Labour party

Thursday

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Prince Charming

On this week's episode of The Spectator Podcast, we look at the new Saudi Crown Prince as he visits the UK. Is he the great moderniser that some imagine, or are we sweeping the more unpleasant elements of his regime under the carpet? We also consider the many strands of Labour's Brexit position, and look at a rocky week for British sport. First, Mohammed bin Salman, known to some as MBS, is making his first trip to the UK this week since assuming the role of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince last year. He has been heralded by some as the radical modernising force that the country has been calling for, whilst others are concerned about lack of counsel and the ruthlessness of his course. What's the truth?

Steerpike

SNP’s fake news

The SNP are a quieter force in Westminster since the snap election. Along with a reduction in size, they now have to face down the equally rowdy Scottish Conservatives each week at PMQs. Alas, it seems the new challenge is proving too great for the party's digital operation. At PMQs, the SNP's Mhairi Black criticised the government for singing the virtues of universal credit when her Tory colleagues in Stirling council have called for half a million pounds in extra funding to mitigate its effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1yY-Ofuqpc The SNP's digital operation was quick to go on the offensive – criticising the Tories over their 'hypocrisy' on Universal Credit after 'Tory-run Stirling council asked for funding to offset its effects'. Only there is a problem.

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Did Munroe Bergdorf not expect the digital inquisition?

But for Toby Young, it is possible that few of us would have noticed the appointment of a transgender model called Munroe Bergdorf, who resigned this morning as a member of Labour’s LGBT advisory board. Her appointment might have gone unnoticed, along with her past comments on social media, which included attacking what she described as 'the racial violence of white people' – adding: 'Yes ALL white people. Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism.

Stephen Daisley

Munroe Bergdorf and the left’s monopoly on morality

Munroe Bergdorf has resigned as Labour's LGBT adviser after just one week in the job. Her appointment looked quite promising until it emerged she had deployed 'butch lezza' as an insult, joked that she'd like to 'gay bash' a TV character, and described gay Tory men as 'a special kind of dickhead'. 'Ever find that sometimes you’re just NOT in the mood for a gay and their flapping arms,' she once mused on Twitter. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest gay rights advocacy isn't the career for her.  She has quit, citing 'attacks on my character by the conservative right wing press'. Of course, there is no need to attack Bergdorf when you can simply quote her.

Sunday

Steerpike

John McDonnell’s bad advice

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...

Thursday

Charles Moore

Jeremy Corbyn’s custom union fantasy

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 with Labour in the forthcoming parliamentary vote.

Wednesday

Ross Clark

What are Jeremy Corbyn and Michel Barnier up to?

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 couldn’t have done better to create the impression of collusion between the two.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s slow running-down of the media

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 not focus on the real issues, they argue. But the problem is that politicians are the least able to gauge what a legitimate press question is.

Ross Clark

Corbynites are right: bin bullies must be stopped

It is another case of Corbynite militants overthrowing a moderate Labour politician. Or so I thought when I read this morning that Warren Morgan, leader of Brighton and Hove Council, has been driven out by the left of his party – he will step down as leader in May and not stand again as a councillor when his term expires in 2019. It has similarities to what happened to Claire Kober, former Labour leader of Haringey council, who recently resigned claiming ‘bullying’ by Jeremy Corbyn supporters. But then I recalled the last time I read the names ‘Haringey’ and  ‘Brighton and Hove’ in the same story.

Alex Massie

Are we tired of Brexit yet?

If you wish to understand this government you might begin with Robert Conquest’s third law of politics. Namely, that 'The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies'. This is certainly a more plausible hypothesis than any obviously available alternative. Indeed, there are times when you begin to think this government’s mission must be to persuade us that, contrary to the evidence hitherto presented, a government led by Jeremy Corbyn might be no bad thing. Or, at any rate, no worse than the government we have now.  Take Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, for instance, notionally two of Brexit’s 'Big Four' though increasingly, like Arsenal, relegated to sixth place.

Douglas Murray

The BBC’s coverage of Ben Bradley’s apology to Corbyn is fascinating

The story about Jeremy Corbyn’s contacts with a member of Czech intelligence in the 1980s has not been treated with great seriousness by our national broadcaster.  At first the BBC deigned not to run the story.  Then they treated it like some kind of joke.  For instance, given a chance to question Corbyn over his past record the BBC journalist Steph McGovern last week bowled Corbyn the humorous soft-ball ‘A final question: are you a Czech spy?’  A question which gave much opportunity for laughter and a firm ‘No’ from Corbyn, who now insists (as he does whenever he is caught in similar situations) that he was in fact discussing ‘peace’ with his agent of Czech intelligence.

