Labour party

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband won’t say anything until after the Labour leadership contest is over

Why is Ed Miliband not intervening to stop Jeremy Corbyn? Some Labourites see the former leader’s silence on the issue as a dereliction of duty, and hope to increase the pressure on him to say something about the importance of not lurching further left. But sources have told Coffee House that he plans to say nothing at all until 12 September, when the new leader is announced. His spokesman says: ‘His view is that the precedent was set by Neil Kinnock and Gordon Brown. He thinks it is right that the debate about the new leaders should not involve the outgoing leaders. It is right that the candidates speak for themselves.’ Miliband is refusing all interview requests, and only once there is a new leader will he work out how he wants to be involved.

Douglas Murray

At least Labour is still a party worth crashing

The Labour party includes many sensible and intelligent people who want what is best for our country.  But all of them are currently gnawing their hands and weeping into their sleeves as they watch their party prepare to take this great leap backwards.  I know of Labour politicians who hoped that putting Jeremy Corbyn up for the leadership would shine a light on him and his ilk and thus chase out for ever the IRA/Hezbollah wing of their party.  Alas for them the infection turned out to be what the body most welcomed, and so here the sensible members of the party sit, sadly mulling their electoral mortality. In such times I feel that it is incumbent upon those of us who wish the Labour party well to provide some comfortable words.

Sebastian Payne

Could Jeremy Corbyn be removed as Labour leader?

If Jeremy Corbyn is elected as Labour leader, how long would he last? Blairities, such as John McTernan, have promoted the idea of an instacoup — taking him out as soon as possible. Or the party might decide further down the line they've had enough. In either scenario, there is a formal procedure for removing a leader. Under the 2014 Labour rule book (produced after the Collins review), clause two of chapter four explains how a leader can be challenged: ‘Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers each year prior to the annual session of Party conference. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20 per cent of the Commons members of the PLP.

Sebastian Payne

Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall deny Peter Mandelson asked them to drop out

He may be out of power but Labour’s Prince of Darkness is still attempting to pull the strings. Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that Peter Mandelson suggested to Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall that they should drop out of the Labour leadership contest in order to have the whole thing called off. One source told the paper ‘Lord Mandelson and other Blairites were saying – this is a disgrace, let’s get this thing pulled. But it was not going to happen’. On the Today programme, Yvette Cooper gave a guarded answer as to whether there had been any contact with Mandelson.

Steerpike

Andy Burnham, we have got news for you!

In an interview with Labour Uncut, Andy Burnham admitted a dark secret: that throughout the 90s he lived in fear that his early-career journalism gigs -- from his time working for B2B magazines -- would wind their way onto Have I Got News for You. He recently repeated his reason for not going on the programme in an interview with GQ: 'Have I Got News for You bid for me almost ten times a year and the reason they do it, I am certain, is they have some of my old articles - so I refuse it every time.' While Mr S can't vouch for the Beeb, Steerpike has at least managed to track down a copy of one of Burnham's early journalism efforts; Passenger Rail Management: Vol. 1, Issue 1, from May/June 1993.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Gordon Brown’s speech provokes scuffles amongst Labour MPs

So, funnily enough, Gordon Brown's speech about his party's leadership election hasn't been that well-received by some quarters of Labour. There are some interesting people who are inevitably claiming he's a Tory, but what's more interesting is the way it has gone down with Labour MPs. Clive Lewis, for instance, seems to be quite keen to help the Tories out by saying that the guy who was Labour Chancellor and then Prime Minister during its last time in power isn't credible: https://twitter.com/labourlewis/status/632899854641971200 Graham Allen thinks Brown should have been talking about something else: https://twitter.com/JasonCowleyNS And supporters of rival camps are starting to do the Twitter equivalent of mud-wrestling: https://twitter.

