Labour party

Monday

Katy Balls

Jeremy Corbyn in the firing line over Russia at PLP meeting

Although Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman described tonight’s meeting of the PLP as barely registering on the Richter scale in terms of hostility, it could hardly be described as an hour of sweetness and light. While the meeting appeared to get off to a good start with loud cheers that could be heard from the corridor, it later transpired that the applause was for Rosie Winterton — the chief whip Corbyn sacked — rather than the Labour leader himself. When Corbyn praised Winterton for her work in the role over the past six years, he was heckled by MPs who questioned why he had fired Winterton if he really thought so much

Katy Balls

Tories open 17-point lead over Labour, in post-conference poll

Today’s ICM poll makes grim reading for Labour MPs. The poll – based on samples taken from Friday to Sunday – shows that the Conservatives have received an impressive post-conference bounce, opening a 17-point lead over Labour: Conservatives: 43pc (up 2) Labour: 26pc (down 2) Ukip: 11pc (down 2) Lib Dems: 8pc (down 1) Greens: 6pc (up 2) To put things into perspective, if this lead were to play out in an election — on old boundary rules — the Conservatives’ majority could be boosted to 114 seats. The 17-point lead is the joint second highest ever recorded for the Conservatives by ICM — which has been polling since 1992 — only being

Steerpike

Labour's frontbench hypocrisy on grammar schools

On Sunday, Shami Chakrabarti was forced to use an appearance on Peston on Sunday to claim that she was not a hypocrite after the topic of grammar schools was raised. The issue? Although the shadow attorney general is vocal in her opposition to selective education in the state, she sent her own son to a selective fee-paying school. https://twitter.com/pestononsunday/status/785053732497006593 While Chakrabarti insists that buying choice for herself while denying people without money the same option does not make her a hypocrite — explaining that as she is rich she is able to live a ‘charmed and privileged life’ — she is just one of a number of shadow cabinet members who

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Republicans revolting against Donald Trump should look at the Labour Party, and despair

The Donald Trump story and the Jeremy Corbyn story are same tale told by different countries. A political party reinvents itself in the 1990s, wins power, but then dishonestly drags its nation into a terrible war in Iraq. It becomes widely reviled. The party is still in power a few years later when the financial system collapses. The party takes desperate measures to keep the country’s economy going – rescuing failed banks – but that in turn leads to more unpopularity and distrust among the public. It loses power. In opposition, the party’s base – its core voters – starts to revolt. The party then loses another election. Then the party’s grassroots have a

Saturday

James Forsyth

Corbyn leaves Ukip an open goal, and they miss it

Jeremy Corbyn is taking Labour ever further away from its traditional working class voters in the north and the midlands. As I say in The Sun today, the party now has a leader who didn’t sing the national anthem at St Paul’s, a shadow Chancellor who has praised the IRA, a shadow Home Secretary who thinks promising ‘controls on immigration’ is shameful and a shadow Foreign Secretary who sneers at those who fly the English flag. This presents Ukip with an open goal and a chance to do to Labour in the north and the midlands what the SNP did to in Scotland following the independence referendum. Indeed, half of

Charles Moore

Theresa May's plain style is a blessed relief

Mrs May’s plain style may well come to irritate people in a few months, but just now it is extremely popular. The lack of glamour, soundbites, smart clothes, and ministerial overclaiming is a blessed relief. I can’t pretend that I find Mrs May an endearing figure, but when she said in her speech that Britain should not go round saying ‘We are punching above our weight’ (a phrase beloved of the Foreign Office), I almost wanted to hug her. There isn’t even much party knockabout. In the old days, any speech which made some pathetic jibe against ‘the brothers last week in Blackpool’ could be guaranteed laughter and applause. Now

