Labour party

One of the toughest jobs in politics is responding to a Budget. It’s the job of the leader of the Opposition, and given the Labour Party has still got two months until it elects its chief, that job falls to Harriet Harman as interim leader. Therefore Harman has an even tougher version of one of the toughest jobs in politics, as she has to work out not just how to scrutinise the government’s spending plans, but also how to stop her party having an unpleasant fight over its stances on certain controversial cuts. If a cut is, in Labour’s view, wrong, then it will struggle to make much headway in opposing it if that opposition only starts in a few months’ time once a new leader is in place and they’ve worked out what they want to do.

Michael Fallon was very careful indeed to push the issue of military action against Isis in Syria in as gentle a fashion as possible when he came to the Chamber this afternoon. The Defence Secretary told MPs the government knew that Isis is running its operations from North Syria, and he again made the argument about the illogicality of sticking to borders that the terror group doesn’t recognise. His attempts not to further agitate those Tory MPs sitting behind him were interesting, but what was more interesting was the Labour response to the statement, in which Vernon Coaker made it clear that his party would be regarding potential action in Syria with a great degree more sympathy than it did for the previous proposal of potential action in Syria.

Ed Miliband was praised for his integrity by George Osborne after he returned to the Commons and gave a speech so soon after his election defeat. Although the Conservatives have been happy to pile on the praise towards their old foe, Mr S suspects their enthusiasm will begin to wear thin by the end of the week. The former Labour leader is to dip his toe back into frontline politics by leading a commons debate tomorrow on Hatfield Colliery, the Doncaster coal mine which is closing this week leading to the loss of 430 jobs. Judging by Miliband comments so far on the mine's early closure, the Tories will be in for a rough ride during the adjournment debate: https://twitter.com/Ed_Miliband/status/615761740081410049 https://twitter.

Liz Kendall is continuing to push herself as the ‘change everything’ candidate for the Labour leadership. During a speech at Reuters this morning, Kendall called for the party to make a big shift on fiscal responsibility if it has any hope of winning the next election — a task some think is beyond Labour in its current state: ‘If we continue to stick with the politics that we had at the last election or, indeed, over the last seven or eight years, we will get the same result. Einstein said the definition of madness was to continue doing the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result. We need big changes.

Never let it be said that Jeremy Corbyn is the most anti-business of the four Labour leadership candidates. The left-wing politician appeared to endorse BT today on Twitter: So, is this corporate sponsorship for his campaign, a tech-savvy leadership pledge or simply the result of a Twitter hack? Given that he has since deleted the tweet, Mr S suspects the latter.

There’s a lot to admire about Jeremy Corbyn. For one, you can’t fault his conviction. While his entire party falls over itself to adopt as many Tory policies as possible, Corbyn remains a stalwart voice of the left. The ideological antithesis of Kendall and the Blairites, Corbyn appears to want to finish the job that Ed Miliband started: bringing Labour back to the left. It’s no wonder, then, that Toby Young and a cadre of other Conservatives want to see Corbyn win. After all, Miliband led Labour to its worst defeat since 1983; he achieved the seemingly insurmountable by appealing to the electorate less than Gordon Brown.

Ed Miliband is clearly struggling to find his place in a post Ed Miliband world. Despite MPs from his own party suggesting the former Labour leader was 'hanging around like an awkward relative at a funeral', Miliband has not shied away from Westminster. Given the comprehensive thumping Ed took at the ballot box, he took a bold decision today to take to Twitter to slam the Prime Minister - remember that guy who beat him last month. A brave decision, if not a wise one. The response was quick and ruthless, and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh: https://twitter.com/DJYems/status/612985229507198976 https://twitter.com/Chav68898982/status/612985260511526912 https://twitter.com/mephistofish/status/612982532448079872 https://twitter.

Ed Miliband believed that after the financial crisis, Britain had moved to the left. He argued that there was no need to adopt all the Blairite positions to win. The election result appears to have disproved that thesis. But, as Andy Grice argues in his column today, Blairite is still being chucked around as the insult of choice in this Labour leadership contest. As Grice points out, Labour particularly need the Blair agenda’s ability to connect with English swing voters now given what has happened in Scotland. In a world in which the swing required for Labour to win Midlothian is larger than to take Kensington, Labour will have to take most of the seats south of the border to gain a working majority. Now, Blair has not helped himself since leaving office.

On Wednesday night in the televised Labour leadership hustings, Yvette Cooper channeled Margaret Thatcher, saying: ‘I’m not standing because I want to be something, but because I want to do something.’ So is she trying to pose as Labour’s Iron Lady? After all, it was Thatcher who originally said that: 'It used to be about trying to do something. Now it's about trying to be someone.' Here's the conclusion that Melissa Kite came to in The Spectator, back in 2012: In Yvette Cooper’s home, an entire room is given over to memorabilia of her husband’s life in politics.