Labour party

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 April 2017

From our UK edition

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.

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn’s ex-spinner exposes an irreconcilably divided Labour

From our UK edition

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.

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn forgets to face the camera

From our UK edition

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 audience as ‘the future Prime Minister’ though.

Nick Cohen

J. K. Rowling and the curse of the left

From our UK edition

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 conscientious leftists are laughing at democracy. How can you justify it unless voters care about who they vote for?

James Forsyth

Why Tories are talking up Labour

From our UK edition

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 not as odd as it first sounds. The Tories are worried about complacency, about their vote not turning out.

Wednesday

The Spectator

How to vote to save the Union

From our UK edition

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 week puts them on 33 per cent in Scotland — enough to win 12 seats.

Ed West

Civil life in London is now balanced on a knife edge

From our UK edition

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.

Tom Goodenough

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

From our UK edition

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’.

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

The cruel hounding of Tim Farron is bloodsport for secularists

From our UK edition

For the benefit of Sky News, standard Christian doctrine says gay sex is a sin. It's the sin that gives sinning a good name. There ought to be a stewards' inquiry into why it didn't make it into the Ten Commandments. But, yes, it's one of those trespasses we ask to be forgiven.  Sky's Darren McCaffrey demanded to know Tim Farron's view on the matter at a Lib Dem event on Monday. In case you're wondering, Farron hasn't proposed banning the love that once dared not speak its name and now won't shut up about it. Nor does he want to roll back any of the gains the gay rights movement has made in the last 20 years. In fact, he has criticised equal marriage legislation for failing to accommodate the rights of trans people and wants to see the 'spousal veto' scrapped.

Nick Hilton

Labour’s decimation would be a disaster for Britain

From our UK edition

Today's polls suggest that Theresa May could be on track to secure a Commons majority of 150, reversing – in just 20 years – the landslide that was inflicted on the Tories in 1997. These figures, from the Daily Telegraph, reveal no fresh agony for Labour: already the worst case scenario being floated in Labour circles would involve a catastrophic loss of about 100 MPs. This is an apocalyptic vision, mainly propagated by centre-leaning folk who have seen their influence wane over the past two years, and is something of a long-shot (the bookies currently favour a Labour seat band of 150-199, but only price 100-149 at 5/2). But let’s say it does happen: what happens next?

Tom Goodenough

Labour’s Brexit plan was doomed before Keir Starmer even opened his mouth

From our UK edition

Brexit comes in all shapes and sizes: hard, soft, clean. Today, Labour added a new type: a ‘reckless Tory Brexit’. That’s what Keir Starmer accused the Government of trying to drive through as he detailed Labour’s plan for waving goodbye to the EU. The main purpose of Starmer’s tour of the airwaves was to clear some of the mud out of the water of Labour’s Brexit tonic. To be fair to Starmer, he did manage to offer some clarity: there would be no second referendum under Labour, which puts helpful space between the party and the Lib Dems who have promised voters a second say. Staying in the single market also remained an option that was ‘on the table’ if it was Corbyn doing the deal making in Brussels, according to Starmer.

Steerpike

Momentum activist’s food bank appeal leaves a sour taste

From our UK edition

Today Jeremy Corbyn took to social media to promise that a Labour government would mean people on low-income no longer need to rely on food banks. https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/856789256618082304 However, when the Labour leader suggested focussing on food banks in the campaign, Mr S is pretty sure he didn't mean physically targeting them. So, Steerpike was curious to learn that Kate Knight -- the Hove Momentum and Hove CLP executive officer -- has adopted a novel method for campaigning on behalf of Corbyn.

Monday

James Forsyth

Can Labour become a truly national party again?

From our UK edition

The latest polling marmalade dropper comes from Wales. Labour have won a majority of Welsh seats in every general election for the past eighty-odd years. But the latest Welsh Political Barometer, the most respected poll there, has the Tories on 40 per cent and on course to win 21 seats to Labour’s 15. This poll combined with the fact that Labour is now down to one MP in Scotland shows how difficult it will be for the party to win a UK-wide majority again. They will have to do it without the inbuilt advantage that their Celtic strength used to provide them with. If May can succeed in realigning British politics in this election and flip lots of Labour seats in the North and the Midlands, then it will become even harder for Labour.

