Jeremy corbyn

Thursday

Toby Young

What I learnt trying to buy lunch for an anti-Tory protestor

The mood at the Conservative party conference this week was a little subdued, and no wonder. As those who watched the television coverage will know, everyone entering the secure zone had to run a gauntlet of potty-mouthed protestors, their faces twisted into masks of hate. It’s not easy to celebrate after you’ve just been showered with spit and called a ‘Tory murderer’. Jeremy Corbyn made a point in his conference speech last week of asking his supporters to treat their opponents with respect and not descend to personal abuse, but I’m not sure how many of them got the message. If the atmosphere in Manchester was anything to go by,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour justifies Corbyn’s Privy Council ‘snub’

Jeremy Corbyn is not attending today’s Privy Council meeting, which is being written up as a ‘snub’ in some quarters and dismissed as totally unimportant in others. The Labour leader’s spokesperson has issued this statement: ‘Although Jeremy was unavailable for today’s meeting, he has confirmed he will be joining the Privy Council. ‘As the Prime Minister and others did, it is far from unusual to miss the first meeting due to other commitments.’ Corbyn’s non-attendance is neither a snub nor totally unimportant. His spokesperson does make a good point that David Cameron didn’t cancel all other engagements in order to attend his Privy Council meeting and the Labour leader does

Steerpike Steerpike

Sorry Corbyn, Nick Clegg is the expert on snubbing the Queen – not you

Today Jeremy Corbyn has cancelled his attendance at what would have been his first meeting of the Queen’s Privy Council due to ‘prior commitments’. Of course naysayers have been quick to jump on this, with Alan Duncan claiming that Corbyn snubbing his first chance to be sworn in suggests that he is not a serious political figure. As for the Corbynistas praising their leader for sticking to his republican values by giving Her Majesty a miss, they would do well to remember that another politican has a far more impressive track record when it comes to snubbing the Queen. During Nick Clegg’s time as Deputy Prime Minister, he managed to earn himself a reputation for repeatedly snubbing Her Majesty. When

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

When the press quivers before the powerful, no one benefits. Except, of course, the powerful

Imagine living in a country where a politician could not only force a newspaper to retract a report but could then make it publish an alternative report on its front page. That would be a bad place to live, right? It would be a place where the relationship between the press and politicians — where the former is supposed to keep in check the latter, not the other way round — had been twisted beyond repair. It would be a country in which pressmen and women would be always on edge, fearful that if they were too stinging or scurrilous about a political player then they, too, might be forced

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories are still anxious to reach out. And that’s a very good sign

Post-election party conferences usually follow a standard pattern. The winning party slaps itself on the back while the losers fret about how to put together an election-winning coalition. But this year, there’s been no talk of compromise or coalition from Labour. They seem happy to be a protest party, unbothered that voters disagree with them on the economy, welfare and immigration. And the Tories, instead of relaxing or moving to the right, have obsessed anxiously about how to broaden their appeal, to make their majority permanent. This determination to look for new converts is a product of the election campaign. Weeks of looking at polls that indicated they were on

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Podcast special: David Cameron’s conference speech

It’s been a good week for the Conservatives, topped off by one of the best speeches   David Cameron has ever given. James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the Prime Minister’s keynote address in this View from 22 podcast special — looking the new policies and themes he has laid out, the direction we can expect to see the Tories heading in and his strong attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. Can Steve Hilton’s influence be seen in the text? And does this mark a new era for Cameron’s leadership? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the player below:

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron repositions the Tories as the party of ‘true equality’

This speech was authentic Cameron. It was the most modernising speech that he has given since becoming Prime Minister and an attempt to reposition the Tories as the party of ‘true equality’. It was a return to the approach that characterised his leadership before the financial crash of 2008. Traditional Tory thinking has always been that if you work hard you get on, that you can pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. But this speech argued that for some people in society this simply isn’t true, that they find their opportunities blocked at every turn. Cameron cited the example of a black girl who had to change her name to

