Labour party

Wednesday

Richard Coles

My brush with the pro-Corbyn Twitter mob

When my old friend – a lifelong Labour supporter – told me he was voting Tory at the election, I posted a message on Twitter: A first: met with a friend who for the first time in his life is ditching Labour not for the Lib Dems but for the Conservatives.— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) April 29, 2017 That was that, I thought. But then the replies started piling in. One of the first responses came from someone who thought my friend would regret his decision if he ever needed the NHS. ‘He’s an NHS consultant’, I replied. Even that didn’t stop the disbelief: many of those responding struggled to believe

Alex Massie

The Conservative party is treating the electorate like mugs

What a curious election this is proving to be. It is hard to think of another general election in which the two largest political parties indulged in so much nonsense, nor did their best to persuade you that what is evidently true cannot possibly be true.  In the first place, the Conservative party asks you to believe the Labour party could yet finagle its way into Downing Street. You can’t afford to take a risk on Jeremy Corbyn, the Tories tell a public that has not the slightest intention of taking a risk, or anything else, on Jeremy Corbyn. Undaunted, the Tories warn: Look, there remains the prospect of a

Steerpike

Watch: Dithering Labour frontbencher Jon Ashworth hounded by Piers Morgan

If Labour ever does make it to No.10, it’ll be Jeremy Corbyn with his finger on the nuclear button. The Labour leader has been famously wishy-washy on whether he’d retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack. And it seems Corbyn isn’t alone on the Labour frontbench in dithering on the subject. Following his performance during an interview on Good Morning Britain today, Mr S hopes that Labour MP Jon Ashworth isn’t involved in the decision-making process in the event of a nuclear strike. Ashworth was repeatedly asked by Piers Morgan what he would do if another country launched an attack on Britain. Here’s what he said: When @piersmorgan asks

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May's scrutiny-dodging will only get worse

What a very boring election this is. The Tories are trying to keep their Prime Minister away from anyone who isn’t an android programmed to wave a placard about ‘strong and stable leadership’. Journalists from local papers are being kept in rooms to prevent them from – gasp – filming an interview with the Prime Minister for their websites. Other events take place away from the media entirely, with Theresa May cocooned safely among Tory activists: the political equivalent of a tree falling in an empty forest. Over the bank holiday, the Sunday papers carried tales of a row between May and her key aide Fiona Hill in which the Prime

Isabel Hardman

The snap election is likely to make the Commons a lot more dull

At midnight, we won’t have any MPs. The dissolution of Parliament means that no-one who has sat on the green benches of the Commons for the past two years has any official status above their fellow candidates in the General Election. Some will return victorious for another five years (or until another advantageously early election). Some have decided that it’s time to go. Others will find that their local electorates have decided it is time for them to go.  Elections are exciting for the political world. They activate a gene in politicians that the rest of us fortunately do not possess, which makes them enjoy six weeks of trying to

Steerpike

Listen: Diane Abbott's car-crash interview on Labour's plan for extra policemen

Is there something in the water today? First Nick Clegg lost his temper on Good Morning Britain, and now Diane Abbott has gone and outdone him with an awkward LBC interview on a policy she is supposed to be advocating. The shadow home secretary has been doing the rounds unveiling Labour’s plans for putting more bobbies on the beat. The problem: Abbott seems to have no idea how she’d pay for the 10,000 extra police officers. At first she said it would cost £300,000 – working out at £30 an officer. Her interview just got worse from there. Here it is:- Nick Ferrari: ‘So how much would ten thousand police officers cost?

