Jeremy corbyn

Maduro’s madness

Imagine if Theresa May suddenly announced that her government was going to devalue the pound by 96 per cent; increase the minimum wage by 6,000 per cent; pay the wage increases for millions of businesses for three months; tie the pound to a mythical cryptocurrency; prepared for petrol rationing; and impose a 0.7 per cent tax on big financial transactions. It would be seen either as an act of lunacy, of a collapsing country — or both. For the long-suffering people of Venezuela, it’s just the latest stage of their country’s grand socialist experiment. President Nicolás Maduro has just issued a new currency, called ‘sovereign bolivars’. The original idea was

Labour’s noise problem

Political parties rarely have good summers. If you’re in government, something normally goes wrong just as you’re settling into a deckchair. If you’re in Opposition, a good summer is when something has gone wrong in the government. A disappointing summer is when no-one notices your carefully-planned announcements. A bad summer is when you get plenty of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Labour has had a bad summer. It has spent much of it making rather wan attempts to calm the row on anti-semitism. A handy diversion turned up this week in the form of Dawn Butler taking exception to Jamie Oliver’s jerk rice, which has led to a

Wanted: a Head of Disputes for Labour

Have you ever looked at a job advert with a temptingly high salary, and thought to yourself… you’d have to be mad to apply to that. Mr Steerpike suspects many Labour staffers had a similar reaction this week to a job posted on the Labour website. Labour HQ are on the lookout for a new ‘Head of Disputes,’ and they’re willing to pay over £50,000 to the person mad enough to take it. The new job holder will be responsible for internal disputes, disciplinary affairs and, rather ominously, ‘undertaking investigations as necessary’ within the party. While the job description seems innocuous at first glance, and even vaguely powerful, the toxic

Jeremy Corbyn’s road to sainthood

This week, a Sky News video has been doing the rounds on Twitter in which an exasperated Jeremy Corbyn supporter cast doubt on the row over the ongoing wreath-laying controversy by declaring that the Labour leader is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. End of. The cult is real. pic.twitter.com/Ze5NyFkvLB — Ben (@Jamin2g) August 14, 2018 Just in case readers are in any doubt, Mr S can confirm this claim is not true. But Mr S thinks he can guess where it came from. A few months ago, Corbyn’s supporters began to rebut questions about his commitment to peace by asserting that he was a winner of the Gandhi

Portrait of the Week – 16 August 2018

Home Unemployment fell by 65,000 to 1.36 million — at 4 per cent the lowest level since 1975. The economy in the United Kingdom grew by 0.4 per cent in the second quarter, compared with 0.2 per cent in the first. The rate of inflation rose a jot from 2.4 to 2.5 per cent, measured by the Consumer Price Index. Sports Direct, run by Mike Ashley, agreed to buy the House of Fraser chain of 59 department stores for £90 million after it had gone into administration. Homebase said it was closing 42 of its 241 stores. Marks & Spencer closed seven clothes stores as part of its programme to

Brendan O’Neill

The shameful double standards of the Corbyn crew

Imagine if there existed a photograph of Boris Johnson next to a man whose associates subsequently axed to death four imams in a mosque. Just imagine it. Imagine how much discussion there would be about the mainstreaming of Islamophobic fascism. About how Boris was enabling murderous racial hatred. About how the Tory party was falling to an extremist loathing of Muslims. Corbynistas in particular would never stop talking about it. Everything they wrote about Boris, forever, would mention his rubbing of shoulders with a man who was cool with the slaughter of imams. Of course, no such photograph of Boris exists. But a photograph of Jeremy Corbyn in a similar

Rod Liddle

Corbyn’s peace process

The crowd were singing ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ again, at a festival in Cornwall, the words appended to a riff by the White Stripes which I once liked but now find a little nauseating. Vacuous, dimbo, middle-class millennials and — worse — their stupid, indulgent parents, all waving their hands in the air for Jezza. Meanwhile, the rest of us were trying to work out if Jeremy is a sort of even more retarded Forrest Gump and thus the most stupid man ever to lead a political party in the history of our nation, or something altogether more sinister. I had always cleaved to the former point of view — and