Friday

Tom Goodenough

'Submission not unity': Labour MPs react to Corbyn's reshuffle

Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle is a clear show of intent. Having won re-election as Labour leader, Corbyn is shoring up his authority and sending out a message to critics by ousting some of those who may have helped placate the Parliamentary Labour party. Unsurprisingly, his ongoing reshuffle isn’t going down well with everyone. Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop had this to say about the changes at the top: https://twitter.com/TomBlenkinsop/status/784080234077380610 Labour MP Barry Sheerman also appeared to suggest he thought Corbyn was asserting his power rather than reaching out with his reshuffle: https://twitter.com/BBCr4today But while there were Labour MPs left unhappy with the reshuffle, not many chose to stick their heads above the parapet and openly criticise Corbyn. Instead,

James Forsyth

Corbyn tightens his grip

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet reshuffle is all about strengthening, and demonstrating, his control over the party. Jonathan Ashworth, a Corbyn-sceptic, has lost his place on the party’s National Executive Committee and is replaced by Corbyn backer Kate Osamor. The word in Westminster is that Ashworth was told he could take shadow Health and lose his seat on the NEC, or reject it and lose it anyway. Ashworth made the deal. In an email to Labour MPs, the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party John Cryer makes clear that the leader’s office started the reshuffle while talks on shadow Cabinet elections were still ongoing. Cryer complains that ‘the party leadership did not

Thursday

Peter Jones

Augustus vs Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected leader of the Labour party not by MPs but by his teenage ‘fans’ in Momentum. So what does Corbyn need to do when he wins power? Follow the example of the emperor Augustus, that’s what. When Rome was a republic, its monuments and military banners proclaimed it as SPQR — Senatus Populusque Romanus, a combination of the senate, mostly consisting of Rome’s elite families, and the people. The Greek historian Polybius greatly admired its clever balancing of powers between senate, people and office-holders. In the course of the 1st century BC, this system collapsed in bloody civil war. From that final conflict in 31 BC

Charles Moore

The Spectator's Notes | 6 October 2016

 Birmingham Checking in to my hotel room on the 18th floor, for the Conservative party conference here, I opened the door and bumped into a workman on a stepladder. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘They shouldn’t have let you in. All the water came through from the room upstairs.’ He was painting over the damage. Then he looked at me, recognised me and asked, ‘Hard or soft Brexit, then?’ I burbled slightly, not being happy with the distinction, but eventually said I thought ‘hard’ better described what was needed. The painter told me he read the Guardian and the Telegraph every day to ‘get both sides’. He reckoned ‘hard’, too: ‘It’s got

Friday

Steerpike

Paul Mason vs the MSM

With Seumas Milne rumoured to be on the way out, Jeremy Corbyn could soon be on the prowl for a new Director of Communications. Although Paul Mason has denied that he is interested in the job, he is still a favourite to join the Leader’s Office. So, with that in mind, Mr S was curious to hear his views on Fleet Street and the Mainstream Media (better known as MSM among Corbynites) at a Momentum talk on ‘radical media’. It turns out that the former Newsnight economics editor isn’t such a fan. While he promised to ‘try and be strained in my vitriol and personal views’ in the discussion, Mason went on to say

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 29 September 2016

Ground zero Sir: James Forsyth looks for hope for moderates within the Labour party and finds none (‘The party’s over’, 24 September). That is because the most promising source of hope for them is not a change of position by Labour, but one by the Conservatives. The history of British politics since 1990 has been a prolonged fight for the centre ground. This isn’t because that’s where either party naturally wants to be, but because that’s where the votes are. With Corbyn’s renewed mandate, Labour have unilaterally ceded that ground. The Conservatives could, as Forsyth suggests, use the opportunity to dig themselves in there so firmly that Labour will never

Toby Young

I know an anti-Tory pact won’t work

I appeared on Radio 4 with Shirley Williams recently and as we were leaving I asked her if she thought Labour might split if Jeremy Corbyn were re-elected. Would the history of the SDP, which she helped set up in 1981, put off Labour moderates from trying something similar? She thought it might, but suggested an alternative, which was a ‘non-aggression pact’ between all the left-of-centre parties. ‘We can unite around the issues we agree on and get the Tories out,’ she said. I didn’t have time to explore this in detail, but I think she meant some kind of tactical voting alliance whereby supporters of Labour, the Lib Dems,

