Labour party

Tuesday

Lee Pollock

The BBC’s latest Churchill documentary is an outrageous hatchet job

Churchill: When Britain Said No BBC2 The 50th anniversary earlier this year of the death of Winston Churchill produced an international wave of commemoration. Churchill remains among the most widely admired – and most regularly quoted – political figures of the past century, especially in America. While Churchill’s role in history will be legitimately analyzed for centuries, there is a class of Churchill-bashers ('revisionists') for whom the adulation of the last few months (and decades) cannot pass without a spirited answer. And where better to do this than on Britain’s state-owned broadcaster. The revisionists’ first salvo was Jeremy Paxman’s programme ('all the dockworkers hated Churchill') on the January 1965 state funeral.

Sebastian Payne

Team Miliband said ‘we must not underestimate Éoin Clarke’

The failings of those around Ed Miliband are numerous. From the Edstone to the interview with Russell Brand, the disconnection between Team Miliband and the real world was one of the key factors contributing to Labour's defeat last month. But I now understand they committed a far graver crime: taking Dr. Eoin Clarke seriously. Clarke, or @LabourEoin as he is better known, spends his days tweeting poorly produced infographics about various public policy matters — mostly related to the NHS. With 42k followers, plus 25k through his ‘think tank’ @LabourLeft and 10.4k with @LabourAndy, he has a decent reach within the hard left.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Team Yvette: We are setting the agenda in the leadership contest

Now that the three main candidates in the Labour leadership contest have established themselves, they are vying to be the ones who set the agenda and the terms of debate. This suggests, they hope, that others, including rival candidates, respect them so much that they cannot help but following their lead. So Yvette Cooper’s campaign believe that Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham have been following in the Shadow Home Secretary’s wake, pointing to interventions she has made on business, tax, the benefit cap, the party’s response to the election and the possibility of a break clause for the party to dump or renew its support for a leader. All of these, they claim, have been followed by one or both of the other two candidates agreeing.

Steerpike

Team Burnham (finally) distance themselves from Dr Éoin Clarke

Oh dear. The love in between Dr Éoin Clarke and aspiring Labour leader Andy Burnham appears to be over. Mr S's colleague Sebastian Payne noted last week that Burnham has attracted 'an online army of fans' which includes Dr Eoin Clarke: 'Part of [Burnham's] nascent leadership campaign is an online army of fans who are promoting his cause and attacking his opponents. Twitter and Facebook are going to be key battlegrounds for each of the contenders — offering an easy way to spread a message without the filter of the media.' These e-cheerleaders have subsequently been christened 'Fandies'. Queen bee among the 'Fandies' remains Clarke - a man armed with nothing more than a PhD in Irish feminism and Microsoft Paint.

Steerpike

Labour leadership race touches a sore spot for Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham may be the odds-on favourite for the Labour leadership but that doesn't mean it's all plain sailing for the politician. Mr S notes that Burnham has been sporting a bruised lip of late. When a hack spied him in the Strangers bar recently, they asked him whether the Labour leadership race had become physical with a punch-up. Happily, it appears that, despite Burnham having a barmy online army behind him, punches are yet to be thrown. Instead it's a cold sore which Burnham put down to 'stress'. Still Mr S can't help but wonder how he will cope if elected leader if he is this stressed already. Is Andy Burnham's upper lip tough enough? Hell no. Latest odds for next Labour leader — via Ladbrokes: Andy Burnham: 10/11. Liz Kendall: 13/8. Yvette Cooper: 9/2.

Steerpike

Lucy Powell: the campaign genius behind the ‘Milibrand’ interview

Lucy Powell's list of PR blunders reached epic proportions through the course of the election campaign, with the Labour campaign chief messing up several media appearances: However, Mr S understands that one of her biggest cock-ups remained unknown until this weekend. Writing in the Sunday Times, Tanya Gold revealed that it was Powell who helped organise Russell Brand's much mocked interview with Ed Miliband. 'The deal was brokered by Lucy Powell, the now equally discredited vice-chairman of the election campaign, and Mr Eddie Izzard.

