Jeremy corbyn

Monday

Jack Staples-Butler

14 questions Owen Jones and Venezuela’s silent fans on the left must answer

Dear Owen, I hear you have finally broken your silence on Venezuela. With that in mind, here are a few questions which you have not answered: 1) In 2008, Human Rights Watch was expelled from the country by force. Why didn’t you feel the need to mention this in any article you wrote? 2) Who paid for that ‘Election Observer’ trip you went on in 2012? 3) Did it ever cross your mind from 2012 onwards that Hugo Chavez referring to Kim Jong-il as a ‘comrade’ he mourned might be a warning sign? 4) Did Chavez’s hero-worship of Fidel Castro and claims that he wanted to turn Venezuela into ‘Venecuba’ ever cause you concerns?

Steerpike Steerpike

David Cameron’s festival chillaxing backfires

David Cameron is making the most of life after Downing Street. Having recently been photographed enjoying the high life in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, the chillaxing former Prime Minister has now been seen letting his hair down at another posh venue: Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire. Glass of wine in one hand and cigarette in the other, Cameron is clearly enjoying himself. But Dave got more than he bargained for on his latest outing. After being asked to pose for a snap with a fellow festival-goer, what he didn’t realise was that the women’s outfit had the Labour leader’s surname – ‘Corbyn’ – emblazoned within a heart on her back.

Friday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Mark Carney, Brexit & Corbyn’s silence over Venezuela

Mark Carney is often accused of being downbeat about Brexit. But the Bank of England’s quarterly inflation report is ‘more sanguine than one might expect’, says the FT. The paper points out that despite a cut in the country’s growth forecast, the Bank ‘expects stronger net trade and business investment to drive a recovery in 2019’. Yet Carney remained ‘candid’ about the damage Brexit is already doing to Britain’s economy. Businesses are investing less, reports the FT, and ‘this has uncomfortable implications’. With the Bank warning that ‘the level of investment in the UK economy (will be) be 20 percentage points lower in 2020 than it forecast before the referendum’,

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Trump is good news for Britain

Jeremy Corbyn might be ‘on a high’ but he shouldn’t be allowed to forget his party’s ‘highly inconsistent, profoundly confusing’ position on the issue of the day: Brexit. Labour’s stance became yet more tangled yesterday, says the Daily Telegraph, with Keir Starmer saying the party wanted to keep Britain in the single market – ‘only 10 days ago Jeremy Corbyn said the opposite,’ points out the paper. It’s time for the Tories to take the fight to Labour, says the Telegraph, which argues that while ‘young voters, have been motivated and energised’ by Corbyn this doesn’t mean they should be allowed to get away with such a contrary position on Brexit.

Steerpike Steerpike

John McDonnell’s words on Venezuela come back to haunt him

As Jeremy Corbyn tries to enjoy his summer holiday, the Labour leader is under increasing pressure to speak out against the Venezuelan regime. With opposition leaders under arrest and mass protests ongoing, the Labour leader has so far kept shtum on the regime he previously lauded as showing a ‘better way of doing things’. So, why the silence among Labour’s top command? It can’t be that they don’t think Venezuelan politics to be of interest. As David Aaronovitch notes in today’s Times, there was a time when Corbyn’s comrade John McDonnell compelled every MP to step up and talk about the country’s regime. Speaking at the Hands Off Venezuela national conference in

Wednesday

Jake Wallis Simons

Venezuela’s crisis exposes the true depravity of the hard-Left

Which British politician would be loopy enough to defend the Venezuelan regime as it guns down protesters and arrests opposition politicians? Need a clue? Didn’t think so. This week, Ken Livingstone – once an adviser to the late Hugo Chavez – said that the reason for the country’s woes was that Chavez ‘did not execute the establishment elite’ when he came to power. For good measure, he added: ‘America has got a long record of undermining any Left-wing government as well… it’s not all just down to the problems of the [Venezuelan] government.’ While reporting recently on the appalling collapse of that country, I found myself staring into the barrel of a gun

