Jeremy Corbyn addressed the Parliamentary Labour Party this evening and it appears to have been a difficult meeting — depending on who you listen to. Those inside the room have said Corbyn was ‘shouted down’ by MPs for his stance on military action and Syria, while others say he was ‘savaged’ over his shoot to kill remarks.
During the summer over 50,000 people signed a petition accusing the BBC of showing bias against Jeremy Corbyn. One major grievance was that presenters regularly referred to the Labour leader as 'left wing'. While the corporation issued a statement at the time defending their coverage, it appears that even one of their own staff was left unhappy by their efforts. Step forward Nick Robinson. Over the weekend the BBC's former political editor confessed -- in an interview in the Sunday Times -- that he had written to several BBC colleagues over concerns that the corporation's political coverage is biased against Jeremy Corbyn. When asked by Lynn Barber whether he was 'shocked' by the way the BBC 'rubbish Jeremy Corbyn', Robinson replied 'yes': 'Yes.
One of my constituents has been in an Indonesian prison since May. Journalist Rebecca Prosser was arrested with her colleague Neil Bonner while working on a documentary for National Geographic about piracy in the Malaccan Strait. Their visas hadn’t come through when filming started and they were arrested by the Indonesian navy and locked up in a prison with 1,400 men and 30 women. The family had been warned that publicity would only make things worse so I have been working behind the scenes to try to get her home. I’ve been ambushing Philip Hammond and Hugo Swire as they come out of the division lobby after 10 p.m. votes, urging them to get our embassy in Jakarta to visit the prison, and leaping on Richard Graham MP,chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Indonesia.
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton is worried that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will never use the existing means of defence — Trident — to defend the country. Mr Corbyn is incandescent that a mere Chief of Defence Staff has the sheer effrontery to express a view on a matter that is (apparently) irrelevant to the defence of country but is purely political. One is reminded of the accession of Nero to Rome’s imperial throne in ad 54. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, it was dirty work by the controlling empress Agrippina that did for her husband Claudius, with the result that Nero, her son from an earlier marriage, was installed as emperor, aged 17. At that time there was trouble on Rome’s eastern frontier.
What a useless shower the Labour party is right now. What a snivelling dance of fools. And I don’t just mean the new lot, under Jeremy Corbyn, although his ongoing decision to surround himself with a team of people who seem to have each been tasked, individually, with emphasising a different bad thing about him does take some beating. I mean the whole train set, radicals and moderates alike. This is a party, right now, reaping what it has sown, which is piety, tribalism and a sort of over-weening preachiness. And now, to mix my metaphors, it is getting bitten by all of them. Last week, Labour suspended a man called Andrew Fisher, who was, and remains, Jeremy Corbyn’s head of policy. It might sound odd, that ‘and remains’ bit, but don’t blame me.
Jeremy Corbyn has had enough of his shadow cabinet publicly opposing him. According to today’s Guardian, the Labour leader has given his frontbench team a dressing down over speaking out against him — in light of comments by the shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle on Trident last weekend: ‘According to several party sources, Corbyn made it clear that disputes must not be carried out so publicly in future, as he addressed his weekly shadow cabinet meeting. ‘The Labour leader also reminded his colleagues that media statements must be cleared through his office and asserted that there must be stronger collective responsibility.
Today Simon Danczuk has come under fire for reportedly pulling out of a parliamentary trip to China at the last minute, after discovering he would have to travel in mere economy class. The Labour MP cancelled his attendance after his request to be upgraded to business class was turned down. According to Richard Graham, the Tory MP, this led to the whole trip being called off. However, Danczuk says that the suggestion he was being overly picky is 'nonsense' and that a health condition -- thought to be a back problem -- was the reason flying economy class was unsuitable. Still, this is the same super-fit Simon Danczuk who boasts that he runs at least 5k a day and is planning to run the London marathon: https://twitter.
Labour is having the sort of day that Ukip used to offer up on a reasonably regular basis. Jeremy Corbyn’s head of policy Andrew Fisher has been suspended and faces an investigation by the party for urging voters in his constituency to back the Class War candidate over the Labour one. But Jeremy Corbyn has backed his head of policy, saying he hopes the matter can be resolved quickly. Corbyn said this afternoon: ‘I have full confidence in Andrew Fisher and his work. I respect the integrity of the General Secretary’s office and trust that this matter will be settled as quickly as possible.
If Islamic State is a threat to Britain that requires a military response, then surely we should be attacking it on both sides of the Syrian/Iraqi border? Our current policy of only hitting it in Iraq, when its operation there is directed from Syria and resupplied from there, makes neither strategic nor moral sense. So, why is Britain not hitting Islamic State in Syria too? Well, that goes back to the legacy of 2013 and the Commons refusal to back bombing Syria then. But the truth is that bombing Islamic State in Syria is not the same as ‘bombing Syria’; it is hitting a terrorist group in a part of the country where Assad’s writ has not run for quite some time.
The Oldham West and Royton by-election is Jeremy Corbyn’s first test as Labour leader, though the party has not selected a Corbynite candidate to fight the seat. Jim McMahon won 232 votes in last night’s selection, beating Mohammed Azam, who got 141 votes and former MP and ardent Corbynite Chris Williamson, who got just 17 votes. McMahon is a moderate, so it will be interesting how much of Corbyn’s message he ends up selling on the doorstep. He said during his selection campaign that ‘on issues like austerity, I’m very close to Jeremy indeed’, so it’s not as though he’s wholeheartedly against the new leader. What will also be interesting is the strategy that the party decides to adopt on immigration policy.
