Jeremy corbyn

Might there be a Brexit deal after all?

Parliament has not yet returned from its summer break but we are already in a bitter constitutional battle, with the Prime Minister pitted against the Speaker of the House of Commons and the opposition parties. Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament is a deliberate attempt to raise the stakes. He wants to deny time to any effort by MPs to pass a law forcing him to request a Brexit extension. His message to them: bring me down or let me get on with Brexit. When parliament returns on Tuesday for a two-week session, MPs will have to decide how to respond to Johnson’s move. Opposition MPs had previously agreed to

Jeremy Corbyn capitulates in cross-party Brexit talks

Jeremy Corbyn’s cross-party talks to stop a no-deal Brexit have broken up, with opposition leaders and MPs releasing a statement saying they ‘agreed on the urgency to act together to find practical ways to prevent no deal, including the possibility of passing legislation and a vote of no confidence’. The Labour leader opened the meeting by saying he would prioritise legislation, rather than a vote of no confidence, which will be kept as a last resort. Calling a vote of no confidence in the first few days of Parliament sitting next week might have been a dramatic way of Corbyn trying to show that he was serious about stopping a

Jo Swinson riles up Corbynistas again

Corbynistas are out to get Jo Swinson again after the Lib Dem leader accused Jeremy Corbyn of being a Brexiteer. ‘Jeremy Corbyn didn’t fight to remain in 2016, and he won’t fight for remain now’, said Swinson. It wasn’t long before the usual suspects leapt to the Labour leader’s defence. Step forward, Owen Jones: ‘This is a direct lie. It’s a matter of public record that Jeremy Corbyn campaigned for Remain,’ according to the Guardian columnist. But Mr S isn’t so sure. In the weeks before the 2016 referendum, Corbyn was asked ‘how passionate are you about staying in the EU?’. Corbyn’s response? ‘Oh I’d put myself in the upper

Jeremy Corbyn, not Boris Johnson, is ‘Britain’s Trump’

Jez he did! Jeremy Corbyn has just surprised absolutely nobody by calling Prime Minister Boris Johnson ‘Britain’s Trump.’ He labelled Boris a ‘fake populist’ and a ‘phoney outsider.’ No doubt Labour speechwriters think this is a great attack line ahead of a general election.  But it might backfire – for two reasons. First, Trump is not nearly as toxic in Britain as everybody in political circles believes. Secondly, for Labour voters, the uncomfortable truth is that the British equivalent of Trump is not Boris, as everyone says. It’s Jeremy Corbyn.  Corbyn, 70, and Trump, 73, have far more in common than Boris and Trump. Jeremy and Donald are both anti-establishment

Steerpike

‘Shame!’: Journalist heckled at Corbyn speech

Jeremy Corbyn has just given a speech attacking Boris Johnson as ‘Britain’s Trump’. But while the Labour leader is happy to dish out criticism, it seems his supporters don’t like it when the tables are turned. A journalist found that out the hard way when he told Corbyn: ‘It’s clear that you do not have the cross-party support in Parliament to be a caretaker prime minister..’ His comment was met with cries of ‘Shame!’ from those in the audience. It seems that for some Corbynistas, the truth hurts…

Jeremy Corbyn’s no-deal plan is unusually smart politics

On the surface, Jeremy Corbyn’s pitch to become caretaker prime minister of a government of national unity after overthrowing Boris Johnson looks like a messy failure. The Liberal Democrats have said they won’t back him, two of the Tories who he wrote to have backed away too, and the Independent Group for Change (which he didn’t write to) have said this evening that they will ‘not support nor facilitate any government led by Jeremy Corbyn’. Instead, everyone is talking about the possibility of a government led by Ken Clarke. The former Tory chancellor today said he wouldn’t object to taking over if it was ‘the only way’ to stop a

How to make sense of Jeremy Corbyn’s pitch to Remainers

What is Jeremy Corbyn up to? The appeal in his letter to Remainers in the Commons to turf Boris Johnson out, and magically transform the Leader of the Opposition into an ‘interim’ Prime Minister – one who would block not just a no-deal Brexit but any Brexit at all, looks like something out of a Bulgakov novel. But there is a sensible – at least from Corbyn’s point of view – purpose behind it. Few of the various ex-Labour and ex-Conservative independent MPs are likely to support the appeal. Many Corbyn-despising Labour MPs will not back it. A couple of Tories might decide to end their parliamentary careers endorsing it.

