Labour party

Jeremy Corbyn is absolutely right not to resign as Leader of the Labour Party. Those calling for his resignation – including those members of the Parliamentary Labour Party who supported the vote of no confidence against him – betray an astonishing misunderstanding of what the project called 'The Labour Party' is all about. Here’s the history lesson they all need to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. The project now called 'The Labour Party' owes its origin to a conference called in London in 1899 to discuss the palpable erosion of trade-union rights as a result of a succession of legal judgments. Out of that conference something called 'The Labour Representation Committee' was established (it changed its name to 'The Labour Party' in 1906).

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. A week after Britain backed Brexit, politics shows no sign of slowing down. David Cameron has resigned, Michael Gove has pulled out of Boris Johnson's leadership campaign before launching his own. And Boris has decided not to run in the contest. We now have a final slate of five candidates vying for the top job. In his Spectator cover piece this week, James Forsyth says the Tory party is in a 'deeply emotional state'. But he also points out that the leadership candidates who have emerged 'seem strangely united in their vision for post-Brexit Britain'.

There are lies, damned lies and pretending to back Remain. I lie because I am a coward. I hug friends who burst into tears, petrified by life without the European Union. I sympathise with strangers, who act like Lady Di just died and there’s nowhere to lay flowers. I obfuscate, I mutter, I am evasive. And I am not alone. There are hordes of us who’ll not admit we voted Leave to our best friends, our next of kin. We learned to keep schtum a long time ago — thanks to social media — since they’d defriend us if said we’d vote to leave. Now they are outraged, deeply confused — and unsure which of us to blame.

As the Labour party slowly implodes, Jeremy Corbyn is doing his best to keep the show on the road. To do this, the Leader's Office today agreed that it would be a good idea to let Sky News film a meeting of the new Shadow Cabinet. Although Corbyn's director of communications Seumas Milne clearly hoped this would prove that everything was tickety boo, the Labour leader had doubts. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, his doubts only surfaced once Sky had actually arrived and started filming: https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/747777048706351104 Corbyn can be heard muttering that 'this seems a bad idea', before summoning Milne to share his doubts. After some awkward exchanges they pause filming.

Whenever I write – or think – about Jeremy Corbyn supporters, I sound like Quentin Letts. For this I apologise. It probably did not help that the first thing I found at the pro Corbyn rally in Parliament Square yesterday was an anti-Semitism special in a far left newspaper. (It is their bar of shame). It suggested that calling dead Zionists not only complicit in the Holocaust but welcoming of it, for the future possibilities of persecuting Palestinians it involved, is an acceptable thing to say. The PA system does not work. To hear the speakers, you must be within 50 metres of the fire engine on which they stand.

Labour MPs are today voting on the motion of no confidence on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The rebels expect the vote to pass with 2:1 support from the parliamentary party. But what they do not know is whether the party membership has really shifted enough for Corbyn to lose when it moves to a new contest. Corbynite sources are adamant that he will win again, and reports of disillusionment amongst activists, while striking, are only anecdotal. But Labour MPs who oppose Corbyn’s leadership now see the coup us unstoppable, and believe that if necessary they will have to hold repeated votes and leadership contests in order to dislodge him.