Jeremy Corbyn’s not an anti-Semite, he’s just very unlucky

Can you be sure, dear reader, you haven’t inadvertently indulged lately in a spot of Holocaust denial? A little light Jew bashing? The problem with modern life is there’s so much to remember. Have I got my keys? Have I got my money? Have I apparently become a member of an organisation which is vocal in its support of writer Roger Garaudy – who claimed the murder of six million Jews was a ‘myth’? Have I got my shopping list? No one can be expected to remember every last thing at all times. We can, then, surely sympathise with Jeremy Corbyn’s discovery only last week that he was listed on

How Corbyn’s opponents made it easier for him to dodge scrutiny

Benjamin Netanyahu’s intervention in the row about Jeremy Corbyn and the memorial wreath has been incredibly handy for the Labour leadership. The Israeli Prime Minister said Corbyn’s presence at the wreath laying for members of the group behind the 1972 Munich terror attack ‘deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone – left, right and everything in between’. A number of Labour MPs have been calling on Corbyn to show contrition in order to resolve the ongoing row, but instead the party leader decided to hit back, accusing Netanyahu of ‘false’ claims and pointing to ‘the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza’. John McDonnell, meanwhile, who has in recent weeks urged

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn turns nasty over wreath-gate

Did he or didn’t he? The question, of course, is whether Jeremy Corbyn laid a wreath or not for one of the Munich terrorists. Given the Labour leader’s shifting position on the subject it’s somewhat difficult to keep track. But Corbyn, it seems, has run out of patience with those confused about his wreath-laying antics. Here he is rolling his eyes at a reporter who tried to question him on the subject: Corbyn: I was there when the wreaths were laid, that’s pretty obvious. There were many others who were witness to that, I witnessed many others laying wreaths. Reporter: Did you lay the wreath? Corbyn: I laid one wreath

Steerpike

Owen Jones’s masterclass in ‘whataboutery’

Corbyn cheerleader-in-chief Owen Jones frequently rallies against what he calls ‘whataboutery.’ For those not familiar with the word, it is a technique used to distract people from talking about injustices on your own side by bringing up atrocities elsewhere. Or, in his own words: Given whataboutery is used to deflect responsibility for misdemeanours and crimes committed by ones own side this is a hilarious ironic tweet — Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) April 8, 2018 It is a charge he frequently aims at his critics on the right. But is Jones guilty of it himself when it comes to the Labour leader? Mr Steerpike thinks so. Last night, as Corbyn’s story fell apart

Alex Massie

The myth of Jeremy Corbyn, a kind and gentle man | 14 August 2018

I am relaxed about Jeremy Corbyn being thicker than mince but draw the line at the assumption, all too evidently held by most of his most devoted supporters, that you must be too. If Corbyn wishes to deny the obvious that is his prerogative; the notion you should be prepared to swallow any and every piece of whitewashing nonsense peddled by his fans is quite a different matter.  “I was present” when the wreath was laid “but I don’t think I was involved in it” is, I suppose, a step forward from the Labour party’s previous suggestion that “The Munich widows are being misled. Jeremy did not honour those responsible

Wasn’t my wreath, guv

Does Jeremy Corbyn harbour sinister views – or is he the unluckiest man in the world? That’s the question being asked today after the Labour leader gave an interview to Sky News after allegations he attended a wreath-laying ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 for members of the terrorist group behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The official Labour line had been that Corbyn was paying his respects to the victims of a 1985 Israeli airstrike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis. However, today he appeared to change tack. The Labour leader admitted he was present when a wreath was laid but added that he did not ‘think’ he was