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

Labour is no longer ‘for the many’

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 say to the contrary — really tells us.

Steerpike

Barry Gardiner’s words come back to haunt him

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn is expected to back 'a' customs union when Britain leaves the EU. To begin Labour's Brexit blitz, Barry Gardiner was sent onto the airwaves to wax lyrical about Labour's new pitch. https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/968045054370697217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw The problem is that of all of Labour's shadow cabinet – other than Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell – it's Gardiner who has been the most critical of the customs union.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Iain McNicol steps down as Labour General Secretary

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.

James Kirkup

Does Seumas Milne hold Brexit’s fate in his hands?

Could Britain remain in the Customs Union after Brexit? That is the question of the moment, the issue that currently troubles a lot of people in politics and government. It raises another question: who will decide whether we do indeed remain in the Customs Union? Here’s an interesting answer being given, in whispers, around Westminster and Whitehall: Seumas Milne. The theory goes like this: the Tories are split on the CU, so Labour’s position on it will be decisive. If Jeremy Corbyn brings Labour in behind the pro-CU Tories (and the SNP) then there is a comfortable majority for staying in, no matter what either Theresa May, or the DUP might have to say about it. Hence there is a huge interest in Labour’s position, in Brussels and Whitehall and elsewhere.

Brendan O’Neill

The terror of Corbynism

This week, the Corbynistas bared their teeth. They gave us an insight into the mob-like authoritarianism that lurks behind the facade of their ‘kind’ politics. They insisted Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t a spy for the Stalinists while at the same time exposing their Stalinist tendencies. ‘How dare you lump us in with Stalinists?’, they cried, while in the next breath making manic-eyed videos threatening the press and forming online mobs to punish those who criticise their Dear Leader. The irony has been dark. For the first time, I feel fearful of Corbynism.

Thursday

Steerpike

Diane Abbott makes another numbers blunder

Diane Abbott is no stranger to getting her numbers in a muddle, and it seems the shadow home secretary has now done it again. Abbott warned this week that some were using immigration as a euphemism for race, but Mr S was surprised by one passage in her speech. The Guardian reports that Abbott told those in the audience at King’s College London: ‘I remember Enoch Powell’s speech, I think I was in primary school, and I wasn’t following it in huge detail, but I do remember how I felt.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Does John Bercow think politics is illegal?

Bit of a rum PMQs today. Jeremy Corbyn, who has always loathed the EU and now pretends to admire it, asked May about Brexit. May, who has always admired the EU and now pretends to loathe it, fobbed him off with glib sound-bites. ‘Take back control of our borders,’ ‘protect workers’ rights,’ and so on. Corbyn asked a long question about the Government’s ‘desired outcome’. He got a four-word answer: ‘A bespoke economic partnership.’ Mr Speaker decided that he should be the star-turn today. Perhaps he sought to wow a posse of French MPs who were witnessing the bun-fight from the gallery. Quelling an early outbreak of shouting, the Speaker got down from his high chair and delivered one his longest ever speeches. ‘Please!

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

Stop flattering Corbynistas | 20 February 2018

Dear right-wing people, please stop the red scares. Please give the Cold War lingo a rest. Please remember it is not the 1950s anymore and that there’s about as much chance of Kevin Spacey taking the title role in a biopic of Jesus Christ as there is of Commies coming to power in Britain. Please stop referring to Jeremy Corbyn as if he were some Trotskyite firebrand, when in truth his drab politics is closer to Milibandism than Marxism (the Ed variety, that is, not the Ralph variety). You’re embarrassing yourselves with this pinko panic. Even worse, you are unwittingly flattering the Corbynista crew by indulging their teenage fantasies about being red and edgy. Stop. This Corbyn-and-the-Czech story has got to be the lamest red scare of recent times.

Nick Cohen

The middle class is Labour’s fickle friend

Labour is a movement of organised sentimentality. Its default sound is a coo. Its default gesture a hug. For generations the party has wrapped itself in fuzzy feelings. You only have to hear the applause for councillors who have served the party since Clement Attlee’s day to understand the part cloying, part inspiring, solidarity that sustains it. They may have lost many of the battles they fought. Their victories may have brought unintended consequences they neither wanted nor understood. But they remain good people with fine motives – just like the rest of us. Even when history has proved them wrong, the world would have been a better place and humanity a nobler species, if it had proved them right.