Jeremy corbyn

Tuesday

15 Sep 2015

Harry Mount

Corbyn has won. So why are the north London lefties still so angry and nasty?

‘Jeremy Corbyn Night’ at the Forum in Kentish Town, on Monday night, should have been a scene of orgiastic pleasure for socialist Labour. Corbyn’s victory was the triumph the grand old reactionaries of north London have been waiting a generation for. But they weren’t happy; they were as angry and full of bile as ever. The scene took me right back to my childhood in Islington in the 1970s. My neighbours in the queue outside the Forum had posher voices than you hear at Annabel’s. The smart greybeards from the £2 million villas of Kentish Town and Islington were joined by a new generation of under-thirties: white, university-educated, also with upmarket

Steerpike

The Corbyn effect? David Cameron pushes his green credentials

Many on the right have raised concerns that a Jeremy Corbyn led opposition could force the government to lurch more to the left in order to pick up votes from disillusioned Labour supporters. But with Corbyn already making waves by hiring a socialist shadow chancellor as well as a vegan shadow Defra secretary, will David Cameron take inspiration from their appointments? Judging by an article written by Cameron that was published today, they could be onto something when it comes to the environment at least. The Prime Minister has listed his favourite children’s book in a piece for the activity group Super Camps. He names Dr Seuss’s The Lorax, which tells the story of a boy —

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn at the TUC: Cameron and Osborne are ‘poverty deniers’

Jeremy Corbyn has delivered the second speech of his leadership at the TUC conference in Brighton this afternoon and it was a slight improvement on the first. The idiosyncratic address Corbyn gave after winning the Labour leadership contest was long-winded and repetitive. His TUC address shared some of these characteristics but it was a little bit more polished — in particular, the section where he slammed David Cameron and George Osborne for being ‘poverty deniers’: ‘They call us deficit deniers. But then they spend billions cutting taxes for the richest families or for the most profitable businesses. What they are is poverty deniers: Ignoring the growing queues at food banks. Ignoring the

Isabel Hardman

Business as usual for Labour as shadow teams get to work

If you’d missed Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, and pitched up to business questions in the Commons today, you might not have noticed that much had changed, initially. Labour had a good frontbench team scrutinising the government, with Angela Eagle leading in her customary dry manner. She asked questions about the skills gap, while Tory ministers complained about Labour’s legacy from its time in government and tried to provoke the Opposition over the Trade Union Bill. Not much change there. But there were differences, even if Labour looked as though it was functioning vaguely effectively after a turbulent few days. The first was that Tory frontbenchers and backbenchers such

Steerpike

Revealed: how Jeremy Corbyn could avoid kissing the Queen’s hand

With Jeremy Corbyn accepting an invitation to join the Privy Council, the republican will have to kneel before the Queen and kiss her on the hand when he takes the position. Of course this is unlikely to go down well with his far-left supporters, as well as the man himself — who today appeared to refrain from singing God Save the Queen at the Battle for Britain memorial service. So Mr S suspects that Corbyn may wish to take a leaf out of Tony Benn’s book on this one. In a Radio 4 series, Benn discussed his political diaries, including samples of the original recordings from which he had first dictated entries onto

Sebastian Payne

EU referendum too close to call, according to new poll

The new wording of the EU referendum question seems to have helped the Brexit cause. Since the Yes/No question changed to Remain/Leave, support for staying in the European Union appears to have ebbed away. According to a new ICM poll 40 per cent now say they’d vote for Britain to leave the EU, compared to 43 per cent who would vote to remain In. This three-point gap is within the usual margin of error for opinion polls, making it too close to say who is ahead. But happily for campaigners, 17 per cent said they still ‘don’t know’ how they will vote in the referendum. ICM conducted a poll based on the

Kate Maltby

Like Cameron, Corbyn also believes in the merits of ‘token women’