Monday

Nick Hilton

In praise of Jeremy Corbyn's campaign

Almost two weeks in, and before the short campaign has even started, people are starting to wise up to Theresa May’s conjuring trick. Last week, Philip Collins of the Times tweeted ‘I am usually a strong defender of politics but this empty, choreographed, stale, boring Tory campaign essentially implies we are all idiots’ (which was retweeted four and a half thousand times). This was then followed up by a performance on Marr that Fraser Nelson judged to have ‘perfected the art of saying nothing’. At the same time, people are still picking holes in the Labour effort. On Thursday, a video emerged of Jeremy Corbyn heading to address a crowd,

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday political interviews round-up: Theresa May says Conservatives will not raise VAT

Theresa May – Conservatives will not raise VAT Touring both the BBC and ITV studios today, Theresa May tried her best to avoid giving specific answers about the Conservatives tax policies after the election. However, during an interview with Robert Peston, the Prime Minister appeared to disown David Cameron’s ‘triple lock’ and make a commitment that a Conservative government would not raise the level of VAT above 20% over the next Parliament: Peston: Given what you say your record as a party is on taxes, do you need to repeat David Cameron’s triple lock – no rise in VAT, no rise in National Insurance, no rise in income tax –

Isabel Hardman

Political activists who behave like zealots will do no good at all

The election debate so far has included a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing over whether religion has a place in politics and whether religious politicians have to spend significant portions of interviews talking about their views on what other people get up to in bed. But one striking feature of all political debate is how many of its participants behave like religious zealots without even realising it.  Media vicar Reverend Richard Coles yesterday tweeted that he’d spoken to a friend who planned to switch from Labour to the Conservative, rather than the Lib Dems, as Coles might have expected. The replies to this message were rather instructive. A number of

James Forsyth

Why the Tories are talking up Labour

Considering that their party is expected to win by a landslide, the Tory spin doctors sound unusually panicked. They are keen to point out that the polls aren’t always right, and the pollsters are still trying to correct what they got wrong at the last general election. They insist that national voting tells you little about what will happen in the key marginal seats. These are normally the pleas of a party that is failing, and trying to persuade voters that it is still in the race. But Labour isn’t doing a good job of spinning its own prospects — so the Tories are doing it for them. This is

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Tim Farron is a Christian, so of course he’s not allowed an opinion

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t remember the BBC running a documentary 100 days into Barack Obama’s first presidency and kicking him from pillar to post. Interviewing almost exclusively people who hated him, pouring scorn on his every utterance. They did it this week to Donald Trump, though, and even wheeled out Jeremy Paxman to present this travesty of a documentary. Because Jeremy was interviewing exclusively people with whom he wholeheartedly agreed, he didn’t get the chance to put on that famous supercilious expression we all used to love, back when he was good. Shame. With Obama, as I remember, it was a very different approach. The studio

William Cash

Why the Midlands will matter on June 8th

It is no coincidence that Theresa May chose to hit the campaign trail in Wolverhampton and Dudley last weekend; both are areas where Ukip did especially well in 2015. What is emerging is that the West Midlands – particularly the Labour-held Midlands marginals – will be the key battleground in this coming election. From the creation of the Mercian kingdom by Alfred the Great, to the Battle of Bosworth and Germany’s bombing of Coventry in 1940 – not to mention the 2015 election which led to Brexit – the Midlands has provided the backdrop against which the future of our country has been shaped. The election on 8 June will be no

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 April 2017

Home Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, cheered the United Kingdom by promising four new bank holidays for the whole country when he becomes prime minister, for the patronal days of St David, St Patrick, St George and St Andrew. Asked about the replacement for the Trident nuclear deterrent, he said: ‘I’ve made clear any use of nuclear weapons would be a disaster for the whole world.’ Three hours later, the Labour party put out a statement saying: ‘The decision to renew Trident has been taken and Labour supports that.’ The Communist Party decided not to field candidates against Labour. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, visited South Wales, following a YouGov

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn's ex-spinner exposes an irreconcilably divided Labour