The real reason Corbynites turned on Caroline Lucas and the Greens

Caroline Lucas’s plan for an all-female emergency Cabinet to stop a no-deal Brexit is a fantasy, with no prospect of success. But if the plan is daft, it has provoked a revealing reaction from Jeremy Corbyn’s loyal outriders. Instead of laughing it off, many have taken it deadly seriously. Most have focused their attack on the ethnicity of the women Lucas chose to enlist: they were all white. Reasonably enough, they asked why shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, was overlooked. Recognising her mistake, Lucas apologised. But instead of giving Lucas – probably the most politically correct member of the Commons – the benefit of the doubt, the Corbynite response has been

If Boris plays the system on Brexit, Corbyn can hardly complain

A standard version of this autumn’s events is beginning to emerge. Labour brings a no-confidence vote in the Government on 4 September. The Tories, down to a majority of one – and with several Conservative old-timers vowing to go out in style by torpedoing their own Government in a last act of defiance to stop a no-deal Brexit – loses. Rather than resign, Boris spends the 14 days he would be allowed under the Fixed Term Parliament Act trying to build a majority. He fails. And Corbyn, too, is unable to form a majority. Boris calls a general election – but crucially stretches it out just beyond 31 October, when

Lib Dems are eyeing a bigger prize than blocking a no-deal Brexit

Politicians determined to prevent a no-deal Brexit are locked in a Mexican stand-off. If Boris Johnson cannot command a Commons majority, Jo Swinson has made it clear that under no circumstances will Liberal Democrats support a caretaker Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. John McDonnell has indicated that Labour will not back a temporary national unity government under an as-yet unnamed backbench MP. With Parliament in recess we are in the realm of second-guessing what might happen next. When MPs return to Westminster, Johnson might win a vote of confidence. But even if he loses, the Prime Minister could possibly engineer a general election to subvert the cunning plans of the no-no

Why a government of national unity isn’t going to happen

There’s been much talk this week of a so-called government of national unity (GNU) to stop Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan. The idea is that he’d be forced out in a vote of no confidence in September and replaced by a caretaker PM who would request an extension to our EU membership before resigning and calling a general election. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, it is hard to see this happening. First, this wouldn’t be a government of national unity as its sole purpose would be to extend our membership of the EU which would make it one of the more divisive governments in living memory. But

Labour MP: I think all countries should be abolished

‘Imagine there’s no countries,’ John Lennon once sang. It seems that one Labour MP is taking that song literally. Paul Sweeney, who represents Glasgow North East, had this to say: Well, Mr S. has to admire the scale of Sweeney’s ambitions, but he also wonders whether this plan might not be the best way to dig Labour out of the hole it found itself in yesterday. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, caused trouble for his party at the Edinburgh fringe festival by saying that Labour would not block a Scottish referendum if they won power. The comments went down badly with Scottish Labour MPs. Sweeney stepped in to clarify the

The diverse party

I’ve never voted Conservative and I never will. Having been raised in a working-class home, I can’t get past the fact that had the Labour party not come into being, the Tories would have kept my people serfs for as long as inhumanly possible. But I’m also an extreme Brexiteer; far from the past three years being boring (anyone who says this reveals themselves as such a monumental dullard that we should remove their right to vote), I consider that this nation spent the four decades up to 23 June 2016 sleepwalking into the shadowlands of EU dreariness — and disaster. Only a halfwit could fail to comprehend that the

