jeremy corbyn Archives

Thursday

28 Jul 2016

Nick Cohen

Enemies of history

At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to understand British and American politics. By 2016, I would say that they have become essential. Admittedly, connoisseurs of the communist movement’s crimes have always thought that 1928 was a vintage year. The Soviet Union had decided that the first period after the glorious Russian revolution of 1917 had been succeeded by a second period, when the West fought back. But now, comrades, yes, now in the historic year of 1928, Stalin had ruled that we were entering a ‘third period’ when capitalism would die in its final crisis. As the

Monday

25 Jul 2016

James Forsyth

Sarah Champion unresigns and returns to Labour frontbench

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, was one of the Labour frontbenchers who resigned in an attempt to force Jeremy Corbyn to quit as Labour leader. But today, she has asked for —and been given — her job back. Now, Champion was just a frontbencher, not a full member of the shadow Cabinet. But her un-resignation is another straw in the wind suggesting that things are moving in Corbyn’s favour. Champion’s willingness to return to the front bench suggests that she’s resigned to Corbyn winning when the results are announced in September. It also enables Corbyn to say that by allowing her to come back, he has shown that

Friday

22 Jul 2016

James Forsyth

Len McCluskey warns that the security services might be trying to sabotage Jeremy Corbyn

The Labour leadership election has become even more bizarre today. Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite the Union and a key Corbyn backer, has given a Guardian interview in which he suggest that the ugly behaviour of Corbyn supporters online is actually the work of the security services. He tells Decca Aitkenhead: “Do people believe for one second that the security forces are not involved in dark practices? Decca, I have been around long enough … the type of stuff that we ultimately find out about, under the 30-year rule.” When Aitkenhead challenges him on this, McCluskey continues: “Well, I tell you what, anybody who thinks that that isn’t happening

Thursday

21 Jul 2016

Ross Clark

The NHS would be crippled without big pharma

Like Owen Smith, I have an interest to declare when discussing Pfizer. Somewhere on my bookshelf I have a Pfizer physics prize – a school prize funded by the US pharmaceutical giant which at the time had a research facility nearby. Later, Pfizer helped fund an extension to the school which, appropriately enough given its best-known product, rose to twice the height of the existing science block. I don’t, then, share the view of Jeremy Corbyn who seems to see Pfizer as part of an evil empire trying to undermine the NHS. Rather I see it as a company which, while it gets into the odd scrape with regulators, has

Isabel Hardman

What matters in Labour’s leadership contest is what works

Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to strike a contrast between his beliefs and those of his Labour leadership rival Owen Smith would have rather big implications or medical research in this country. The Labour leader told the launch of his campaign to hold on to his job that pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer shouldn’t take on medical research: ‘I hope Owen will fully agree with me that our NHS should be free at the point of use, should be run by publicly employed workers working for the NHS not for private contractors, and medical research shouldn’t be farmed out to big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and others but should be funded through the

Steerpike

Sorry Jeremy, shouldn’t Labour’s gender equality review start at home?

Today Jeremy Corbyn has launched his campaign ahead of the Labour leadership election. Corbyn, who is being challenged by Owen Smith, used the launch to announce that — under him — the next Labour government would introduce compulsory pay audits for companies with more than 21 staff — in order to show whether or not they are discriminating against female employees. However when asked by Sky News if this meant he would publish an equal pay audit for his own office, Corbyn failed to commit. Perhaps that’s for the best given that any such report is unlikely to make inspiring reading. Forget comparing the salary difference between women and men in the top jobs, when

Tom Goodenough

Diane Abbott sticks the knife into Owen Smith as she compares him to David Cameron

If we didn’t know it before, Diane Abbott has made it clear that this summer’s Labour leadership contest is going to be very nasty indeed. On the day Jeremy Corbyn will officially launch his campaign, his loyal ally has taken to the airwaves to stick the knife into his challenger Owen Smith. We’ve had a taste of just how the Corbynistas are planning to attack Smith before and it seems his links to Pfizer, where he used to work, will be the main thrust of their attempts to undermine him. Abbott made that much obvious this morning. She managed to concede that Owen was a ‘great bloke and so on’,

