Labour party

Jeremy Corbyn has given up on winning this election and is currently struggling to ensure that on 12 December Boris Johnson will be denied a Commons majority.  Last week Labour’s campaign strategy switched from trying to win seats to trying not to lose them, reflecting just how badly things are going. With polling day just around the corner, the party has been reduced to sending its chair Ian Lavery to visit once rock-sold northern seats to try and win back former miners to Labour. It should not have been this way. Indeed, according to John McDonnell, Corbyn was just a week away from becoming Prime Minister in 2017. If only that election campaign had lasted just a little bit longer he would have entered Downing Street as the victor.

One of Labour's key messages throughout this election has been the future of the NHS. The party has used confidential US-UK trade documents to drive home their message that Boris Johnson wants to sell off parts of the health service to American businesses. But last night, social media experts told Reuters that the leak of these sensitive documents had the hallmarks of foreign interference. Jeremy Corbyn has used the leaked paperwork as a campaigning prop on multiple occasions, including on the ITV leader's debate last month. Having looked through the documents, Mr S has his own views on the veracity of Labour's claims...

Another day, another uncosted bribe from Labour. This time, Corbyn is promising to slash a third off rail fares and allow children to travel for free. What wonderful, munificent people we have putting themselves forward to lead us. And of course, it won’t cost the taxpayer an extra penny because, as Labour’s transport spokesman, Andy McDonald, said this morning, it is all coming from a ‘repurposed’ pot of money – money raised through vehicle excise duty, which had been earmarked for road-building. Except, of course, road-building is capital expenditure and subsidising rail fares is current spending. For all its guff about investing in Britain’s future, what Labour is proposing is a sly trick to rob investment spending and blow it on day-to-day spending.

There are many reasons why I am suspicious of the Conservatives’ current lead in the polls. The Tories may have peaked too soon. Labour voters flirting with the Liberal Democrats could return the more they see of Jo Swinson. Many Conservative target seats, while Brexity, have voted Labour since there was a Labour Party to vote for. Landlines still dominate over mobile phones in the sampling methodologies of some pollsters, under-reflecting younger and poorer voters. Labour supporters and Remainers are more likely to turn out than Tories and Brexiteers and a million more voters have joined the roll than did prior to the last election, which just reeks of young people.

Labour launched its 'Race & Faith Manifesto' earlier today amid a storm of criticism over the party's anti-Semitism problem. The latest person to condemn Jeremy Corbyn is the chief rabbi, who questioned whether the Labour leader is fit to become prime minister. During today's event in north London, Corbyn hit back, insisting that under his government 'no community will be at risk because of their identity'. The party had hoped the mini-manifesto launch would focus attention on policy ideas such as a wholesale review of the Prevent strategy or the scrapping of random stop and searches. But it didn't go to plan. Outside the venue in Tottenham, activists had parked up trucks with phrases such as 'A vote for Labour is a vote for racism'.

Labour's Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner took to the Andrew Marr Show this morning to discuss her party's Brexit position. The veteran BBC interviewer questioned Ms Rayner on whether her party would campaign for their newly renegotiated Brexit deal if a future Labour government was to put it to the people. The Labour frontbencher decided to dodge the question, calling it a 'hypothetical'. Is the party now rowing back on Jeremy Corbyn's commitment to stay neutral during any future referendum?

To excited cheers, Angela Rayner last week promised Labour supporters that a Jeremy Corbyn-led government ‘would knock the socks off’ the one led by Clement Attlee. Given Attlee oversaw the creation of the NHS and the nationalisation of 20 per cent of the economy while establishing a universalist welfare state, not to mention building nearly one million homes – and all during a time of acute post-war shortages - Rayner’s claim was a brave one. Given its record, the government elected in 1945 is Labour’s version of Motherhood and Apple Pie. It has long enjoyed a revered status across the party. During the early 1980s, both those who left Labour to form the SDP and the Bennites who forced them out each claimed to be true heirs to Attlee.

I am not sure if it is class war exactly but something very like it is back. Perhaps it is a hybrid of a class, eco and generational war. In that Labour is planning to sting those earning £80,000 a year or more with an additional tax burden just short of £20bn from higher taxes on income, capital and dividends. As for businesses and financial institutions, they are being whacked for almost £50bn, in a dizzying array of increased levies on profits, assets and financial trading, and - eccentrically perhaps for a party saying it wants to encourage a green high-tech economy - a reduction in allowances for spending on research.