Labour party

There are still a few hours left in the Labour leadership race but judging by Owen Smith’s mood you wouldn’t know it. In an open letter to supporters, Smith has all but conceded defeat in the race. He described the summer contest as a ‘long and bruising’ encounter and went on to say that the ideas he suggested during the bloody leadership bout… ‘...will remain as relevant after this contest as they have been during this contest. They are part of my vision for Labour and Britain's future and whatever the outcome of this contest I will continue to make these arguments and do all I can to see us back in government.

Tim Farron’s hardest task in his conference speech today was convincing people to actually listen. A test of how successful he was will be how soon into the 6pm news tonight he pops up on screen (following Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's reported split, the signs don't look good). So what did Farron do to try and get people to sit up? Banging the anti-Brexit drum was one of his main tactics. Farron promised... 'Not a re-run of the referendum, not a second referendum, but a referendum on the terms of the as-yet-unknown Brexit deal' The Lib Dem leader did, to be fair, do his best to empathise with those who voted to ‘Leave’ but instead he’s more likely to have left them rather wound up.

The big question in Labour's leadership contest is not whether Jeremy Corbyn will win, but how much he'll win by. There is, it seems, an inexhaustible supply of Corbynistas standing ready to join the party - so the moderates who had hoped that a formal leadership challenge would be a vehicle of deposing him have had to think again. Neil Kinnock said this weekend that he'll probably never live to see another Labour government. So Labour's only hope, for now, is that the 67-year-old Corbyn might change. During his interview on Today this morning we've been offered a taste of what his leadership will look like if (or, rather, when) he wins. The depressing news for Labour MPs is that it looks like it will be business as usual. But with a smiling face.

The leaking - accidental or otherwise - of a list of Labour MPs allegedly guilty of abusive behaviour towards Jeremy Corbyn is yet another illustration of quite how divided the party is, and quite how messy things are going to be when Corbyn tries to reassert his authority following what looks certain to be his re-election to the top job. We now have MPs such as Neil Coyle consulting legal opinion on whether to sue their party leader. If you wanted the antonym of ‘happy ship’, the Labour Party is a pretty good option. The Labour leader and John McDonnell today took questions on the matter after a speech on the economy and public services (awkwardly trailed as ‘pubic services’ in a press release), and both insisted they were trying to heal the party.

Jeremy Corbyn has today announced the launch of the Labour Organising Academy, a new body designed to look at methods of turning the party’s newly engorged membership into an effective campaigning body. In the pamphlet he produced, Corbyn observes that ‘Labour is now Europe’s biggest political party’ and that the ‘party’s membership will transform how Labour campaigns’. The launch of this might feel somewhat hasty. After all, the leadership campaign won’t be concluded until the announcement at party conference in Liverpool on 24 September – but it represents a big change for Corbyn.

Why on earth did Owen Smith say that he might consider re-joining not just the European Union but also the euro and Schengen? Some of the Labour leadership contender’s colleagues have been asking the ‘why on earth’ question a fair bit this summer, not least when he made the interesting decision to out-Corbyn Corbyn on the small matter of Islamic State. But today the Pontypridd MP told Andrew Marr that if certain conditions, such as a further recession, privatisation of the NHS and so on, were met, ‘I think the sensible and responsible thing for a Labour government to do is to say we’re better off in the European Union’.

What can you fill your time with if you’re a former Labour frontbencher left twiddling your thumbs as a result of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership? Well, as Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna have shown this week by launching themselves into campaigns to replace Keith Vaz, chairing a select committee is a pretty attractive option, particularly when it is one as prestigious as the Home Affairs Committee. But both have also shown over the past few months that it is possible to be a forlorn former frontbencher and still achieve something. Umunna was on the airwaves on Monday morning talking about migration controls: a slot his Shadow Cabinet colleagues might only dream of.

After seven years of Tory domination at the Westminster Dog of the Year competition, MPs from other parties had clearly had enough. Labour’s Anna Turley and Clem the Shih Tzu (named after Clement Attlee, of course) came down from Redcar in a bid to knock the Tories off top spot (though seemed more interested in attacking a TV boom mike), while the DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr borrowed rescue dog Freda, an English Bulldog, from the Dog’s Trust. This year also saw its first SNP entry – Dr Lisa Cameron and French bulldog Rossi – who, having swapped East Kilbride for the bright lights of London, was finding the whole place a bit hot.

Bit early for a lap of honour. At PMQs Mrs May congratulated her government (i.e. herself) on fifty marvellous days in government. And she drew comparisons between her polished style and the Corbyn car-wreck. One view is that the chimpanzees’ tea-party currently posing as Her Majesty’s opposition should remain beneath the attention of Number 10. Mrs May disagrees and she used Labour’s woes as the starting point for some carefully scripted comedy. With mixed results. Delivering gags is tough. Delivering someone else’s gags is tougher. Delivering someone else’s out-of-date gags is so tough that it borders on crazy. But the PM is, understandably perhaps, tempted by the illusion of omnipotence at the moment.

Labour MPs have just voted 168 to 34 in favour of bringing back Shadow Cabinet elections. This doesn’t mean there will be elections for the Labour top team straight away: the measure, proposed by Clive Betts, now goes to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee, which is now dominated by Corbynites. If the NEC so chooses, it can propose the rule change at the party’s conference. This is, however, another example of the PLP, which had been fading as a parliamentary force compared to the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, asserting itself against Jeremy Corbyn.

Could Jeremy Corbyn come out of the Labour leadership contest with an even bigger mandate? Few would be surprised and a new poll on the front page of the Times today suggests that such an outcome is highly likely. The YouGov survey indicates Corbyn is beating his rival Owen Smith by 62 per cent to 38 per cent amongst Labour voters - a result which would gift him a three per cent spike on last year's vote, when he won 59.5 per cent. This would spell disaster for those challenging Corbyn and make it almost certain that the Labour leader would still be in place come a 2020 general election.

Owen Smith desperately needs to make up ground in Labour's leadership contest (bookies’ odds, perhaps more reliable than the polls, suggest Corbyn has an 84 per cent chance of winning next month). What's more, with voting soon drawing to a close, he has less and less time to do so. Which all explains why last night's leadership hustings in Glasgow was much more bitter than any of the others which came before it. The main topic of contention yesterday? The referendum - something which Smith is trying eagerly to make his own cause and his reason for being. Earlier this week, he said he wanted to block Brexit - a strategy which perhaps wasn't as fruitful as he hoped it would be.

It's exactly one month until Labour conference and the party's security shambles just got a whole lot worse. After the NEC voted to boycott G4S, the only firm willing to do the job were Showsec, a non-unionised security firm. This option was deemed unsatisfactory and so the party have had to go 'cap in hand' to G4S. Alas, the Telegraph reports that the firm rejected Labour's offer over concerns about 'staff safety'. So, will the conference be cancelled? There is another option. The party could ask the police for extra security. However, this would cost them as where security workers for Showsec cost around £9 per hour, a PC comes to £59.65 an hour. By way of assistance, Mr S has come up with a rough estimate of what the party should start put to aside for this.