Labour party

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Gordon Brown’s speech provokes scuffles amongst Labour MPs

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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?

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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?

From our UK edition

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.

Isabel Hardman

Time is running out for Labour

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/chinasdownturn-labourslostvotersandthesweetestvictoryagainstaustralia/media.mp3" title="Isabel Hardman and Rowenna Davis discuss Labour's lost voters" startat=622] Listen [/audioplayer] The Labour leadership contest was supposed to be a debate about the party’s future. Instead it has oscillated between petty personality politics and bickering. Nobody is addressing the question of how to win back lost voters. The four candidates have barely mentioned the fact that Labour is not winning seats in the south of England, nor the huge challenge from Ukip in its heartlands in the north. Given that the party failed to win its majority in England, it is staggering that more attention hasn’t been paid to this at hustings and in speeches.

Robert Philpot

Labour’s losing instinct

From our UK edition

It appeared the ultimate summer ‘silly season’ story: that Labour would choose an unrepentant, self-consciously unspun bearded leftie as its leader. But, as ballot papers for the leadership election are dispatched, the story is threatening to close with a nightmare final chapter for the party. This week the pollsters YouGov had Corbyn 20 points ahead of Andy Burnham, his closest rival, and in a position to win the contest in its first round. Labour thus faces the prospect of a defeat in 2020 that could make Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 landslide look small-scale. But while Corbyn’s rise may not have been predicted, it was eminently predictable.

Nigel Jones

Polymath or psychopath?

From our UK edition

They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of his centenary, the obituaries — once they had expressed astonishment that this titan from the age of Attlee and empire had still been around —paid tribute to a polymath whose achievements could fill nine more ordinary lives. Freeman was a pioneer of television, virtually inventing the TV celebrity interview. He was a leading politician — the last surviving member of the 1945 Labour government; a diplomat — at one time our man in Washington and High Commissioner in India; a much decorated war hero; and — not least — a renowned swordsman between the sheets, boasting four wives and innumerable girlfriends.

Wednesday

Ed West

Corbynmania has shaken my faith in my own loony right-wing opinions

From our UK edition

I used to consider myself to be in tune with the general public on politics, by which I meant – on the loony wing of the Tory party. After all, I told myself, we have widespread public support on crime, immigration, Europe and most issues involving morality. Things had only gone wrong because a modernising clique based in Notting Hill wanted to reject true conservatism and embrace social liberalism, a liberalism that is neither popular nor especially rational or workable. But I have to say that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid has rather shaken my confidence in the whole 'authentic right' thing.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Is Andy Burnham telling the whole truth about his time outside Westminster?

From our UK edition

The Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham, who has worked in politics for 21 years, makes much of his life outside the Westminster bubble. As well as releasing a campaign video designed to show off his Northern working-class roots, he told Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics that part of the reason he is 'rooted' in the real world is that he has held down normal jobs outside of politics: AN: You work from a mile from where we are. Tell me one job you’ve had that’s not the Westminster bubble? AB: I worked for a newspaper, I worked for a publishing company before I came into politics. AN: For how long? AB: Pardon? For about four years before I came into politics. AN: What was the publishing company?