Toby Young Toby Young

My mission: buy lunch for a protestor outside Conservative party conference

The mood at the Conservative party conference this week was a little subdued, and no wonder. As those who watched the television coverage will know, everyone entering the secure zone had to run a gauntlet of potty-mouthed protestors, their faces twisted into masks of hate. It’s not easy to celebrate after you’ve just been showered with spit and called a ‘Tory murderer’. Jeremy Corbyn made a point in his conference speech last week of asking his supporters to treat their opponents with respect and not descend to personal abuse, but I’m not sure how many of them got the message. If the atmosphere in Manchester was anything to go by,

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

George Osborne: Corbyn is not the cause of Labour’s problems

George Osborne was interviewed by Kath Viner, editor of The Guardian, this afternoon and offered some interesting thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have generally kept schtum about the rise of the new Labour leader, focusing instead on the message that he is a danger to Britain’s national/economic security. Echoing the thoughts of Labour’s Jon Cruddas, the Chancellor said Corbynmania is not about the man himself: ‘I don’t think it’s actually about personalities in this sense which is, you know, Jeremy Corbyn is not the cause of the Labour party’s problems, he is a symptom. He was elected by the great majority of Labour members — not just the new people who joined,

Steerpike Steerpike

George Osborne takes a dig at Jeremy Corbyn at Tory conference

Although Cabinet Ministers are said to be on strict instructions to refrain from insulting or mocking Jeremy Corbyn in their conference speeches, the Chancellor of the Exchequer couldn’t resist taking a dig at the Labour leader on Monday night. As Corbyn was speaking to a packed crowd of protesters across town, Osborne found room in his speech at the Enterprise Forum Business Reception to make a joke at the expense of the Labour leader over his appearance at the fringe protest event. At first, Osborne appeared to compliment Labour in his speech, praising the party for working out that they were not pro-business enough in the last election: ‘What was of course interesting about the

Monday

James Forsyth

How the Tories are trying to make their majority permanent

This is the first conference since the election where the Tories won a majority and the first since Labour chose an unelectable leader. But, strikingly, George Osborne chose to use his speech to emphasise how the Tories must show the millions of working people who voted Labour in May that they ‘are on their side’. Osborne is a man seized of the opportunity presented to the Tories by Labour’s lurch to the left. He has spent the last few days picking off several of Labour’s best ideas. His aim to make sure that when—or, should I say if—the Labour party attempts to return to the centre ground of British politics,

Ed West Ed West

The left’s hatred of ‘Tory scum’ is both stupid and self-defeating

Plenty has been written about the hatred some on the left feel towards their ‘enemies’, something on display at the moment in Manchester, with journalists being called ‘Tory scum’ for covering a party conference. I’ve bored for Britain on the subject of political hatred of the left, but less has been written about how self-defeating it is. For example, one of the best things that could happen to the Tories is for the Labour faithful to convince themselves that Corbyn was defeated only because of a biased, Tory-dominated press. This means that, rather than brutally analysing their weaknesses after Corbyn goes, they’re more likely to retreat into their own comfort

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

In pictures: the most Tory things at Conservative conference

The Conservatives are wrapped in the quiet cocoon of Manchester Central today and the conference has a subdued vibe — many activists might be staying away until the anti-austerity protests are over. But the halls are packed out with the exhibitors, shops and merchandise you’d expect for a party that has won its first majority in 23 years and is in celebratory mode. Here are some of the most Tory things in Manchester (click on the pictures to enlarge). One of the more interesting additions to the exhibition hall this year is the Conservative Party Archive. The Tories now have a whole stand dedicated to the party’s vast archives at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. As

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn: the most unpopular new opposition leader in the history of polling

Labour’s conference in Brighton might not have been the disaster some expected but it hasn’t done much for Jeremy Corbyn’s standing with the public. A new YouGov/Sun poll shows the Labour leader’s personal rating is minus eight — the lowest since polls of new opposition leaders began with Hugh Gaitskell in 1955. As the chart below shows, Corbyn is eight points lower than Michael Foot in 1980 and Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. This rating also puts him 34 points behind Ed Miliband in 2010. This poll follows a trend: Ipsos MORI’s first tracker for Corbyn put him on minus three in their net satisfaction ratings — five points behind