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Yvette Cooper makes coded attack on Liz Kendall for ‘swallowing’ the Tory manifesto

Yvette Cooper may lack some of Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall's momentum but she remains a formidable opponent in the Labour leadership contest. On the Andrew Marr Show this morning, Cooper was quizzed on how enthusiastic she is for the job, given her late entry to the contest: ‘I want to make sure that Labour leads and wins again and I think I’m the right person to do that because I think I can be the strongest in terms of taking on David Cameron. I also think I will set out ideas for the future that don’t just involve swallowing the Tory manifesto and set out a Labour vision for the future.

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Andy Burnham’s barmy online army

Andy Burnham's campaign has ensured he remains the current favourite to be the next Labour leader. Part of his nascent leadership campaign is an online army of fans who are promoting his cause and attacking his opponents. Twitter and Facebook are going to be key battlegrounds for each of the contenders — offering an easy way to spread a message without the filter of the media. Naturally, Burnham’s campaign has an official Twitter account: @Andy4Leader. As far as I can see, this is the only official account associated with Burnham’s campaign. The account has 1,421 and mostly retweets favourable news from others about Burnham. On May 13, it posted this video of Burnham announcing he was running: https://twitter.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Labour could U-turn on the benefit cap

The most striking aspect of Labour’s response to the Queen’s Speech yesterday was that it is ‘sympathetic’ to the Tory plan to lower the £26,000 benefit cap for workless households to £23,000. This is a policy position that Harriet Harman developed after some discussion with the rest of the party as she prepared to respond to the Speech. The party is well aware that it struggled to respond well to the introduction of that cap in 2010, and that given it ended up being one of the most popular policies pollsters have ever touched, it can’t make the same mistake again. But what’s interesting is that not all leadership candidates agree with this.

Douglas Murray

Liberty’s ‘Human Rights’ campaign uses luvvies to spread misinformation

Does anybody else remember life in Britain before the year 2000?  Despite the distressing increase in the number of walking, talking human beings one meets who were born since the millennium, there must be some other people who remember those times.  Yet what a picture of that era is now being painted. Take the incredibly glitzy and celeb-driven campaign currently running thanks to the campaign group ‘Liberty’.  No less a site than The Spectator has run the ads. And understandably so. For they are not only well-funded but feature the icons of our time.

Steerpike

Peter Mandelson’s ‘but I am a celebrity’ moment

When GQ editor Dylan Jones hired Peter Mandelson as a columnist for the men's magazine in 2001, he was accused of trying to head off criticism that the publication, which was adorned with racy celebrity shoots at the time, was going downmarket. However, little did Jones know that his highbrow hire was actually a... celebrity! Speaking at a News Academy event at Hay, Jones revealed that he discovered only after signing Mandelson how big the Labour politician's ego really was: 'I remember learning something when we hired Peter Mandelson to write a column for us. I think he'd just been fired by the government for the second time, I courted him for a while and then he started writing a column for us.

Martin Bright

Tony Blair has long been an irrelevance in the Middle East peace process

Following months of speculation, Tony Blair has finally announced he is standing down as the Quartet Representative to the Middle East after eight years in the post. It is tempting to ask whether anyone will notice. His time in the job has been marked by a stagnation of the Peace Process, a hardening of the position of increasingly belligerent Israeli governments and a growing distrust among the Palestinians. Tony Blair himself had long become an irrelevance in negotiations. The truth is that Blair was hamstrung from the moment he took the job (immediately after he stood down as Prime Minister in 2007). He was never a 'Peace Envoy', although there was hope in some circles that he would bring the lessons of Northern Ireland to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Nick Cohen

Len the loser

It is not only Russian oligarchs and multinational corporations who run to the ‘capitalist courts’ — as we used to call them on the left. Have an argument with Len McCluskey and you find that the leader of Unite is prepared to spend his money, or more likely his members’ hard-earned dues, on hiring the libel lawyers of Carter-Ruck at £550 an hour (plus expenses, of course). Carter-Ruck can charge a little more than the minimum wage because its many wealthy clients know that its lawyers will push as hard as they possibly can to defend clients’ interests, as our spat with McCluskey showed. Last week I published a brisk blogpost on The Spectator’s site in which I said that the Labour party should recognise that Unite was its enemy.