Brendan O’Neill

Tony Blair is the messianic Remainer here to save us from ourselves

From our UK edition

Here they come, Tony Blair and his tragic chattering-class army. The former PM, whose rictus grin and glottal stops still haunt the nation’s dreams (well, mine anyway), is on the march with his pleb-allergic mates in business and the media. Blair and the Twitterati, linking arms, united in their horror at the incalculable stupidity of northerners and Welsh people and Essex men and women and other Brexiteers, their aim as clear as it is foul. They’re here to save us from ourselves. ‘Tony Blair is trying to save Britain from itself’, as one report put it. Excuse me while I pop an anti-nausea pill. Yes, Blair, the political version of Michael Myers, the nutter in the Halloween movies who just cannot be slain, is back. Again.

Sunday

William Cook

This election will be won or lost on the suburban battleground

From our UK edition

In Westminster, all the general election chatter is about Brexit. Will Tory Remainers turn Lib Dem? Will Labour leavers desert Jeremy Corbyn? As polling day draws near, however, the Europe obsession must recede. Politicians may not be able to look past last year’s referendum, but voters will have moved on. MPs will find that, as before, the great issue of our time will be just one of many on the doorsteps. This summer’s battleground won’t be Brussels. It will be suburbia. Domestic matters will decide whether Theresa May returns to Downing Street with a fat majority, and no one is more domesticated than the average suburbanite. We are intensely local. We want good local schools and good local hospitals — we don’t like grand projects like HS2.

James Forsyth

Theresa May’s great gamble

From our UK edition

Theresa May has long been clear about what sets her apart from other politicians: she doesn’t play political games. When she launched her bid for the top job last year, she was clear that — unlike her rivals — she hadn’t succumbed to the temptations of Westminster. She told us that she didn’t drink in the bars or gossip over lunch. She invited the TV cameras into her first Cabinet meeting as Prime Minister to record her telling ministers that ‘politics is not a game’. The danger for May in calling an election three years ahead of schedule is that it looks a lot like game-playing. Has a 20-point poll lead proved too much of a temptation, even for this vicar’s daughter?

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Expect the unexpected in Theresa May’s pointless poll

From our UK edition

A general election is called and in a matter of hours a neutral and unbiased BBC presenter has likened our Prime Minister to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Governments rise and governments fall, but some things stay just as they always were. It was Eddie Mair on Radio 4’s PM programme who made the comparison, while interviewing the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. In fairness to Mair, he had been alluding to Theresa May’s apparent wish to create ‘unity’ within Westminster, a truly stupid statement within an address which sometimes made no semantic sense and sounded, to my ears, petulant and arrogant. Then along came the opinion pollsters to tell us exactly what will happen on 8 June — except they declined to be too explicit.

Friday

Tom Goodenough

Len McCluskey’s victory finally gives Corbyn something to smile about

From our UK edition

Len McCluskey has been re-elected as General Secretary of Unite. It was something of a messy fight: his rival Gerard Coyne was suspended yesterday - we still don’t know why - and the contest was much narrower than had been expected, with McCluskey winning by just 5,000 votes. The dismal turnout of 12 per cent also suggests that many of those eligible to vote were put off by the parochial rows at the heart of this contest. McCluskey accused a ‘cabal’ of Labour figures, who he described as ‘skilled masters of the darks arts’ of trying to use the election to oust Corbyn. While Coyne suggested that the general secretary of Unite shouldn’t be ‘the puppet master of the leader of the Labour party’, in a thinly-disguised dig at his rival.

Charles Moore

Theresa May doesn’t trust enough people for a power ‘circle’. A triangle, maybe

From our UK edition

The fact that nothing leaked about Mrs May’s snap election tells you much of what you need to know about her. It shows how iron is her discipline and how close her inner circle (so close, in fact, that it is a triangle rather than a circle). It suggests that she takes neither her cabinet nor her party into her confidence. It shows that if she wins the general election, her control of her administration will be much tighter than that of Margaret Thatcher (which was surprisingly loose) and even than that of David Cameron (which was surprisingly tight). Finally, it shows that if she loses, or gets a result no better than the present parliamentary arithmetic, she will find herself friendless.

Stephen Daisley

Len McCluskey’s hollow victory

From our UK edition

Len McCluskey has seen off a challenge to be elected to a third term at the helm of Unite. And what a seeing off it was. When the votes starting to come in, and reportedly showed the top two contenders neck-and-neck, McCluskey’s rival was promptly suspended. Gerard Coyne was stripped of his duties as West Midlands regional secretary - although it’s not clear what he’s supposed to have done wrong or who his accusers are. Coyne has been a thorn in the side of the McCluskey hierarchy for some time. The Guardian points out that he was given a written warning in 2016. His offence? Speaking at an event hosted by moderate Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt.  His challenge certainly was not welcomed.