All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The clock struck noon and it was if the past 32 years had never happened. Veteran Left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn had, with seconds to spare, got the necessary 35 nominations to win his place on the Labour leadership ballot. And with that news, it became clear that the Labour party has not just failed to
Thanks to a last minute rush of nominations, Jeremy Corbyn has made it onto the Labour leadership ballot paper. Corbyn had 30 MPs backing him at 11am this morning and it seems some undecideds and Team Burnham defectors were persuaded it would be a good thing to have Corbyn in the contest, taking him to the 35
Who described the folks backing Liz Kendall as the ‘Taliban New Labour’? The Telegraph’s story this morning attributed the vituperative comments to a ‘sources close to Burnham and Cooper,’ but both campaigns are distancing themselves from the remarks. A source on Team Burnham tells Coffee House that the comments came from Yvette’s Team and not from anyone on the Burnham campaign.
As a Doncaster resident, Lesley Garrett is well acquainted with her local MP Ed Miliband. However, the soprano was left disappointed by Labour’s effort in the general election. In an interview ahead of her performance in Garsington Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, Garrett — who is a loyal Labour supporter — blamed their election defeat in part on the party
After Jeremy Clarkson was suspended by the BBC over an alleged fracas with a Top Gear producer, the presenter got on stage at a charity bash and told the audience that the BBC were ‘f—ing b—–ds’. Clarkson was later sacked and the corporation went to such lengths to erase the memory of the presenter from their channels that they
If you peer deep into the statute book, you will see that it is still an offence to enter parliament wearing armour. Even more amazing, it has been a crime since 1313. I mention this because the moment has again come for parliament to clear some of the redundant legislative noise off its books. This
Today is the last call for nominating candidates in the Labour leadership contest. At noon, the nominations will close and we’ll know then whether it’s going to be a three or four horse race. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall are on the ballot paper so it’s now a question of whether Jeremy Corbyn can find
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 19 June 1915: In the British section of the western theatre of war our troops have taken the offensive to the west of La Bassée and to the east of Ypres. In the La Bassée district on Tuesday evening they won several trenches, but these trenches were retaken
The PM’s first policy speech in this Parliament was devoted to the NHS and marked a big shift in tone compared to the election. The campaign message was somewhat defensive, majoring on the extra spending that the Conservatives would provide (and leading some to ask where the extra £8 billion a year was coming from).
The Labour leadership contest is in full swing, with Labour MPs announcing who will they be backing to be the next leader. Under new rules, each candidate requires the backing of 35 MPs to make it into the ballot paper. Four candidates have made it onto the ballot paper: The candidates MPs backing Bookies’ odds YouGov poll Andy
Question: which comes out worse from the Tim Hunt affair – the lynch mob on Twitter which brought him down, or University College London, which pulled the rug from under both him and his immunologist wife once they gathered that one of their own had said something off message? It’s a tough call, but I
A year into his sentence on 12 counts of indecent assault, it doesn’t look like Rolf Harris has developed much of a sense of remorse. After seeing Mr Harris’s latest foray into song writing, his victims’ lawyer has said he mustn’t be given parole, and she has a point. Theodore Dalrymple (also known as Anthony
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) is a strange beast. Its membership largely consists of Asghar Bukhari and his brother. Occasionally another person appears on television claiming an affiliation to the group – an affiliation promptly proved by use of the organisation’s modus operandi, viz furious shouting backed up by ferocious stupidity. Anyhow, it has
If you ever doubted it was the case, here’s the final proof that in the UK, Health and Safety legislation trumps everything. Tamanna Begum, a Sunni Muslim nursery school ‘teacher’ in Essex, has just lost an employment appeal tribunal. She wanted to wear a full head to toe Darth Vader style jilbab to work. Her employer
On Wednesday at Noon, George Osborne will rise to respond for the government at Prime Minister’s Questions. The symbolism of this moment won’t be lost on anyone on the Tory benches. It will be the start of Osborne’s audition for the top job. A few years ago, the idea of Osborne as Prime Minister was—as
From ‘Longs and Shorts’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915: Names of things in constant use should never be too long. The cinematograph has inevitably dwindled into the “cinema,” while young America calls these shows the “movies.” But the passion for polysyllables, though considerably abated, has not died out of the Press. (How could it, when
The Greek crisis has been going on for so long now, it is hard to imagine it actually coming to a conclusion. But next week’s meeting of European Finance Ministers is one of the last chances for a deal to be struck. However, there is no sign of an agreement yet. The Financial Times today