Steerpike

Wreath-gate: Corbyn’s version of events – a timeline

Today, Jeremy Corbyn confirmed that he had been at a ceremony which commemorated the deaths of several terrorists linked to the 1972 Munich massacre. But it seems that Jeremy has had trouble recollecting what actually happened while he was there. So, to help jog Jeremy’s memory and to let our readers make up their own minds up about what happened on that day in 2014, Mr S has compiled every version of Jeremy’s story: 1. In 2014, soon after the visit to Tunisia, Corbyn wrote an article for the Morning Star, which said: ‘After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day and on the

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn’s terror tribute confusion

Poor Jeremy Corbyn, always ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time. After revelations in the Daily Mail that he had laid a wreath near the graves of those involved in the 1972 Munich terrorist attack, he finally clarified what happened. Asked by Sky News if he was involved in the tributes, he answered: ‘I was present when it was laid, I don’t think I was actually involved in it’ Jeremy Corbyn: I was “present” when the wreath was laid “I don’t think I was actually involved in it.” pic.twitter.com/fNL7yXxIdE — Ben (@Jamin2g) August 13, 2018 In fairness, who hasn’t accidentally found themselves at a service where tributes were

Labour plotters: please don’t overthrow Jeremy Corbyn just yet

According to the Daily Express, a tightly knit group of fanatical Labour moderates have been meeting in a country retreat to plot the overthrow of Jeremy Corbyn. Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and another ten or so smoothy-chops have met secretly for away-days at Fair Oak Farm, near Mayfield in Sussex, the paper claims. This scoop is a slight blow to me, since I live only a few miles away and failed to notice the plotters, but a much graver one to this country’s greatest defender of ordinary decent people, Paul Dacre, whose large southern estate all but borders Fair Oak. How did the Daily Mail’s inferior rival steal this story

Portrait of the week | 9 August 2018

Home Brandon Lewis, the chairman of the Conservative party, demanded that Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, should apologise for saying, in an article defending the right of women in Britain to wear the burka or the niqab, that it was at the same time ‘absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes’. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘The language that Boris used has offended people.’ Jennie Formby, the general secretary of the Labour party, wrote to Dame Margaret Hodge saying that no further action would be taken against her. Dame Margaret was said to have called Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, an ‘anti-Semite’.

The old left and the new anti-Semitism

This  is the English version of a piece of mine that was first published in DIE WELT on 4 August 2018, in which I attempt to explain to German readers why anti-Semitism, of all things, is dominating politics in Britain, of all places. Germans visiting Britain before Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party in 2015 would have struggled to find anyone who believed anti-Semitism was worth discussing. I and a few others had warned that the collapse of socialism had allowed a strange post-Marxist left to emerge that endorsed ideas previous generations of socialists would have dismissed as fascistic. There appeared to be no reason for the rest

Watch: Corbyn says the BBC is biased about Israel’s right to exist

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, which Labour refuses to adopt in full, is very clear about one thing. That denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination constitutes discrimination. In the past though this fact appears to have been lost on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Footage has emerged of the leader, speaking on the Iranian sponsored channel Press TV, saying: ‘There seems to be a great deal of pressure on the BBC from the Israeli government and the Israeli embassy and they are very assertive towards all journalists and to the BBC itself. They challenge every single thing on reporting the whole time. I think there is

Douglas Murray

Jeremy Corbyn and the cynical tactics of the left | 7 August 2018

It is August, so perhaps it is inevitable that parts of the left are getting somewhat over-heated. But it can’t just be the weather. Take this segment from the bottom of a story in Sunday’s ‘Observer’ which was about something else (comments by Labour’s Deputy Leader on that party’s Leader): ‘[Tom] Watson’s intervention came as Corbyn was forced to “entirely disassociate” himself from an organisation whose website lists him as a member of its international advisory panel and which openly supported a prominent writer convicted of Holocaust denial. In 1996, the Just World Trust, an international NGO that has been a trenchant critic of Israel, wrote a letter defending the