Politics

Snap. It was a long time coming but it was always coming. Jeremy Corbyn, who has traded on an image of saintly anti-racism for his entire career, was finally confronted by someone who sees through it. Yesterday, Labour’s national executive committee adopted a new policy that rejected the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. Rabbis from across the spectrum had urged Labour to accept this definition; Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that failing to do so would send an unprecedented ‘message of contempt to the Jewish community’. Of course, that was the point. Labour does not like Jews very much; some within its ranks downright hate them; and

Boris Johnson did not launch a full-on attack on Theresa May in his resignation speech. But he was brutally critical of the Chequers plan, saying that in crucial respects it was ‘Brexit in name only’. He complained that since the Lancaster House speech ‘a fog of self-doubt has descended’ and that the UK never even attempted to turn that speech into a negotiating position. He said that ‘18 months of stealthy retreat’ had led the UK to its current predicament. In a speech shorn of his usual jokes, the former Foreign Secretary urged Theresa May to change course, to return to Lancaster House. He said that there was ‘still time

So this is what a principled politician looks like. They can be hard to spot these days, but last night, in parliament, we saw four of them in action. Kate Hoey, Frank Field, John Mann and Graham Stringer. Four Labour MPs who, despite knowing they would get flak from both Corbynistas and centrists, despite knowing the Stalinist sections of left-wing Twitter would shriek for their deselection, despite knowing they would be paraded online as ‘Tory stooges’ whom all good Labourites have a duty to despise, nonetheless voted with their consciences and rejected an amendment to Theresa May’s trade bill that could have kept Brexit Britain entangled in a customs union

Last week, the left-wing blogger Ash Sarkar told Piers Morgan she was ‘literally a communist’ after the pair got into a heated debate over her decision to protest Donald Trump’s visit to the UK when she hadn’t done the same for Barack Obama. Since then, the clip has gone viral and Sarkar – who works for Novara Media – has been rebranded as a liberal champion – with Teen Vogue even chipping in. Now Novara Media is keen to cash in. The blog has released a new t-shirt to its online shop emblazoned ‘I’m literally a communist’. Only rather than, say, practise communism and dispensing them ‘from each according to his

Oh dear. As No 10 attempt to stop more Commons rebellions today on the customs bill, relations between Tory Remain rebels and Tory Brexiteers have hit an all-time low – and that’s saying something. Appearing on the Daily Politics, Nadine Dorries launched a broadside against Anna Soubry over her comments in the Chamber on Monday – when the Tory MP accused her Brexiteer colleagues with a ‘gold-plated pension and inherited wealth’ of backing Brexit to the detriment of people’s jobs. One such Brexiteer colleague’s response? Dorries just described it as ‘one of the worst moments that we have ever seen or witnessed in the chamber’. “No longer anger, they have

Theresa May’s government may be on the verge of collapse but it’s still business as usual on the Westminster summer party scene. At think tank Freer’s summer party at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Liz Truss introduced the new Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab – finding time to send him up after he was outed for having the same Pret lunch every day: ‘Freedom to choose is very important to me. I want the freedom to be able to eat a donut or drink a glass of wine. Our speaker tonight wants the freedom to eat the same meal at Pret a Manger every day of the week — and I