Jeremy corbyn

PMQs Sketch: The high horse comes out cantering

PMQs kicked off with a big fuss about improvements to our world-beating education system. To academise or not to academise? Corbo wants to let good-or-outstanding schools be good-or-outstanding. Cameron says good-or-outstanding schools can become even more good-or-outstanding. Both leaders prefer to ignore Ofsted’s lower grades, ‘inadequate’, and ‘requires improvement’. Rightly so. No one else recognises these cold and impersonal classifications. The average citizen uses a system based on the sight of a uniformed teenager on the street. ‘Safe to ignore’, ‘pass with caution’, ‘armed and feral’ or ‘requires imprisonment’. Today’s exchanges were marked by moral panic and an outbreak of high-horse fever. Cameron started it with a premeditated dig at

Lara Prendergast

Labour’s Lisa Nandy suggests that Naz Shah should be suspended from the party

Labour’s Lisa Nandy has just been on the Daily Politics, where she suggested that Naz Shah should be suspended from the party. When asked about Bradford West MP Naz Shah’s comments about Israel,  Nandy told Jo Coburn that the Labour party should ‘suspend anybody who makes anti-Semitic comments in line with our policy and investigate it’. She said: ‘We have a policy that people who make anti-Semitic remarks are suspended and an investigation carried out…and the policy ought to be followed without any exception.’ ‘There has to be a suspension and an investigation when something like this occurs because it is so serious and it does have a knock-on effect

Julian Fellowes on ‘class hatred’ and Corbyn’s Labour

Although Julian Fellowes recently promised to take a backseat in the EU debate after growing tired of celebrities telling people what to do, he is still able to grace us with his thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. In an interview with BA High Life, the Conservative peer — and Downton Abbey writer — discusses the current state of the Labour party. The Conservative peer says he is upset by the ‘real seething jealousy’ at the heart of politics today: ‘It strikes me that as long as people are reasonably responsible in trying to do their best in terms of their own lives, there’s no reason for this permanent encouragement to class hatred.’

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn suggests the Queen is a secret Gooner

Although Jeremy Corbyn’s aides refused to confirm whether he would give a tribute to the Queen on her 90th birthday, the Labour leader did manage to put his republican tendencies to one side today in order to mark the happy occasion. After wishing Her Majesty a happy birthday, he went on to give his football team Arsenal a plug. Corbyn said that many locals believe that Her Majesty is actually a secret Gooner — pointing to the fact that the Queen’s coronation drive went through Islington, key Arsenal territory ‘Now we know the Queen is absolutely above politics. She may be above football too. But many locals harbour this quiet secret view

Lloyd Evans

The Jezza effect

Corbyn the Musical feels like it comes from the heart. Did the writers live through the 1970s when the hard-left was full of hope and confidence? Socialists then genuinely believed they could see off capitalism (which seemed in its death throes anyway) and replace it with a happier and more equal world. The show takes that objective seriously and attacks it with style, wit and affection. Young Jezza is portrayed as a sweet-natured bumbler entranced by an ideology he barely understands. He expresses his political dreams in terms of manhole covers and allotment vegetables. With his racy girlfriend, Diane Abbott, he sets off on a motorbike tour of East Germany,

PMQs Sketch: The Tories have redefined the term ‘manifesto’

Does Cameron care any more? Insouciance is a more attractive quality than earnestness in a leader but Cameron is taking his demob-happiness to extremes. He dismisses every crisis with a bored eye-roll and a wave of the hand. Doctors strike? No big deal. Backbench revolt over education? Been there before. Dodgy dossier on Brexit? All forgotten by the summer. Tax evasion scandal? A scrap of signed paperwork will sort it. Corbyn attacked Tory plans to academise schools against their will. This is the same freedom-at-gunpoint policy that worked so well in Iraq and transformed a malign dictatorship into a thrusting modern democracy. Cameron believes that cattle-prodding schools into accepting autonomy

