Jeremy corbyn

Why does Labour need to publish yet another report on why it lost?

It must come as a relief to many Labour MPs worried about their party’s electoral chances that the official report into why Labour lost in May will finally be published. But will it really make much of a difference? The BBC reports that the document, compiled by Margaret Beckett, will identify four key reasons for the party losing in May 2015, which are that it failed to shake off the myth that Labour was responsible for the financial crash and failed to build trust on economic issues, it didn’t connect with voters on key issues such as benefits and immigration, that Ed Miliband was not seen as being as strong

Isabel Hardman

Will Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle ever end?

Pity the poor correspondents who set up a reshuffle ‘live’ blog to cover Jeremy Corbyn moving around his frontbench team last Monday. The Labour leader has, a week and a half in to the slowest shuffle ever, just made a few more appointments. Imran Hussain, Kate Osamor and Thangam Debbonaire are all new MPs, and join the International Development, Women and Equalities and Culture, Media and Sport teams respectively. Last night Jo Stevens, also a new MP, became Shadow Solicitor General. When will it end? To be fair to the Labour leader, the reshuffle has dragged on partly because people keep resigning, so it’s not entirely his fault that he

Steerpike

Coming soon: Red Ken’s guide on the future of the Labour party

A number of Labour MPs have become increasingly riled with Jeremy Corbyn this week over the much-delayed Beckett report on Labour’s General Election loss. Despite calls from Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint for Margaret Beckett’s investigation into the reasons Labour lost the election to be published, Corbyn has so far refused even though he has been sitting on the report since November. While many Labour brains have put this down to Corbyn not wanting to face some of the reasons Labour lost the election, there may soon be a more Corbyn-friendly analysis on offer. Step forward Ken Livingstone. Red Ken is to publish a handy new book which will lay out his advice

PMQs sketch: We’re all dying, according to MPs

Cameron has a dream. And Jeremy Corbyn wants to destroy it. Our belligerent prime minister has declared war on those inner-city council estates that foster poverty, despair, unemployment, truancy, social exclusion, (and an aversion to Tory candidates). His hope is to replace these crime-ridden concrete citadels with frondy low-rise dream-homes. It sounds like Syria organised by Foxtons. But consider the result as it takes shape in the prime minister’s mind. Acre upon acre of urban dereliction transformed into mini Chipping Nortons. A sofa from Habitat in every sitting room. A sea bass in every fridge. A sundial in every garden. A low-carbon Toyota Land Cruiser on every driveway. And a future

Steerpike

Dawn Butler struggles with the new kinder politics

Dawn Butler was one of the Labour MPs who helped to get Jeremy Corbyn onto the ballot paper in the Labour leadership race. While Butler ultimately wanted Andy Burnham to be leader, she has been supportive of Corbyn since his election. Alas Butler now appears to be struggling when it comes to getting to grips with the new kinder, gentler politics. Today the Labour MP tweeted that a friend of hers had compared Cameron’s appearance to ‘a kid whose just done a poo’. To which Butler replied: ‘yes it does feel like he’s sh–ting all over the working class doesn’t it.’ Of course this is the same Butler who lost her

Isabel Hardman

Is Jeremy Corbyn really up for a fight with Len McCluskey over Trident?

Today’s report that Len McCluskey plans to warn Jeremy Corbyn against changing Labour policy on Trident is not a surprise after the GMB’s Sir Paul Kenny used pretty fruity language to do the same on Monday. But it is significant as it shows that the plan of those in the party who do not want the Labour leader to continue in post to the next election is progressing as they’d hope. That plan is pretty rough and ready, but it does involve the unions losing faith in Corbyn’s basic competence, and not just blocking his moves to mark Labour a unilateralist party. Whether or not that plan succeeds isn’t clear.

Steerpike

Team Corbyn left red-faced over Berlin hostel Twitter ‘hack’

Over the weekend a number of strange tweets were emitted from Jeremy Corbyn’s Twitter account. The Labour leader appeared to be taking his call to attack the Tories — and not other members of Labour — to new heights when he tweeted ‘Davey Cameron is a pie‘ along with ‘Here we… here we… here we f—ing go!!!’. While the tweets were swiftly deleted and put down to the account being hacked, new information has now come to light surrounding the incident. The Times Red Box reports that the ‘hack’ occurred in a hostel in Germany. One of Corbyn’s staff was enjoying a break in Berlin when the orders came to tweet from

The anti-Corbyn plan to undermine the Labour leader

Have Labour MPs who oppose Jeremy Corbyn just given up? Given many of them have chosen to stay on the frontbench after the reshuffle in which the Labour leader made clear that it was his way or the highway, and also that he does want to change party policy on Trident after all, it looks as though many have just resigned themselves to a miserable few years in which they struggle to mount any meaningful resistance to the Labour leader. It’s certainly true that Corbyn’s opponents don’t have a clear plan for removing him. Some of them have concluded that the best option is for the unions to turn against

Two more Labour frontbenchers step down as reshuffle row drags on

Labour’s reshuffle isn’t, as some foolishly alleged, over. It may never end, as frontbenchers decide to resign over the internal warfare in the party. This morning Catherine McKinnell, who was Shadow Attorney General, has resigned, citing family reasons, the struggle to balance frontbench and constituency life, and ‘the situation in which the Labour Party now finds itself’, which the Newcastle North MP says has ‘amplified’ the first two issues. She writes: ‘However, as events have unfolded over recent weeks, my concerns about the direction and internal conflict within the Labour Party have only grown, and I fear this is taking us down an increasingly negative path. I feel that I

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn says he’s not going to war with his critics. But are they going to war with him?

