Labour party

Labour’s Executive Director for Governance, Membership and Party Services Emilie Oldknow has announced she is leaving, just weeks after Iain McNicol was ousted as General Secretary. At the time, Corbynite insiders had told me that Oldknow was the ‘power behind the throne’ and had been responsible for the real running of HQ as McNicol was increasingly sidelined by the party leadership. Now, that power behind the throne has left too. In a letter to party staff, she says ‘I will be leaving in the summer to pursue some new and exciting opportunities’. Oldknow was a moderate, and had also been sidelined: I understand that she only found out about McNicol’s

The moment that has defined my approach to politics came when my mother told me the proudest moment of her life: buying her council house.  Growing up in Consett, a former steel town in the north east, that house seemed to be like any of the other identikit terraced properties in the area. But to my mother, it was an asset she now owned and was able to pass on to me and my siblings. Later in life, I realised that Right to Buy had opened up new avenues for my mother, beyond having a roof over her head: it gave her choice, security, and a sense of achievement and

How did it come to this? Here we are, in 2018, in modern, democratic, fair-minded Britain, and what happens when it turns out the leader of the Labour Party was a member of a secret Facebook group awash with anti-Semitic comments? Not a lot really. As the political editor of the Jewish Chronicle, I have been writing about Jeremy Corbyn’s associations with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and radical clerics since long before he became leader of the opposition. I have also lost count of the number of stories I have written on Labour MPs, councillors, activists and supporters linked to Jew-hate since the summer of 2015. When I saw the work

John McDonnell’s business credentials took another hit on Friday when the shadow chancellor struggled to name a single one of his ‘business heroes’ in an interview with the Financial Times. The pause was so long that McDonnell’s press adviser eventually came up with a suggestion for him – ‘Vince Dale’, the renewable energy entrepreneur: Only there’s a problem. There’s no renewable energy entrepreneur by the name of Vince Dale. Instead, the person in question goes by the name of… Dale Vince. Mr S suggests the pair learn the entrepreneur’s name before going in for a business endorsement…

Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to ‘stay in a customs union’, according to the BBC. The phrase does not make sense. We could possibly stay in the customs union, if the EU decided to let us, but that is not the policy of his party or of the government. We cannot ‘stay’ in ‘a’ customs union, because that would require us to join something which does not at present exist. But the use of the reassuring word ‘stay’, in reference to an as yet unformed, unnegotiated customs union, is exactly the rhetorical sleight of hand which Mr Corbyn seeks. It is designed to persuade Remainer Conservative rebels that they must side

The Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport recently investigated claims of Russian interference in the UK electoral process. The committee might soon be forced to go one further and investigate EU interference in our political system.  How remarkable that today’s ‘legally-binding’ document from Michel Barnier, which tries to keep Northern Ireland in a customs union with the EU comes just 48 hours after Jeremy Corbyn made a speech changing Labour’s policy in order to commit the UK as a whole to remain within the customs union. I am not party to any conversations Jeremy Corbyn might have had with Michel Barnier or his team, but the Labour leader

Yesterday, after Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Brexit, he moved on from press questions about the substance of his policy change to seeking non-media questions. It was presumably to show that Labour is more interested in the real questions of real people rather than the biased agenda of the press. That real question ended up being ‘please will you hurry up and be our Prime Minister?’ Corbynites would argue that even a question as pointless as this is better than the mocking tone that journalists take as they try to claim, on the basis of whispered gossip, that this is a result of some kind of Shadow Cabinet falling out. Why

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today in which he confirmed that a Labour government would keep Britain in a Customs Union with the EU was about so much more than trade. It was about the future of the Labour party itself. It sent a clear message about what, and more importantly who, Labour is for these days. It confirmed that Labour has finally made its choice between which of its two, quite conflictual support bases it will represent in public life: the better-off ones, the middle-class ones, the Southern ones. This is what Labour’s cosying up to the idea of a Customs Union — which is a betrayal of Brexit, whatever Labourites

Iain McNicol’s departure from the position of Labour General Secretary has been a very long time coming indeed. He wasn’t Ed Miliband’s first choice for the job, and he certainly wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite person at Labour headquarters, either. After the snap election, Corbynites pushed for a ‘purge’ that involved ousting McNicol. They failed, then, but today he announced that he was off to ‘pursue new projects’, which is one of those Westminster formulae for ‘booted out’. Corbynite Jennie Formby is being mooted as his successor. In a sense, it’s admirable that McNicol managed to stay on for so long, given the constant attempts to get rid of him. Insiders