Labour party

After Heidi Allen gave a barnstorming maiden speech last week criticising her own party over tax credit cuts, the Tory MP has found herself in the firing line within her own party. Mr S's colleague Isabel Hardman writes in today's Times that a number of Tory MPs are even refusing to speak to her over concerns that 'her careless talk could cost them their majorities'. Now to make matters worse, it appears that even journalists are struggling to work out which side Allen is on. Word reaches Steerpike that a producer for a national radio station -- thought to be one of the BBC's radio stations -- contacted the Labour party to ask if they would put Allen forward to speak on tax credits...

George Osborne and John McDonnell went head-to-head at Treasury Questions today and one topic predictably dominated: tax credits. There was a charged atmosphere in the Commons as the shadow chancellor explained ‘the Chancellor has a choice before him’ and outlined his proposal for reversing the planned cuts to tax credits. The plan differs somewhat from Osborne's: ‘He can push on with the tax giveaways to multinational corporations. He can press on with tax cuts to the wealthiest few in inheritance tax that he announced in his summer budgets.

As well as the rather big problem of how to get rid of a leader they think is unpalatable to the general voting public, Labour MPs also have to work out how to protect themselves from deselection. Simon Danczuk seems to be the only member keen to talk about the former, claiming today that he’s happy to be a ‘stalking horse’ if Labour performs badly in next May’s local, London and Holyrood elections. But without many colleagues backing him and the leadership contest rules and party membership remaining the same, Danczuk could find that his intervention drops like a dead donkey.

Arnie Graf was, for a little while, the man who was supposed to rebuild the Labour party after its 2010 defeat. He was a famed community organiser from the US, brought over by Ed Miliband to have a go at revitalising is party. Graf didn’t last, but last night he spoke about his experiences with the Labour party, and what he thought of the current surge in membership under Jeremy Corbyn. This was his first brush with proper party politics, and while Graf had clearly enjoyed the work he’d done in building up the party in small local areas with community meetings, he said ‘I wouldn't come back to it where the party is now’. But surely the surge in membership was exactly what someone like him, keen to organise groups of people, was after?

Seumas Milne’s appointment as Labour’s new head of communications and director of strategy has generally been met with his dismay in the party — but it does tell us something about Jeremy Corbyn: compromise is not a phrase in the Corbynite dictionary. John McDonnell’s appointment as shadow chancellor was the first hint that beneath Corbyn's cuddly beard lies a tough ideologue. Milne’s appointment adds credence to that notion. One former Labour staffer describes Milne’s appointment as the ‘icing on the cake’: ‘This is who Jeremy and John wanted from the start. This is who they really are. This is what their politics is about.

Lord Warner has resigned the Labour whip in protest at the direction in which Jeremy Corbyn is taking the party, Patrick Wintour has revealed tonight. Warner was a minister of state at the Department of Health under Tony Blair. Now, Corbyn supporters will be quick to point out that Lord Warner is hardly a household name and that he was at the far Blairite end of the party. Both of these statements are true. But Warner’s departure should still worry Labour. All parties are coalitions and no leader should want to be losing former ministers from the party at any point in their leadership, let alone this early. One footnote to Warner’s defection is that it will deny Ukip of one of their favourite attack lines againt Labour.

The Labour leadership has abandoned plans to effectively neuter the party’s whips office after realising it is quite useful, Coffee House has learned. I understand that John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn had considered making the whips’ office more of an administrative entity which didn’t try to herd MPs into the right lobby. There had also been plans afoot to get rid of Rosie Winterton, the party’s chief whip, as she had initially been identified as someone hostile to a Corbyn leadership who represented the old way of doing things. But the vote on the fiscal charter this week was much less troublesome than the Labour leadership had anticipated, thanks to Winterton’s efforts.

Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour's new leader, few of his colleagues have been more supportive than Diane Abbott. As well as defending John McDonnell on the Today show this week over his fiscal charter U-turn, the shadow secretary for international development -- who reportedly once enjoyed a romance with Corbyn -- took it upon herself to defend Corbyn's honour at a PLP meeting last month when Jess Phillips criticised him over the lack of women in his shadow cabinet. With Phillips responding by telling Abbott to f--- off, it's safe to say that Abbott's new role as Corbyn's champion has not gone down well with some Labour MPs.

Over 20 Labour MPs rebelled against their party whip and abstained on the government’s fiscal charter this evening. The Labour party claimed there were 20 abstentions, but the Tories claimed the number was closer to 28.