Labour party

During the Blair years the security guards at Labour party conferences had a reputation for over-zealous intervention – remember the sight of octogenarian Walter Wolfgang being manhandled out of his seat and ejected from the chamber for daring to heckle Jack Straw over the Iraq War? Appropriately enough, under Corbyn, Labour’s conference security has the opposite problem – it seems to have been unilaterally-disarmed. As Guido Fawkes reveals this morning there is a serious possibility that this year’s event, scheduled to take place in Liverpool next month, will have to be cancelled owing to the party’s inability to organise security for the event. The problem goes back to last year when the party’s grandees high-mindedly decided to boycott G4S.

Whilst Labour tangle themselves up in civil war, the Prime Minister is making a move for the party's economic territory. On her first day in Downing Street, Theresa May said her Government would stick up for everyone, not only the 'privileged few'. Today, she'll start work making good on that promise when she chairs the first meeting of her Cabinet committee on the economy and industrial strategy. So what does that all mean? It's obvious the sentiment suggests an attempt to beat Labour at its own game. From the politician who coined the description of the Tories as the 'nasty party', May is doing her best to show the Conservatives are the party of both compassion and competency.

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, was one of the Labour frontbenchers who resigned in an attempt to force Jeremy Corbyn to quit as Labour leader. But today, she has asked for —and been given — her job back. https://twitter.com/SarahChampionMP/status/748175455409344512 Now, Champion was just a frontbencher, not a full member of the shadow Cabinet. But her un-resignation is another straw in the wind suggesting that things are moving in Corbyn’s favour. Champion’s willingness to return to the front bench suggests that she’s resigned to Corbyn winning when the results are announced in September. It also enables Corbyn to say that by allowing her to come back, he has shown that he wants to bring the party back together again.

The Labour leadership election has become even more bizarre today. Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite the Union and a key Corbyn backer, has given a Guardian interview in which he suggest that the ugly behaviour of Corbyn supporters online is actually the work of the security services. He tells Decca Aitkenhead: “Do people believe for one second that the security forces are not involved in dark practices? Decca, I have been around long enough … the type of stuff that we ultimately find out about, under the 30-year rule.” When Aitkenhead challenges him on this, McCluskey continues: “Well, I tell you what, anybody who thinks that that isn’t happening doesn’t live in the same world that I live in.

Today Jeremy Corbyn has launched his campaign ahead of the Labour leadership election. Corbyn, who is being challenged by Owen Smith, used the launch to announce that -- under him -- the next Labour government would introduce compulsory pay audits for companies with more than 21 staff -- in order to show whether or not they are discriminating against female employees. However when asked by Sky News if this meant he would publish an equal pay audit for his own office, Corbyn failed to commit. Perhaps that's for the best given that any such report is unlikely to make inspiring reading. Forget comparing the salary difference between women and men in the top jobs, when it comes to the Leader's Office it's men who tend to rule the roost.

In order to become a ‘registered supporter’ of the Labour party, you first have to disclose whether you’re a member of an organisation opposed to the Labour party. Such as, I suppose, the Labour party. You also have to affirm that you agree with the party’s ‘aims and values’, which must be the hardest bit, because who alive now knows what those are? If the leader of the Labour party — to pick an example not wholly at random — agrees with the aims of the Labour party, then how come he just voted against the party’s own manifesto in order to oppose Trident? Or is the idea supposed to be that Labour was only pretending to have those aims and values, in order to get the electorate into bed?

Jesus H Christ. Is this what it comes down to? A smarmy post-Tribunite nonentity swathed in unrealistic ambition, versus Chauncey Gardener? It is close to pointless wondering who to support between these political titans, Owen Smith or Jeremy Corbyn. If Smith wins, which I doubt very, very, much, he is no more adept to change the nature of the party than is Corbyn. He has not the nous, balls or means to challenge the activist base and thus recapture those Labour votes which, since 2005, have been winnowing away to Ukip, or the Tories, or to nowhere. Nor even that much support within the PLP. There are two big issues upon which Labour has lost its votes: immigration and welfare.