Labour party

[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.

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.

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?

According to some of the more far-left members of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman is a Tory. The somewhat surprising claim came after she told her party to abstain on the Tories' Welfare Bill, leading 48 MPs to break whip and vote against it. However, seemingly keen to silence the naysayers -- in an interview with the Guardian -- Harman, who has three children with Jack Dromey, has given an account of the lengths she has gone to to avoid socialising with Tories. The acting Leader of the Labour Party says that she once hid in a side corridor to prevent Margaret Thatcher -- who she likens to a witch -- from meeting her baby son: 'Very early on, I brought in one of the babies to the Commons and I saw her at the other end of the corridor.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters and spokespeople are fiercely debating whether or not he told the Independent on Sunday’s Jane Merrick that he wants to bring back clause IV. His quote to the journalist seems pretty clear: ‘I think we should talk about what the objectives of the party are, whether that’s restoring Clause Four as it was originally written or it’s a different one. But we shouldn’t shy away from public participation, public investment in industry and public control of the railways. ‘I’m interested in the idea that we have a more inclusive, clearer set of objectives. I would want us to have a set of objectives which does include public ownership of some necessary things such as rail.

Since Karen Danczuk announced her split from her husband Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP, she has been embroiled in a bitter row with him over the reasons for their parting of ways. Happily, in recent weeks this has cooled, as they try to put their differences aside for the sake of their children. Not that this means the 'selfie queen' is about to become a wallflower. The former Labour councillor has started a blog -- titled 'Selfie Made Woman' -- in which she offers readers an insight into her deepest thoughts. And while the Mirror reported earlier in the week that she faces bailiffs after ignoring a court order concerning rent, Danczuk has decided to focus on another issue at hand: her worries ahead of her first girls' night out: 'I feel like the new Bridget Jones.

One of Andy Burnham’s problems is his occasional pandering towards populism. In an interview with GQ magazine, the Labour leadership contender tries to talk up his credentials as an ordinary bloke and says he doesn’t intend to spend the rest of his life in politics, arguing there should be a limit on how long MPs should remain the Commons: 'Not necessarily, no. I think modern politics is intense - it's changed in my 14 years in parliament. I always felt I would give it my all for 20, 25 years. Never put a time limit on it but then maybe finish off my career by doing something different. If you've had a seat for 25 years, people should let some new thinking in.' What motivated Burnham, who has served as an MP since 2001, to say this?

‘Corbynomics’, aka Jeremy Corbyn's plans for the UK economy, has entered the Westminster lexicon today. It appears to consist of the work primarily of one man, Richard Murphy. The director of TaxResearch UK, who advises various charities and trade unions on tax matters, has taken credit for the handful of economic policies Corbyn has announced so far, which have been attacked by Labour’s shadow chancellor Chris Leslie today. https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/628127935543799808 In case you missed the birth of Corbynomics two weeks ago — the launch event was closed to the media — here is a summary of what we know so far. The details of these proposals have come from Murphy's blog and Corbyn's pamphlet: 1.

George Galloway has announced that he would like to return to the Labour party if Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader. The former Respect MP for Bradford West sees Corbyn as a comrade in arms and would feel at home alongside him. He told LBC this week: ‘I think if Jeremy were to win everyone on the left would rejoin the Labour party. That's the part of the problem that saw us part solved. I've always been a Labour man I consider myself real Labour. I've never been a Marxist or a Trotskyist or any other kind of -ist other than a Labour-ist.’ And asked if he would contemplate a  return to the Labour fold if Corbyn wins, Galloway said 'definitely, pretty damn quick.