Steerpike Steerpike

Corbyn attacks Arsenal’s owner – but keeps quiet on Venezuela

Venezuela is on the brink of collapse, with thousands taking to the streets and the government locking up those who dare stand in its way. Yet while Jeremy Corbyn has been all too eager to voice his support in the past for Venezuela, the Labour leader is keeping a radio silence on the current situation. Corbyn has said that the country’s previous leader, Hugo Chavez, showed ‘a different and better way of doing things’. Having been called on today to condemn the country’s current regime by Labour MPs, Corbyn has so far kept schtum. But Mr S was curious to note that Jezza isn’t afraid to speak out on some matters close

Tuesday

Steerpike

Corbynite shadow minister suggests 16-year-olds can have sex… with their MP

Oh dear. We’re one day into August – also known as ‘silly season’ – and Cat Smith has stepped up to the plate so journalists don’t have to. The shadow minister for voter engagement and youth affairs has penned a blog for the Huffington Post in which she makes the case for lowering the voting age to sixteen. Her argument? If you’re 16-years-old you can have sexual intercourse with your MP… but you can’t vote for them: At 16 you can have sex with your MP – but you can't vote for them! My latest blog @HuffPostUK https://t.co/SVEe3t5i0H — Cat Smith MP (@CatSmithMP) July 31, 2017 Putting aside whether this is

Ed West Ed West

The Left don’t mind hating immigrants – so long as they’re rich

It seems a long time ago that Jeremy Corbyn made an impassioned defence of immigration from both within and outside the EU, telling his party that: ‘Migrants that have come to this country make an enormous contribution to it. Our conference understands that and Tom Watson put that case very well about the work that migrants have done in the NHS and education and other industries … we should live with that but also understand the number of British people.’ That was last September, yet it seems to sit ill at ease with what he told Andrew Marr recently, that under his rule: ‘What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale

Monday

Stephen Daisley

Socialism is destroying Venezuela – but the left will never admit it

If ever I have to live in a dictatorship, put me down for one of those right-wing set-ups. To toil under leftist autocracy would be too exhausting — you plant potatoes all day, get chased around by the secret police, then have to wade through articles in the Guardian explaining why you’re not experiencing true socialism. It’s the standard response of Western radicals faced with the brutal truth about the regimes they fetishise. They will not be dissuaded by evidence that their ideology tends to result in mass immiseration and exciting opportunities in the garbage-scavenging economy. For no evidence is possible: when command economies go wrong, it turns out real socialists

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour shadow minister’s confusion over Jeremy

Labour’s Brexit position is confusing enough for the best of us, but one shadow cabinet minister found a unique reason for being lost for words this morning. The party’s Barbara Keeley appeared to lay into Jeremy Corbyn during an interview on 5 Live – only to backtrack saying she had been referring to a different Jeremy: Jeremy Hunt. Having responded to a question about Corbyn’s stance on free movement – that it should end – Keeley told Nicky Campbell that such a position would only make ‘the situation worse’. But when she was asked to explain why she was laying into the Labour leader, Keeley used an inventive ‘get out of jail’ card:

Steerpike Steerpike

Tom Watson eats humble pie

Ever since the election result, Labour moderates have attempted to put on a brave face when it comes to their feelings about Jeremy Corbyn. After ruling him out as an electoral catastrophe, they now have to work out if their former issues with the man can be put to one side for the good of the party. So, Mr S suspects Tom Watson won’t be overly delighted to hear that an account of his own team’s inner struggles has made its way to The New European. In an interview with Labour backer Steve Coogan, the comedian said his daughter spent much of the campaign helping Labour’s deputy leader in the

Saturday

Toby Young

Rupert Murdoch has helped me understand Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal

For our 16th wedding anniversary, Caroline and I went to the Almeida Theatre to see Ink, a new play about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Sun in 1969 and the subsequent circulation war with the Daily Mirror. It is terrifically funny, brimming with comic characters and acerbic one-liners, as you would expect from writer James Graham, perhaps best known for This House, his play about the five-year duel between the Labour and Conservative whips during the period 1974-79. Ink is due to transfer to the Duke of York’s Theatre on 9 September and I cannot recommend it highly enough. One of the things that struck me as the Murdoch character prowls the stage, laying out his plans

Friday

Nick Cohen

The Labour left and Tory right agree on Brexit. Why don’t they merge?

