Jeremy corbyn

Barring a most spectacular Mossad operation – and I wouldn’t put it past them – Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected Labour leader on Saturday. There is almost nothing Labour moderates can do about this now but accept the annihilation facing them at the next election; even then, party members may still re-elect Corbyn, or choose someone from a similar background, maybe even someone more left-wing if such a thing exists. There is nothing that can be done because the make-up of the Labour Party has now changed. Last year former Labour councillor Michael Harris wrote a fascinating piece on how the party has effectively allowed itself to be taken over. There is

Personally, I should have no hesitation in identifying my favourite biscuit. It would be Bahlsen’s Choco Leibniz, which is as much chocolate as biscuit, the milk version for preference, though the dark is just fine too. It’s probably made in Germany, so it would, accordingly, be quite impossible for a British politician to identify with. I also like my own biscuits, which are way better than the shop bought sort (may I recommend Bee’s Brilliant Biscuits, a new biscuit book, for beginners?) but again you couldn’t say so if you were a party leader, because it would be too non-populist. I rather applaud Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to the biscuit question, posed –

Any Britain politician of note will at some point in their career face the question: what is your favourite biscuit? While David Cameron opted for oatcakes, Gordon Brown had to take a recess to consider his options — before returning to say that anything with ‘a bit of chocolate’ would suffice. Today it was Jeremy Corbyn’s turn to step up to the plate. Although the question was inevitable, the Labour leader showed little enthusiasm for any type of biscuit. Instead, he launched into a lecture on the danger of sugar: ‘I’m totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits, but if forced to accept one, it’s always a pleasure

The leaking – accidental or otherwise – of a list of Labour MPs allegedly guilty of abusive behaviour towards Jeremy Corbyn is yet another illustration of quite how divided the party is, and quite how messy things are going to be when Corbyn tries to reassert his authority following what looks certain to be his re-election to the top job. We now have MPs such as Neil Coyle consulting legal opinion on whether to sue their party leader. If you wanted the antonym of ‘happy ship’, the Labour Party is a pretty good option. The Labour leader and John McDonnell today took questions on the matter after a speech on

Remember how it was? Many fans of Westminster still recall with fondness the happy afternoons when the Tories used to greet Ed Miliband at PMQs with a storm of ironic contempt. Nowadays the Labour-shambles is barely worth a half-hearted jeer let alone a burst of orchestrated scoffing. When Corbyn stands up at the despatch box, with his Oxfam suit and his whopping tofu-tum, he gets something close to library-silence from the Conservatives. There’s a Chinese whisper of resentment, a few chuntering snuffles, the odd yawned harrumph. That’s all. It’s the sound of 300 well-fed hogs resettling themselves during an afternoon nap. What politics needs is the intoxicating roar of crack-troops

Jeremy Corbyn has today announced the launch of the Labour Organising Academy, a new body designed to look at methods of turning the party’s newly engorged membership into an effective campaigning body. In the pamphlet he produced, Corbyn observes that ‘Labour is now Europe’s biggest political party’ and that the ‘party’s membership will transform how Labour campaigns’. The launch of this might feel somewhat hasty. After all, the leadership campaign won’t be concluded until the announcement at party conference in Liverpool on 24 September – but it represents a big change for Corbyn. It is a tacit acceptance of the notion that his supporters are too inward looking, too concerned with

What can you fill your time with if you’re a former Labour frontbencher left twiddling your thumbs as a result of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership? Well, as Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna have shown this week by launching themselves into campaigns to replace Keith Vaz, chairing a select committee is a pretty attractive option, particularly when it is one as prestigious as the Home Affairs Committee. But both have also shown over the past few months that it is possible to be a forlorn former frontbencher and still achieve something. Umunna was on the airwaves on Monday morning talking about migration controls: a slot his Shadow Cabinet colleagues might only dream

It’s a long way from Westminster to the banks of the Zambesi. But last week, for me, they linked up. I was lolling on my bed in the Sausage Tree Safari Camp, writing up notes for a travel article. Then a single, iridescent, rather delicate green wasp buzzed into my room and settled on my mosquito net. I folded my laptop. Looked at the wasp. And I got a sudden vision of Jeremy Corbyn and the fate of the Labour party. To explain. The reason I was able to identify the wasp so quickly — and assure myself that it was no threat — is because this wasp is one

Bit early for a lap of honour. At PMQs Mrs May congratulated her government (i.e. herself) on fifty marvellous days in government. And she drew comparisons between her polished style and the Corbyn car-wreck. One view is that the chimpanzees’ tea-party currently posing as Her Majesty’s opposition should remain beneath the attention of Number 10. Mrs May disagrees and she used Labour’s woes as the starting point for some carefully scripted comedy. With mixed results. Delivering gags is tough. Delivering someone else’s gags is tougher. Delivering someone else’s out-of-date gags is so tough that it borders on crazy. But the PM is, understandably perhaps, tempted by the illusion of omnipotence