Isabel Hardman

Gordon Brown tries to save his party

Gordon Brown has just given one of his saving-the-world-at-the-last-minute speeches. He was speaking just as the ballot papers for his party’s leadership election are being sent out, and in keeping with his other saving-the-world-at-the-last-minute speeches, particularly the one he delivered shortly before the Scottish referendum, it was a barnstormer. His main theme was the importance of getting Labour into shape so that it can be in power in order to carry out its moral mission. Brown argued that ‘it is not an abandonment of principles to seek power and to use that power in government. It is the realisation of principles’.

Charlie Cadywould

Lurch to the left or the right? Where Labour and the Tories must position themselves to win in 2020

What are the best political positions for Labour and the Conservatives to take to win back more voters? The Tories want to maintain and extend their victory, while Labour is trying to work out how to unite the left and encourage more people to turn out for the party. These two parties used to focus their attention on swing voters in the centre-ground, but politics has fragmented too much for that now. Things are, naturally, more difficult for Labour. The scale of its 2015 defeat means that just taking votes and seats from the SNP, Plaid and the Greens is insufficient to give the party a majority in 2020.

The Spectator

A Twitter snapshot of the Labour leadership struggle

Who would win the Labour leadership contest if it were decided by the number of Twitter followers? Jeremy Corbyn 94,200 Andy Burnham 85,400 Yvette Cooper 72,800 Liz Kendall 35,900 And the nascent Tory leadership battle? Boris Johnson 1.43m* George Osborne 135,000 Theresa May 0† *For @MayorofLondon; his personal handle has another 73,200. †She doesn’t tweet.

Friday

Georgina Stockley

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet: runners and riders

Who could Jeremy Corbyn invite into his shadow cabinet if elected Labour leader? Some frontbenchers are suggesting today that he could find two thirds of his shadow ministerial positions unfilled as MPs refuse to serve under his leadership. But who might say yes to an offer from the veteran socialist. These are the runners and riders who might just be prepared to join Corbyn’s inner circle: Golden Oldies Dennis Skinner MP for Bolsover One of Corbyn’s earliest backers, the Beast of Bolsover is also a long-serving member of Labour’s awkward squad. Perhaps he could help out by adding jokes to Corbyn’s dry speeches: his annual Queen’s Speech gags will come in handy.

Ed West

Could the Tory right do a Corbyn?

If the Labour leadership has taught us anything it is that, as Kent Brockman once observed, democracy simply doesn’t work.  The people’s party has asked the people, and the people are going to drive them off a cliff. One or two journalists have speculated about whether the Tory Right could ever do something similar. https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/631935656139337732 To some extent it’s a moot point because the set-up of the Conservative leadership election favours the moderates, by allowing only two candidates to go forward to the membership for voting.

Steerpike

Coffee shots: Cocktails for Corbyn

With the registration period now closed, Labour members are sitting tight, waiting for their ballot papers to arrive. A period of quiet, sober reflection now begins, as members decide who they want to see face off the Tories. But not everyone is seeing it that way. The Scottish Labour Young Socialists - who say they are 'fighting for a new, subversive politics' - are holding an event in honour of comrade Corbyn. https://twitter.com/SLYSocialists/status/631554048479461376 Forget champagne socialism; for young Corbynites, the tipple of choice is a cocktail. Marxtini anyone?

Isabel Hardman

Andy Burnham: We should/shouldn’t attack Jeremy Corbyn

At least Andy Burnham is keeping us all on his toes with his leadership campaign. If you’d stopped paying attention to the Labour leadership election for a couple of hours, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Shadow Health Secretary thinks it is a bad idea to attack Jeremy Corbyn. This is what he had to say on the matter yesterday: ‘I would say the attacks we’ve seen on Jeremy I think misread the mood of the party because what people are saying is they’re crying out for something different, they are fed up with the way politics has been, particularly the way Labour has been conducting politics in recent times.

Isabel Hardman

The Tories can start celebrating the Labour leadership result now

The Conservatives are naturally very much enjoying the Labour leadership contest, and are starting to make use of it in the press, with Matt Hancock warning that Jeremy Corbyn would cost every working household £2,400. It’s the sort of thing the Tories were doing in the general election, slapping often rather arbitrary price tags on Labour’s policies, but Corbyn does make it rather easier for these attacks to gain purchase with voters. Hancock does say that any Labour leader will cost voters money. And it is not right that the Tories will only benefit if Jeremy Corbyn wins. It is too late for any leadership candidate to put the Corbyn genie back in the bottle, even if someone else wins.

