Labour party

One of the daily rituals in British politics at the moment is each of the main parties sending out press releases about how ‘hopelessly divided’ the other is on Brexit. There are so many facets on which politicians can bicker that this ritual won’t end with the negotiations, or the transition period (however long that ends up being) or indeed with the eventual relationship with the EU that Britain settles into. “There will be a lot of movement” of workers after Brexit – @jeremycorbyn tells #marr pic.twitter.com/qn38wWGQks — The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) September 24, 2017 Today Labour is ‘hopelessly divided’ over the question of single market membership and freedom

Sarah Champion could hardly be blamed for bearing a grudge against Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour MP was among those who nominated Corbyn in his original bid to become Labour leader. Yet it’s likely that she regretted that decision when she was forced out of the shadow cabinet for her comments on Pakistani grooming gangs. Now, it seems, support for Champion’s decision to nominate Corbyn is being quietly deleted from Twitter. A message retweeted by Sarah Champion during Corbyn’s 2015 leadership bid was taken down this morning. Here’s what it said: @SarahChampionMP top move nominating @Corbyn4Leader … you’ve done democracy a service, much love Is Sarah Champion regretting nominating Jeremy Corbyn?

Oh dear. Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, he has had an at times difficult relationship with the ‘Mainstream Media’. From hacks being booed at press conferences to Corbyn avoiding questions, it’s safe to say that the media feel a little bit unloved. Now, it seems Labour’s high command is keen, too, that party members have limited interaction with the MSM. At this year’s party conference in Brighton, the press will not be granted access to the floor. Instead journalists will have to watch proceedings from the balcony. This means that the media will be away from the action – and unable to interact with delegates on the floor. The official

One of the reasons that coalition governments are so unusual in Britain is that both main parties are coalitions themselves. The Tories have long been a party of both social conservatives and libertarians, Eurosceptics and Europhiles, buccaneering free traders and economic nationalists. Labour has always brought together Methodists and Marxists, middle-class liberals and working-class trade unionists, hawks and doves. These internal alliances mean the parties mostly avoid the need for an external one. But the Labour and Conservative coalitions are nearing breaking point. Labour’s problem is that its far left now dominates, making the party unbalanced. The two years since Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership have seen his wing gain

Tonight’s series of votes on the second reading of the EU withdrawal bill are unlikely to be the most spectacular part of its passage through the Commons. MPs have decided in the main to focus on the Committee stage which follows, as this allows Brexit-sceptics to try to force changes to the legislation without being accused of blocking Brexit. Labour is voting against the Second Reading and the programme motion, but the Tory rebels have decided to keep their powder dry, and so the debate this afternoon is much more of a preview of the fights in committee stage than it will be about the principle of the legislation, which

Keith Vaz kept a low profile at last year’s Labour party conference. In the wake of allegations surrounding a pair of rent boys, Vaz had to call off his annual ‘diversity’ shindig. Now, a year on he is returning to the limelight – and his ‘Diversity Nite’ is back on. The event, held in Brighton’s Walkabout nightclub, is hailed as a chance to ‘join Keith Vaz and the Labour Party’s Ethnic Minority Taskforce to celebrate diversity with special guests’: Mr S for one is looking forward to it…

With second reading of the EU withdrawal bill coming this week, there’s a lot of speculation about Tory rebels and what amendments might be able to command a majority at committee stage. But there won’t just be rebels on the Tory side. There will be some Labour MPs who will be prepared to defy the party whip in the interests of getting the bill through without any changes. These Labour rebels could be crucial. For every Labour rebel, will cancel out a Tory one. It doesn’t matter if Anna Soubry votes against the government, if Kate Hoey votes with it. One minister closely involved with the bill told me last

It is the gripe of every end-of-the-bar bigot you meet. ‘Look, I’m not saying there isn’t any racism but there can’t be as much as they claim. They exaggerate it. This isn’t me saying this, by the way. I know loads of black lads who say the same. They’re just milking it. It stands to reason.’ Place that paragraph before almost any Labour member and they would know exactly what they were looking at. They would call it textbook racism. The throat-clearing at the outset. The downplaying of the problem. The some-of-my-best-strawmen-are-black rhetorical device. Whatever the intent (though we can probably guess), the overall effect is to delegitimise critics of

When Kezia Dugdale was elected Scottish Labour leader, she tweeted: ‘Mission: Impossible has a happy ending, right?’ As she steps down from the job, Dugdale is getting enough praise to suggest that her mission has a happy ending. But is that really fair? She leaves with more Scottish Labour MPs in Westminster than she started with: impressive, given many had assumed Scottish Labour was dead for at least a generation after the SNP surge in 2015. But then again, she leaves with her party in third place at Holyrood. Her critics on the Left will argue that the party’s recovery in its Scottish seats was far more down to Jeremy

Jeremy Corbyn did better than many expected in the general election, but while some of his allies might not like it, he still lost. Or at least he did unless you’re looking at things from where Labour frontbencher Chris Williamson is sitting. Fresh from coming under fire for suggesting women-only train carriages were a good idea, the Labour MP has now been claiming that Corbyn won a landslide election victory on June 8th. Here’s what he told the Guardian‘s Rowena Mason in an interview today: Mr S would be interested to know where Williamson is getting his numbers from…

For months, Labour has been moving ever closer to the Tory position on Brexit while pretending that it isn’t. First, it backed Brexit. Then in June, John McDonnell told Robert Peston that he couldn’t see continued membership of the single market being ‘on the table’ in Brexit negotiations. He added that people would interpret membership of the single market as ‘not respecting that referendum.’ In July, Jeremy Corbyn told Andrew Marr that single market membership is ‘dependent on membership of the EU.’ Barry Gardiner has even suggested that the UK would become a ‘vassal state’ if it were to remain in the single market after Brexit. Today, Sir Keir Starmer writes in the Observer that, unlike Liam Fox and Philip Hammond,

A transitional period that offers businesses some time, and some certainty.  A financial settlement including a one-off severance payment and possibly ongoing contributions for continuing programmes. A legal arrangement that concedes some sort of role to some sort of European court, and thus concedes that any substantive trade relationship with the EU will involve some sort of sharing of sovereignty. Today’s government paper on the ECJ is more proof that Theresa May has come a long way from the days of “no deal is better than a bad deal”. The clear message from the UK government positions sketched out this summer is this: we want a deal. We really want