they were unable to save Dugher through either their threatened power as political operators (Watson) or their representations to Corbyn himself (Burnham).

Jeremy Corbyn is currently conducting his reshuffle, with a group of journalists huddled at a discreet distance from the Labour leader’s office. So far, not much has happened, other than Corbyn asking the journalists not to stand outside his office, and Barry Gardiner emerging with a smile on his face. But still the briefings around the reshuffle and the anticipation of it have dominated the news agenda. This must be intensely frustrating for Sadiq Khan, who had planned to spend today getting lots of attention for his campaign on train fares. Labour members and staffers were up long before dawn handing out leaflets publicising the four-year fare freeze promised by the party’s mayoral candidate.

Back in August -- after much anticipation -- Jeremy Corbyn finally revealed some of his economic policies to the world. His policies -- also known as 'Corbynomics' -- took inspiration from the tax expert Richard Murphy's blog. While several of the ideas -- which included reclaiming the £120bn 'tax gap' and quantitative easing -- were described as 'starry-eyed, hard left' policies by Labour's Chris Leslie, Corbyn was not put off. The Labour leader invited Murphy -- who is not a party member -- to Labour conference. In fact, Murphy even thought at one point that he was in line for a role in the Labour Treasury team. Alas the dream appears to have come to an abrupt end.