Jeremy corbyn

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

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.

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

Labour has gone oddly quiet today, and that’s not just because the party is enjoying the mayhem in the Conservative leadership contest. After a very well-organised week of resignations, the rebels have now decided to sit back and wait for Jeremy Corbyn to come to terms with what the party he leads now looks like. The leader today appointed Angela Rayner as Shadow Education Secretary, which was a matter of necessity as it is Education Questions in the Commons on Monday, and the party didn’t have anyone to face Nicky Morgan. But the Labour frontbench generally looks like a Swiss cheese after the mice have been at it. There are

Referendum day is as nondescript and wet as the day before, happily spent in Cambridge at my son’s Leo’s graduation. Even here the coming vote intrudes. Some students say that the master of Trinity College has come out for Brexit. Leo’s boyfriend Eddie, newly graduated in German studies and about to head to a job in Berlin, worries about job prospects. Our lunch table is shared with genial and smiling but very divided family. The polling station is equally lively, a place for chat with neighbours. The working day is uneventful. Dinner with friends in the evening, asleep before the first results. I wake in the middle of the night,

PMQs was always going to be an odd event today. David Cameron is going as Prime Minister and Jeremy Corbyn is trying to survive wave after wave of resignations from his front bench. When Corbyn rose to his feet, there was almost complete silence from the Labour benches—there was the odd chuckle from the Tory one. The first few exchanges were relatively flat. But then Cameron was clearly riled by Corbyn suggesting that the referendum had been lost because voters didn’t think the status quo was working for them. Cameron swiped back that if the EU referendum was Corbyn putting his back into something, as the Labour leader had claimed,