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Tony Blair to step down as Middle East peace envoy

Reports are coming in that Tony Blair is set to stand down as a peace envoy to the Middle East. AP is reporting that the former Prime Minister has tendered his resignation to the Quartet on the Middle East — consisting of representatives from the US, EU, Russia and the UN — and will leave in June. Blair has worked for the Quartet for several years, joining on a wave of publicity and hope in 2007. But with the collapse of the US-led peace talks last year, as well as continual questions about his business links, his efforts to bring peace to the region have been doomed. Given that Blair’s foreign policy reputation is already toxic both here and abroad, his failure to make a breakthrough with the Quartet will only damage his legacy further.

Isabel Hardman

Yvette Cooper snaps up six more MP supporters for her leadership campaign

Six more Labour MPs have endorsed Yvette Cooper as leader: Coffee House has the names exclusively. Emily Thornberry Ian Austin Jim Cunningham Karen Buck Lyn Brown Steve McCabe They’re an interesting mix, ranging from Londoners like Karen Buck, Lyn Brown and Emily Thornberry to those with seats in the Midlands, such as Ian Austin, Jim Cunningham and Steve McCabe, and helps the Cooper campaign’s claim to have nationwide support, rather than backing from MPs in certain parts of the country. It is also interesting that Buck, who served as Ed Miliband’s PPS towards the end of the last Parliament, has backed Cooper, along with Austin, who was exposed as one of the MPs who had tried to complain about Miliband’s leadership.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Chris Bryant interview: Labour has to speak to voters ‘at the end of the line’

Chris Bryant is haunted by Labour’s general election defeat. He has taken his former colleague Douglas Alexander’s office, and Commons staff have been appearing to collect the former Shadow Foreign Secretary’s computers. ‘They were referring to the computers as “the defeated computers”,’ he says. ‘Politics is quite brutal.’ The defeated computers are a sad symbol of Labour’s loss: Alexander was one of Labour’s many election chiefs, but is now just an ex-MP. But Bryant, who says he did feel in his gut that Labour was going to lose, still seems rather chipper.

Sebastian Payne

David Miliband doesn’t rule out running in future Labour leadership contest

Is David Miliband Labour's prince across the water? The elder Miliband brother appears to be watching the leadership contest closely avidly from afar, without backing any particular candidate. Speaking to his friend Fareed Zakaria on CNN this weekend, he was keen to stress that he has no plans to return to British politics in the immediate future: 'We don't have a presidential system as you know well and I am leading the International Rescue Committee in New York. Already three candidates have declared in the UK and it's obviously vital that Labour is able to provide the kind of modern progressive alternative that is essential in democratic politics. As in his post-election interview, Miliband Sr could not resist a pop at his brother.

Isabel Hardman

Chuka Umunna endorses Liz Kendall for Labour leader

After pulling out of the Labour leadership contest himself, Chuka Umunna has given his star-studded endorsement to Liz Kendall, along with his leadership team of Emma Reynolds, Stephen Twigg and Jonathan Reynolds. In an article for the New Statesman, Umunna writes: ‘For us, our next leader must get this vision right. On all these big subjects, Liz Kendall has asked the tough questions and started to chart a course to the answers. She has been courageous in challenging conventional wisdom. She has no compunction in moving Labour beyond our comfort zone and is determined to build a team ready to chart a route forward. This is exactly what our party needs and that is why we are nominating her to be the next leader of the Labour Party.

Friday

James Forsyth

Kezia Dugdale running for leader of Scottish Labour

Kezia Dugdale, the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour party, has announced that she’s running for the leadership of the Scottish party following Jim Murphy’s resignation. With Murphy not being an MSP, it has fallen to Dugdale to take on Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions. She is generally thought to have done a good job at it, highlighting the SNP’s poor record on education. But in the current political climate in Scotland, it is highly unlikely that Labour will be able to deny the SNP a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections. So, the risk that Dugdale—who is only 33—is taking in running is relying on the Scottish Labour party not to immediately jettison its leader post-defeat in 2016.