James Forsyth

PMQs: David Cameron brings up Sadiq Khan’s extremist links

Today’s PMQs was a reminder that the old fashioned approach of detailed, forensic questioning on a single topic works best. Jeremy Corbyn delivered his best performance as leader of the opposition today, questioning David Cameron on why all schools will have to become academies. He skilfully exploited Tory splits over the issue. The relative silence from the Tory benches did nothing to shake the impression that this is a policy in trouble; which is a pity given that too many local authorities continue to exert a negative influence on education. But the most heated moment of the session came later when Cameron started talking about Sadiq Khan having shared a platform

Steerpike

Watch: David Cameron wades into Labour’s McDonald’s row – ‘I’m lovin’ it’

This week Jeremy Corbyn has faced an MPs’ revolt over the Labour party’s decision to ban McDonald’s from having a stall at its party conference. A number of MPs have accused the Labour leader of snobbery, while Corbyn’s spokesman has had to admit that he does not know what the vegetarian Labour leader could even eat at the popular fast food chain. Happily one person is at least enjoying the ongoing row. David Cameron brought up Labour’s misfortune at PMQs. He explained that he had at first thought the party were banning John McDonnell from Labour conference, before realising it was something much worse. He added that he was “lovin'” the row, in

Jeremy Corbyn’s McDonald’s boycott shows he’s a terrible snob

What has Jeremy Corbyn got against McDonald’s? He wants to block the fast-food chain from having an outlet at the Labour party conference, a position which has been blasted by quite a few MPs in his party, who presumably enjoy a Big Mac every now and then. It raises a more serious question though. According to their website, McDonald’s employ about 85,000 people in the UK. Most of these workers are voters. Add to that the number of British people who dine at McDonald’s – which must be in the millions – and you start to see why Corbyn’s McBoycott has gone down badly. Is snobbism behind it? Possibly. McDonald’s working conditions may not be the best in the labour market, but are they really

Steerpike

Did Zac Goldsmith pick up some tips on tackling extremism from Yvette Cooper?

During last night’s BBC mayoral debate, Zac Goldsmith was asked whether he had run a racist campaign against Sadiq Khan — following negative press surrounding the Labour candidate’s links to extremists. After Khan found himself under fire for sharing platforms with characters like Suliman Gani, as well as for his work for Louis Farrakhan — the man who claimed Hitler was a ‘very great man’ — Labour’s Yvette Cooper complained that the Tories’ mayoral campaign amounts to racism: ‘It’s time to call it out for what it really is before it gets worse. What started as a subtle dog-whistle is becoming a full-blown racist scream.’ However, Cooper hasn’t always appeared to hold such strong views when it comes

The strange death of left-wing Euroscepticism

Jeremy Corbyn’s eye-swivelling about-face on the EU – he once wanted to leave, now he wants to stay – has become a source of mirth for Eurosceptics and a sign of hope for Europhiles. To the anti-EU lobby, the fact that Corbyn voted against staying in the common market in the 1975 referendum and against EU treaties as an MP, yet now wants us all to vote to stay in, shows what a slippery character he is. For the Brussels-loving brigade it confirms that even the most heathen of EU haters can see the light. The ‘sinner who repents’ – actual words used in the Guardian‘s editorial on the newly

Referendum camps try to enthuse voters as official campaign starts

Rather like the 2015 General Election campaign, the EU referendum campaign feels as though it has been going on rather a long time. And yet today is in fact only the start of the official ten-week campaign. There may be some in Westminster who are filled with great excitement at the thought of another ten weeks of bickering about who has the most negative campaign. But the campaigns do have the difficult challenge of motivating those who back them to get out and vote on the day, and endless fighting and negativity about negativity won’t quite do the trick. So today Boris Johnson is giving a speech in Salford in

Tax returns to boast about

As Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell whinge away about how rich David Cameron’s family is, they might consider that in the last six years he has funded schools ’n’ hospitals to the tune of £402,283. How much have they put in? Since wealthy ancient Athenians loved to boast about the vast sums they contributed via property taxes to the public benefit, they would have been amazed that Cameron did not long to reveal how rich he was. The 5th-century BC thinker Democritus argued that there was nothing like the rich giving to the poor to produce concord that strengthened the community. The Greek orator Hyperides (389–322 BC) pointed out that Athenians allowed statesmen

