Labour party

Either Len McCluskey is, in the Corbynista narrative, a Tory, or things are going badly wrong for the man his union endorsed for the Labour leadership. The York Press reports that the Unite leader told an audience in York that Jeremy Corbyn ‘has to come to terms with his leadership’, that he ‘can’t necessarily say the first thing that comes into his head’ and that his comments about shoot-to-kill were ‘inappropriate’. What this shows - unless Len McCluskey really is a red Tory - is that even those union bosses who have been agitating for years for Labour to move left have been shocked by how disorganised and naive his operation has been since taking the helm of the party.

A number of Labour MPs are campaigning in Oldham today, with fears growing in the party that it could be in serious trouble in the by-election there. Even though Michael Meacher won the seat in May with a 14,000 majority, the fears that I reported last week about white working class voters turning away from Labour and plumping instead for Ukip seem to be growing. No MP who has been there has anything positive to say about what they’ve seen, other than that their candidate, Jim McMahon, is hugely impressive. Some Labourites with a good knowledge of the seat are worried that the party may do well in postal votes, but perform poorly on polling day itself. ‘It therefore depends on us having a sophisticated postal vote operation in order to win,’ says one source.

The Tories may be steaming ahead in the national opinion polls but the Labour grassroots are still pleased with Jeremy Corbyn. According to a new poll from The Times and YouGov — who surveyed the Labour membership during the leadership contest and predicted Corbyn's victory — two thirds of members think the leader is doing ‘well’. He continues to have the overwhelming support of those who backed him during the leadership contest too: 83 per cent of this group say he is doing well. It’s not just the Corbyn backers within Labour who are pleased with his performance — almost half of those who voted for Andy Burnham this summer think the leader is doing well, as do 29 per cent of Yvette Cooper’s backers.

When Jeremy Corbyn says it is better to bring people to trial than to shoot them, he is right. So one might feel a little sorry for him as the critics attack his reaction to the Paris events. But in fact the critics are correct, for the wrong reason. It is not Mr Corbyn’s concern for restraint and due process which are the problem. It is the question of where his sympathies really lie, of what story he thinks all these things tell. Every single time that a terrorist act is committed (unless, of course, it be a right-wing one, like that of Anders Breivik), Mr Corbyn locates the ill as deriving from the behaviour of the West, especially the United States and Britain (and, where relevant, Israel).

Yesterday Ken Livingstone found himself at the centre of a media storm after he suggested that Kevan Jones -- a Labour MP with a history of depression -- required psychiatric help, after he dared to question Livingstone's appointment as co-chair on Labour's defence policy review. As Jones -- along with Jeremy Corbyn -- called on Livingstone to apologise, a series of media appearances followed where he did no such thing. At first he said Jones should 'get over it', later explaining he was just standing up for himself as any self-respecting south London lad would. Eventually a grovelling statement appeared on Livingstone's Twitter account where he apologised 'unreservedly'.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/parisattacksaftermath/media.mp3" title="Nick Cohen and Freddy Gray discuss whether Jeremy Corbyn dislikes the West" startat=42] Listen [/audioplayer]Before the bodies in Paris’s restaurants were cold, Jeremy Corbyn’s Stop the War Coalition knew who the real villains were — and they were not the Islamists who massacred civilians. ‘Paris reaps whirlwind of western support for extremist violence in Middle East’ ran a headline on its site. The article went on to say that the consequence of the West’s ‘decades-long, bipartisan cultivation of religious extremism will certainly be more bloodshed, more repression and more violent intervention’.