Labour party

Friday

Charles Moore

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

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

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.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Jeremy Corbyn does pose a threat to the Tories

Theresa May is riding high in the polls and there’s much talk of a Tory landslide - but that doesn’t mean the Government should rest on its laurels, says the Daily Telegraph. It’s vital, the paper says, that the PM does her best to ‘create a sense of urgency among the voters’; ‘They have to understand the dangers of not coming out to support her,’ the paper adds. Of course, some might laugh at the prospect of Corbyn making it to Number 10 - yet it’s just that sense of ‘impossibility’ that the Labour leader ‘hopes to exploit’.

Thursday

Steerpike

Listen: Dawn Butler’s car-crash interview – ‘this election is Theresa May trying to rig democracy!’

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn kicked off Labour's general election campaign with a speech on his party's vision for a fairer society -- complaining that the current system was rigged. However, confusion over whether Labour would consider holding a second referendum, if elected, distracted from the message. Now Dawn Butler has dealt the party another blow with a disastrous interview on Radio 4's PM. The Labour MP appeared to be having a bad day as she blustered through the interview with Eddie Mair -- claiming this election was May's attempt at rigging democracy: 'Labour will make this country fairer and that's how they will overturn a rigged system. This election is Theresa May trying to rig democracy.

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Election special

On this week's episode, we discuss the two European nations that are are heading for the polls in the next couple of months. First, we look at Theresa May's shock decision to hold a snap election, and then we cross the channel to consider the French election as they get set to whittle the field down to just two. With British news set to be dominated until June 8th by election fever (yet again), there was no place to start this week but with the fallout from the Prime Minister's stunning U-turn on an early election. It's a gamble, James Forsyth says in his cover piece this week, but with a portentially enormous pay off. James joins the podcast along with Bobby Duffy from Ipsos MORI and Richard Angell director of Progress.

Steerpike

Revealed: Labour party’s ‘wellbeing day’ scrapped as staff told to cancel holidays

Theresa May's decision to hold a snap election in June has scuppered many MPs' holiday plans -- and one politician's honeymoon. But now word reaches Steerpike that it will also have a negative effect on the Labour Party's general wellbeing. Yes, in what is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the snap election yet -- the Labour party's 'Wellbeing Day' has been called off. Announced on 11 April and scheduled for 10 May, there was palpable excitement among Labour staff over the event which promised to help Labour brains 'bounce back from adversity' and 'steer calmly through the challenges' ahead. Attendees were promised treats such as the 'smoothie bike' and 10-minute massages: Sadly, this is no more.

Tom Goodenough

Did Douglas Carswell try – and fail – to rejoin the Tory fold?

Douglas Carswell has just announced that he will not stand for re-election as the MP for Clacton. The independent MP, who quit Ukip last month, said that he was planning 'to move on to other things' and was looking 'forward to being able to read newspapers without appearing in them'. In a statement on his website, Carswell said: 'As I promised in my maiden speech, I have done everything possible to ensure we got, and won, a referendum to leave the European Union - even changing parties and triggering a by election to help nudge things along. Last summer, we won that referendum. Britain is going to become a sovereign country again. I have decided that I will not now be seeking re-election.

Steerpike

Watch: Labour supporters boo journalist at Corbyn speech

Some Labour supporters, it's fair to say, do not like hearing hard truths. So when a journalist at Jeremy Corbyn's first speech of the general election campaign asked about the party's dismal support in the polls - and whether Corbyn merely spoke for an 'Islington elite' - there was only going to be one outcome. ITV journalist Libby Weiner's question was met with a round of boos after she said to Corbyn: 'Mr Corbyn, you say that you want to speak for the many not the few, but your poll ratings of something like 14 or 15 per cent suggest that very few people believe you. And you've attacked the elite, aren't you effectively just part of an Islington elite that doesn't reflect the views of people around the country?

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour’s General Election campaign, full transcript

The dividing lines in this election could not be clearer from the outset. It is the Conservatives, the party of privilege and the richest, versus the Labour Party, the party that is standing up for working people to improve the lives of all. It is the establishment versus the people and it is our historic duty to make sure that the people prevail. A duty for all of us here today, the duty of every Labour MP, a duty for our half a million members - including the 2,500 who have joined in the last 24 hours. Much of the media and establishment are saying that this election is a foregone conclusion. They think there are rules in politics, which if you don’t follow by doffing your cap to powerful people, accepting that things can’t really change, then you can’t win.

Tom Goodenough

Labour’s General Election plan is already coming unstuck

What does it mean to be rich? That’s the question already getting the Labour party into a tangle as it struggles to get its act together ahead of the snap general election. Yesterday, John McDonnell said a Labour government would send a higher tax bill the way of all workers earning over £70,000. The shadow chancellor said simply that those earning more than that amount were ‘rich’ and should ‘pay their way more’. A straightforward policy, you might think. But today, it seems, there is already confusion in the ranks.

Tom Goodenough

The exodus of Labour MPs is underway

Who'd be a Labour MP? Despite the best efforts of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Corbyn is going nowhere and, if the polls are to be believed, he's leading Labour to electoral oblivion. A general election landslide is on the cards for the Tories, with some estimates suggesting the Government could boost its majority by more than 100 seats come June 8th. Much of this surge will it seems, inevitably, come at the expense of Labour MPs. And for some, the prospect of a snap election has led to them calling time on their Parliamentary careers. Here is the full list of the Labour MPs doing just that: Gisela Stuart, who represents Labour in Birmingham Edgbaston, said she was ending her 20 year spell in the Commons ahead of the snap election.

