Jeremy corbyn

Oh dear. Although Paul Mason has taken to the airwaves this morning to suggest that Scottish independence would be a good thing, it had been thought that comrade Jeremy Corbyn was still on the side of the unionists. So, Mr S was curious to hear the Labour lead thank the SNP in his speech at today’s Scottish Labour party conference. Referring to plans for a new Scottish Labour policy to increase child benefit, Corbyn confused delegates by thanking ‘our SNPs’: ‘I’m delighted Scottish Labour announced a new policy to use powers of Scottish Parliament to increase child benefit, which will lift thousands of Scottish children out of poverty. Well done Scottish Labour

Copeland was a truly awful result for Labour. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the really alarming things for Labour is that things can get worse for them. Many Labour MPs have been operating on the assumption that the NHS will keep the party’s loses down to a manageable level in 2020. But Copeland suggests that this hope is misplaced. Labour went all in on the health service there and had no shortage of material to work with, the maternity unit at the local hospital is under threat. By the end of the campaign, Labour’s message was perilously close to vote for us or the baby gets

Labour’s famously vocal moderates have been awfully quiet today, given one of their number – Jamie Reed – has just been replaced by a Tory in a hugely embarrassing by-election defeat for the party. The centrist wing of the party, now almost exclusively a backbench club, has taken a vow of silence because it doesn’t want to be accused of salivating at the loss of a seat or of conforming to the ‘Bitterite’ stereotype of MPs undermining the Labour brand. This is particularly important given some Corbynites are still blaming last summer’s attempted coup by the Parliamentary Labour Party for any catastrophe it encounters, including losing Copeland. That coup didn’t

The so-called leader of the so-called opposition gave another so-called performance today. Jeremy Corbyn seems to have challenged the Labour party to a slalom race. Target: rock bottom. Go Corbo! his enemies cheer as they watch his hapless figure slithering and shimmying down the ice-floes of public contempt. Today he came to the Commons with grounds for hope. Which, for Corbo, means a bulletin of despair issued by a public body with a fancy title and some embossed note-paper. The Marie Curie Foundation worries that nurses are struggling to care for dying patients. And the British Medical Association complains that 15,000 beds have been trundled out of NHS wards and

Although Owen Jones, Derek Hatton and Glenda Jackson are just a few of the Labour left to turn on Jeremy Corbyn of late, the Labour leader can always rely on comrade Seumas Milne. Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications has stuck by Jeremy through thick and thin, even ending his leave with the Guardian to move to the Leader’s Office on a permanent basis. So perhaps it’s little surprise the pair have formed a special bond. In fact, word reaches Steerpike that the bromance is so strong the pair even have nicknames for each other. The talk of Labour staffers is that Corbyn refers to Milne as ‘TGM’ which stands

Given the frequency of shadow cabinet reshuffles under Jeremy Corbyn, even the most eagle-eyed Westminster residents now have difficulty identifying who makes up Labour’s frontbench. However, up until now Mr S had thought that the party at least knew. Alas not. Steerpike has been passed an internal Labour party email sent on Friday which details a lucrative job vacancy as a ‘political advisor to the shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs’: Role: Political Advisor to the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Location: Westminster Salary: Dependent on experience Duration: Fixed term contract for the period only that Grahame Morris is the Shadow

In normal times, by-elections are bad for governing parties and good for oppositions. But it is an indicator of how much trouble Labour is in, as I say in The Sun this morning, that they are the ones who are nervous ahead of Thursday’s by-elections. Some in the Labour machine seem almost resigned to losing Copeland to the Tories and are concentrating on trying to hold off Ukip in Stoke. Given that Labour is polling as low as 24% and Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings are worse than Michael Foot’s were at this point in his leadership, and the epic defeat Foot led Labour to in 1983 paved the way for 14

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage to find a new low. The latest nationwide poll puts them at 24 per cent, trailing the Tories by 16 points. No wonder Labour MPs look so boot-faced around Parliament, and an increasing number are hunting for jobs elsewhere. If a general election were called now, the Conservatives would win a huge majority. Labour would be further than ever from power, arguably even finished as a major parliamentary force. Polls are not rock-solid indicators of future electoral success or failure, but Labour’s ratings are so abysmal as to suggest a

Another week, another disappointing poll for Labour. This time it’s not even the Conservative’s 16-point lead, with Labour on just 24pc, that’s the party’s biggest problem. Worse still, Jeremy Corbyn’s beleaguered party are now the third most popular party with working class voters, according to the YouGov/Times poll. The working class approval rate puts Labour on just 20pc, with Ukip ahead on 23pc. The Conservatives continue to lead the way among lower income voters, on 39pc. Given Labour’s turmoil over Brexit, it’s not so surprising that blue collar voters are less likely to vote for Labour than Ukip. Corbyn’s party have become more associated with the liberal elite than working class voters for some time

With the latest polling on voting intentions from ICM putting Labour on 27 and the Conservatives storming ahead on 42 points (the Lib Dems and Ukip are on 10 and 12 respectively), it’s no surprise that, as James Forsyth writes in this week’s magazine, the Tories are hugely confident of winning the next general election. But Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson, speaking on Marr this morning, wasn’t about to give up on his party’s hopes anytime soon, stating that ‘we can certainly win a general election.’ ‘We’ve had a tough eighteen months. We had a damaging second leadership election, so we’ve got an uphill struggle ahead. The polls aren’t great