Jeremy corbyn

Amber Rudd will be keeping a low profile this weekend. The sight of a working mother on Question Time, tearfully confronting the Energy Secretary over cuts to working tax credits, won’t have made easy viewing for the Tory press machine. Earlier this month, at Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne reiterated again and again that core Tory message, so ardently championed by Harlow MP Robert Halfon and groups like Bright Blue: this is the (real) party of hard-working people. So last night’s former Tory voter was heavily on message, until suddenly, she wasn’t. 'I work bloody hard for my money to provide for my children, to give them everything they've got… and you're going to take it away from me and them.

Corbyn’s PMQ’s strategy is now clear. Hopeful emailers send their lifestyle details to Labour HQ and a computer sifts the figures to find the voter likeliest to cause the prime minister’s cheeks to blush purple with shame. Today’s lucky winner was Kelly, (no surname given), a single mum on £7.20 per hour who works for 40 hours a week while caring for a disabled sprog. Did the prime minister know how much the tax credit deductions will cost her? Cameron hadn’t a clue so he talked about the rising minimum wage and falling council rents. Corbyn gave the answer: Kelly loses £1,800 a year. The question assumes that we all live in a dysfunctional boot-camp run by Whitehall.

John McDonnell has tried to explain why he U-turned on the fiscal charter this afternoon, saying that he has only ‘changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics’, not the principles of the matter. He told Sky News: ‘I have changed my mind, but I haven’t changed my mind on the principles of what the charter is standing for which is we need to tackle the deficit and we will tackle the deficit. Labour will tackle the deficit – we are not deficit deniers, I haven’t changed my mind on that. ‘But I have changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics.

Whenever the Parliamentary Labour Party meets, journalists gather outside the room in the hope that those leaving the meeting will reveal what went or that the argument will get so heated that they will be able to hear what is going on behind closed doors. Those of my colleagues who turned up to tonight’s PLP meeting were very much in luck. George Eaton reports that Ben Bradshaw, the former culture secretary, left declaring the meeting ‘a total f*** shambles’ and that Emily Thornberry could be heard loudly upbraiding MPs for texting journalists about what was going on inside this supposedly private meeting. So, why was his meeting so rowdy? Well, many MPs are still furious about having had a Jeremy Corbyn leadership imposed on them by the party membership.

At this year's Tory conference Jeremy Hunt defended the government's tax credit cuts, claiming they would make the British people work as hard as the Chinese. While Hunt has since claimed that his comments were misinterpreted, tonight Labour's Helen Goodman hit out at the Health Secretary for the comments. She says if things are so great in China then why did Hunt's wife Lucia -- who is from Xi'an, China -- move to Britain: Given that the personal dig hardly fits in with Jeremy Corbyn's promise of 'a new kind of politics', Labour supporters have been quick to call on Goodman to apologise. Speaking on Westminster Hour this evening, Lady Basildon -- the Labour peer -- said Goodman should say sorry.

With the help of the BBC’s Panorama this week, the full evil lunacy of the child abuse and murder conspiracy allegations relating to Dolphin Square, Elm House, Leon Brittan, Ted Heath, Field Marshal Lord Bramall etc is now emerging. There is a long, long way to go, however, before the names are properly cleared and the police have apologised for their disgusting behaviour. There also needs to be a long list drawn up of those in public life and the media who gave credence to these cruel fantasies. The behaviour of Tom Watson puts him in the same class as Titus Oates, Noel Pemberton Billing and Senator Joe McCarthy. Many of us tut-tut that Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour party, but it is far more shocking that its deputy leader is Mr Watson.