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It’s day two of the Labour Party conference. Here’s the Spectator’s guide to what to look out for today: Main conference: 11am: Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s speech Fringe events: 9am: ‘You can’t build peace with concrete: ending our relationships with Israel’s illegal settlements’ Speakers include: Jeremy Corbyn (possibly); Emily Thornberry 12.30pm: Where Next for Britain
Labour conference is now firmly underway in Liverpool, as is the ‘World Transformed’ festival organised by Corbynite grassroots organisation Momentum. Labour MPs and long-time activists are wandering about in a state of bewilderment at the change forged in their party over the past year, perhaps best embodied by the joyful appearance of former Militant bigwig
Well that didn’t last long. After Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected as Labour leader on Saturday, Corbyn sceptic MPs appeared to put their differences to one side as they took to the airwaves to claim that Corbyn could be Prime Minister. At tonight’s Progress rally at conference, that facade was lifted. MPs including Liz Kendall and Ian Murray took to
While the mood at Labour Conference is notably low this year, across town at Momentum’s ‘The World Transformed’ festival the crowd can be described as buzzing. Although Mr S’s taxi driver dropped him off while remarking that after the leadership result ‘the Monster Raving Loony party has as much chance of winning power as Labour’,
Earlier this month, Derek Hatton told Mr S of his dismay after the former deputy leader of Liverpool Council’s application to attend this year’s Labour conference was denied. Although he had just wanted to attend in the capacity of a journalist, the former Militant member — who was expelled from Labour 29 years ago —
If Jeremy Corbyn set out in his Marr interview to reassure his critics in the Labour Party that this is the beginning of a new era for the leadership and the wider party, he didn’t do a great job. The Labour leader refused to rule out mandatory reselection of his MPs, saying that most of
Normally, a leadership election is followed by the leader appointing a new top team. But that won’t be happening in this case. Instead, a new shadow Cabinet will have to wait for the Labour party to agree a new set of rules on how it should be selected. The problem is that many of those
In the EU referendum campaign, Alan Duncan penned a piece for the Telegraph entitled ‘why this lifelong Eurosceptic is now voting to stay in’. In this, the Conservative MP explained the heartfelt reasons he backed Remain. Alas, these were later placed in doubt when Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott claimed that Duncan had met with him
Now that Jeremy Corbyn has won, the fight moves to the jungle of Labour Party rules, regulations and procedures. Whoever controls these controls the party. Last Tuesday, for example, an eight-hour session of the party’s governing National Executive Committee (NEC) concluded that Scotland and Wales should each have their own member on the NEC. This
Tim Shipman’s book about the EU referendum campaign, All Out War, is serialised today in the Sunday Times. The newspaper today leads on the remarkable disclosure that David Cameron blames Theresa May for the paucity of the deal he negotiated in those 30 sleepless hours with Brussels. Here’s the extract:- Before the speech, conscious that
Mark Twain once said that if you give a man a reputation as an early-riser he can sleep in till noon. The same is true of calling someone ‘a moderate’. Call someone ‘a moderate’ and they can rant like a fascist any day of the week without reprimand. President Rouhani of Iran has been called
Jeremy Corbyn promised to wipe the slate clean following Labour’s fractious leadership race. Now that he’s officially clinched victory, it’s time for the party to try and do just that at Labour’s annual conference, which kicks off at 11am today. Here, The Spectator has put together a guide of the main events to look out for. This is what’s on
History teaches no lessons but we insist on trying to learn from it. There is no political party more sentimental than the Labour party. The stone monument of Labour history is Clement Attlee’s 1945–51 administration, so any biography of the great man is, inevitably, an intervention into the present state of the party, even if
Hillary Clinton hazarded that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are a ‘basket of deplorables’. The Kaiser called the BEF a ‘contemptible little army’, Aneurin Bevan called the Tories ‘lower than vermin’ — and in both cases, those so named took up the insult as a badge of pride: the Old Contemptibles, the Vermin Club. I
The Labour Party is in a sour mood at present, that much we already know. Usually, most of the sourness expressed by MPs is directed at their own party comrades. But this afternoon, at the Labour Women’s Conference, speaker after speaker decided to turn fire on Theresa May. Angela Rayner congratulated her on being the
Jeremy Corbyn has never been in a stronger position as Labour leader than he is today. A leadership contest that was meant to topple—or at the least, weaken him—has ended up solidifying his position. His Labour critics came for him, and he defeated them. He garnered 61.8 percent of the vote in this leadership contest,