Rod Liddle

Boris may end up delivering Corbyn

Alastair Campbell has written a longish ‘open’ letter to Jeremy Corbyn, helpfully explaining why he has decided not to contest his expulsion from the Labour party. The remarkable thing is that Alastair believes there is anyone of importance in the party, or indeed outside of it, who gives a monkey’s one way or the other. For all of Jeremy Corbyn’s myriad faults, he has not visited upon this country the two greatest crises, foreign and domestic, that the UK has endured since the second world war (by which I mean the Iraq war and unconfined immigration). Nor has Magic Grandpa lied to the British public and parliament with quite the

Labour must ditch Corbyn now if it wants to stop Boris

If Labour were serious about stopping the most right-wing Conservative government within living memory, it would revolutionise its approach to politics. Clearly, it would have to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Ideally, Corbyn would remove himself. He would not allow the struggle to force him out to waste precious time. He would look at his leadership ratings, ask himself why Labour was not 20 or 30 points ahead of a dire government, and conclude that, in the interests of the party and country, it was time to retire with dignity. With their leader duly patted on the back and sent on his way, Labour MPs would then game the system to avoid

Lib Dem success may be the Tories’ best hope

When the leadership result was announced, Jeremy Corbyn’s keyboard warriors swung into action. Behold, they said: a new party leader whose track record involved overseeing years of austerity, voting for tax cuts for the super-rich and pursuing a neoliberal agenda. As for Boris the man, the Corbynites didn’t seem to mind him so much. It’s Jo Swinson, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is enemy number one. The Labour fear — and the Tory hope —is that the current Liberal Democrat resurgence continues and Labour loses seats in the North to the Tories and metropolitan seats to the Lib Dems. Under Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems were a

How Tom Watson reinvented himself to become the new challenger to Corbyn

Tom Watson has had more reinventions than Kylie Minogue has had mid-performance outfit changes. His performances over the years have ranged from baronial backroom fixer loathed by Blairites to scourge of Fleet Street when he took on Rupert Murdoch. There was a brief counter-culture period when he went around wearing a beret, a foray into hunting down alleged paedophiles, and a mysterious vanishing act when he realised that Jeremy Corbyn’s fans were out to get him. In the magazine this week, I look at where Watson’s latest incarnation is taking him: he’s the key figure in the latest attempt to save the Labour Party from Jeremy Corbyn and his hard

Rome’s lesson for Labour

Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to take serious action against Labour’s anti-Semitic members is no surprise: Marxists know who their friends are. The Roman plebs showed how to deal with such cabals. In 509 bc, Rome’s last tyrant king was thrown out, and the very nobles who had advised him at once took over the new republic as senators and annually appointed leaders (‘magistrates’ such as praetors, consuls, etc). And the plebs? Desperate for change, they found none: poverty, debt and landlessness persisted. So they took action —rioting and withdrawing their labour, especially on the battlefield. An early breakthrough was made in 494 bc, when the senate had to accept a plebeian

Isabel Hardman

Watson’s new plot

Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour party, many of his MPs have dreamed of deposing him. They’ve tried mass shadow ministerial resignations, a no-confidence motion, even a formal leadership contest — but to no avail. Some, like Chuka Umunna, left the party, hoping (in vain) that others would join their breakaway group. Other MPs gave up hope, resigned and found jobs outside of politics — concluding no plot would ever work. But that might now be changing. The Corbynites, who have stuck together for so long, are fighting with each other. Party members, once the human shield who protected their leader, are beginning to doubt

The only way to solve Labour’s anti-Semitism problem

‘The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (except, it seems, Jews)’. So says an unprecedented advert in the Guardian today, which is signed by more than 60 Labour peers. It could hardly be more damning. Yet while the advert is shocking, it stops short of pointing out the only way that Labour can solve its anti-Semitism crisis for good: by getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn. Labour peers who backed the statement aren’t the only ones to fail to state the obvious. Deputy leader Tom Watson, who says he favours the introduction of an independent complaints procedure, has also fallen short. So, too, has