Labour party

At the end of last year Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was convicted of perverting the course of justice, after lying to police about a speeding charge. She has since been suspended from the Labour party but will remain the MP for Peterborough unless she is recalled or sentenced to longer than one year in jail. In response to the verdict, Onasanya had what we might call an unusual reaction. In messages to colleagues the MP compared her plight to that of Jesus and Moses and in a newspaper column, vowed to carry on fighting as an independent MP, promising to fight this ‘botched Brexit deal’: ‘This is why I have continued to

Brenda from Bristol, look away now. Jeremy Corbyn is pressing Theresa May to call a general election, saying: ‘To break the deadlock, an election is not only the most practical option, it is also the most democratic option. It would give the winning party a renewed mandate to negotiate a better deal for Britain and secure support for it in Parliament and across the country.’  The EU has already made clear there will be no changes to the terms and Corbyn’s election call is really a holding tactic. However, he has, inadvertently, stumbled on an inescapable truth: this Parliament is no longer capable of delivering Brexit or even of thwarting

Jeremy Corbyn has come under pressure this week to back a second referendum after a YouGov poll found that seven in ten Labour members wish for it to be party policy. So far, Corbyn has resisted such calls for a so-called People’s Vote. In this week’s Spectator, I explain why the Labour leader is reluctant to go near one – at least for the time being. With the Tories in turmoil over Brexit, it’s quite possible — some cabinet members believe probable — that the government may soon collapse with a new general election called. This is Labour’s great hope – and Corbyn hopes to trigger a snap poll by

It’s the New Year, which must mean that railway fares are up again – this time by an average of 3.1 per cent. Jeremy Corbyn has said the latest price hike is a ‘disgrace’, and commuters forced to shell out more for their journeys are likely to agree. No one – not even Chris Grayling – is pretending that Britain’s railways are perfect, or that the system that they operate under does either. The Transport Secretary has in fact explicitly stated this week that ‘the franchising model cannot be the path for the future’. But at the same time, there’s something that’s not said often enough, or even at all: Britain’s

Oh dear. Fiona Onasanya’s 2018 didn’t go exactly as she would have hoped with the Labour MP found guilty of perverting the course of justice, after a court found that she had lied to police about speeding to avoid putting points on her driving license. Despite the Labour whip being withdrawn, Onasanya has since compared herself to Jesus and hinted that she may continue on as an MP regardless. So, Mr S was curious to read Onasanya’s review of the year for her local paper, the Peterborough Telegraph. In the article, Onasanya looks back at the big events of ‘an incredibly busy, and sometimes fractious year in the House of Commons’

We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 10: Rod Liddle on the leader of the opposition: The crowd were singing ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ again, at a festival in Cornwall, the words appended to a riff by the White Stripes which I once liked but now find a little nauseating. Vacuous, dimbo, middle-class millennials and — worse — their stupid, indulgent parents, all waving their hands in the air for Jezza. Meanwhile, the rest of us were trying to work out if Jeremy is a sort of even more retarded Forrest Gump and thus the most stupid man ever to lead a political party

As Parliament rises for the Christmas recess, Jeremy Corbyn ends the term one MP down. Ivan Lewis has this afternoon quit the party citing Corbyn’s response to allegations of Labour anti-Semitism as a motivating factor. Complicating matters is the fact that Lewis – a former Labour minister – has been suspended by the party since November pending an internal party investigation into an allegation of sexual harassment. In his resignation letter, Lewis – MP for Bury South – says it was with ‘great sadness’ he had come to this decision to quit the party – before turning his ire on Corbyn’s handling of anti-Semitism allegations: ‘All too often you have been

Christmas – the time for peace on earth and goodwill to all men. It’s also the time of year for giving. Except that is if you’re Clive Lewis. The Labour MP – and sometime Corbynista – has managed to raise eyebrows in Parliament over his attempt at a Christmas bash. While the bulk of Christmas drinks events in Parliament come with warm wine, crisps and the odd G n T, Lewis’s Christmas bash could be described as less generous on the catering front. Mr S understands that guests invited to his drinks this week were asked to bring… their own refreshments and snacks. Still, it’s merrier than anything the Leader’s

