Jeremy corbyn

Owen Smith launches ‘radical and credible’ Labour leadership bid. But is anyone listening?

Owen Smith has officially thrown his hat into the ring for the Labour leadership contest. But the question on many people’s lips is: who is he? A recent poll of Welsh Labour voters showed that 69 per cent had no idea who Smith was. So whilst Angela Eagle’s leadership bid launch might have been overshadowed by events elsewhere in Westminster, she is at least a more familiar face to those in the party who will be picking the new leader. During his Today interview this morning, he was asked whether he was familiar enough to stand a chance. Smith had this to say: ‘Well Angela Eagle has been in Parliament

Tom Goodenough

Will Corbynistas be willing to stump up £25 to back their man?

On the day Theresa May takes control at No.10 in a comparatively seemly transition, the Labour party is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its history. Jeremy Corbyn will be on the ballot paper in what looks set to be a messy and fractious leadership contest. He also looks likely to win: in September, he picked up 59 per cent of the votes and, amongst the party’s membership, little seems to have changed to knock that support. A quick glance at Corbyn’s Facebook page reveals a lot about the huge base of support the Labour leader can count on. A not-wildly-exciting video uploaded last night in which Corbyn

Victory for Corbyn as Labour’s NEC puts him on the ballot

Jeremy Corbyn will be on the Labour leadership ballot. After a contentious meeting that lasted for almost six hours, the party’s National Executive Committee have ruled by 18-14 that as the incumbent his name will appear automatically on the ballot paper and so there is no need for him to gather nominations from MPs and MEPs. This is a massive victory for Corbyn and his wing of the party. He is now favourite to win this leadership election and if he does, the 172 Labour MPs who voted no confidence in him will either have to shut up or split off and form their own party. Crucially, if they leave

Katy Balls

Shadow Cabinet thwart Corbyn’s last-ditch attempt to stitch up NEC meeting

So, can Jeremy Corbyn automatically qualify as a candidate in Labour’s coming leadership election? The future of the party might well hang upon this question, being decided today at a meeting of the NEC, Labour’s governing council. With the decision expected to be close — down to just one or two votes — both sides are feeling rather nervous. So nervous in fact that some party members are resorting to underhand tactics. At today’s Shadow Cabinet meeting, I understand there was an attempt to ‘re-level’ the playing field. Jeremy Corbyn’s team made a last-ditch effort to remove Jon Ashworth from the NEC so there would be one less anti-Corbyn voice when it came to deciding whether

Tom Goodenough

Angela Eagle’s leadership launch goes from bad to worse: ‘I’m not crying now, am I’

There were no great bombshells being dropped elsewhere or dramas unfolding in the Tory leadership race to distract attention away from Angela Eagle during her interview this morning on Today. But the Labour leadership hopeful might have been wishing there had been. It’s a big day for Eagle, with the party’s NEC deciding today whether Jeremy Corbyn will end up on the ballot paper in the leadership contest. Yet after a doomed leadership launch yesterday in which journalists walked out to go and cover Andrea Leadsom’s decision to drop out, things didn’t go much better this morning during her interview with John Humphrys. In a particularly awkward exchange, she was asked whether

Tom Watson tries to calm tensions ahead of crunch NEC meeting

With Angela Eagle clear that she will run to be the next Labour leader and Jeremy Corbyn willing to contest any such challenge, the Labour party is in a state of stalemate until Tuesday’s meeting of the National Executive Committee. At the crunch meeting, the NEC will announce whether or not Corbyn is automatically on the ballot — with a legal challenge expected whatever the result. So with the result looming, Monday’s PLP meeting proved to be a rather muted affair as MPs wait to learn their party’s fate. Tom Watson’s spokesman described the mood as ‘not the greatest’, while John Mann walked out halfway through complaining that Emily Thornberry was ‘prattling on’. However,

