Jeremy corbyn

PMQs sketch: Confident Corbyn tries to cook up a Christmas crisis

Corbyn’s improvement continues. He thumped away at a single issue today – social care – in a determined attempt to corner Teresa May and stick the word ‘crisis’ on her jacket, like a brooch. A crisis for the elderly, he said. A crisis for families. A crisis for the NHS. ‘A crisis made in Downing Street.’ His delivery still havers and wavers a lot but the drum-machine technique, banging out identical noises in a hypnotic rhythm, was effective. She met his assault with verbal trinkets composed by back-room smart Alecs in Westminster: the future Osbornes and Camerons. Rejecting the word ‘crisis’ she called it ‘short-term pressure’. She also mentioned ‘sustainability’,

James Forsyth

PMQs: Festive silliness before Corbyn gives his best performance yet

PMQs began with the Labour MP Peter Dowd asking Theresa May if she didn’t wish that she had told Boris Johnson to FO rather than sending him to the FO. To which, May replied that he was a fine Foreign Secretary — an FFS. At this point, it seemed that the session, the last PMQs before Christmas, might descend into festive silliness. But that didn’t happen. Jeremy Corbyn urged people to buy the Jo Cox charity single, a call May echoed, before moving onto social care. Over the next five questions, Corbyn turned in his best PMQs performance — admittedly not a particularly high a bar to clear. Corbyn kept

Isabel Hardman

Could Labour give the Boris Johnson row the attention it deserves?

What could Jeremy Corbyn attack Theresa May with this week at Prime Minister’s Questions? The Labour leader has already had a go at the crisis in social care funding, which the government is trying to patch up this week by raising the council tax precept from 2 per cent to 4 per cent. He could have another go, given what has long been a serious issue is starting to become a political row too. The problem is that the Labour leader so often retreats to social care and the NHS as a comfort blanket that his attacks are a little blunter than they could be. One row that really hasn’t

Jeremy Corbyn’s Christmas drinks – Chilcot, trouser-gate and pork pies

Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party has struggled when it comes to forging a positive relationship with the MSM (mainstream media). Right wing press aside, Corbyn has taken issue with coverage from the BBC, New Statesman, The Guardian, the Mirror and Channel Four. However, are times a-changin’? Last night journalists were welcomed into the Leader’s Office for Corbyn’s Christmas drinks. True to form, Corbyn stayed on brand — using a box Chilcot Reports as a handy door stopper. However, in a sign that he is willing to compromise in order to appeal to the masses, the vegetarian lay on a spread of chicken legs and pork pies for hungry hacks.

Rod Liddle

We’re seeing the sad death of the once noble Labour party

Sleaford wasn’t terribly good for Labour, was it? Nor indeed Richmond Park. Sleaford was never very Labour friendly – although, even given that, the party’s performance was staggeringly abject. Richmond has not been historically Labour-friendly – but given its current trajectory, towards the achingly liberal and affluent London upper class, you might have expected a better performance than the one they turned in (with an excellent candidate, incidentally, in Christian Wolmar). It has long been a given that Labour will lose vast numbers of seats in the north of England (and the midlands), in a similar fashion to its capitulation, north of the border, to the SNP. But now the

Jeremy Corbyn unveils his Christmas card

Last year it was a bicycle, this year it’s a dove. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn has refrained from using a photo of himself for Labour’s annual Christmas card for a second year: However with May, too, opting for an illustration, Mr S is beginning to miss the Cameron and Miliband years.

Katy Balls

Labour left put Jeremy Corbyn on notice

After a disappointing result for Labour in the Sleaford by-election on Friday, over the weekend it fell on Diane Abbott and Ken Livingstone to take to the airwaves to try and generate some good PR for the beleaguered party. However, things didn’t go quite to plan as Abbott — the shadow home secretary — attempted to attack the Conservatives for in-fighting over Europe while not being able to say what Labour’s position was. Nick Robinson — standing in for Andrew Marr — went on to read quotes from different Labour politicians raising concerns about Jeremy Corbyn’s position on freedom of movement: NR: This is why people talk about confusion. The man who is

