Labour party

The best way to understand the chaos engulfing the start of the Labour party conference is by looking at the instability of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Even if this is not immediately obvious from the outside (which, with such terrible personal poll ratings for Corbyn, it should be), it is the underlying factor in yesterday’s attempt to abolish Tom Watson, and in the resignation of Andrew Fisher, the leader’s policy chief. Fisher isn’t a Labour man through and through: he endorsed a  Class War candidate standing against Labour in the 2015 election. But he is - or was - a Corbyn man through and through. He was involved in the first leadership campaign that sent the obscure backbencher rocketing into power.

This evening, Labour's ruling National Executive Committee has started to discuss a motion which would oust Tom Watson as deputy leader. There is expected to be a vote on this plan, which abolishes the role altogether, tomorrow, and there is a strong chance that it will pass. It was tabled by Momentum founder Jon Lansman, and was narrowly ruled out of order because Watson wasn't present at tonight's meeting. Tomorrow it will be in order. Why is Labour having this battle on the eve of its autumn conference? It is potentially weeks away from an election, and instead of facing outwards to voters, it is engaged in an internecine battle over internal positions. And not just small roles, but the separately-elected role of the party's deputy leader.

Labour has yet again shown it doesn't care about its Jewish members. Jeremy Corbyn said earlier this year that “there is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour party”. But not for the first time – and not for the last – Jews who still belong to the party have been sidelined.  The latest cause for disquiet is the decision yesterday by the party's National Executive Committee. Not content with scrapping the party's student wing ahead of next week's gathering in Brighton, the NEC has now agreed new rules concerning the handling of allegations of anti-Semitism and disciplinary procedures for expelling members.

Ahead of the looming general election, moderate Labour MPs are understandably upset by an instruction they say the party has given to suspend the selection of new candidates in seats where the serving MP is retiring or has defected. They've been told the reason is to 'concentrate on the trigger ballot processes' – or the deselection of usually moderate MPs who have alienated activists. See the below email by a Labour official for detail. What moderate MPs fear is that there is tacit support from Labour’s leadership for a purge of MPs from the right of the party.

Why has Tom Watson given a speech about what his party leadership should do on Brexit? The party's deputy leader has urged Labour to 'unambiguously and unequivocally back Remain' and to campaign for a referendum ahead of an election. This is contrary to the current frontbench position that a referendum should contain a 'credible Leave option'. So why, given Watson sits with Jeremy Corbyn in private shadow cabinet meetings each week, has he gone public with this? The speech is a symptom of how bad relations are between Watson and the leader's office. As I wrote in the Spectator recently, the two men at the top of the party have only had two private meetings together since 2016, and memos from the deputy leader to the leader have gone without reply.

Very important breaking news. Which is that trade unions, in their TULO meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, have tonight endorsed the Labour leader's position that in a general election Labour should campaign for a referendum that would have a "credible leave option and remain" on the ballot paper. The reason this matters is that those senior members of the shadow cabinet, such as Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell and Tom Watson, who want Labour to adopt an unambiguous remain position have been defeated. "It is important that voters who want to leave as well as those who want to remain can vote Labour. What we've rejected is the Trumpian no-deal position of Boris Johnson".

There's an assumption in Westminster that the Labour Party would have to back a snap general election if Boris Johnson called one this week. Jeremy Corbyn has said that 'an election is the democratic way forward', while his Shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman said Labour would vote against one that came after 31 October, adding that 'having a general election becomes one of the few ways that we are able to prevent no deal'. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Labour will provide the numbers to approve an election motion in the Commons. I have been speaking to MPs in the upper echelons of the party and on the backbenches and many of them privately say they would vote against the motion, even if whipped to do so.

We know that the Conservatives are gearing up for an election in the next few months. Their official line is that they don't want one, largely because it will appear better if they are apparently pushed into a poll, but that doesn't mean that preparations aren't well underway. One of the main benefits of proroguing parliament is that it allows the Tories to produce an election manifesto before there is an election, using the Queen's Speech. In today's Guardian, I've written about what's going to be in that manifesto/Queen's Speech: the focus will be on education and crime.

Gordon Brown has broken his silence again. The former prime minister told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the Scottish Parliament had ‘failed to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland’ and had instead become a ‘battering ram for constitutional warfare’. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped down the well? And creating a Scottish parliament to run almost all of Scotland’s affairs separately from the rest of the UK helped rather than hurt the campaign for independence? Jeepers. The battering ram that Brown laments exists only because the party and government in which he played a somewhat senior role insisted on fashioning it.

Mr S was curious to spy a puzzling email sent out by CCHQ to their prospective parliamentary candidates today. The message asked would-be Tory runners to send in their CVs so that the party can select candidates for the next general election. Recipients were told that anyone selected as a parliamentary contender would cease to be a candidate if 'an existing MP exercises an incumbency right over it'. The email reads: The Board of the Conservative Party has decided to proceed with selections in constituencies that would be affected by Major Boundary changes under the Parliamentary Boundary Review.

Caroline Lucas's plan for an all-female emergency Cabinet to stop a no-deal Brexit is a fantasy, with no prospect of success. But if the plan is daft, it has provoked a revealing reaction from Jeremy Corbyn’s loyal outriders. Instead of laughing it off, many have taken it deadly seriously. Most have focused their attack on the ethnicity of the women Lucas chose to enlist: they were all white. Reasonably enough, they asked why shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, was overlooked. Recognising her mistake, Lucas apologised. But instead of giving Lucas – probably the most politically correct member of the Commons – the benefit of the doubt, the Corbynite response has been nasty and vituperative.

A standard version of this autumn’s events is beginning to emerge. Labour brings a no-confidence vote in the Government on 4 September. The Tories, down to a majority of one – and with several Conservative old-timers vowing to go out in style by torpedoing their own Government in a last act of defiance to stop a no-deal Brexit – loses. Rather than resign, Boris spends the 14 days he would be allowed under the Fixed Term Parliament Act trying to build a majority. He fails. And Corbyn, too, is unable to form a majority. Boris calls a general election – but crucially stretches it out just beyond 31 October, when we drop out of the EU without a deal. No further Parliamentary efforts can be made to stop no deal because the Commons will be prorogued for the election.

John McDonnell spent a large amount of his time this week attacking the career history of the newly-promoted Chancellor, Sajid Javid. While some might take heart at the way Javid, as son of a Pakistani bus driver, worked his way up to become a banker and then the second most powerful politician in the country, for McDonnell it's clearly evidence that he should be clapped in irons. In a press release on Monday, McDonnell thundered that Javid's stint at Deutsche Bank and his alleged role in selling collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) which were behind the 2008 banking crisis, meant that he was unsuitable to be Chancellor, and the prime minister should launch an investigation into his past.