Jeremy Corbyn’s Today interview was a reasonably good stint for the leader after a bad week. He had clearly worked out better ways of talking about terrorism that make him sound reasonable – although he deliberately left in tell-tale references to what he thinks of the West. While he refused to say whether or not he would back a drone strike against the new British jihadi militant revealed in an Isis video last week, he also told the programme that France was no more responsible than any other Western government for terror attacks: ‘Of course the French government are not responsible for the attacks on the streets of Paris any

Jeremy Corbyn has his Twitter hacked: ‘Davey Cameron is a pie’

Oh dear. It’s safe to say that last week was not a great week for Jeremy Corbyn after the Labour leader found members of his party on the verge of revolt following his so-called ‘revenge reshuffle’. His decision to sack members of his Shadow Cabinet led to resignations from Shadow Ministers as party members criticised his decision to move Emily Thornberry — who is anti-Trident — into the role of Shadow Defence Secretary. However despite this the Labour leader appears to be on fighting form. A series of rather strange expletive-ridden messages have been emitted from his Twitter account this evening: While Mr S suspects it is a hacker — rather than Corbyn — behind the

The EU campaign has begun – and Tory wars are back

Liam Fox’s new year party at the Carlton Club has become the traditional start to the Tory Party’s year. This year there were 11 Cabinet members including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Business Secretary and Boris Johnson. I’d say that most of the Tory MPs there are ‘leavers’, who have this week been given permission to campaign freely against a ‘remain’ campaign expected to be led by the Prime Minister.  So in this way, the old Tory wars are about to start again. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. This is not Eurosceptic vs Europhile. This will be a battle between Eurosceptics: the ones who think

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn sacked Michael Dugher while ally Tom Watson was out of the country

Michael Dugher was sacked while his key ally and Labour deputy leader Tom Watson was out of the country, Coffee House has learned. Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle may have been limited, but it included a clear attempt to undermine alternative Shadow Cabinet powerbases, including the notion that Tom Watson can protect his allies on the frontbench. But Labour’s Deputy Leader was on holiday in Lanzarote when the reshuffle started, apparently unaware that there was going to be a reshuffle at the start of the week when Parliament was still in recess. I understand that he was told that Dugher would be sacked on Monday night. The Shadow Culture Secretary lost his

Portrait of the week | 7 January 2016

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, decided to allow ministers to campaign for either side in the referendum on membership of the European Union, once his negotiations had been concluded on Britain’s relationship with the EU. The government said it was commissioning 13,000 houses to be built by small builders on public land made available with planning permission. Junior doctors decided to go on strike after all, starting with a day next week, after talks between the government and the British Medical Association broke down. In an extraordinarily drawn-out reshuffle, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, replaced Michael Dugher as shadow culture secretary with Maria Eagle, who was

Steerpike

Jonathan Reynolds takes on Diane Abbott: ‘you’re a total sell-out’

After a tough day yesterday for Corbyn’s team following his chaotic reshuffle, there was only one thing left to do to save the day: send Diane Abbott onto the airwaves. The gaffe-prone shadow international development secretary appeared on Newsnight to wax lyrical about the state of Corbyn’s slightly reshuffled Shadow Cabinet. When put to her that things might not be quite so rosy given that three shadow ministers had resigned in protest of Corbyn’s reshuffle, she said it wasn’t really a great loss given that they all use to be special advisers who lacked real life experience: In case you missed: @hackneyabbott on the sacked "special advisers" from the frontbench https://t.co/xkVzH3WrUh — BBC

Nick Cohen

Labour’s tantrum over Pat McFadden’s ‘toddler terrorists’ question was very revealing

Two points stand out from Pat McFadden’s career-killing question to David Cameron. ‘May I ask the prime minister to reject the view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to what we in the West do? Does he agree that such an approach risks infantilising the terrorists and treating them like children, when the truth is that they are adults who are entirely responsible for what they do? No one forces them to kill innocent people in Paris or Beirut. Unless we are clear about that, we will fail even to understand the threat we face, let alone confront it and ultimately overcome it.’ The

James Forsyth

Corbyn is untouchable now

There have been few more pathetic displays of political impotence than the tweets sent by shadow cabinet members paying tribute to Michael Dugher after his sacking by Jeremy Corbyn. Dugher, a classic northern Labour fixer, had taken on the role of shadow cabinet shop steward. He spoke out against Momentum, the Corbynite pressure group, warned against a ‘revenge reshuffle’ and criticised negative briefings against the shadow cabinet from the leader’s office. But rather than protesting at his sacking through a walkout, shadow cabinet members confined their solidarity to a 140-character gesture. Their tweets, rather than looking like brave defiance of the boss, actually showed just how cowed they are. Dugher’s

Hugo Rifkind

What a spankingly splendid scandal

Apparently, according to a variety of relatively reliable sources that include the man himself, the Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk, is in the habit of accepting money from a paparazzi agency in exchange for advising them how they might best snap pap pictures of the Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk. Is this not one of the most amazing facts you have ever learned? Every bit of it — that tabloids want these photographs; that photo-graphers will pay for them; that an MP can earn a tidy sum by secretly facilitating them — simply boggles me. Are they all at it? Maybe that’s why we keep seeing those vile