Labour’s terminal decline began before Jeremy Corbyn

Labour’s dire performance in the Sleaford by-election is just the latest sign of a party in terminal decline. To cap it off, a YouGov poll out this week puts them 17 points behind the Tories – their worse showing since the gloomy days of Gordon Brown. Jeremy Corbyn is taking his share of the blame for the miserable state of the Labour party. But for me, the beginning of the end for Labour can be traced back to well before Corbyn. The third of March, 2011, to be precise. It was on this day the Barnsley Central by-election brought rising Labour star Dan Jarvis into Parliament. As a rookie reporter for the Barnsley Chronicle, I

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn faces protest over Russia during human rights speech

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn tried to move the conversation from Labour’s bad polling to human rights, with a speech to mark International Human Rights Day. However, while Corbyn wished to speak about championing women’s rights across the world, Peter Tatchell and anti-war campaigners had other ideas. As the Labour leader spoke at Methodist Central Hall, Tatchell interrupted to accuse of Corbyn of not doing enough to condemn the actions of Russia in Syria: Jeremy Corbyn's speech had been disrupted by protests led by Peter Tatchell https://t.co/98nguJsSmY — Sky News (@SkyNews) December 10, 2016 ‘What is happening in Aleppo is a modern-day Guernica. We haven’t heard the leader of the Labour party speak out enough

James Forsyth

Labour has even bigger problems than Jeremy Corbyn these days

Want proof of how bad things are for Labour? Jeremy Corbyn and his disastrous leadership is not even its biggest problem anymore. I write in The Sun that Labour’s biggest problem, and it is potentially an existential one, is that its reaction to the Brexit vote is threatening to make it a political irrelevance More than 60 percent of Labour seats voted to leave the EU. In these constituencies, being the party that is trying to block Brexit would be electoral suicide. That’s why the Labour leadership felt compelled to accept the government’s amendment this week saying Theresa May should start the formal, two-year process for leaving the EU by

Emily Thornberry’s PMQs performance should worry Jeremy Corbyn

The PM is abroad. Her vacant throne was occupied by David Lidington, the agreeably lightweight Leader of the House. He’s confident, fast-talking, well-briefed but glib and untidy-looking. He doesn’t improvise well. Physically he’s an unrestful presence. He hops and twitches and pecks and dabs like a pigeon attacking a box of Chicken McNuggets. For comic effect he likes to turn sideways with both arms outstretched as if entreating somebody in the wings. A speaking coach would tell him to calm down, put his hands in his pockets and stop head-butting imaginary bees. He made no errors today. He didn’t exactly shine. Bumptious competence was his level. Opposite him was Emily

Nick Cohen

Marxist-Leninists are now the Labour party’s moderates

There are three misconceptions about the far left. Not one of them is true. And all of them hide the crisis in the opposition, which is giving a dangerously incompetent Government unparalleled and unwarranted freedom of manoeuvre. The first is that its obsession with doctrinal disputes makes far leftists Pythonesque figures of ridicule, rather than a malicious force with malign political consequences. We are then told that the young pass through a ‘left wing phase,’ as if it were a rite of passage like drinking cider or puberty. They believe extreme ideas and shout angry slogans, but when they realise the true nature of the far left they grow up and move on. Finally, moderate commentators always reach

David Davis sets the cat among the pigeons at Brexit questions

David Davis put the cat among the pigeons in the chamber today. The Brexit secretary — who takes a more relaxed approach to discussing Brexit than his tight-lipped boss — talked at length as he was asked various questions on the government’s Brexit position. The news line came after Labour’s Wayne David asked if the government would consider ‘making any contribution in any shape or form for access to the single market’ after Brexit. In response, David said the government would consider it: ‘The major criterion here is that we get the best possible access for goods and services to the European market. And if that is included in what he’s talking about, then

PMQs Sketch: Striking attitudes in the Chamber

Sometimes PMQs is about policy. Sometimes it’s about posturing. Today everyone was striking attitudes like mad. Jeremy Corbyn over-stated the levels of suffering in the country. He painted a picture of workhouse Britain where ‘four million children’ live ‘in poverty’. He means ‘relative poverty’, an elastic term, which covers every child in the land, including those of David Cameron who are ‘poor’ relative to the children of Bill Gates. God-squad veteran, Chris Bryant, argued that the state shouldn’t just improve our lives but our deaths as well. He took us back to a funeral he once conducted during an adolescent phase when he thought he was a vicar. ‘Everyone was