Steerpike

The Labour party's struggle with the F-word

This year, Labour’s Women Conference saw Harriet Harman take to the stand to describe Theresa May as ‘no sister‘. Hoping for a bigger platform next year for their feminist message, party members have since called for the event to be integrated into the main conference. While Mr S wishes them luck with this, the ladies of Labour can take heart that things have at least improved since the conference first returned in 2010. Speaking at a Progress fringe event this week, Ayesha Hazarika — Harriet Harman’s former chief of staff — recalled the struggle they came up against when Harman was acting Leader: ‘In 2010 when we had just got kicked

Matthew Parris

Let the metropolitan elite lead the way

How does one join the Liberal Metro-politan Elite? What should be the qualifications? I must be an LME member because literally thousands of my readers have (over the years) told me so. They don’t mean it kindly, but I take it kindly. ‘Elite’ means ‘the best’, I should hate to be called illiberal, and I have a nice flat near central London. How, though, do we LMEs maintain the exclusivity of our club? The 48 per cent of voters who voted Remain will soon be hammering on our door for admission, plus (I’ll bet) a fair few repentant former Leavers too. But the elite cannot by definition comprise more than

Wednesday

Nick Hilton

Coffee House Shots: The verdict on Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech

Labour conference is over for 2016 and it concluded with a barnstorming speech from Jeremy Corbyn. After rumours that he would only be speaking for half an hour, Corbyn addressed the audience for almost an hour, receiving a rapturous ovation in the conference hall, along with unified approval from Labour MPs. Andy Burnham called it a ‘strong speech’, whilst even Chuka Umunna had praise for Corbyn’s economic policies, calling them ‘well put’. The analysis from The Spectator’s Isabel Hardman was also positive, as she told the podcast: “I thought it was a much better speech than the rambling one he gave last year. He had two clear aims. One was to say to his

James Forsyth

Corbyn talks past the country

Jeremy Corbyn’s second leader’s speech was much better than his first. One has to beware the soft bigotry of low expectations when judging his performance as leader of the opposition. But, it’s fair to say that Corbyn’s speech was up there with some of Ed Miliband’s off year efforts. The delivery was much improved, there was a joke or two and some canny lines. Corbyn cleverly made the moderates an offer they’ll struggle to refuse, saying that the one thing everyone in Labour agreed on was that a divided party would not persuade the public. So, he asked them, ‘accept the decision of the members, end the trench warfare and

The Spectator

Full speech: Jeremy Corbyn at Labour party conference

Thank you for that introduction. And how brilliant it is to see the hall here in Liverpool, absolutely packed for the Labour conference, well I say it’s packed but Virgin Trains assure me there are 800 empty seats. Either way Conference, it’s a huge pleasure to be holding our party’s annual gathering here in this fantastic city that has shaped our country, our economy, our culture and our music. Liverpool and its people have always been central to the Labour party and our movement. And I know some people say campaigns and protests don’t change things. But the Hillsborough families have shown just how wrong that is. It’s taken twenty-seven

Nick Cohen

The Brexit charlatans are getting away with it

Opponents of demagogues from Donald Trump to Nigel Farage have suffered from a huge political disadvantage. They were either politicians who were or had been in power, and had to take responsibility for all the failures and compromises power brings as inevitably as blisters on weary feet. Or they were voters, who thought that mainstream politicians were preferable to the leaders of the far right and left. Demagogues could dismiss them as establishment lackeys, Blairites, liberal elitists, Republicans in name only, and so on. And the dismissals could work. For how many wised-up 21st century voters wants to think him or herself as some establishment drone, some dupe of a

Isabel Hardman

There will be nothing normal about Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech

Jeremy Corbyn will shortly address the Labour conference with what is officially known as the ‘parliamentary report’. An accurate ‘parliamentary report’ would include an in-depth discussion about relations between the parliamentary party and its leader, who has gone from being one of the most rebellious backbenchers to demanding loyalty from his colleagues. Normally before a leader’s speech, pundits pick over what it is that the leader needs to cover. Normally, this involves variations of rousing the party faithful, announcing a policy or two that give us an idea of who the leader is and their vision for the coming year, and facing down any critics, whether in rival parties or