Labour party

The question I had hoped to pose this week was this: “Do people dislike Diane Abbott because she is black and a woman, or because she is useless?” But then I worried that we would come to a fairly definitive conclusion a long time before my allotted 1,000 words had been used up. “The latter, I think,” is the response I have heard time and time again, both from Labour supporters and Tories. For the entire day before Abbott’s appearance on Question Time, in which she thinks she was treated badly on account of the colour of her skin and her gender, my wife had been bouncing around the house in a state of enormous excitement, looking forward to the car crash which would inevitably occur that evening on the TV. It always does with Diane.

After Theresa May appeared before the Commons to reveal that her Brexit Plan B looks an awful lot like her Brexit Plan A, MPs now have a chance to try and force the Prime Minister to change path. Next week, MPs will vote on May's Brexit motion – along with a series of amendments submitted by MPs. A range of amendments have so far been submitted, with Labour's Yvette Cooper attempting to take No Deal off the table (meaning Article 50 would be extended until a deal had been agreed upon) and Hilary Benn calling for indicative votes on four Brexit options. However, the amendment that has caused the most excitement this evening has been tabled by Labour.

A few of us on the Labour left decide to see if it is possible to conjure, from nowhere, a #FinalSay campaign for a second referendum. The Labour front bench does not sound ecstatic about a second referendum, and Chuka Umunna’s lot are bound to screw it up if they’re in charge. So we schedule a meeting in the Commons, commission a meme and spread the word. Not long after this goes public, numerous Twitter users with random numbers in their handles begin accusing me of being a ‘pro-Nato White Helmet shill’, a ‘coup-monger’ and a ‘neoliberal’. The reaction at my Labour branch is more positive. We pass a motion calling for an emergency party conference to decide the line in any second referendum. Our MP, pro-Brexiteer Kate Hoey, does not attend.

When he first came to power, Jeremy Corbyn promised a 'kinder' politics and told Labour supporters to 'treat people with respect'. But did Richard Burgon get the message? Mr S. only asks because he suspects the Labour MP and arch Corbynite won't have won many new fans when he popped up on Channel 4 News yesterday evening in the aftermath of May's thumping defeat in the Commons. Burgon told Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson that she would be 'judged by history' as a result of her party's past coalition with the Tories: https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1085302626349142016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw 'The real enemies are the Conservatives. And you have aided and abetted them. to hurt working class communities and stall our diversity. I hope that rests well with your conscience.

Labour MPs who want a second referendum are threatening to table their own motion calling for one next week if their frontbench fails to do so. Jeremy Corbyn is expected to call for a vote of no confidence in the government once Theresa May's deal is defeated in the Commons this evening. The Labour leadership has refused to do this until now because it doesn't want to hold a vote it is certain to lose, but the pressure has now grown so great for a vote that it will be extremely difficult for Corbyn to dodge it, even though the DUP have said they will stop the government from falling so long as there is a chance that the backstop will not pass.

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 scrutinise this botched Brexit deal: a deal that does not take back control, nor provide industry, business, and left behind communities with confidence.

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 it. It is not the democratic system that has broken down but the parliamentary one.

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 defeating the government in a confidence motion after the meaningful vote.

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 rail network is actually not that bad.

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' – Brexit, universal credit and 'drastic cuts' to the local area: Curiously Onasanya doesn't find space to mention her own problems.

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 in the history of our nation, or something altogether more sinister.

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 unwilling to condemn those whose hatred of Israel becomes Jew hatred'.

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 Office are planning. Jeremy Corbyn is yet to send out an invite for Christmas drinks for hacks.

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 one tabled by the Labour Party.