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

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

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

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

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

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

On the morning after the European Union referendum, Britain looked like a country in crisis. The Prime Minister had resigned, Scotland’s first minister was talking about a second independence referendum and the FTSE was in free fall. In several EU capitals, there was an assumption that, when the Brexit talks began, Britain would be the new Greece: a country that could ill afford to reject any deal offered by the EU, no matter how humiliating. In the days following the vote, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, declared that Britain had just ‘collapsed — politically, economically, monetarily and constitutionally’. Five months on, Britain is in a stronger position than Rutte

It’s a big day in the Commons with the Autumn Statement. Perhaps that’s why seat tensions ran so high at PMQs among Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. After arriving in good time, Diane Abbott — dressed in a showstopping silver jacket — secured a prime seat next to the dear leader. Alas when Tom Watson arrived, Labour’s deputy leader thought that he should be the one who gets to sit next to Corbyn. The shadow home secretary was less than keen to give up her spot — leaving Watson awkwardly standing as a heated discussion ensued before everyone eventually agreed to budge up. ‘Taking a lady’s seat?! Labour really do have

People say Corbyn’s getting better. I wonder. He seemed out of touch today. Soaring employment, falling inflation, the booming stock-market, the Trump ascendancy, the implosion of Isis, the Aleppo siege? He ignored the lot. He brought up the exiled Chagos Islanders whose right to return has been denied for decades. Having mentioned them, and enjoyed a flush of reflected sanctity, he dropped the issue entirely. Poor old Chagos. Its scattered natives are used to being abandoned by false-friend statesmen but this seemed particularly cynical. Corbyn’s main brainwave today was to deploy all his rhetorical skill, all his mastery of the political arts, to lure Mrs May into accidentally disclosing her red-lines