Jeremy corbyn

Forget Corbyn’s shambolic reshuffle: the Labour leader is winning

No amount of reports in the press that Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet-making is farcical and his party is divided should distract us from the fact that he is winning. I don’t mean that he will become prime minister, or even (though this seems quite possible) that he will survive as leader until the general election. It is just that he is gradually bringing more and more of Labour under his control, and grinding down his opponents. Besides, his public positions are coherent — in the sense of being internally consistent — and he is quite accomplished at adhering to an undeviatingly hardline, left-wing ideology while sounding mild and decent. Taxed,

Diary – 14 January 2016

Whatever you do, don’t allow your six-year-old to be caught short at Crewkerne station. With the rain pouring and the wind howling, my daughter needed the loo. But it was locked. And no staff anywhere to be seen. So I pressed the ‘Help’ button on one of those machines that have replaced stationmasters. ‘How can I assist you?’ responded a warm South Asian voice. ‘Er, we need someone to open the loo at Crewkerne.’ ‘Where exactly are you?’ she came back, sounding lost. ‘You know, in Dorset, after Yeovil. On the Exeter line. How far away is the help centre?’ I was thinking Bristol, maybe Swindon. ‘Oh, we are in

Steerpike

John Mann goes to war with the Islington Corbynistas

It’s not been a good week for the Corbynistas of North London. First Lord Watts took aim at them for their taste in pastries during his maiden speech in the upper house. The Labour peer said that the party leadership should take less notice of ‘the London-centric hard left political class who sit around in their £1 million mansions eating their croissants at breakfast and seeking to lay the foundations for a socialist revolution’. Now John Mann wants them to put their money where their mouth is. The Labour MP has written a blog post on his website today calling for Labour to charge party members with properties worth over £1m a

Isabel Hardman

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

Isabel Hardman

Ken Livingstone makes Labour’s bad week even worse

Funnily enough, after Ken Livingstone told the Daily Politics that the defence review that he is co-chairing with the new Labour Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry would consider whether Britain will leave Nato, the party has issued a statement shooting down the former Mayor’s suggestion: ‘The terms of the defence review are still to be agreed but will not look at our membership of Nato.’ Livingstone said the following to the BBC: ‘That’s one of the things we will look at. There will be many people wanting to do that. I don’t think it’s a particularly big issue because in the Cold War it was; it isn’t now. Russia is