Jeremy corbyn

Oh dear. Although Jeremy Corbyn faces plenty of opposition on the right of his party, up until now he has managed to keep those on the left of Labour on side. But his decision to issue three-line-whip on MPs to vote in favour of Article 50 means that this could all be about to change. Derek Hatton, the ‘socialist firebrand’ who joined Labour with the Trotskyist group Militant (before being expelled), has been one of Corbyn’s most vocal supporters. However, in a column for the Liverpool Echo, he has turned on the Labour leader — expressing doubts over his future: ‘I can’t believe Corbyn is arguing for Labour MPs to vote with the

Perversity is a much undervalued British trait, much more redolent of our real psyche than queuing, drinking tea or being tolerant of foreigners and homosexuals — all things for which we are better renowned. Seeing Dunkirk as a victory was magnificently perverse. So, too, was electing a Labour government in 2005 shortly after we had invaded a sovereign country and created a civil war. For ‘perversity’ I suppose you could read ‘complexity’, although the two often amount to the same thing. Our reactions to stuff are never as straightforward as they should be — they are complex and therefore can seem perverse. And so it is right now. For three

Mr Corbyn has spent a week shuddering at goblins that don’t exist. At least outside his head. But he wants his posse of demons to exist in our heads too. So he keeps conjuring them up. He says Mrs May is about to turn Britain into ‘an offshore tax haven.’ Being a Puritan he hasn’t noticed that this has an attractive, Hefner-ish feel. It suggests white sands and azure waves, the tinkling of steel-drums, and bottles of Red Stripe being served at ten cents a time by pouting lovelies straining out of their bra-cups. To be fair, Corbyn’s team of wordsmiths have spotted the problem. So the boss has been

He was supposed to be the third man of the French Socialist primary held on Sunday. While all eyes were on Manuel Valls, the steely former Prime Minister, and Arnaud Montebourg, the charismatic former Economy Minister, the somewhat subdued former education minister Benoît Hamon was never considered a potential frontrunner. And yet only a couple of weeks after Francois Fillon’s shock victory in the conservative primary, history seems to be repeating itself. Hamon has not won yet, but with over 36 percent of the votes he has a comfortable advance after the first round. Valls, who finished second with 31.1 percent of the votes, was quick to state that ‘a

Jeremy Corbyn is a famous rebel, so famous that when he was elected, many in his party wondered how he might tell MPs to vote the way he wanted them to when he himself had refused to listen to the whips throughout his backbench career. When he was still a backbencher, he enjoyed telling a tale about Sadiq Khan, then his whip, ringing him up to check he would definitely be rebelling on a certain vote, and not bothering to waste his energy trying to get him to abstain instead. Now the Labour leader is faced with one of those awkward moments that involve him telling his MPs to vote

It’s difficult to escape from Donald Trump’s interview with Michael Gove in the Times this morning. The president-elect’s view that he wants a quick trade deal with Britain is not only leading a number of newspaper front pages, it’s also stirring up excitement in the editorials. Here’s what the newspapers are saying: In its editorial, the Times says its interview with the ‘refreshingly candid’ president-elect should reassure us about the prospect of a Trump presidency. Take Syria, for instance: it’s true that Trump ‘clearly grasps’ the scale of the crisis there. It’s also ‘reassuring’ to hear Trump commit to a strong Nato. And the fact he wants early talks with Theresa May on

‘I’m really interested about the similarities between me and Donald Trump,’ joked Jeremy Corbyn this morning on Marr. ‘Is it the hair or something?’ When the Labour leader expounded upon his Trump-esque analysis of the system that is rigged against the people, it turned out that the main difference between him and the American president was that he wants a series of constitutional reforms including overhaul of the House of Lords and more political representation of the North. Which doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you can shout at a rally, whether or not you have ludicrous hair. Corbyn managed to dodge questions on how far Labour would pursue

At PMQs today, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t have a disaster: there was no repeat of yesterday’s shambles. But he didn’t take full advantage of the opening he had. Yes, he went on the NHS—but he didn’t cause Theresa May as much trouble as he could have. There was no reference to the Times’ story this morning claiming that Downing Street is blaming Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS. Nor did he manage to create any daylight between May and the Health Secretary over changes to the four-hour waiting target and Hunt’s warning that people turning up to A&E unnecessarily is a large part of the problem. This isn’t to

For a man prepared to stick to his principles over decades, no matter how unpopular they make him, Jeremy Corbyn has changed his mind a remarkable number of times today. His latest stance on freedom of movement is as follows: ‘Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle, but I don’t want that to be misinterpreted, nor do we rule it out.’ This makes the party’s infamous ‘controls on immigration’ mug from the 2015 election look like such a simple, wholesome proposition. Here is the evolution of Corbyn’s stance: Last night: Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens