Labour party

I’d like to thank Ken Loach for that wonderful film and thank Ken for his incredible contribution to our movement. Can I also thank the Shadow Treasury Team: Peter Dowd our Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury; Anneliese Dodds; Jonathon Reynolds; Denis Tunnicliffe; Bryan Davies and my brilliant PPS Karen Lee Only a few months ago we were 24 points behind in the polls. Our opponents and virtually every political commentator = those two groups are often interchangeable by the way - they predicted that we would be wiped out in the general election. I said then in interview after interview that the polls would narrow and we would shock them all. Not many believed me. And let’s be honest until you saw the exit polls, most of you were pretty on edge too, weren’t you?

The Labour Party is starting this conference season in its most confident mood for years - even though it still isn’t in government. It’s not just the confidence of the party’s leader as he makes demands on public spending which would previously have been dismissed, but also what MPs and activists are now calling for as they stand up at fringe meetings. They may not have won an election, but they have started to regain the political narrative, and so they are in a considerably less defensive mood than over the past few years. Take tonight’s Open Labour fringe rally. Open Labour is a ‘soft left’ pressure group in the party, though there was nothing soft about tonight’s event. It kicked off with a passionate speech from newly-elected MP Emma Hardy.

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.

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 ever more control.

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 is what second reading is supposed to be about.

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.

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 week that the government needs to be ‘prising out the concerned Labour Brexiteers’ over the next few weeks.

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.