Steerpike

Corbyn campaign website sends a mixed message

With Owen Smith now Jeremy Corbyn’s official challenger in the leadership election, the pair will spend the summer campaigning ahead of the September vote. Thankfully Corbyn has a shiny new leadership website titled ‘Jeremy4Leader’ to help him do exactly this. However, judging by the main photo one could be forgiven for thinking it was a site for the Socialist Workers Party. Although the site is designed to ‘help get Jeremy re-elected as Labour leader’, in the photo — from a march in support of Corbyn — there are several SWP placards as well as a charming sign with a picture of Hilary Benn — and the caption ‘chat sh–, get sacked’: The

Hugo Rifkind

Hand over £25, or the centre-left gets it

In order to become a ‘registered supporter’ of the Labour party, you first have to disclose whether you’re a member of an organisation opposed to the Labour party. Such as, I suppose, the Labour party. You also have to affirm that you agree with the party’s ‘aims and values’, which must be the hardest bit, because who alive now knows what those are? If the leader of the Labour party — to pick an example not wholly at random — agrees with the aims of the Labour party, then how come he just voted against the party’s own manifesto in order to oppose Trident? Or is the idea supposed to

Wednesday

20 Jul 2016

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Theresa May’s hard head and soft heart is terrifying for Labour

What we know for sure about our secretive new PM is that she uses her clothes as a bush-telegraph. What did the tom-toms tell us? Mrs May was done up like an Evesham house-wife going to dinner with her husband’s boss in about 1950. Neat hair. Navy blue jacket. White top underneath. A rope of fake pearls and just a hint of neck. Across the shires the faithful will have cheered this display of Brief Encounter elegance. She was good at the despatch box, nervous certainly, sometimes stumbling over her words. But she produced a forceful impression of competence and compassion. Hard head. Soft heart. She has ‘grip’ as they

Steerpike

Meet Jeremy Corbyn’s new Question Time champion – the Vote Leave campaigner

After Jeremy Corbyn faced a vote of no confidence from Labour MPs over his lacklustre effort in the failed Remain campaign, a leadership contest is now underway. Corbyn and his challenger Owen Smith will spend the summer campaigning against one another for the leadership. However, in order to have a vote supporters only have until 5pm today to cough up £25 to join the party as a registered supporter. In order to encourage his supporters to do exactly this, Jeremy Corbyn has today tweeted a video of his new star supporter Michelle Dorrell. Michelle will look familiar to many. She appeared on Question Time last year in the midst of the Tories’ tax credits

Tom Goodenough

Did Theresa May’s flash of nastiness at PMQs tell of trouble to come?

That Theresa May ‘won’ Prime Minister’s Questions today, there is no doubt. Tory backbencher Simon Hoare said it was ‘game, set and match’ and few are likely to disagree with that summation of what took place in the Commons. Jeremy Corbyn was repeatedly left floundering throughout by a politician who showed that she means business. As James Forsyth says, the Labour benches looked even more fed-up than usual upon their realisation of just how effective an adversary May will be. But from the woman who famously coined the ‘nasty party’ term about the Tories, was there also a part of that moniker on display from the despatch box this afternoon? It

Hugo Rifkind

Hand over £25, or the centre-left gets it | 20 July 2016

In order to become a ‘registered supporter’ of the Labour party, you first have to disclose whether you’re a member of an organisation opposed to the Labour party. Such as, I suppose, the Labour party. You also have to affirm that you agree with the party’s ‘aims and values’, which must be the hardest bit, because who alive now knows what those are? If the leader of the Labour party — to pick an example not wholly at random — agrees with the aims of the Labour party, then how come he just voted against the party’s own manifesto in order to oppose Trident? Or is the idea supposed to

James Forsyth

Theresa May wipes the floor with Jeremy Corbyn at her first PMQs

Theresa May was utterly brutal with Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs today. She mocked the Labour leader repeatedly, leaving the Tory benches delighted and the Labour benches looking more miserable than ever. Once again, Corbyn’s problem was his inability to think on his feet. He asked May about Boris Johnson saying that some of Barack Obama’s view came from him being ‘part-Kenyan’ and his use of the word ‘piccaninnies’. May didn’t defend the new Foreign Secretary, instead choosing to answer a different bit of Corbyn’s question. But the Labour leader failed, as he so often does, to properly follow up on this. Corbyn then walked into a trap. He asked May