One of the favourite tenets of Jeremy Corbyn supporters is that their movement is persecuted by the ‘mainstream media’ and that if only there were a fair, left-wing-friendly press in this country, then the public would be flocking to JC’s hugely popular policies. This debate has trudged its way through many acres of print already, but the insight into how Corbyn’s own team dealt with the media from former Labour spinner Matt Zarb-Cousin in an interview this week is very interesting indeed. Zarb-Cousin was, like his former colleague Kevin Slocombe, respected by many lobby journalists as someone who dealt with their queries as efficiently as possible. This is never a

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn forgets to face the camera

Boris Johnson has stolen the show this morning by calling Jeremy Corbyn a ‘mugwump’. But the Labour leader is making a pretty miserable attempt at trying to recapture the limelight. During a campaign speech in Essex, Corbyn had a golden moment to set out Labour’s pitch to voters. The Sky News camera was rolling, with hundreds of thousands of viewers watching at home to hear what Corbyn had to say. The only problem? Corbyn started his speech with his back to the camera. Thankfully, an aide stepped in to put Jezza right before people got bored of the sight of his back. His blunder might have slightly undermined his introduction to the

Nick Cohen

J. K. Rowling and the curse of the left

How people who want a fairer society should vote at this election is causing agonies across the liberal-left. It is easy to mock the torn activists. Why do they bother? One vote is worth next to nothing under a PR system. Under first past the post there are hundreds of safe seats where there’s no point in voting, let alone worrying about how you vote. The number of safe Tory seats is likely to grow after this election. Indeed, if you believe the opinion polls, it is likely to rocket. The futility of casting a token anti-Tory vote is more apparent than ever. For all that, those who laugh at

James Forsyth

Why Tories are talking up Labour

Considering that their party is expected to win by a landslide, the Tory spin doctors sound unusually panicked. They are keen to point out that the polls aren’t always right, and the pollsters are still trying to correct what they got wrong at the last general election. They insist that national voting tells you little about what will happen in the key marginal seats. These are normally the pleas of a party that is failing, and trying to persuade voters that it is still in the race. But Labour isn’t doing a good job of spinning its own prospects — so the Tories are doing it for them. This is

Wednesday

The Spectator

How to vote to save the Union

When launching the Scottish National Party’s election campaign, Nicola Sturgeon said the word ‘Tory’ 20 times in 20 minutes. For much of her political lifetime, it has been used by the SNP as the dirtiest word in Scottish politics. Nationalists have long liked to portray the Conservatives as the successors to Edward Longshanks: an occupying army with little affinity for the people they were trying to govern. But things are changing fast in Scotland. Amid the other political dramas of the past few months, the revival of Tory support north of the border has gone relatively unnoticed. They had only one MP after the last election, but a poll this

Ed West

Civil life in London is now balanced on a knife edge

I’m a member of a small and weird minority, the conservative urbanophiles. Obviously cities are nests of degeneracy and, even worse, the false faith of progressivism – my postcode voted 82 per cent Remain and the Tories finished fourth in 2015 – but nevertheless urbanisation is glorious, the best thing our species ever did. City life means socialising, culture and prosperity.  But the English-speaking world forgot two important things about city life in the 20th century, lessons that have been painfully half re-learned: that cities should be beautiful and cities need to be civilised. The story of American urban decline in the late 20th century is especially tragic, hollowed out

Tom Goodenough

If Keir Starmer is Labour's great hope the party really is in trouble

Is Keir Starmer Labour’s great hope? That’s what some longing for the day that Jeremy Corbyn calls it a day have said. The shadow Brexit secretary was centre stage yesterday as he spelled out the party’s plan for leaving the EU. But for those pinning their hopes on Starmer, today’s newspaper editorials make miserable reading. Labour’s plan for Brexit ‘is a joke’, says the Sun, which blasts the shadow Brexit secretary for his ‘waffle and wishful thinking’ yesterday. The paper says that Starmer’s argument that we should return to the negotiating table in Brussels if MPs reject the Brexit deal would give the ‘EU licence to play hardball for years’. Starmer