The working assumption in Westminster at the moment is that Theresa May will lose Tuesday’s meaningful vote on her Brexit deal, and then the Labour Party will table a motion of no confidence in the government. The Tory whips certainly seem as concerned about that no confidence vote as they are about the Brexit vote, given they are resigned to losing one but have a good chance of winning the other. But I’m not sure that this is the case any more. The public language from the Opposition has changed in recent days to suggest that there will not be a separate vote after all – or at least not

Oh dear. It’s no great secret that under Jeremy Corbyn there is little love lost between the Labour party and the mainstream media. The Labour leader and his supporters rarely miss a chance to take a jab at hacks – whether it’s calling for press reforms or simply booing journalists at party events. However, the latest episode in the saga still manages to surprise. Labour MP – and Corbyn ally – Kate Osamor did not take kindly to a Times reporter turning up her address to ask her for comment on reports that she appeared to issue false statements over her son’s conviction for drug offences. Osamor told the reporter,

Jeremy Corbyn has been clear for a while that Labour will vote against Theresa May’s Brexit deal in the Commons. But it’s worth keeping an eye on the reaction in his party to the development of a second line in the Labour position, which is that the party has a better plan for Brexit. Today the Labour leader urged the Prime Minister to ‘prepare a Plan B’, telling the Commons that ‘there is a sensible deal that could win the support of this House based on a comprehensive customs union and strong single market deal that protects rights at work and environmental safeguards’. This is of course based on the

At Labour conference this summer, the party’s leadership were clearly spooked when its previously loyal members demanded the party support a second Brexit referendum. With this in mind, and ever keen to ensure that the rank-and-file are in step with Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing campaign group Momentum recently decided to survey its supporters to see what they really thought about Brexit and Labour’s position. The group asked over 6500 of its members from across the UK what they thought of Labour’s spurious six tests, the possibility of no deal, and most importantly: if Momentum members wanted a second Brexit vote. Well today the results came in, but they were clearly

Labour, as we know, is a party which has fallen into the hands of a dreamy left-wing idealist who is out of touch with the public, and who has managed to push out the party’s down-to-Earth moderates – people who, like Tony Blair, understand that if Labour wants to win power it must appeal to broad swathes of Middle England. That, at least, is how it seemed until this week. But it all looks a little different after 20 backbench Labour MPs defied the whips to vote against the Chancellor’s decision to raise income tax thresholds. Jeremy Corbyn had instructed his MPs to abstain. It is astonishing to read the

Oh dear. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s interview on the Today programme started off a little oddly this morning, with the presenters noting how rough he looked in the studio – apparently he had tripped over fly-tipped rubbish outside his house. The Labour MP joked that although he was arriving rather than leaving the studio looking roughed-up, John Humphreys will ‘beat me up anyway, won’t he?’ Clearly, it was a sign of things to come.  The interview began with Labour’s huge spending proposals, and how they would square this with their supposed promise to reduce the deficit. His answer – increased tax revenues – wasn’t fooling anyone. McDonnell was then taken

The news that Chuka Umunna is getting paid £451 an hour to chair a new centrist think tank will go down very well indeed with some of his Labour colleagues. It’s not so much that those MPs are just delighted for Umunna, as it is that they can use his £65,000 salary to undermine the chances of the new centrist party that this think tank might be working for. The Labour leadership is naturally worried about the idea of a breakaway centrist party, as it could rob Jeremy Corbyn of his chance to become Prime Minister at the next general election. But the Corbynite attack line against such a party

Why has Labour decided to give John Bercow at least a stay of execution as Speaker? Emily Thornberry was asked about whether Bercow should go following Dame Laura Cox’s damning report on bullying and harassment in the House of Commons, and argued that she shouldn’t go. She told Sky News: ‘I think this is absolutely not the time to be changing Speaker. We don’t know for example with regard to Brexit as to what is going to happen, whether there’s going to be technically an amendable motion or not, whether it’ll be the Speaker’s discretion as to whether it is. We do need to have all hands to the deck