Cindy Yu

Coffee House Shots: Labour’s leadership election

Labour’s leadership contest has finally been triggered as Angela Eagle made her bid for the position today. So how will this contest shape up? And will Jeremy Corbyn appear on the ballot paper? Isabel Hardman tells Fraser Nelson: ‘It’s going to be very bloody because Jeremy Corbyn wants to get back on that ballot paper, thinks he’s entitled to. If the NEC, the party’s ruling executive, says that he shouldn’t be back on that ballot paper unless he can get 51 nominations, the wrath from the membership will be enormous.’ If Corbyn prevails in this contest, might the moderates of the party then break away to form their own party? With

Isabel Hardman

Labour party split over whether to split

As well as all the other things that Labour MPs are anxious about at the moment, there is genuine anxiety in the party today that some MPs are considering splitting off to join a new, moderate group in politics. Certainly Labour MPs are pretty miserable about the state of their party – and about the way many of them are being treated by their own local parties. And many Labourites are starting to believe that a split is inevitable, with many arguing that it is wrong to be wary because of what happened to the SDP, as this would be a much larger chunk of MPs who would break off

Tom Goodenough

Angela Eagle picks the worst possible moment to launch her leadership bid

As leadership launches go, the timing could not have been worse for Angela Eagle. Moments before she was due to set out her pitch, rumours started to circulate that Andrea Leadsom was dropping out of the race for the Tory leadership. By the time Eagle had actually started speaking, Leadsom was elsewhere reading a statement confirming the news to a scrum of journalists. All of this seems particularly unfortunate for Eagle given how long she appears to have spent mulling the decision. In the end, she couldn’t have picked a worse moment to actually show her hand. Though the publicity was snuffed out by this morning’s other events, what about the

Angela Eagle flounders as she makes her leadership bid to ‘heal Labour’

After weeks of uncertainty, the Labour coup is officially on. While Jeremy Corbyn made clear on Marr that he has no intention of stepping down, Angela Eagle has done the rounds on Peston and Sunday Politics declaring that she will run for leader if Corbyn refuses to go. So with a fresh leadership election on the horizon, it’s now on Eagle to make the case for her candidacy. In an interview with Andrew Neil on Sunday Politics, Eagle argued that Corbyn’s position was untenable now he had lost the confidence of the majority of the PLP — stating that he couldn’t ‘lead behind a closed door’. She also argued that Labour’s electoral performance under

Steerpike

Momentum chief: winning elections is for political elites

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn fuelled concerns that he isn’t interested in winning power when he failed to say that winning a general election was a priority, during an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. Now Jon Lansman, the Momentum chief, has waded into the ‘should winning matter to a major political party?’ debate. After tweeting his followers to urge them to stand by Jeremy Corbyn in the face of the Labour coup, former Blair spinner John McTernan responded by suggesting that Corbynistas only care about their leader — rather than the party or country: To Corbynistas and most party members, democracy matters — Jon Lansman 🟣 (@jonlansman) July 10, 2016 While

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn hints at legal challenge if he’s kept off the ballot paper

Jeremy Corbyn was insistent this morning on the Andrew Marr Show that he isn’t going anywhere. More than that: he insisted that Labour is ‘changing the way politics is done’. His opponents in the party would agree, as it happens. Corbyn is going nowhere, certainly not anywhere near to Number 10, but also nowhere near being a functioning Opposition leader. And he is changing the way politics is done, by making it more and more difficult for Labour to ever get into power. The interview itself was proof that under Corbyn, Labour cannot function as an Opposition. Even those in the party who support the direction in which he is

Angela Eagle threatens Labour leadership bid on Monday

Finally, the Labour coup is about to begin. Or at least, Labour MPs are talking about the fact that the Labour coup is about to begin, after weeks of threatening it. After talks between the party’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson and Labour’s trade union backers broke up today, Angela Eagle has said she will launch her leadership challenge to Jeremy Corbyn on Monday. The talks broke down because Corbyn would not resign and the parliamentary Labour party would not accept his leadership after voting overwhelmingly in favour of a motion of no confidence two weeks ago, and so there was no possible compromise to reach. Corbyn’s camp are confident that

Steerpike

John McDonnell compares the Labour coup to the Thatcher government at rate-capping rebellion event

Although John McDonnell has been busy of late helping fight off the Labour coup, he was able to find time this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the rate-capping rebellion of the eighties. The Shadow Chancellor joined forces with Ted Knight —  the former leader of Lambeth council who once warned ‘no compromise with the electorate’ — to reminisce about the patch of history which saw the group earn the tabloid title ‘the loony left’. Speaking at Clapham library in front of a crowd of Momentum activists — who regularly referred to the Labour MPs behind the no confidence vote in Corbyn as the ‘172 Judas Iscariots’ — McDonnell talked about his time as the GLC’s finance

What has happened to Labour’s coup?

