Politics

According to some of the more far-left members of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman is a Tory. The somewhat surprising claim came after she told her party to abstain on the Tories’ Welfare Bill, leading 48 MPs to break whip and vote against it. However, seemingly keen to silence the naysayers — in an interview with the Guardian — Harman, who has three children with Jack Dromey, has given an account of the lengths she has gone to to avoid socialising with Tories. The acting Leader of the Labour Party says that she once hid in a side corridor to prevent Margaret Thatcher — who she likens to a witch — from

Unless something entirely undetected is happening in the Labour membership, Liz Kendall is not going to be elected party leader in the next few weeks. Today in an interview with the World at One, she said she was ‘definitely’ the underdog in the contest and that though ’I know I’ve got a long way to go’, she would be making the case ‘right towards the end’. Now her aim, it seems, is to advance her arguments about the future of Labour, rather than hoping that she might win. Those arguments might be characterised as Blairism, but when Kendall was asked if she was the ‘heir to Blair’, she said: ‘I

Forget Tories4Corbyn, a new craze is taking hold of Conservative politicians across the country. With Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity now at an all-time high, he has amassed a hoard of female fans who have described him as sexy in ‘a world weary sea dog’ sort of way. Now it seems the Tories too want in on the action. In a bid to look more like the man of the moment, David Gauke — who is the current Financial Secretary to the Treasury — has grown his beard out in the style of Corbyn. #Corbynmania reaches my chin. Temporarily. pic.twitter.com/C2OKJXlfNi — David Gauke (@DavidGauke) August 10, 2015 What’s more, he’s not alone; Ed Vaizey has also been

Since Karen Danczuk announced her split from her husband Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP, she has been embroiled in a bitter row with him over the reasons for their parting of ways. Happily, in recent weeks this has cooled, as they try to put their differences aside for the sake of their children. Not that this means the ‘selfie queen’ is about to become a wallflower. The former Labour councillor has started a blog — titled ‘Selfie Made Woman’ — in which she offers readers an insight into her deepest thoughts. And while the Mirror reported earlier in the week that she faces bailiffs after ignoring a court order concerning rent, Danczuk has

Only a couple of years ago the Labour Party was criticised for its silence over the summer recess, with complaints that Ed Miliband’s team had failed to take advantage of the traditionally quiet period to get some much-needed media coverage. Well, never let it be said that Labour doesn’t learn from its mistakes: this year’s seemingly endless leadership election has turned into a nightmare for the party and a delight for hacks. The cause of all this has been the extraordinary rise of Jeremy Corbyn, and attention is shifting to what might happen if he actually wins this thing. But we already know what will happen if Corbyn wins: it

The moment Edward Heath sat down in the first class seat next to me on the flight from Scotland to London, shook my hand and said ‘Jonathan, it is a pleasure to meet you’ I determined to flirt with him in order to find out whether the rumours that he was gay were true. I was in my thirties and famous. An undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, I had been lucky, in 1965, to write and sing Everyone’s Gone To The Moon, which sold just under 5 million copies. That same month in that same year Heath had been elected leader of the Conservative Party. I’ve been fortunate, in my life,