Labour party

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Why can’t lefties argue properly?

The main problem with lefties is that they can’t decide in their own minds what exactly they want. And sometimes want two paradoxical things simultaneously. So, among the Twitter reactions from Corbynistas to my appearance on Question Time last Thursday was this: 'I hope he dies a long and painful death TONIGHT.' I mean come on mate, make your bleedin’ mind up. At least the injunctions that my wife and daughter should be raped and murdered had a certain internal consistency about them. They’re a lovely bunch, no? https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1045438264906338305?

Friday

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: John McDonnell vs the clueless Tories

As we head into Conservative Party Conference, Theresa May has never looked more alone. We talk to Iain Duncan Smith and James Forsyth about a Prime Minister abandoned. And while chaos reigns in the Conservative Party, Labour is gearing up, led by a pragmatic but radical Shadow Chancellor. Just who is John McDonnell? And last, why is Tesco’s new discount retailer so Brexity? First, the Prime Minister may be celebrating her 62nd birthday at Conservative Party Conference with thousands of party members, but Theresa May has never seemed more alone. At home, neither Brexiteers or Remainers have any sympathy for her while they try to push their vision of Brexit; and on the continent, she is humiliated by leaders and negotiatiors.

Steerpike

Revealed: Seumas Milne’s bumper pay rise

At party conference last week, several Labour front benchers poured scorn on ‘fat cat bosses’ with excessive earnings. Jeremy Corbyn himself promised to end the country’s culture of ‘greed is good.’ It appears, though, that a bit of greed isn’t so bad when it comes to lining your own friends' coffers. The Evening Standard reports today that Corbyn, who earns around £140,000 a year, has given his closest aides whopping pay rises of up to 26 per cent. The average salary of his three best paid advisers is now £94,421, four times the salary of a London nurse. Corbyn’s closest ally, former Guardian hack and champagne socialist Seumas Milne is doing best out of the arrangement and now earns £101,855.

Steerpike

Watch: Rod Liddle takes Corbyn to task on Question Time

Corbynista cheerleader Ian Lavery is used to dishing it out, but on the evidence of last night's Question Time he is not quite so good at knowing what to do when it comes back at him. The Labour MP got a taste of his own medicine after Rod Liddle took him to task over the 'raft of hypocrites' in his party: 'Thornberry, Abbott, Chakrabarti, all of who don't want you to send your kids to private or selective schools but do so for their kids. And for Corbyn and McDonnell who have given support and succour to every possible hostile, violent anti-democrat terrorist regime that they can: IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. If you want people like that running your country, vote for Corbyn' https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1045438264906338305?

Thursday

The Spectator

Left in charge

The worst of Britain’s post-war mistakes, ideas we thought long dead, are once more in the air. Yet again there are plans for ‘workers on boards’ (the govern-ment, of course decides who’s a worker), and for mandatory price caps, based on the delusion that government can make things cheaper by diktat. Intelligent people are once more agreed that British employers should pay the highest minimum wage in the developed world — a policy estimated to condemn tens of thousands to unemployment. The tax burden is at a 30-year high, yet many assume we should make that burden still heavier — as if the country can be taxed to prosperity. The Labour party has been pontificating along these lines in Liverpool all week, but these are in fact Tory ideas.

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s conference has made it harder for its unhappy MPs to leave

Labour's lost centrists weren't just physically absent at the party's conference: they were also absent from the debate. Perhaps those who had turned up from the 'moderate' wing of the party had expected frequent denunciations of 'Blairites' from the main stage, but it didn't come. In fact, even in the fringes, the moderates came up far less as enemies than the unions and Momentum. This is partly because the Labour Party now feels very comfortable in its Corbynite skin and is more interested in ensuring it can deselect those moderates in the most efficient way rather than attacking them. But the moderates themselves are also quiet because they are on what is probably best described as a psychological precipice.

Stephen Daisley

Why we should fear Corbyn’s socialism

Donald Trump was at the UN this week sticking it to the globalist elites and bragging about being the greatest president since Reagan or FDR or one of the other ones. Twitter and the press corps — to the extent there is any difference remaining between the two — were fair taken by the General Assembly snorting in response to this familiar display of MAGAlomania. Of course they laughed. It's the UN, the world’s most prestigious gathering of diplos, kleptos and psychos. They look at Trump, a strongman who can’t even stop his own executive branch investigating him, and think: ‘Amateur’.  Other than that, it was a fairly middling restatement of Trumpian nationalism. Far more telling was the section of his remarks he dedicated to socialism.