James Forsyth

PMQs gets interesting as Tory Eurosceptics coordinate their activities

A rare event at PMQs as Jeremy Corbyn went on the economy. The Labour leader had some well-crafted questions but rather spoiled things by confusing the IMF and the IFS, enabling Theresa May to declare that it is a good job she stands at the government despatch box and he sits on the opposition front bench. May gave little away, as is her wont, but Corbyn again went on social care — which is, obviously, an area where Labour think they can make political advances. A couple of Tory Eurosceptics asked May about reciprocal rights for UK and EU citizens respectively and the refusal of the EU to engage on

What the papers say: Labour’s Ukip nightmare

After being made Ukip leader yesterday, Paul Nuttall wasted no time in making it clear who he had in his sights: the Labour party. Nuttall said he wanted Ukip to ‘replace Labour’ within five years. And in its editorial, the Times says this threat spells a ‘nightmare’ scenario for Labour. The paper says that while ‘healing’ Ukip’s own ‘wounds’ won’t be easy following a fractious and divisive few months, ‘the rewards could be historic’; it says that a two per cent swing towards Ukip would lose Labour 13 seats, while Labour ‘would lose 19 more’ seats if one in five Labour voters sided with Nuttall’s party. But can Ukip pull it

Is Justin Trudeau totally clueless about Castro’s Cuba?

In Miami’s Little Havana, champagne fizzed all weekend. Meanwhile, the rest of us in the free world amused ourselves comparing the barmiest political reactions to the death of Fidel Castro. Jeremy Corbyn is strong in the running for the ‘Despot Hagiography Award’, though top honours must go to the national statesmen remembering a tyrant as a saint. ‘A giant among global leaders,’ Irish President Michael Higgins gushed, ‘whose view was not only one of freedom for his people but for all of the oppressed and excluded peoples on the planet.’ His statement went on to praise Cuba’s health system as ‘one of the most admired in the world’. Yes, the same one where

Katy Balls

Paul Nuttall’s election is bad news for Labour

Today Paul Nuttall has been appointed Ukip leader, winning over 62 pc of the vote. His election marks a new chapter for the party, after months of in-fighting and confusion since the Brexit vote. A popular figure in the party, many had hoped he would run in the first leadership election, that Diane James went on to win — before quitting after just 18 days. Better late than never, Nuttall now has a good chance of uniting the party behind him. In his acceptance speech, Nuttall wasted no time in setting out his vision for Ukip post-Brexit. He said he hoped ‘to replace the Labour party and make Ukip the patriotic

Castro created a façade for tourists – and misery for Cubans. Why can’t Corbyn see that?

To hear Jeremy Corbyn hail Fidel Castro as a great hero of social justice is to be reminded that those who toast communists are never those who have actually lived under communism. Corbyn has visited Cuba: He might have been taken on a day tour of Havana, where tourists are ushered to buy famous Cuban cigars, replicas of Che Guevara’s hat and postcards with historic revolutionary slogans such as ‘¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!’ On his bicycling tour Corbyn will have doubtless visited the charming colonial towns of Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba and Cienfuegos, perhaps swam in the Bay of Pigs or conducted a pilgrimage to Castro’s 1950s rebel headquarters in Comandancia

Katy Balls

Emily Thornberry’s Marr interview sparks more Brexit confusion for Labour

Today Emily Thornberry appeared on the Andrew Marr show to talk left-wing dictators and Brexit. Following in the footsteps of Jeremy Corbyn, the shadow foreign secretary praised the late Fidel Castro. She spoke fondly of what he had done for Cuba’s national health service — but conceded such benefits ‘came at a price’. However, the comments most likely to land her in hot water come tomorrow related to Brexit. Ever since the referendum result, Labour have struggled to come up with a coherent position on leaving the EU. While Corbyn previously suggested his party would block Article 50 if single market membership was not a part of the deal, Tom Watson — Labour’s deputy leader —