Things have gone mysteriously quiet in the Labour party. Every so often, Len McCluskey and Tom Watson emerge from a meeting, asking their comrades to give them a little bit more time before any of them move against Jeremy Corbyn. And nothing seems to happen. How much more time do the plotters need to give the unions and the party’s deputy leader before they give up and make a move on the leader? Or have thy already given up, and decided that they can’t defeat him and that it’s all over? Some reports in the past few days suggest that Labour MPs have marched all the way up the hill

Jeremy Corbyn and the oracle

Inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo in Delphi were the famous words gnôthi sauton (‘know yourself’) and mêden agan (‘nothing in excess’). They should be re-inscribed in the chamber of the House of Commons, and especially on every piece of paper that passes across the desk of the hapless Jeremy Corbyn. The ancients were all too aware that life was characterised by man’s weakness, ignorance and vulnerability to sudden, unpredictable reversals of fortune. Although one reaction was to eat, drink and be merry, pessimism was the Greeks’ default position to the world about them. Struck by the way in which their myths returned again and again to

Has Parliament learned the lessons of the Iraq war?

Normally whenever someone mentions Iraq in the House of Commons, the Chamber descends into a grouchy scrap. But today’s statement on the Chilcot report from David Cameron and the questions that followed it were surprisingly measured and thoughtful. As James notes, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t mention Tony Blair, and he didn’t give a furious response to the Prime Minister, either. Of course, his analysis of the report wasn’t comfortable for many Labour MPs – indeed, Ian Austin shouted from the backbenches that his party leader was a ‘disgrace’. But he did not call for Blair to stand trial, and neither did he rant at length about the failings of the West.

James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn refuses to mention Tony Blair in his Commons statement on Chilcot

As the House debated the Chilcot report, it was hard not to look round the Chamber and reflect how many MPs were not members when the Commons voted on whether to commit British forces to the conflict in Iraq. But the two party leaders were there then. David Cameron voted for the war, Jeremy Corbyn did not. Cameron took the House through the Chilcot report’s conclusions in a measured, non-partisan way. He ended by urging the country not to jettison the special relationship, confidence in the intelligence agencies and an appreciation that military intervention can be effective following Iraq and the failures detailed in this report. Then came Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour’s dirty laundry aired as Jeremy Corbyn speaks at anti-Semitism select committee

Last week Labour’s own inquiry into anti-Semitism in the party descended into chaos after Jeremy Corbyn managed to spark a new anti-Semitism row at the press conference. Discussing the findings of Shami Chakrabarti’s report, Corbyn appeared to compare Israel to Isis. So, Corbyn faced a tough ride today as he appeared before the Home Affairs select committee on anti-Semitism. The committee — chaired by Keith Vaz — began by asking Corbyn to clarify his comments on Israel: KV: Would you like to take this opportunity to clear this up? That you didn’t mean to compare a democratically elected government — no matter that it holds a different view to yours — with the

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s message to Labour members: ‘I’m carrying on’

After a week of Shadow Cabinet resignations amid a Labour coup to oust Jeremy Corbyn, there have been several theories doing the rounds as to what it means for the party. While some have suggested that Corbyn’s director of communications Seumas Milne is stopping Corbyn from resigning, there have been reports that he will resign and allow John McDonnell to run. However, today Corbyn has decided to set the record straight. In a — rather clunky — video message to Labour members, Corbyn declares that he is not going anywhere: ‘I have a huge responsibility, I’m carrying out that responsibility and I’m carrying on with that responsibility.’ After the events