Nick Cohen

The moral case against Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are making much of Owen Smith’s work as a corporate lobbyist for Big Pharma before he entered politics. Whether he behaved unethically is irrelevant. To anyone who knows the culture of the left, his old job description alone can be enough to damn him. Reciting ‘corporate lobbyist’ in many left-wing quarters produces the same effect as reciting Satan’s name in a nunnery. No wickedness is unimaginable once such a demon is conjured from the depths. As I would expect, Corbyn supporters are already implying on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that Smith wants to privatise the NHS. Whether Smith responds in kind will tell you whether moral arguments

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May ridicules ‘unscrupulous’ Corbyn over Labour job insecurity

In recent weeks, Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity has hit a new low with the Parliamentary Labour Party. Things are so bad that he is unable to assemble a full Shadow Cabinet — instead having to assign some people with more than one position. So, it was an interesting move of the Labour leader to bring up job insecurity and difficult bosses at today’s PMQs. Corbyn suggested that Theresa May had much work to do when it came to making employment rights fairer. Alas, the Prime Minister was unimpressed with Corbyn’s complaints. Channeling her inner Thatcher, May went on to suggest that it was he who was the guilty one when it came to

Tom Goodenough

Which Labour MPs are backing Owen Smith?

Owen Smith is now in a head-to-head battle with Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership. We’ll know by September 24th – the day before the Labour party conference starts – who has come out on top. As things stand, Corbyn is the clear favourite: a recent YouGov poll put the party’s current leader 20 points ahead of his rival. But Owen Smith is not going to relinquish without a fight and has already been doing his best to counter one of his main problems – how well-known he is. Smith has been positioning himself as the ‘radical’ yet ‘normal’ alternative to Corbyn in various interviews. He’s also vowed to be

Cindy Yu

Coffee House Shots: Owen Smith’s ‘Mission-bloody-difficult’

Jeremy Corbyn is the clear favourite to win the Labour leadership battle, if yesterday’s YouGov poll is anything to go on. But now that Angela Eagle has dropped out of the race, is it just possible that Owen Smith might unite the anti-Corbyn vote and oust Jeremy? In this Coffee House Shots podcast, Fraser Nelson is joined by Isabel Hardman and YouGov’s Marcus Roberts to discuss what chance Owen Smith has in this race. Marcus Roberts tells Fraser Nelson that: ‘It’s not Mission Impossible – but it is a Mission Bloody Difficult, to put it mildly. What Owen Smith has to do now is to appeal – not just to

Tom Goodenough

Is Owen Smith ‘radical’ or ‘normal’? He needs to be both to defeat Corbyn

Owen Smith has told us he’s both ‘radical’ and ‘normal’. It doesn’t take a genius to work out those characteristics aren’t compatible. Yet, Owen Smith knows he needs to try and be both if he is to defy the huge odds and win this Labour leadership race. And therein lies the problem. Smith is deftly attempting a balancing act between praising Corbyn (his ‘radical’ bit) whilst trying to offer those policies in a more electable package (the ‘normal’ bit). So can Smith manage to do both? It’s going to be a tricky ask but he tried his best just now during his Today interview. After praising Corbyn as someone who

Tuesday

19 Jul 2016

Rod Liddle

If smarmy Owen Smith is the answer, Labour’s asking the wrong question

Jesus H Christ. Is this what it comes down to? A smarmy post-Tribunite nonentity swathed in unrealistic ambition, versus Chauncey Gardener? It is close to pointless wondering who to support between these political titans, Owen Smith or Jeremy Corbyn. If Smith wins, which I doubt very, very, much, he is no more adept to change the nature of the party than is Corbyn. He has not the nous, balls or means to challenge the activist base and thus recapture those Labour votes which, since 2005, have been winnowing away to Ukip, or the Tories, or to nowhere. Nor even that much support within the PLP. There are two big issues