Steerpike

Labour’s attack dog takes a swipe at the Guardian after Burnham snub

Oh dear. Is the Labour leadership campaign beginning to get too much for the Burnham camp? After the Guardian announced last night that they would be endorsing Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham's campaign manager Michael Dugher was quick to tweet a link to the Guardian's 2010 endorsement of Nick Clegg. https://twitter.com/MichaelDugher/status/631885221554749441 As this endorsement didn't work out too well for the Liberal Democrats, some users took this to be a thinly veiled dig by Dugher -- who previously worked closely with Labour spin doctor Damian McBride under Gordon Brown -- to suggest that the paper's endorsement is not worth much. https://twitter.

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 13 August 2015

I’m going off Jeremy Corbyn. He seems more and more pleased with himself by the minute. But I understand why he is so popular with Labour supporters. It isn’t just his perceived authenticity in a field of machine politicians — the same attribute that has thrust Donald Trump to the fore in the race for the Republican nomination in the United States. It is something of which I have been reminded this week by the news that Silvio Berlusconi is planning to sell his preposterous Sardinian villa to a Saudi prince, and this is the shame felt by so many party members over their long servility to Tony Blair. For perhaps nothing better exemplifies Blair’s indifference to Labour sensibilities than his visit with Cherie to the Villa Certosa in 2004.

Dot Wordsworth

Taleban

Toxic virus or Taleban: it’s funny how the mild-mannered Liz Kendall has attracted for her Blairite associations the most violently pejorative terms. Hardly had the Labour leadership contest begun before her allies were being called ‘Taleban New Labour’. No one thought New Labour was really much like the Taleban. That’s why the metaphor was effective: it suggested generalised maleficence. Many people presume that the Taleban is some immemorial movement within Islam, like the Hanbali school or the Wahhabi sect. But it dates back no more than 20 years, to the exiles who returned to Afghanistan having developed strict practices while students of Islamic law in Pakistan. Talib, more fully talib al-ilm, is a ‘seeker of knowledge’ in Arabic.

Isabel Hardman

Why all the Labour leadership candidates have failed to deal with Jeremy Corbyn

Even though Jeremy Corbyn has the Big Mo in this Labour leadership campaign, it is fair to say that Yvette Cooper has had a pretty good few weeks too. The Shadow Home Secretary managed to produce all her passion for her speech today in which she finally rounded on Corbyn, as well as rightly attacking the idea that only those at the hard ends of the political spectrum are the ones with principles. This evening she has bagged the endorsement of the Guardian. Andy Burnham, meanwhile, has not been enjoying the campaign since his bungled handling of the welfare bill.

Isabel Hardman

Failed candidates highlight Labour’s southern discomfort

While the Labour leadership contest is in a miserable state, other parts of the party are trying to get on with working out how it can recover in 2020. Two big questions are how to deal with Ukip and how to make Labour a winning force again in the South of England and I look at the senior party figures who are trying to get going with answering these questions in this week’s politics column. So anxious are those who actually fought the general election in the South that they’ve written a letter to all four leadership candidates and deputy leadership contenders to remind them of the importance of making Labour a winning force in the South West, the South East and East of England.

Isabel Hardman

Will Tony Blair really help save Labour?

Will Tony Blair’s intervention into the Labour leadership contest really make a difference? The former Prime Minister argues in today’s Guardian that this is a far worse crisis for his party than the 1980s, and uses what Angela Eagle last night described as ‘apocalyptic language’ to warn members of the danger the party is in. He writes: ‘This is directed to longstanding members and those who have joined but without an agenda. They’re still a majority and they have to exercise leadership now to save the party. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left, right or centre of the party, whether you used to support me or hate me. But please understand the danger we’re in.