John McTernan

The fatal flaw in Labour’s politics

If we learned one thing from Labour Party Conference it's that capitalism is bad. The union leaders said so, the delegates said so, Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour Party, said so – at length. And do you know what? They’re right. Capitalism is bad, very, very bad – at defending itself. As anti-business policy after anti-business policy was announced, despair at the poverty of the response of the business lobby was matched only by grudging admiration for the message discipline of Corbyn and his supporters.

Nick Cohen

J.K. Rowling and the darkness on the left

You rarely come across a character in modern literature like Jimmy Knight. He’s a racist, but that’s not what makes him a novelty act. racists, after all, are deplored everywhere in the culture industry, from Hollywood to Pinewood Studios. Of this racist, however, his ex-wife says: ‘I wouldn’t trust him if it was anything to do with Jews. He doesn't like them. Israel is the root of all evil, according to Jimmy. Zionism: I got sick of the bloody sound of the word.’ Knight is also a misogynist, a type which is once again a familiar figure in contemporary fiction. But when his girlfriend cries out after he hits her, he replies by attacking her privilege with the language of the left: 'Oh fuck off, that didn’t hurt!

Matthew Parris

Don’t dismiss McDonnell as a loony

‘Wherever Sir Stafford Cripps has tried to increase wealth and happiness,’ wrote the Conservative Scottish journalist Colm Brogan, ‘grass never grows again.’ But Roundup has its uses. When Brogan made this comment, Sir Stafford was Britain’s postwar ‘austerity’ chancellor of the exchequer, a post he held from 1947 to 1950. Dry as dust, Cripps had rejoined the Labour party only two years previously, having served as ambassador in Moscow, then in Churchill’s war cabinet. A leading voice on the hard left, he had been expelled from Labour for his advocacy of co-operation with communists in 1939, but his judgment had proved shrewd.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Why the latest Labour broadcast should worry the Tories

In his speech today at Labour conference, Jeremy Corbyn confidently set out his vision for government. The Leader of the Opposition promised that a change was coming – and said that this change would benefit the many. On Brexit, however, he disappointed some pro-EU MPs by refusing to soften the party's position and explicitly back a Leave/Remain second referendum. A glimpse of why that was can be found in the party's latest broadcast. Following on from that speech, Labour has released 'Our Town'. The short video is centred on the message that a Corbyn government would 'restore pride in British towns and bring our high streets and communities back to life'. In it, the party promises to kickstart the economy in 'all the regions'.

James Forsyth

The Tories will have to up their game in response to this Corbyn speech

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour conference has raised the stakes for the Tories ahead of their gathering in Birmingham. Corbyn is mastering the art of making very radical things sound reasonable. Listening to him talking about ‘Inclusive Ownership Funds’ which ‘will mean workers share more fairly in the rewards of successful businesses’ you would have no idea that what this really means is the government confiscating 1pc of a companies’ equity every year without compensation; an idea that is bound to scare off business investment. Labour want to present their agenda as a response to the 2008 crash. Jeremy Corbyn’s distance from New Labour means that the Tory arguments about how Labour policies made the crash worse, just bounce off him.

Liam Halligan

Review: The book that reveals John McDonnell’s economic world view

In 1995, the Labour party voted to amend Clause IV of its constitution, ditching its historic commitment to mass public ownership. A significant victory for Tony Blair, it sparked a modernisation process that saw New Labour win three successive elections. On Monday John McDonnell drew wild cheers from Labour delegates in Liverpool when he directly rebuked Blair, insisting Clause IV is 'as relevant today' as a century ago. The Shadow Chancellor certainly rolled back the years during his conference speech, unveiling the most radical Labour prospectus of modern times – an unashamedly socialist pitch, calling for aggressive re-nationalisation and sweeping trade union powers.