In the early hours of Monday, it dawned on Jeremy Corbyn that no women in his team would be shadowing the four Great Offices of State. ‘We are taking a fair amount of shit out there about women,’ his advisor Simon Fletcher was heard saying. ‘We need to do a Mandelson. Let’s make Angela shadow first minister of state. Like Mandelson was. She can cover PMQs.’ Of course, if you’re reading this, and you’re a deep-set Corbynista, I doubt you believe a word of it: it’s the testimony of Darren McCaffrey, Sky reporter, spawn of the evil Murdoch empire. Therein lies the central challenge of our polarised body politic. How can any

Monday

14 Sep 2015

James Forsyth

No enthusiasm for Corbyn as he addresses Labour MPs

Labour MPs are in no mood to fake it. At Jeremy Corbyn’s first meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party, there was no cheer as he entered the room, no raucous applause when he stood up to speak. Instead, all that could be heard outside in the corridor was a few rounds of mild, polite applause. For a new leader, this is quite unprecedented. Corbyn’s message was that he had three priorities as leader: housing, the elections in Scotland and Wales next year and a Labour government in 2020. He also tried to stress that he wanted to be an inclusive leader, emphasising that he didn’t want any change to party

Steerpike

Labour staff flee party headquarters

Ahead of the general election, David Cameron used a fire metaphor to describe what he offered the nation in comparison to the chaos — he claimed — Ed Miliband would unleash on the country: ‘I feel like the firefighter, hosing down the burning building, and there’s Ed Miliband – the arsonist – saying “why aren’t you doing it quicker?”‘ Well, Miliband may be gone but the threat of fire certainly hasn’t. With Corbyn just three days into his leadership, rumours abound that many staff members may face the axe under the new regime. However, it was another disaster which caused Labour bods to flee their office this afternoon. Staff were evacuated from

Camilla Swift

Meet the new anti-meat, anti-shooting, pro-badger shadow Defra secretary

It’s no surprise that Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet appointments have rattled a few cages – and the choice of Kerry McCarthy as shadow Defra secretary is just one of many. The MP for Bristol East (a city that Anthony Whitehead described a few weeks ago as employing a ‘totalitarian brand of environmental idealism’) has made her views on both meat eating and rural pursuits clear in the past, and has a fair few critics already. It has already been pointed out elsewhere that putting a vegan in charge of representing the farming industry is slightly odd – but then again, vegetarian Hilary Benn was Defra secretary for three years. But that

Steerpike

Listen: Lucy Powell discusses her ‘very new relationship’ with Jeremy Corbyn

Lucy Powell is back. As Steerpike reported this morning, Jeremy Corbyn has appointed Ed Miliband’s blunder-prone deputy campaign chief as Labour’s shadow education secretary. The Labour MP kick started her first day in her new role with a return to old form. Taking part in an interview on BBC News, Powell spoke about how the party needed to rebuild their economic credibility. First, however, she addressed the point Mr S drew attention to earlier: that she had never met Corbyn before he offered her the shadow cabinet job: ‘It is a very new relationship. It was the first time I’d spoken to him directly. We had a good conversation, and he offered me the

Leo McKinstry

The Trade Union Bill defends workers. No wonder Jeremy Corbyn hates it

The brothers are back. Few political groups have been more exhilarated by Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory than the trade unions. For years they have been regarded as the difficult relations of the Labour movement, useful mainly for their financial and organisational muscle but not much else. Blairite New Labour was openly hostile towards them, Ed Miliband equivocal. Indeed his decision to widen Labour’s voting membership, a move which dramatically assisted the Corbyn campaign, was a deliberate attempt to reduce the influence of the trade unions. But now Labour is led by someone who enthusiastically shares their anti-capitalist, anti-austerity, reform-blocking, high-taxing, state-expanding ideology. In Corbyn, they now have a political soulmate

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn rewrites the rules to claim gender balance in Shadow Cabinet

After being criticised for not involving enough women in his shadow cabinet, Jeremy Corbyn has brought more women in by creating cabinet roles. He has promoted ‘young people and voter registration’ to a Cabinet role and given the job to Gloria de Piero, who will be terrific at it given her interest in non-voters and political apathy, but who may be surprised by the whooshing promotion that the role has received. Similarly, Luciana Berger is Shadow Minister for Mental Health, which is now a Cabinet position too. Perhaps it’s a good thing that mental health, so overlooked and underfunded, is a Cabinet role – though it’s not arepa rate department

