Labour party

Jeremy Corbyn is this weekend campaigning against Labour Party policy. A year ago, it would have been quite unremarkable for the then obscure backbencher to turn up to the CND rally and give a speech against nuclear weapons. But now he's the Labour leader, Corbyn will be speaking against the current official policy of the party he heads up. This has obviously annoyed the many pro-Trident MPs in Labour, though some of their public frustration includes feigned surprise, given their party elected a man who sticks to his principles like glue, and who has hardly snuck those principles up on his party after election. He's been going on about them for years.

Europe has opened up an unbridgeable chasm in the Conservative party. Labour remains, near as dammit, united. On the EU referendum, an opposition accustomed to defeat has a rare chance of victory. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn makes the case for staying in he speaks without conviction. Like a man called into work on his day off, his weary expression and dispirited voice tell you he would rather be somewhere else. Tory MPs, so divided that it is hard to see how they can stay in the same party, unite in laughing at him. The Labour leadership and most of the unions seem unaware that this is a fight over the future of Britain. Their strange indifference may help the opponents of the EU prevail.

This could have been a tricky PMQs for David Cameron. Instead, it will be remembered for Cameron ventriloquising his mother and telling Corbyn 'put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem'. What gave this jibe its potency, is that it sums up what a lot of voters think of the Labour leader. It was not quite as Flashmanesque as it sounds. For it came in response to a Labour front bench heckle asking what Cameron’s mother would say about cuts in Oxfordshire. Even before Cameron floored Corbyn with that line, the Labour leader was struggling. He chose to go on the NHS and the junior doctors’ strike. But even on this subject, he couldn’t make any headway. Worryingly for Labour. Corbyn’s PMQs performances are—if anything—getting worse.

Labour’s angst over Trident has taken something of a back seat over the past few days as the party tries - relatively unsuccessfully - to revel in the split opening up in the Tories on Europe. But this evening, those tasked with developing Labour’s foreign policy, and particularly its stance on the nuclear deterrent, are holding a two-hour meeting on security and defence. This is a meeting of the International Policy Commission, which includes Hilary Benn, Emily Thornberry, Diane Abbott and Pat Glass from Labour’s frontbench, and members of the National Executive Committee including Ken Livingstone. Corbyn yesterday afternoon attacked David Cameron for ‘trying to appease—or failing to appease’ half of his party.

Back in 2009 Damian McBride had to step down from his role as Gordon Brown's advisor after leaked emails revealed that he had been part of a proposed sex smear campaign against the Tories. The emails showed that McBride was embroiled in a plot to damage the reputations of senior Tories with smears relating to their private lives. While Ed Miliband took steps to distance himself from McBride during his time as Labour leader, it appears there is a space for the disgraced spinner in Corbyn's 'straight talking, honest politics'. McBride has been hired as Lady Nugee's media advisor. The Huffington Post reports that the disgraced spinner applied for the job serving Emily Thornberry in her role as shadow defence secretary after spying the vacancy online.

One of the more intriguing exchanges at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was between Julian Lewis and David Cameron on Trident. The chairman of the Defence Select Committee asked the following: ‘The debate and vote on the Trident successor submarine should have been held in the last Parliament, but was blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Given the fun that the Prime Minister had a few moments ago at the Labour party’s expense over Trident’s successor, it must be tempting for him to put off the vote until Labour’s conference in October. However, may I urge him to do the statesmanlike thing and hold that vote as soon as possible because everyone is ready for it and everyone is expecting it?

Shadow Cabinet members are a little disorientated after the heated discussion on Trident that they were expecting at today’s meeting didn’t go ahead. Officially, the reason that Jeremy Corbyn and his top team didn’t talk about the party’s defence policy review is that they had a discussion on Europe and the economy, which were considered to be slightly more pressing issues than Trident. But given last night’s furious parliamentary Labour party meeting on the matter, and given they’d been told that the discussion on Emily Thornberry’s presentation would take place today, many Shadow Secretaries of State have been left scratching their heads about why it didn’t then happen.

Emily Thornberry, the new Shadow Defence Secretary, held a meeting with her fellow Labour MPs this evening. It either went 'swimmingly' or was 'worse than I thought', depending on which MPs you listen to. Based on the accounts of the meeting from MPs who've spoken to Coffee House this evening, it was less the Ian Thorpe sort of swimming, and more Eric the Eel. Naturally, those opposed to a change in Labour policy are not happy, and were unlikely to come out of tonight's meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party feeling very happy unless Thornberry had announced that Jeremy Corbyn has learned to stop worrying and love the nuclear deterrent.

Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party have had a fair few run-ins with dictators of the past. After John McDonnell quoted Chairman Mao during the budget, Corbyn then cited Enver Hoxha at the Labour Christmas party -- while his director of comms Seumas Milne has questioned just how many deaths Stalin actually brought about. Happily some prominent Labour members are happy to talk about the shortcomings of such dictators.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Vote Leave's Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm"] This might seem impossible, but the row between Vote Leave and Labour leave has become even more complicated. This afternoon, Labour donor John Mills, who remains on the Vote Leave campaign, has put out this statement: 'I am the founder and co-owner of Labour Leave. A statement has been put out by someone called Richard Hillgrove purporting to be from Brendan Chilton, General Secretary of Labour Leave. That statement is fraudulent. Richard Hillgrove has no position in Labour Leave. Labour Leave is an independent campaign but corporately it supports Vote Leave.