Those of us on the left can all too easily imagine how our political rivals felt when watching Jeremy Corbyn’s latest victory speech. English Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists do not wake at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat, worrying about how they can defeat him. Like a drunk who punches his own face, Corbyn beats himself, leaving Labour’s
As expected, Jeremy Corbyn has just beaten Owen Smith in the Labour leadership race with 62pc of the vote, higher last year’s 60pc. So this means he has redoubled his authority – and probably his reach within the structures of the party as moderate members shrug their shoulders and give up. ‘Let’s wipe the slate clean from
The Labour leadership result isn’t announced until 11.45am today. But whatever the result—and no one seems in much doubt what it will be, this contest has represented an intellectual surrender to Jeremy Corbyn and the ideology he represents. Isabel Hardman and Marcus Roberts discuss Corbyn’s victory on Coffee House shots I argue in The Sun this
With Italy facing a referendum that could unseat its president, the EU’s member states in furious conflict over immigration, and Hillary Clinton looking like an increasingly shaky last line of defence, our very own Brexit is being held up as the model of a new, disruptive politics. But its meaning has been debated. For some, Brexit
Hinkley Point — for all its flaws and the whiffs of suspicion around its Chinese investors — has finally received Downing Street’s blessing. Meanwhile, ministers hold the party line that High Speed 2 will go ahead according to plan, backed by news that the project has already bought £2 billion worth of land; and investors
Since he moved to Hong Kong three years ago, the Rat’s Cantonese has been coming on apace. This has rather less to do with his language skills — never that much in evidence on his school reports — than it does with the fact that my stepson works in what is still, despite the mainland
A Methodist church in Hinde Street, London, is exhibiting ‘You cannot pass today: Life through a dividing wall’, a reconstruction of a border control point between Israel and the occupied territories. The purpose, needless to say, is not to show how to deal with a terrorist threat, but to attack Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. A
When I read that Martin Roth, the director of the V&A, was resigning from his job because of Brexit, I sensed it was not quite true. I did not doubt the sincerity of Dr Roth’s views: he has his German generation’s horror of anything which could be presented as ‘nationalism’. It was rather that it
For the latest competition you were invited to filter popular nursery rhymes through the prism of political correctness. Some years ago, CBeebies came under fire when it took all the fun out of ‘Humpty Dumpty’ by changing the words to give it a happy ending. And it wasn’t just Humpty; Little Miss Muffet and the
Nearly fifty years ago, CR Poole published a short work entitled ‘The Customs, Superstitions, and Legends of the County of Somerset’. Inexplicably, he omitted the foremost of these customs: Somerset will never, ever, win the County Championship. For a while this week, I and many others dared to dream this year might be different. This could
Although David Cameron’s political career took a nose dive after the EU referendum result, he has been doing his best to ensure that his old chums don’t too badly out of the situation. Take for example, Ed Llewellyn — Cameron’s former Chief of Staff. As well as being given a peerage in Cameron’s resignation honours,
My favourite quote of all time comes from John Stuart Mill: ‘War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing
Well, that didn’t take long. George Osborne has had dinner with the FT and the write-up shows him as ambitious as ever. Having never held down a job outside of politics, the former Chancellor isn’t looking for one now. ‘I am not going anywhere,’ he said, ‘I want to see what happens next.’ It seems
Tomorrow just before noon, Jeremy Corbyn is set to be crowned leader of the Labour party for a second time, possibly, according to insiders, with an even bigger mandate than the one he’s spent the past year waving at his own party. And after months of resignations, fighting, and a leadership contest where the challenger
Jim O’Neill, who was somehow overlooked in Theresa May’s purge of the Osbornites, has become the first person to resign from her Government. A few weeks ago, the former Goldman Sachs chairman said he wanted assurances that she remained committed to the Northern Powerhouse agenda. It seems that no such undertakings were received. In his somewhat terse letter this
When we were putting together the latest issue of Spectator Life, we had a debate about whether to put Donald Trump on the cover – not out of any political squeamishness, but because the article about him by Alex Connock is 26 years old. Back in 1990, Alex was a cub reporter for an American
Spenders and savers alike would no doubt appreciate some kind of reward for staying loyal to their bank or building society, but it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to get a better deal than if they were to switch. Savers At a time when savings rates are hitting new lows, consumers who have managed
UK banks should do more to protect customers tricked into transferring money to fraudsters, according to a consumer body that has lodged a ‘supercomplaint‘ with financial regulators. The move by Which? means banks could now face a formal investigation into whether they can continue refusing to reimburse victims. The Guardian reports that the organisation submitted its