Labour party

Good news for people who love bad news. Jared O’Mara, a former member of the Labour Women and Equalities select committee, has been reinstated as a Labour MP. He had the whip removed in October over a series of online posts and claims he verbally abused a woman – from his time before becoming an MP. However, an investigation by the Labour Party yesterday ruled the Sheffield MP should have the party whip restored – and a formal warning for good measure. For those who need a refresher, here are a few facts about the newly reinstated Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam: Jared on Angelina He favourably compared a 'shredtastic' Sheffield band to receiving fellatio from Angelina Jolie.

Jeremy Corbyn has promised to deliver '21st century socialism' to the UK if elected. Only Mr S isn't so sure all Corbynistas are on the same page as to what this will mean in practice. With the ill-fated LabourLive festival just four days away, the blame game has already begun on who is at fault over the low ticket sales. Making matters worse, is the fact that things could have been so different had the organisers managed to get Stormzy to perform. The chart-topping Grime artist is a big Corbyn supporter; 'My man, Jeremy! Young Jeremy, my guy. I dig what he says.' While his omission was first blamed on scheduling issues, the Evening Standard reports that it is actually down to... money. Jeremy Corbyn’s team apparently balked at his 'six-figure' fee.

Oh dear. The Labour party is one of the loudest cheerleaders when it comes to giving 16-year-olds the vote. At PMQs in January, Emily Thornberry was particularly keen to push the cause. The shadow foreign secretary accused the Conservatives – who oppose such a move – of being in a 'coalition of cavemen', before going on to list all the things 16-year-olds could do: leave home, start a family, marry, work, pay taxes and join the army. But there is one other thing that she is not able to add to that list: Labour Live. Mr S was surprised to learn of the ticketing rules for the upcoming Labour Corbyn-tastic Jez-fest Labour Live – featuring headliner Owen Jones. It turns out that if you are under 18, you have to get a 'child ticket'.

There are few sights more pitiful than Labour 'moderates' – I prefer to call them what they are: Corbyn-enablers – plating up meagre scraps as a feast of optimism for the party's future. Last week, it was the routing of Momentum – and Unite-backed candidates for the Lewisham East by-election. That didn't last long. Now, it's Ken Livingstone, allowed to resign rather than risk possible expulsion. In its 'all out war' on anti-Semitism, Labour sued for peace on the enemy's terms without firing a single shot.  Expelling Livingstone would not have undone the bias and abuse the party has inflicted on British Jews.

Earlier this week, I wrote about David Lewis, a Labour member who was allowed to stand for election as a constituency women’s officer on the basis that he identifies as a woman under some circumstances. That report seems to have drawn some attention, not least from Labour HQ. David Lewis was told on Tuesday night that he has been suspended from the party and cannot therefore stand for election as Basingstoke CLP women’s officer. I’ll try to unravel the implications of that in a moment, but first I want to say something about David Lewis and the general debate around this case. As is usual with debates around gender, a lot of people have strong feelings about this case, and have expressed them bluntly.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Except in the Labour Party, when it’s surprisingly easy. Just ask David Lewis. David, 45, is a member of the Labour Party. After several years of supporting the party, he became a full member last year having been “inspired” by Jeremy Corbyn. Tomorrow, David will be a candidate for election as an office-holder in his Constituency Labour Party in Basingstoke. He is standing for election as women’s officer, a post that Labour rules say can only be held by a woman. David is standing for that post because he is a woman. On Wednesdays, at least. When we spoke yesterday, he put it like this: “I self-identify as a woman on Wednesdays, between 6.50am when my alarm goes off and around midnight when I go to bed.

Amid all the argument in Westminster, everyone can agree on one thing: the country is bitterly divided. The 52:48 divisions of the Brexit referendum are still there, and possibly even more entrenched than during the campaign itself. The result hasn’t been followed by a period of national healing — quite the opposite. Even the cabinet appears to be split along Leave and Remain lines. You would have to go back a quarter of a century to find a time when the two main parties were so far apart. The public, however, shows no sign of deciding which path it wants to choose. The general election resulted in a hung Parliament, and the local elections earlier this month suggest that if Theresa May went to the country tomorrow, the result would be even more inconclusive.

Dame Tessa Jowell has died aged 70 after suffering a haemorrhage on Friday. The former Labour cabinet minister was diagnosed with brain cancer in May last year. In a post on Alastair Campbell's personal blog. Jowell's close friend David Blunkett has written a tube to his former colleague:. ‘Tessa was one of my closest friends for over 40 years. In 1980s local government, Tessa in Camden and myself in Sheffield, we helped to promote an alternative to Old Labour on the one hand and the far left on the other. Before the 1997 Labour victory, we worked on a programme to nurture children from the moment of their birth, but crucially also to work with parents and the wider community to transform the lives of those otherwise caught in intergenerational disadvantage.

The Conservatives better-than-expected election result has been dampened somewhat by CCHQ's decision to reinstate a councillor suspended for comparing an Asian man with a dog last June in order to take control of Pendle council. Labour have been quick to go on the attack – accusing the Tories of abandoning decency in favour of a power grab. However, Labour don't have the monopoly on outrage over elected councillors. While the party failed to get the landslide it had hoped, there was one particular cause for celebration in Birmingham: Safia Alif Noor Akhtar, the party's candidate in Birmingham Small Heath, 'waltz[ed] to victory' in the words of the local paper. Mr S predicts a bright future in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

If you want to know how last night was for the Labour Party, you need to look no further than the statement that Jeremy Corbyn has just released on the results. It is not a celebratory comment on Labour’s spectacular night, but a defensive one, describing the local elections as a ‘solid set of results’. He adds: ‘In a sign of how worried they are about Labour’s advance, the Tories talked up our chances to unrealistic levels, especially in London. The results show they're right to be worried - we came within a whisker of winning Wandsworth for the first time in over 40 years.’ Corbyn is right, by the way: the Tories spent months telling anyone who was half listening that they were going to get trounced in these elections.

Another word which has gained a new meaning in the present decade, along with ‘vulnerable’ and ‘diverse’: survivor. Once it meant a person who had been transported to Auschwitz but somehow came out alive. Or a person who had been involved in a terrible car crash but had escaped with only a broken neck. Today it means someone whose nipple was perhaps gently tweaked by a light entertainment star 40 years ago. Or someone who was mildly and almost certainly justifiably bullied at school. I’m also getting a little weary of the elephant in the room. It has become for me, when talking about transformative grammar, the elephant in the room. I heard a woman on Radio 4 say: ‘Well, the thing is, Sarah, there are so many elephants in the room.

Yesterday, Parliament debated anti-Semitism. It is hard to get over the oddness of the situation. It is 150 years ago since the Conservatives produced their first Jewish leader: Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister on 27 February 1868. If the Tory party in the 21st century had a leader who was seen as tolerant of anti-Semitism, and was backed by its most anti-Semitic factions, the scandal would bring him and/or it crashing to the ground. Yet with Labour, this is not so. Mr Corbyn is a bit uneasy with his predicament, but not fearing for his political life. How have we got here? This is an extract from Charles Moore's Notes. The full article will be available in this week's issue.