Jeremy corbyn

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Twelve disagreements Charlie Falconer has with his party leadership

Charlie Falconer is one of the few figures closely associated with Blairism serving in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, which isn’t surprising given the new leader’s mandate. In an extraordinary interview on the Sunday Politics, the shadow justice secretary said he was serving under Corbyn because ‘I want to make the opposition as effective as possible in holding the government to account’ — while outlining a long list of policy areas he is at odds with the leadership on. As well as saying he would quit if Labour campaigns for a Brexit, Falconer has revealed no fewer than twelve other areas where he differs with Corbyn and John McDonnell. 1. Leaving Nato Corbyn has previously

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Arthur Scargill: Jeremy Corbyn isn’t left wing enough

Ahead of the Labour leadership election result, David Cameron warned that Jeremy Corbyn would take Britain back ‘to the days of Michael Foot and Arthur Scargill’ if elected. Well, a week into Corbyn’s leadership of the party — and several gaffes later — it turns out that there is one small snag with regards to Cameron’s premonition; Corbyn is just not left wing enough. Arthur Scargill — who founded his own Socialist Labour Party after the party changed the wording of Clause IV — says Corbyn is ‘not left wing enough to lure people back to Labour’. Arthur Scargill tells Sunday Politics Yorks & Lincs @jeremycorbyn isn't left wing enough to lure

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The emotional appeal of Tony Benn’s apostle

When the history of Corbynism comes to be written, many will assume that his form of leftism arose as a protest against the Thatcher era. This is not so. It predated her. There really was a belief in the 1970s that capitalism would ‘collapse under the weight of its own contradictions’. The formative experience of the Corbyn generation was not Thatcher but the crisis of 1976, when a Labour government was forced to bring in the IMF. It was then that the campaigns against ‘the cuts’, which have been going on ever since — and the hard-left infiltration connected with them — really took off. (Indeed the Jim Callaghan/Denis Healey cuts were

Saturday

Charles Moore

Manhole covers are not gender neutral. Does this bother Jeremy Corbyn?

Mr Corbyn’s hobby is manhole covers, on which he is an expert. I was about thoughtlessly to mock this leisure activity when I was prevented by the learned Christopher Howse. He speaks as a connoisseur of a distinct, but related genre — coal plates, which cover coalholes, and are often neglected. In the 19th century, a man called Shephard Taylor sketched 150 coal plates, and these were published as a book called Opercula: London Coal Plates, in 1929. Christopher has now photographed 1,019 coal plates on his mobile phone and tweeted them (#opercula). Despite his preference for coal plates, Christopher is generous about students of manhole covers or (with which they must

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn’s first week as Labour leader: a series of gaffes, u-turns and general chaos

Harold Wilson’s remark that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ has never been more apt than at the beginning of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The hopey-changey rhetoric that lead him to victory last Saturday has inevitably given way to a more traditional form of compromise politics. While Corbyn’s debut at the Dispatch Box was the high point of his first week as Labour leader, the rest of his time has been devoted to fighting fires — literally in one incident. Women in the shadow cabinet: Sky News’ Darren McCaffrey revealed how the first Corbyn shadow cabinet was put together last Sunday and how the Labour leader attempted to deal with a lack of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Jeremy Corbyn appoints convicted arsonist Mike Watson as his education spokesman

Given that Jeremy Corbyn is a Hamas sympathiser with an IRA sympathiser as his Shadow Chancellor, I imagine he didn’t think too much about promoting a little-known Scot named Mike Watson. He is a Labour peer, who now takes a place in Corbyn’s frontbench as education spokesman. He is also a convicted arsonist, who quit the Scottish Parliament in disgrace after being caught drunkenly setting fire to a set of curtains during the Scottish Politician of the Year ceremony 2004. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison, which he served in HMP Edinburgh. Watson’s undeserved rehabilitation says much about how Corbyn is having to scrape the very bottom of the barrel for people willing to serve

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

John McDonnell’s slick performance on Question Time was worthy of Tony Blair

Hats off to John McDonnell. We’ve all been fretting about how the Corbyn gang would cope against the media slick Tories. We all think that, despite the appeal of conviction politics, a shadow chancellor such as McDonnell will be eaten alive by the Tory front bench. John McDonnell’s performance on BBC Question Time last night suggested otherwise. Question Time is a good test for politicians: they have to look and sound passionate while saying nothing much at all. McDonnell did exactly that, and with gusto. He masterfully shrugged off his ‘joke’ about killing Margaret Thatcher. When asked about his support for the IRA, he managed almost simultaneously to apologise and to

Douglas Murray

Why are people falling for John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’?