Britain has not had a functioning opposition on the most vital question of the day ever since the Labour left and Tory right found they were in agreement on our future relations with the EU. Although both sides are too embarrassed to admit it, we are ruled by a Corbyn-Johnson pact. It will deliver a hard Brexit, whatever the costs to the country. When Nigel Farage hailed Jeremy Corbyn as ‘almost a proper chap’ you learned that whatever trouble this hopelessly ill-equipped government faces it will never face trouble from the Labour leadership. The left has ceased to exist as an organised force in British politics, at least as far as

Thursday

Toby Young

Now I get it – Corbyn is the new Murdoch

For our 16th wedding anniversary, Caroline and I went to the Almeida Theatre to see Ink, a new play about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Sun in 1969 and the subsequent circulation war with the Daily Mirror. It is terrifically funny, brimming with comic characters and acerbic one-liners, as you would expect from writer James Graham, perhaps best known for This House, his play about the five-year duel between the Labour and Conservative whips during the period 1974-79. Ink is due to transfer to the Duke of York’s Theatre on 9 September and I cannot recommend it highly enough. One of the things that struck me as the Murdoch character

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Bad news for the Tories: Corbyn has learned to love the centre

When Tony Blair was selling out the Labour Party by introducing a minimum wage, paid holiday leave and free nursery education, the hard left reckoned it had his measure. Semi-Trots and leftover Bennites, since decamped to one of the many exciting acronyms British Leninism has to offer, filled monochrome magazines and academish journals with tracts denouncing Blair as a Tory, a Thatcherite and both a neoliberal and a neocon. The charge sheet was echoed with righteous indignation by proud purists on the backbenches and in the columns of the Guardian and the Independent. New Labour was so far to the right it was indistinguishable from the Conservatives. What was the

Steerpike Steerpike

Momentum’s attack ad is close to the bone for Corbyn

After the Tories went on the attack this week over student debt, Momentum – the grassroots pro-Corbyn group – has hit back with an attack on… middle-aged middle class voters. Yes, rather than aim their ire at the Tories, the video sees the group make fun of those voters who ‘just don’t get it’ – whether it’s the property ladder, tuition fees or finding a job: Finally someone said it 😂 pic.twitter.com/FoPN9jmIbZ — Momentum 🌹 (@PeoplesMomentum) July 27, 2017 It’s an interesting tactic. Not least because they criticise a man who ‘got his job at a media agency through his father’. No doubt, Jeremy Corbyn’s son Seb got his job

Tuesday

Steerpike

Conservatives weaponise student debt

The Conservatives are back on the front foot. After Jeremy Corbyn appeared to row back on an election promise over the weekend that his party would abolish pre-existing student debt, Labour have been under attack in the press. Now brains at CCHQ have released an attack ad on the issue and it will not make for pleasant viewing at Labour towers: Promise broken: Corbyn u-turns on abolishing student debt pledge to NME magazine during the election campaign. Yet another Corbyn shambles. pic.twitter.com/xf0dqPtdhY — Conservatives (@Conservatives) July 24, 2017 Labour MPs and activists are trying to play down Corbyn’s election comments to NME magazine – claiming that when Corbyn said he

Monday

James Forsyth

Will Labour split?

With parliament in recess and the Prime Minister on holiday, politics is calmer than it has been in some time. But Jeremy Corbyn’s comments on Marr yesterday about the EU and the single market are a reminder of Labour’s divisions over Brexit. At some point, this tension will have to be resolved. The 49 Labour MPs who voted for Chuka Umunna’s single market amendment to the Queen’s Speech will have to either back down or repeatedly defy the whip. The question is how does this division fit with the broader struggle for control of the party machinery between the Corbynites and the rest. Will those Corbynites who want mandatory re-selection

Steerpike Steerpike

Shouldn’t Labour’s ‘gender pay audit’ begin at home?

This weekend, Jeremy Corbyn was full of beans during an appearance on the Andrew Marr show. As well as frank comments on immigration and student debt, the Labour leader found time to turn his ire on the BBC over the gender pay gap. Discussing the disclosure that two thirds of the corporation’s highest earners are men, Corbyn said the Beeb needs to ‘look very hard at itself’ – adding that a Labour government would insist on a pay audit of every organisation. Strong words indeed. But is Corbyn just repeating empty platitudes? This time last year, Corbyn made a similar pledge. In the Labour leadership contest, he announced that if in power, companies with more