Steerpike Steerpike

Charlotte Church feels the heat on Question Time

Last night’s episode of Question Time saw David Dimbleby relocate to Cardiff to join Charlotte Church, Charles Moore, Stephen Crabb, Labour’s Stephen Kinnock and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood for a Welsh debate. While questions were raised about the future of Plaid Cymru after a lacklustre election result, the first topic on the agenda touched on whether Jeremy Corbyn could still be Prime Minister now he has said that he would never, ever use a nuclear weapon. With Kinnock struggling to defend Corbyn’s comments while also sticking to his own views supporting nuclear weapons as a deterrent, it fell to Corbynista Church to praise the Labour leader’s comments as ‘commendable’: ‘I think that it’s commendable. I think that if nuclear warfare

Thursday

Peter Jones

Cicero on Labour taxes

Heidi Alexander, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow health secretary, has emphasised how important it is ‘to weave into [Labour’s] language, our narrative and our political mission a fundamental respect for taxpayers’ money, something that is clearly missing given our current reputation for profligacy’. Cicero would be cheering her on. Cicero’s de officiis (‘On Duties’) was composed in 44 bc, the year in which he was assassinated on Marc Antony’s orders. The work, the second to be printed in the Gutenberg revolution after the Bible, was immensely influential during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. In it, he envisaged a community bound by partnership (societas) and trust, whose leaders obeyed the law and had the

Piers Morgan

Diary – 1 October 2015

Party conference season is the most pointless waste of money, time and liver quality ever devised. I attended these sweaty, drunken gatherings for ten years during my newspaper-editor days and achieved nothing constructive other than clarity over which is the best way to treat a monstrous hangover. (Answer: my late grandmother’s recipe of vine tomatoes on toast, laden with thick Marmite and gargantuan grinds from a pepper mill.) But they were fun, so long as I adhered to the golden rule: always leave the bar before 2 a.m., thus avoiding the moment when enough alcohol emboldens other delegates, and indeed one’s own staff, to tell you what they really think

The Spectator

Will Spain learn?

One of the unforeseen consequences of the reunification of Europe after the Cold War has been a resurgence of independence movements in western Europe. Emboldened by a greater sense of security and influenced by the rebirth of independent nations to the east, separatist parties have begun to challenge the boundaries of nation states which a quarter of a century ago we took for granted. Scotland’s near miss — a 45 per cent vote for ‘yes’ — inspired the leader of Spain’s Catalonia region, Artur Mas, to launch his own vote on secession. This week, forbidden by Madrid from calling a referendum, he called regional elections in which pro-independence parties formed

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 October 2015

Home In his speech at the Labour party conference, much of it taken from material that had been on the internet for some time, Jeremy Corbyn, its new leader, told the British people that most of them shared his values, such as ‘fair play for all, solidarity and not walking by on the other side of the street’. ​Mr Corbyn urged: ‘Let us build a kinder politics, a more caring society together.’ Supporters of the Class War movement with fiery torches and pig masks attacked the hipsterish Cereal Killer Café in Brick Lane, east London​.​ The Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate apologised after an RAF sergeant was

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Jeremy Corbyn finds his fizz

In Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech, the Labour leader claimed that it was time young people found their fizz. ‘Young people and older people are fizzing with ideas. Let’s give them the space for that fizz to explode into the joy,’ he said optimistically. So Mr S is glad to say that Corbyn looks like he may have found his own fizz. On his trip to Scotland today, the Labour leader was gifted a bottle of Irn Bru by Kezia Dugdale, the leader of Scottish Labour. The gift of the drink which is popular in Scotland came after Corbyn declined the offer of a can of the drink from a Buzzfeed journalist this morning. Judging