John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’ was no such thing and I am amazed to see anybody for fall for it. It was obviously insisted upon by Labour party spin-doctors. But as the words themselves show, it was not an apology. Sure, he apologised for causing any offence or upset, but not for the fact that he was wholly and utterly wrong. And wrong not only to have praised people who spent three decades shooting people and planting bombs in public places but wrong on the facts too. I cannot think how he can get away with this, but it seems like he will, not least because his boss has done so

Sebastian Payne

Alistair Darling: there’s no ‘silver lining’ to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership

Today marks one year since the Scottish independence referendum and many of the key figures are reflecting on how politics has changed. Alistair Darling, the former Labour Chancellor and leader of the Better Together campaign, spoke on the Today programme about Scotland, but it was the remarks on his own party that were the most striking. He said Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader thanks to the ‘disillusionment’ of people who are ‘fed up with the established order’. But Darling said ‘I honestly don’t know’ whether John McDonnell will ever become Chancellor: ‘Just at the moment, it seems to me to be difficult [to judge] but I’m willing to be surprised. I’m sure all clouds have a silver lining but I haven’t quite

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 September 2015

What firefighters do Sir: Leo McKinstry’s vicious, misleading article ‘Out of the ashes’ (12 September) shows that he has no understanding of the real issues facing firefighters today. He implies firefighters sit around doing nothing while other emergency services are doing the real work. Nothing could be further from the truth. Firefighters rescue more than 38,000 people every year, working regularly with paramedics, ambulance staff and police. There has been reluctance in the past from the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) to sanction firefighters stepping in to help with medical rescues as a matter of course, since such moves need to be made carefully, with assurances that proper training will be

The Spectator

Barometer | 17 September 2015

It’s their party Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership contest with 60% of the vote among four candidates in the first round. Which leader has the largest mandate from their party? — David Cameron was elected in 2005 with 28% of the vote out of four candidates in the first round (held among MPs only). He won 68% of the party vote in the run-off with David Davis. — Tim Farron won 57% of the Lib Dem vote this year. Only two candidates stood. — Nicola Sturgeon was appointed as SNP leader unopposed last November. — Nigel Farage was elected Ukip leader in 2006 with 45% of the vote (among

Chris Mullin

Diary – 17 September 2015

With four days to go until the result of Labour’s leadership election, a call from the Sunday Times. Would I like to write a piece, along the lines of the opening chapter of my 1980s novel A Very British Coup, about the first 100 days of a Corbyn government? Anything up to 3,000 words, he says. I am sceptical that the sense of humour of the censors at Murdoch HQ will stretch to the prospect of a Corbyn government, however fanciful. Especially since any such government is likely to be interested in breaking up the concentration of media ownership. What they are really looking for, I suspect, is tale of

Dot Wordsworth

Twitter speak

‘Tweeting’s like text messaging, isn’t it?’ said my husband confidently, though not, as usual, from any knowledge of the matter. I find the register of language in tweets interesting. The tweeter in his own right must assume an easy tone, quite different from that of the niggling troll. As far as style goes, I was impressed by Jamie Reed, the Labour MP who made public his resignation from the shadow cabinet when Jeremy Corbyn had hardly finished his acceptance speech. Mr Reed is fond of tweeting, and quite good at it. The little picture (tweeters it call an avatar) with his account shows Larry Sanders, the fictional chatshow host. Having