Hugo Rifkind

Cameron and Mugabe: spot the difference

It is not what Robert Mugabe would do. Calm down. These are ‘spiv Robert Mugabe antics’, said the Tory backbencher Nigel Evans, of the government’s alleged £9 million mailshot making the case for staying in the European Union. But no. They aren’t. If David Cameron was behaving like Robert Mugabe, then he wouldn’t just be sending a leaflet to your house. He’d be sending a gang of thugs to your house, who all claimed to have fought in the second world war and yet had an average age of about 22, and then they’d come into your house and make you leave your house, and say it was their house. And

PMQs Sketch: Cameron’s far-sighted statesmanship

A vandal smashing a window and calling it air conditioning. A mother marrying her son and declaring it a lesson in advanced sexual morality. A shoplifter caught with a chicken up his jumper and congratulating the store detectives on their commitment to property rights. That’s how David Cameron ducked the tax-abuse row at PMQs today. He basked in hypocrisy. He wallowed in smugness. He luxuriated in panic measures and called them far-sighted statesmanship. He chose to posture as the brilliant leader of a brilliant government whose brilliant new policy is to rip down the cloaks of secrecy that protect Britain’s tax-dodge paradises overseas. And he contrasted his zeal with the

James Forsyth

PMQs: Cameron mocks Corbyn for his late tax return

This time last week, you would have expected PMQs to be rowdy and extremely difficult for David Cameron. After all, he was on the back foot on tax and steel. But today’s session was actually remarkably dry as Jeremy Corbyn asked worthy and technical questions on tax and Britain’s overseas territories. Strikingly, Cameron felt confident enough to repeatedly mock Corbyn over his tax return, which was submitted late. Cameron will, I suspect, be relieved that the tax debate is now one of policy detail. Not only does it take the personal sting out of the issue, but it makes it harder for it to continue to command public attention—I feel

Today in audio: PM branded ‘dodgy Dave’ as tax row rumbles on

David Cameron has been defending himself in the Commons following the publication of his tax return. He said he found some of the comments about his father ‘deeply hurtful’. He also held his hands up for not responding to criticism sooner following last week’s Panama papers controversy: One of the more personal jibes thrown at him in the chamber came from Dennis Skinner, who branded the PM ‘dodgy Dave’ in a remark which got him booted out of the Commons: Jeremy Corbyn was more measured in his response to David Cameron, but he still used the debate to say there was ‘one rule for the super-rich and another for the

James Forsyth

Has David Cameron’s tax debacle united the Tories?

Yet again, David Cameron has reason to be grateful for the quality of the opposition facing him. First of all, Jeremy Corbyn took until Cameron’s statement to release his own tax return, meaning that journalists were studying that as much as his response in the House of Commons. Second, Corbyn’s own response was long on verbiage but failed to ask any difficult questions of Cameron. Finally, Dennis Skinner had John Bercow order him from the chamber for refusing to withdraw his use of the word ‘dodgy’ about Cameron, which rather reinforced the point that the case against Cameron is long on name-calling and short on specifics. Cameron himself came armed

Tom Goodenough

Osborne and Corbyn publish their tax returns – but are they any more interesting than the PMs?

George Osborne and Jeremy Corbyn have now both followed in the Prime Minister’s footsteps by publishing details of their tax returns. As James Forsyth said on our Spectator podcast earlier today, it was just a matter of time before the Chancellor and Labour leader bowed down to pressure. But what do the two documents actually tell us? The simple answer is that Osborne and Corbyn’s tax returns make for even less interesting reading than David Cameron’s. Properly speaking, Osborne’s isn’t even a tax return at all but rather a summary of the main bits. It shows his earnings as Chancellor; it also appears to show that he isn’t putting any

Steerpike

Has Jeremy Corbyn lost his tax return?

Oh dear. Although Jeremy Corbyn spent the best part of last week calling on David Cameron to publish his tax return, the Labour leader appears to be struggling to follow his own advice. Despite Corbyn promising to publish his tax return last Tuesday, the document is yet to see the light of day. Rather than a tax evasion conspiracy, it’s thought that Corbyn simply can’t find it; with some outlets reporting that he has had to ask HMRC to send him a copy.  However, the Leader’s Office dispute this — they insist that it will be published soon. So as things stand, we have a Prime Minister for whom the Panama Papers have turned into