Given that Jeremy Corbyn took time out of his party conference speech to take a swipe at articles published by both the Mail Online and the Mail on Sunday, it's safe to say that there is no love lost between Corbyn and Lord Rothermere's media empire. However, Mr S understands that times are now a-changing, with Corbyn about to take his relationship with the Mail to the next level. Steerpike can reveal that a recent job vacancy at the Mail Online attracted the attention of a freelance technology journalist by the name of Gian Volpicelli. However as Volpicelli's application was processed, staff clocked that Volpicelli -- who has written for Wired and Vice -- lives at a rather famous address in Finsbury Park.
After Mr S's colleague Harry Mount wrote in The Spectator that the Labour party has undergone 'a brain transplant’ under Jeremy Corbyn with a purge of the Oxbridge set, Martin Amis went on to accuse the Labour leader of being undereducated. The best-selling novelist said that he suspected Corbyn -- who achieved two Es at A-Level before enrolling at the North London Polytechnic to study trade union studies for a year -- possessed 'slow-minded rigidity'. Now Corbyn's cheerleader Owen Jones has waded into the debate. Writing for the Guardian, Jones comes to the Labour leader's defence arguing that an Oxbridge degree isn't everything.
How does Labour make its policy? Different factions and frontbenchers are quarrelling about a number of issues such as Trident and action in Syria, but a common theme in each dispute is whose word actually represents official policy. Currently the party has a plethora of different stances on everything. Maria Eagle is having to explain that a Scottish Labour conference vote does not change the party’s official policy on Trident, while her Shadow Cabinet colleague Diane Abbott is explaining that it’s something the UK-wide party really should follow.
Ukip has plumped for John Bickley as its candidate in the upcoming Oldham West & Royton by-election, following the death of Michael Meacher. Although other names were in the frame, Bickley was the natural choice — he came very close to winning in the nearby seat of Heywood & Middleton in a by-election last year. Ukip HQ will be hoping Bickley can use his local following to, at the very least, increase the party's vote share. In the 2015 general election, Ukip received 20 per cent of the vote, a 17 per cent increase since the 2010 election. But Ukip still has an almighty challenge to win the seat: Labour won Oldham West with a 14,738 majority in May and the seat has been held by the party for over 40 years.
The keyboard weirdos bombarding Labour MP Jess Phillips with threats, after she scoffed at the idea of marking International Men’s Day with a debate in parliament, are cretins of the highest order. Pathetically hiding behind made-up names and cartoon avatars, they harangue a politician for saying something they disagree with. Not by saying to her ‘I disagree with you,' but rather ‘I think you should be raped'. If you know one of them, please give them a clip round the lughole, and perhaps confiscate their gadgets. But should these morons be investigated by the authorities? I’m not so sure. Ms Phillips has reported some of her ugly maulers to the police. I think that could be a mistake.
24 hours after Scottish Labour voted to oppose renewing Trident, the party's policy is firmly where it was before this weekend's conference. On the World at One, the shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle thanked the Scottish Labour conference for their thoughts and said their vote won’t be changing Labour’s policy: ‘I welcome the input of Scottish Labour and its conference into our internal debate, they’re one of many important voices that there are across the Labour movement about this issue. ‘But let’s very clear about what this does and does not mean. This does not change our policy. Defence isn’t a devolved matter, so Labour party policy has to be set at a national party level, at a UK level.
With Tristram Hunt reported to be one of the Labour MPs on the list of targets for de-selection, the former shadow education secretary could do worse than to keep his head down. Unfortunately, a talk he recently gave to Cambridge University's Labour Club -- entitled ‘Principles, Politics and Pathway to Power’ -- is only likely to heighten tensions. Varsity, Cambridge's weekly student newspaper, reports that during the talk, Hunt raised concerns that Labour would soon become an echo chamber and cease to be a major political party: 'My fear is algorithmic politics [where because] everyone shares the same views as you on social media and in your social circles… you become a sect rather than a party.
The far left controls the Labour leadership because the centre left did not take it seriously until it was too late. For a generation indeed, Labour and much of the rest of liberal-left Britain has lived with the comforting delusion that there was no far left to fight. The left, on this reading, was one family. It may have had its troublesome teenagers. Their youthful high spirits may have made the little scallywags 'go too far' on occasion. But everyone was still in one family, still on the same side. The old notion that the far left was the centre left’s enemy died away as the Labour party gave up on argument about what it was and what it wanted to achieve, and entered its long period of intellectual stagnation.
When the Tory MP Philip Davies called for a Commons debate to mark International Men's Day last week during a backbench business committee meeting, his suggestion was met with laughter from Labour's Jess Phillips. Phillips said that despite it being the case that a Commons debate currently marks International Women's Day, it was 'laughable' to suggest that the men should have the same for International Men's Day. She said that men do not need more opportunities to speak in the House of Commons given the current ratio of men to women. So when the pair were brought together on the Daily Politics to air their differences, it made for some entertaining viewing.
After Harriet Harman stepped down from the frontbench earlier this year after 28 years, she was asked by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics which Labour leader had been her favourite to work under. While Harman had praise for Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair -- who was nice even when he sacked her -- and Gordon Brown, she failed to mention her most recent boss Ed Miliband. So perhaps the MP for Doncaster North will be emitting a bead of sweat on hearing that Harman is in the process of writing her memoirs. The outspoken Labour MP has tweeted a photo of a censored screen as she begins to recount her days on the frontline of politics: https://twitter.