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 17 September 2015

When the Labour party began, its purpose was the representation of labour (i.e. workers) in the House of Commons. Indeed, its name was the Labour Representation Committee. Its goal was gradually achieved, and then, from the 1980s, gradually annihilated. With the victory of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader is supported by only 10 per cent of the party’s MPs, and yet it is imagined, at least by his backers, that he will eventually be able to get into government with them. It is an impossible situation. What is needed today is the opposite of how it all started — a Parliamentary Representation Committee in the Labour party. When the history of

The Spectator-Leader

The right answer

David Cameron might not be remembered as the best prime minister in modern British history but he will probably be remembered as the luckiest. Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour party is proving worse — or, for the Tories, better — than anyone could have imagined. His wrecking ball is busy destroying everything that was built by Labour’s modernisers. He does not lack authenticity, belief and passion — but his beliefs are ones which would be more at home in a 1920s plenary meeting of the Moscow Soviet than in contemporary British living rooms. The Chancellor sees Corbyn’s leadership as a chance to further blacken Labour’s name. The

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 17 September 2015

Home In the shadow cabinet chosen by the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the Exchequer went to John McDonnell, a left-winger who had run his campaign for the leadership. Although Mr Corbyn’s defeated rival Andy Burnham was given the Home Office portfolio, most appointments were from the left. Angela Eagle, the new shadow business secretary, was also named shadow first secretary of state and would perform at Prime Minister’s Questions when the Prime Minister was away. Her twin sister Maria Eagle got the defence portfolio. Even Diane Abbott was given international development. Mr Corbyn had received 59.5 per cent of 422,664 votes cast; of the 105,000 who had paid £3

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn offers a twist to the EU renegotiation

Jeremy Corbyn has taken to the Financial Times, the newspaper of big business, to say that Labour will support Britain staying in the EU whatever happens in the renegotiation. This is a reversal of Corbyn’s previous view that such a position was equivalent to giving David Cameron a blank cheque to negotiate away social and environmental ‘protections’. But there is a twist. Corbyn says that if Cameron does win changes in these areas, Labour will commit to reversing them if it wins the next election. Now, I think this could pose a problem for the In campaign because it confirms that the settlement that is being put to the electorate

Steerpike Steerpike

Jess Phillips: Why I told Diane Abbott to f— off

Jeremy Corbyn’s first PLP meeting as the leader of the Labour party got off to a shaky start as MPs failed to applaud him. Happily, the attention was soon taken away from him, as a row erupted between his shadow international development minister and a Labour backbencher. Diane Abbott attempted to scold the newbie Labour MP Jess Phillips for asking a ‘sanctimonious’ question about why all the top four shadow cabinet jobs had gone to men. With Phillips telling Abbott to ‘f— off’, Corbyn has since been criticised for not stepping in to stop the argument. Today’s Times suggests that Corbyn’s romantic fling with Abbott back in the 70s could have played a factor in

Steerpike Steerpike

At last, Jeremy Corbyn befriends a cameraman

Jeremy Corbyn has not had much luck with cameramen of late. Since he was elected as Labour’s new leader over the weekend, a war with the media has ensued as Corbyn does his best to avoid most cameramen. One particularly eye-watering encounter occurred on Sunday night with Sky News. Things took a turn for the worse on Tuesday when a BBC cameraman was admitted to hospital following an altercation outside Corbyn’s home. While the Department for Transport is currently investigating if a member of their staff was responsible for the man’s injuries, Corbyn can take heart that at least one cameraman is fighting his corner. Dai Baker, a Welsh cameraman who works for Channel 4 — which broadcast a sympathetic

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What holds Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench team together

Jeremy Corbyn surfaced last night to do his first round of broadcast interviews since becoming Labour leader. The two key lines were on Europe and Trident, and though the interviewers were interested in these issues, Corbyn also had an interest in being as clear as he possibly could be on them as they play a large part in holding his Shadow Cabinet together. Labour MPs spent a lot of time chatting with one another and debating whether it was the right thing to join the Corbyn frontbench as he assembled it on Sunday night. They reached different conclusions, with some fearing they would be tainted by a hopeless administration that