As England’s longest-running weekly magazine for women, The Lady magazine has an illustrious roll call of former employees. However in recent years, its editors have often attracted attention for the wrong reasons. Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel was appointed as editor in 2009 but departed three years later following a feud with the publisher Ben Budworth’s mother Julia, who
The latest comp was inspired by Stephen Spender’s notorious poem ‘The Pylons’, which he likens to ‘nude giant girls that have no secret’. Spender wasn’t praising pylons on aesthetic grounds in his notorious poem, but celebrating the progress that these non-human structures embody: ‘There runs the quick perspective of the future’. The spirit of the
This weekend the masters of the universe will gather at the annual Bilderberg conference. The secretive summit, which is being held in Austria, sees heads of banks and company CEOs mix with political heavyweights including the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, US pollster Jim Messina, George Osborne and… Ed Balls. No notes are taken,
From ‘Convalescents—Some Portraits’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915: No. 12. hardly spoke any French. He was very fat, middle-aged, and placid, his face perfectly round, and his whole form almost spherical. A farthing and a penny and two matches could be arranged to form an excellent representation of his silhouette. We discovered that he was
Mary Creagh has announced she is withdrawing from the Labour leadership contest. The shadow international development secretary has explained in tomorrow’s Guardian that she is quitting the race but won’t be backing another candidate. Given that Creagh had just seven MPs openly backing her — with only a rumoured handful still in the shadows — it was increasingly clear over the
Jeremy Corbyn is adding some unlikely excitement to the Labour leadership contest. Although he does not have enough MPs yet to make it onto the ballot paper — he needs another 16 nominations at the time of writing — there is still a sense he might make it into race. As I wrote earlier in the
Today’s Times carries an interesting story. A new report from the Department of Education reveals that: ‘Almost one in three of England’s primary school children is from an ethnic minority – the highest level yet. One pupil in five speaks English as a second language.’ There follows some information about how these numbers are putting
Will the country be torn apart by the EU referendum? That’s the argument made by Chris Deerin on the capitalist running dog website CapX. Deerin, a Scottish Unionist, says it’s now Great Britain’s turn to go through the same painful and divisive process that Scotland endured last year. Personally I doubt that will happen, although
Jenny Sealey, director of Graeae Theatre Company, has had a brainwave. Fine producers who don’t employ disabled actors. She’s particularly concerned about the failure of opera directors to hire performers with impaired sight and hearing: ‘There is no diversity whatsoever inside those opera houses. And that is disgusting.’ She wants her new fines siphoned into
After Bruce Jenner’s transformation into Caitlyn Jenner was unveiled in Vanity Fair with a cover titled ‘Call me Caitlyn’, the Twitter mob went into overdrive with thousands rushing to tweet their congratulations. However, as Mr S’s colleague Brendan O’Neill reported, not all tweets were well received. Drake Bell, a former American child star, became the subject of
Gordon Brown has popped up in the Guardian today to warn that the evil Tories are going to destroy the Union. The former Prime Minister laments in an op-ed the government’s attitude towards Scotland and calls for a ‘constitutional convention’ to figure out the ‘rights and responsibilities of citizens’ in different parts of the Union. If we don’t, Brown
Given that John Whittingdale once described the licence fee as ‘worse than the poll tax’, the BBC were reported to be less than thrilled when David Cameron appointed the Tory MP as Culture Secretary ahead of the corporation’s charter renewal next year. However, should the BBC be concerned about the impending decision, culture minister Ed Vaizey has at least offered
Sore heads over at the Guardian this morning after yet another leaving party for Alan Rusbridger. In what Mr S makes to be Rusbridger’s third leaving do, politicians and celebrities gathered at the Battlebridge Room of Kings Place to raise a glass to the departed editor. Ed Miliband chatted away to Benedict Cumberbatch over a bottle
David Mundell, the somewhat improbable Secretary of State for Scotland, had at least one good line yesterday: “The SNP are asking for something they don’t really want, but of course they will complain if they don’t get it.” It being our old chum Full Fiscal Autonomy (or Responsibility) for Scotland. Now if the ordinary rules of
Occasionally, there are moments when politicians of all persuasions welcome a result. As David Cameron noted at PMQs this week, Naz Shah’s victory over George Galloway in Bradford West was one of these moments. This morning’s news that Labour’s John Biggs has been elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets is another. Biggs won decisively, with 32,754 votes
Jemima Goldsmith’s love life has been well documented by the red tops in recent years, with her former loves including Imran Khan and Russell Brand. So Mr S was pleased to hear that – in the name of research – she has been adopting a new approach and experimenting with the dating app Tinder. Goldsmith took
From ‘The Industrial Reserve’, The Spectator, 12 June 1915: The Industrial Reserve (227 Strand, W.C.), which was started eight weeks ago, and has already placed over nine hundred men in useful employment, directly or indirectly concerned with war work. These men are for the most part drawn from classes who do not ordinarily come into
