Jeremy corbyn

Tactics! At long last. Jeremy Corbyn actually used tactics at today’s PMQs. For the first time ever he divided his six questions into two three-ball overs. He spent the initial trio on last week’s terror attacks. Then, after an unsettling delay, he used three more on Mrs May’s fibs about school budgets. She says they’ve been ‘protected’. He says they’ve been ‘cut’. Protected. Cut. Cut. Protected. On it went. Mr Corbyn had a superb ally in the Public Accounts Committee which seems to support his view. The exchange might have been tricky for Mrs May but Mr Corbyn still can’t ram home a simple advantage. Rather than forcing her to

Given that Owen Jones, Glenda Jackson and Derek Hatton are just a handful of the figures to recently turn on Jeremy Corbyn, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Labour leader is turning people off Labour. So, Mr S was surprised to learn of Labour’s latest recruit, in today’s issue of the Times. Step forward Clare Foges. Yes, David Cameron’s former SpAd and speechwriter — who earned the affectionate nickname ‘the Prime Minister’s Larynx’ — has joined… the Labour party. Writing in the Times, Foges says that she is as surprised as anyone by her decision: ‘I tapped out the words somewhat guiltily, late at night. This was entering a corner of

In spite of everything against them, the Labour party scored an historic victory last night in the City of London. Five Labour councillors were elected in wards that are traditionally contested by ‘independents’ (usually retiree residents who are inclined towards the pomp and ceremony). It was their highest ever total. People will, of course, be quick to point out that the City of London is the 325th smallest authority in England, out of a total of 326. It has 25 wards covering the area that would, in most authorities, be designated to a single ward. Labour also only has 5 Commoners (the antiquated term the City uses in favour of

A bizarre exercise in diplomacy from Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs. He manoeuvred the PM into a tricky corner and then stepped gallantly in to disperse the trouble he’d arranged. She’d been caught violating a manifesto commitment to protect school funding. The statistics proved it too. Corbyn’s back-room elves had devised a clever way to summarise the difficulty. Averaging out the cuts will mean, in effect, that every primary school loses two teachers and every secondary loses six. It was good stuff. Danger for the PM. But Corbyn, for some unfathomable reason, decided not to pursue his advantage and he proceeded to flannel his way out of his opponent’s problem. He

Theresa May has once again ruled out a snap general election but that doesn’t mean the temptation to hold one will go away. Today’s ICM poll shows why: the Tories, on 45 per cent, have a 19-point lead over Labour. This pushes the Government’s poll lead up by three points following a fortnight dominated by Philip Hammond’s Budget debacle, his subsequent u-turn over hiking national insurance rates and Theresa May coming under pressure from the SNP. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the Labour party, the usual rules that a government would be punished for a bungled budget need not apply. In fact even after a raft of dismal headlines for Philip Hammond,

The government’s decision to announce a U-turn on the planned rise in Class 4 National Insurance contributions minutes before PMQs meant that Jeremy Corbyn was left with the wrong homework for the session. Still, presented with an embarrassing government climbdown on a key Budget pledge, surely Corbyn could still come out on top? It wasn’t to be. Instead the Labour leader stumbled around for things to say in one of his worst performances to date. Corbyn began by offering May an easy pot shot when he accused her of leading a government in chaos. The Prime Minister responded with an effective — if predictable — retort that while she usually does not take lectures

Last night Jeremy Corbyn gathered with thousands of supporters on Parliament Square to protest against the government’s failure to guarantee the rights of EU migrants in the UK. Upon hearing the chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear – all EU migrants welcome here!’ Theresa May performed a sensational U-turn. Britain now has an open doors policy to anyone with a pulse and a dream. Or so might have been the case, had Jeremy Corbyn bothered to turn up to his own rally. Instead, a motley rabble of speakers from such august institutions as Stop the War, the Socialist Workers Party, and the National Union of Students, preached to

Philip Hammond had, in his first few months of Chancellor, gained rather a reputation for being an ‘Eeyore’ about the consequences of Brexit. In the run-up to today’s Budget, it was briefed that he would be much more upbeat about things, while also storing up a ‘war chest’ to guard against any future shocks to the economy caused by Britain leaving the European Union. In the event he barely talked about it at all.  He told the Chamber that ‘as we start our negotiations to exit the European Union, this Budget takes forward our plan to prepare Britain for a brighter future’, and ’our task today is to take the

If you want to judge the extent of the crisis that is paralysing the left, look at this morning’s Guardian. On the one hand you have an article from Abi Wilkinson, who tellingly doesn’t even mention the Labour leader’s name. Convincingly to my mind, Wilkinson argues that the May government ought to be in all kinds of trouble. May herself is an evasive and awkward politician. She is presiding over an NHS that has had more austerity than it can stand. The British Red Cross may have been guilty of hyperbole when it said the UK faced a ‘humanitarian crisis’ across the whole of its health service. But individual patients are finding that, as far

As Budget day approaches, the opposition are attempting to pile pressure on the Tories. As part of these efforts, Jeremy Corbyn has published details of his tax return in an effort to force Philip Hammond to do the same. However, if the stunt was meant to put the focus on the Chancellor, it has backfired spectacularly this evening. Rather than questions being raised over Hammond’s finances, Corbyn is facing questions over his own. Namely whether he declared his full income as Labour leader. His tax return shows that he earned £114,342 in 2015-16, and paid £35,298 in tax. However, as the Leader of the Opposition, it’s thought he would also be in line for

Were I a Labour party strategist I wouldn’t be too distressed by the news that the party has lost 26,000 members since last summer. On the contrary, I would regard it as the possible beginning of a very long road back to power. Until Jeremy Corbyn came along there was a received wisdom that modern political parties were becoming isolated from the views of the public as a whole because their once mass memberships had shrunk to a few party faithful. Not only has Corbyn disproved this theory, his experience suggests that the opposite might be the case: having a large membership is a hindrance to winning elections. If driving