Rod Liddle

What I expect from this pointless election

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.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour is starting its hardest election campaign woefully unprepared

The opposition parties about whom Theresa May complained in her speech launching the snap election are grinding into action. Their size and resources seem to be inversely proportionate to how prepared they are: the Lib Dems say they have already selected around 400 candidates to contest seats, while Labour hasn't selected any candidates in seats it doesn't hold. The party is contacting its 2015 candidates to see if they might stand again so it might mount reasonably well-informed campaigns in key seats (or formerly key seats: a campaign with an ounce of wisdom would have to name seats it already holds as 'key seats' while accepting that many of its sitting MPs will just be washed away).

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn is already anticipating his political extinction

Just seven weeks till Jezza-geddon. The Labour leader seemed to anticipate his political extinction with a dead-sheep performance at PMQs. Poor Corbo. He’s never shaken off the air of Speakers’ Corner. He belongs outdoors, with a step-ladder and a bull-horn, ranting away at tourists and pigeons. Today he was faced with a carefully drilled Tory militia eager to demonstrate their unity. It was impressive but dispiriting as well. Every preferment-seeker and red-box wannabe on the backbenches had been ordered to lace their query to the PM with extravagant praise of Tory economic genius. Up they popped, in wearying succession, the pliable Pippas, the malleable Marys, the robotic Richards, the pushover Pauls. It wasn’t a debate. It was a flash-mob of Duracell Bunnies.

Nick Cohen

If Labour is decimated, Corbyn and his comrades will be delighted

In the early hours of 9 June 2017, Jeremy Corbyn conceded defeat. For the luckless political journalists forced to cover the Labour campaign this was a rare moment. The leader of the opposition had avoided the press and public. Now, as Labour was going down to its worst defeat since 1935, Corbyn was at last prepared to take questions. But not before he had made one of the most graceless concession speeches in British political history. He offered no apologies to the scores of Labour MPs who had lost their seats or the millions of voters who needed an alternative to conservatism. He accepted no responsibility. On the contrary, the passive-aggressive Labour leader was as close to jubilation as anyone had seen him. His eyes shone. His voice rang with an unearned self-confidence.

Tuesday

Paul Nizinskyj

Can Labour survive this general election?

'There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics,' reflected James Callaghan in 1979, conscious he was about to be turfed out of Number 10. He didn’t know the half of it. While Margaret Thatcher’s election did herald the end of the post-war consensus, it kept the Conservative/Labour ‘mould’ intact, despite later attempts by the SDP/Liberal alliance to break it. But with a ‘Brexit election’ now called for 8 June, Labour will be fighting for its very survival. The last great national political realignment was the 1922 general election in which Labour beat the Liberals into second place for the first time.

Ed West

Could a big Tory victory make a soft Brexit more likely?

Whatever happens in the forthcoming general election, no day of social media can ever compete with the dizzying heights of May 2015. I think I laughed more on the day of the result than I had in the previous decade; sure, it was the twisted and cruel laughter of someone whose dreams are slowly fading, but aren't those the most genuine and heartfelt? This time it won't be quite as funny because everyone expects Labour to be slaughtered, aside from one or two Comical Ali-like figures who continue to maintain steadfast confidence despite all evidence to the contrary.

Nick Hilton

Even a crushing election defeat might not spell the end of Jeremy Corbyn

After the referendum, Jeremy Corbyn said that Labour was ‘very, very ready’ to contest a general election. Which is good news, because that’s precisely the task he now faces. In the world of Corbyn’s most ardent supporters, the snap election has been greeted with something like glee. Their greatest fear – that Corbyn may not survive in the leadership long enough to face the public at large – has been alleviated. Momentum's Michael Chessum tweeted that there ‘absolutely is a path to victory for Labour... We'll have to be bold, but it's there’, while Paul Mason said that ‘a progressive alliance can beat the Tory hard Brexit plan’. That jubilation on the hard left is typical of the movement’s resilience.

Will Heaven

Five times Theresa May ruled out a snap general election

Theresa May's snap election, scheduled for 8 June, was unlikely for three big reasons. Holding off until 2020 would allow the Tories to take advantage of boundary changes that come into force in 2018. There's a fixed-term parliament act, which is a major complicating factor (Labour will probably have to back a vote in the Commons to allow this election to take place at all). Most of all, she staked a large chunk of her credibility on not U-turning on her decision that there wouldn't be one. Until this morning, her reputation for unwavering unflappability looked justified. Here are five occasions on which the Prime Minister personally, or her staff, denied that there were plans for an election.

Katy Balls

What a snap election means for Labour

Theresa May has taken Westminster by surprise this morning by saying she wants an early election. Tomorrow she will ask MPs to support a motion for a poll on June 8. It is pretty much certain that this will pass -- any opposition MP who rejects the motion is effectively saying they want another three years of Tory rule. Tim Farron has been the first out of the starting blocks to say that his party welcomes an early election -- heralding the Liberal Democrats as the only party that will fight for Britain to remain in the single market. So, what of Labour? Well, after a sluggish start Her Majesty's Opposition have issued a statement.