Isabel Hardman

How blaming the media keeps Labour activists happy

One of the features of conference season, along with the stale sandwiches and lack of natural light, is the obsession with 'the mood'. It's a nebulous thing, made up of the atmosphere in the conference hall and fringe meetings, but it can tell you a lot about what a party might be up to over the next few months. Labour's 2014 conference, for instance, felt eerily flat for a party that was supposed to be on the cusp of government. Conversely, the party's 2016 gathering felt pretty edgy following the second leadership contest in as many years. That conference saw a very clear pulling-apart of the 'moderates' and the Corbynites following the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn, and this set the agenda for the following year. The past few days in Liverpool haven't felt so sharp.

Steerpike

No early election? We’ll just go on a general strike, says Labour MP

Oh dear. Despite reports this year of a more professional tone at conference, one Labour MP appears to have missed the message. Last year John McDonnell told a conference fringe that his party was wargaming for a 'run on the pound' in the event they were elected. This year's socialist slip-up has been committed by Laura Smith. The MP for Crewe and Nantwich has come up with a Plan B should Labour's Plan A of bringing about an early election fail: 'If we can’t get a general election, we should unite with our comrades in the trade union movement and bring an end to the government with a general strike.' https://twitter.com/rosskempsell/status/1044814788612820992 The crowd went wild – with shadow cabinet member Richard Burgon even taking part in a standing ovation.

Steerpike

Security check: Corbyn’s adviser, the former Communist Party member

Jeremy Corbyn’s adviser and close friend Andrew Murray has been scratching his head of late as to why he still hasn’t had his request for a Parliamentary security pass granted. In search of answers, Murray has hit out at the 'deep state' made up of spies and sinister civil servants looking to thwart a left-wing government. However, Mr S wonders whether there could be another reason it's taken so long for the pass to be granted.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Corbyn’s rallying cry at Mirror bash

It’s the eve of the Leader’s Speech at Labour conference and Jeremy Corbyn has attempted to set the mood with an extra speech at the Mirror conference party. The Labour leader told an adoring crowd that this conference was historic - before thanking them for being one of the okay media publications: ‘Conference this week has been fascinating - it’s now the biggest ever. We are planning for a future that works for everyone and brings about social change. Thanks to the Mirror for giving us a fair hearing - plenty of the others don’t. This conference shows a degree of confidence in our party. This country needs a Labour government and I’m ready to take us there if we can force an election any time soon.

Katy Balls

What Jeremy Corbyn will say in his leader’s speech

Jeremy Corbyn will use his leader’s speech on Wednesday to promise change. The Labour leader will vow to change the direction of the way the economy is done. He’ll say a Labour government will  do this in a way to benefit the majority and pin the need for change to the financial crisis - criticising the immediate efforts to prop up the system (led by former Labour  PM Gordon Brown, lest we forget) and pinpointing bailouts as the worst excess of modern capitalism. Aside from a not so veiled dig at a former PM who was only recently hailed by his shadow chancellor on Monday, there will be a diatribe against privitisation - chronicling the ways in which he thinks it has let people down - and Corbyn will outline a green agenda.

Isabel Hardman

Emily Thornberry’s leadership pitch, part 1

The Labour leadership may be rowing back from the idea of having a second, female, deputy leader, but that isn’t stopping those who, like Emily Thornberry, fancy a shot at the top job one day. While the Shadow Foreign Secretary was totally loyal to Jeremy Corbyn when she spoke at a Times fringe this lunchtime, she started by talking movingly about her backstory, touching also on the need for a leader who has experience of the frontbench, and repeatedly referred to the importance of members in the Labour Party. It is well-understood that Thornberry would, one day, like to run for leader, and today’s performance not only underlined that, but also showed why she should.

Steerpike

Live blog: Labour’s Brexit position, 25/9/18

It's Labour conference and the party is supposed to be setting out its plan for government. Only when it comes to Brexit, no-one is quite sure what that is. In the interest of clarity, Mr S will be running a live blog with the latest twists in the party's apparent Brexit policy: 11am: Keir Starmer says remaining in the EU is an option The shadow Brexit secretary tells Labour conference: ‘Nobody is ruling out remain as an option.’ 11am: Dennis Skinner frowns The Beast of Bolsover doesn't seem too impressed by Starmer's intervention: https://twitter.com/Alain_Tolhurst/status/1044540809197105152 11.