Jeremy corbyn

Chuka Umunna’s call for Labourites to unite around their new leader and show 'solidarity' does show a growing acceptance that Jeremy Corbyn is on the brink of being installed as the party’s new chief in just ten days’ time. But it also shows that the Blairites in the party are finally starting to come up with a plan for dealing with the rise of the hard left. Labour’s centrist modernisers have spent the summer scratching their heads at the Corbyn phenomenon, which they hadn’t predicted at all - indeed, I was initially briefed by one of their number that ‘we will get hundreds of thousands of new supporters. Social media has changed how we communicate in a way we can’t grasp and it has blown open this leadership contest too.

The news that Jeremy Corbyn thought the death of Osama bin Laden 'a tragedy' because he was never put on trial is not very surprising. Nor is it as far-out-there as most of his comments.I did a BBC Question Time immediately after bin Laden's death where I got the impression I was the only person in Britain not to feel sad about the terrorist's death. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Paddy Ashdown and most of the audience seemed horrified by the terrorist's early demise and were most exercised of all over whether or not he had been given an appropriately 'Islamic' burial.Fortunately there was a woman in the audience (in Hammersmith, London) who had been on the Tube on 7 July and had seen people ripped from their lives far more brutally and with far less reason than Osama bin Laden was.

The silly season is supposed to end tomorrow. September sidles in and normality replaces August's frivolity. The reality of winter will be with us soon enough, too. That, at any rate, is the theory but it seems, on both sides of the Atlantic, that sillyness is likely to last for some time yet. There's the twin risings of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, for instance. It might initially seem as though they have little in common but a more penetrating gaze at their improbable ascent to prominence discerns certain commonalities. Trump is the American Corbyn and Corbyn the British Trump. The difference, of course, is significant. Trump won't win the Republican nomination; it still looks as though Corbyn will be the next Labour leader.

It’s not entirely surprising that Tony Blair fancied one last chance to plead with his party not to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader. And it’s not particularly surprising that his piece in today’s Observer is attracting exactly the sort of reaction he expected. But what is surprising is not just the former Prime Minister’s rather sarcastic tone - he says that ‘someone else said to me: “If you’re writing something again, don’t blah on about winning elections; it really offends them.” It would actually be quite funny if it weren’t tragic.’ - but that he’s not really pleading with his party not to elect Jeremy Corbyn at all.

A quick disclaimer: I am a socialist and I share much of Jeremy Corbyn’s politics. I believe that austerity is unjustifiable ideological warfare; I believe in renationalising the railways, I believe in Clause IV, I believe in strong trade unions, and I believe in nuclear disarmament. I also believe that Corbyn should be commended for his unwavering parliamentary record, and that the media’s sniping attacks on the man are often facetious and usually motivated by clandestine political agendas. I clarify all of this to appease the claws of ‘Camp Corbyn’. In fact I am willing to admit that when this drawn-out election begun I initially supported the MP for Islington North.

The summit on the integrity of the Labour leadership contest is over and interim leader Harriet Harman described it as a ‘routine’ and ‘useful’ meeting. Although she is ‘confident that there won’t be questions over the integrity of the result and there aren’t any bases for legal challenges’, some of the numbers released on the number of infiltrators are pretty high. 3,000 ‘cheats’, as Harman described them, have been excluded from voting so far but the final number could be substantially higher. Harman has suggested the selectorate would be ‘fewer than 600,000. It will be over half a million’ — meaning there are tens of thousands of rogues still to be weeded out.

Quelle surprise, Jeremy Corbyn has come out against a third runway at Heathrow. The Labour leadership favourite has indicated in an interview with the FT that under him, the party would not support expansion at Heathrow: ‘I think the third runway is a problem for noise pollution and so on across west London…I also think there is an under-usage of the other airports around London. I’d vote against it in this parliament.’ Assuming that the bookies and pollsters are correct and Corbyn is elected leader on September 12, this would represent a U-turn from the party’s current stance.

Jeremy Corbyn has hosted over 70 rallies as part of his Labour leadership campaign. Yesterday evening, the bearded one returned to Islington to speak at a four hour fundraising event — the first in his local patch. I went along to find out more about the 'movement' that has sprung up around his candidacy. The event was held in the beautiful Union Chapel on Upper Street, a church that moonlights as a live music venue. Crowds lined the street to get in and the comrades took advantage of this to distribute propaganda — promoting the ‘Spartacist League’, a ‘Rage Against the Tories’ rally and Sadiq Khan’s mayoral campaign: https://twitter.