Steerpike

A teacher and Labour party member has just taken to the stage at the party's conference talking of the importance of giving kids a good education. Sensible enough, you might think. Except for the fact that Sion Rickard said that if children were educated properly it would mean that Tories would no longer exist. Here's what he said: 'I've never met a bad four-year-old. I've never met a four-year-old that was evil. So every child has a chance and if we give them a proper education, we'll empty our prisons, we'll have much less problems with our NHS, social issues... We'll probably not have any Tories because we'll have brought up our kids properly.' Mr S wouldn't want to be a kid in his class...

Jeremy Corbyn's relationship with the MSM has long been a strained one. When the Labour leader isn't bad-mouthing hacks, he's telling them that he will 'democratise' their publications. So, perhaps it should come as little surprise that journalists have found themselves left out in the cold at this year's Labour conference. Hacks arrived to find themselves not in the main building but in a tent outside in the cold. Adding insult to injury, to find it one must follow the 'dog exercise' area signs. To borrow the words of Chuka Umunna: won't Corbyn 'call off the dogs'?

Is Jeremy Corbyn the victim in Labour’s anti-Semitism scandal? Emily Thornberry seems to think so. The shadow foreign secretary said that the Labour leader was ‘distressed’ by the claims against him and that he found the row ‘very difficult’ to deal with because it went ‘so against his idea of who he is’. In an interview with the Evening Standard, the Corbynite MP said that while the Dear Leader was usually ‘very Zen’ about criticism, ‘calling him an anti-Semite, calling him a racist, that just went straight to the absolute core of him. It really distressed him’. Poor old Jeremy.

Vince Cable's big moment at the Lib Dem party conference has arrived – but unfortunately for the Lib Dem leader he managed to fluff his lines. Cable was set to use his keynote speech to accuse Brexiteers of pursuing an 'erotic spasm' in leaving the EU. But that's not quite what he actually said: https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1042049125699575808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Talk about an anti climax...

Remain crusader Gina Miller has repeatedly denied reports that she has plans to become a politician – or, more specifically, leader of the Liberal Democrats. With Miller due to speak at the beleaguered party's conference next week, it must be pure coincidence that today the campaigner has published a personal manifesto. She has said she wants to 'take back control of Brexit' by launching her manifesto to 'End the Chaos!' On the home page, Miller opines: 'I believe it is morally and democratically right to give people as much unbiased information as possible.' Unbiased being her advocacy for what she is calling 'Remain Plus': 'You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.

Yesterday, the LGBTQ+ society of Goldsmiths University, emitted a series of tweets defending the educational value and 'compassion' of Soviet Gulags. Writing to 'clarify what a gulag is', the group sought to demonstrate that to send a friend, family member, or stranger to the gulag 'is actually a compassionate, non-violent course of action'. It turns out that gulags – sometimes referred to as death camps – offered a chance to gain skills and 'move up the ranks'! The tweets have since been deleted and as of this morning, LGBTQ+ Gold 'are protecting our tweets temporarily for the sake of safeguarding'.

It’s been over a year since the last general election, but it looks like there are still some Labour MPs who are confused about their presence on the opposition benches. One such appears to be the shadow minister for women and equalities and Corbyn devotee, Dawn Butler. In an interview on TalkRadio this afternoon, it was put to the MP,  that Labour's manifesto can’t have been that brilliant if they went on to lose the general election. Butler responded: ‘Well actually, we didn’t lose. We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose the election’ https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1039146683966398465 Mr S must have missed the brief reign of Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn...