Labour party

Jeremy Corbyn is expected to make changes to his junior ministerial team today, though some might choose to walk anyway, particularly in protest at the sacking of Pat McFadden. Meanwhile sources in Hilary Benn's camp are insisting that the decision to keep him in place as shadow foreign secretary but not allow him to take a dissenting position from the dispatch box won't lead to a material change in the way the two men work together. A source says: 'When you strip away the hysterical and breathless reporting of it, all you have got is two men who do not operate on a 24 hour news cycle and are not influenced by Twitter. These two men are experienced old school politicians who have been able to work in step on most issues and that hasn’t changed.

In December, Julie Burchill had lunch with Jess Phillips MP, and decided in an article for Spectator Life that the gobby Brummie had the balls to drag the Labour party back from Korbyn’s Keystone Kommunism. It now seems that Phillips agrees. Speaking on Newsnight last night, she admitted - over a pint - that she was indeed interested in the role: 'Yes, absolutely I would consider doing it, a long time in the future. It’s not something I’m planning on doing any time soon but it’s absolutely something I would do in the future, yes.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Jeremy Corbyn is currently conducting his reshuffle, with a group of journalists huddled at a discreet distance from the Labour leader’s office. So far, not much has happened, other than Corbyn asking the journalists not to stand outside his office, and Barry Gardiner emerging with a smile on his face. But still the briefings around the reshuffle and the anticipation of it have dominated the news agenda. This must be intensely frustrating for Sadiq Khan, who had planned to spend today getting lots of attention for his campaign on train fares. Labour members and staffers were up long before dawn handing out leaflets publicising the four-year fare freeze promised by the party’s mayoral candidate.

Simon Danczuk's lightning-fast suspension from Labour - as they investigate whether he sent 'lewd' texts to a seventeen-year-old girl - is an embarrassing note to end the year on. Especially for an MP like Danczuk who has spent much of the last few years positioning himself as a campaigner against child abuse. He has described today's story in the Sun as being 'not entirely accurate' but has suggested that his behaviour 'was inappropriate'. 'I was stupid and there's no fool like an old fool' he said via Twitter. https://twitter.com/SimonDanczuk/status/682531578434686976 Danczuk has now had the party whip removed, so he will sit as an independent MP. He seems to think it won't last long.

Nick Cohen's cover piece in the Spectator on the demise of the Labour party - and of his own support for it - is the 4th most-read magazine piece of 2015. ‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it is ridiculous. If you are a woman, you face misogyny. Kate Godfrey, the centrist Labour candidate in Stafford, told the Times she had received death threats and pornographic hate mail after challenging her local left. If you are a man, you are condemned in language not heard since the fall of Marxist Leninism.

In recent months both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have defended the Momentum group from criticism. Created as a result of Corbyn's leadership campaign, the grassroots movement aims to organise activists in towns and cities in order to create a mass movement for the Labour leader. Despite this, the far-left group has repeatedly been accused of being linked to deselection threats against centre-left Labour MPs. However, it seems that Momentum's biggest problem may actually be learning to control its supporters.

Yesterday a new Scottish opinion poll reported that 58 percent of voters intend to endorse SNP candidates when the choosing time comes for next year's Holyrood elections. By any reasonable measure this is excessive, even extravagant. But there we have it. As it happens, I would be surprised if the SNP polled that well on election day itself but we live in a time of astonishment so even the previously impossible can no longer be reckoned entirely improbable. And, besides, what is the alternative? Nicola Sturgeon's greatest strength is that no-one else - or at least no-one outside her own party - can be thought a plausible First Minister.