Sebastian Payne

The Tories aren’t leaving Jeremy Corbyn’s destruction to chance

Jeremy Corbyn has been Labour leader for less than 48 hours and the Conservative party is already managing to set the tone of the debate. In a piece for POLITICO Europe today, I look at how the Tories are feeling about Corbyn’s victory over the weekend and their plans to deal with it. Some MPs feel sad that Labour is no longer a serious party. ‘Saturday was a sad day for our country and the Labour Party — I am not laughing,’ says one influential Tory MP. ‘The party of Ramsay Macdonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair has now been reduced to Jeremy Corbyn’. But any sorrow however is overwhelmed by jubilation that the next

Steerpike

Is Damian McBride angling for a job as Jeremy Corbyn’s spin doctor?

Given that Jeremy Corbyn has been on the receiving end of a barrage of bad press this morning, he could do with the help of an expert spinner. Yet everyone who has cared about the Labour Party over the years is appalled at his triumph; no one is willing to defend him. No one, that is, except the currently ‘freelance’ former king of spin, Damian McBride. The disgraced spin doctor appears to have been on a mission to endear himself to Corbyn ever since he won the leadership election on Saturday. He kicked things off with an editorial in the Mail on Sunday titled ‘Jeremy Corbyn may be the best thing since Clement Attlee’. Yes, seriously. Corbyn,

Brendan O’Neill

Welcome to the era of conspiracy-theory politics

Who argues that a ‘shadow state’ controls Britain? That a gang of faraway, faceless suits ‘orchestrate public life from the shadows’, from their ‘yachts in the Mediterranean’? Who thinks people in ‘the shadows’, who always remain ‘hidden’, exercise a ‘poisonous, secretive influence on public life’? A spotty sixth-former who spends way too much time on the internet, perhaps? Or maybe one of those cranky guys who hangs out in the discussion threads of David Icke’s website, convinced that lizards in suits run the world? Actually it’s Tom Watson, new deputy leader of the Labour Party. All those claims come from his rather bonkers book on the Murdoch empire, where Watson

Steerpike

Labour’s campaign genius (finally) meets Jeremy Corbyn

Ahead of the Labour leadership results, Lucy Powell engaged in some gentle bitching online about Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of social interaction with her. Ed Miliband’s former deputy campaign chief told Miliband’s former political secretary Anna Yearley that she had never, ever met the man of the moment. @AnnaYearley I have never, ever met or spoken to him. At PLP, in Chamber, in voting lobbies, tea rooms, library, anywhere … — Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) August 18, 2015 This led Ukip’s Douglas Carswell to offer to make an introduction. Happily this gesture won’t be needed as the times are a’changin. Seemingly willing to overlook this slight, the newly-elected Corbyn has appointed

Isabel Hardman

DUP fury over McDonnell appointment could increase Cameron’s majority

Funnily enough, the DUP aren’t particularly happy that Labour’s new Shadow Chancellor praised the ‘bravery’ of the IRA. They were already – as reported on Coffee House – nervous about Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader. But a party source says: ‘Corbyn was a punch to roll with. He was elected after all. And ultimately he’s a “holy fool” of the left; it’s not to say he’s harmless, just that he’s fundamentally naive. But McDonnell? He was *chosen*. It’s sending us a message loud and clear and we’ve heard it.’ It could be that Corbyn’s victory and McDonnell’s appointment effectively increases Cameron’s majority, if the DUP refuses to vote with Labour

Leo McKinstry

The Trade Union Bill must tie up Thatcher’s unfinished business

The People’s Assembly, the self-appointed left-wing pressure group behind the recent anti-austerity demonstrations, portrays itself as the voice of the masses struggling under oppressive Tory rule. It claims that no fewer than 250,000 demonstrators went to its rally in central London in June (a figure dutifully regurgitated by broadcasters). But photographs of the event in London indicate no more than 25,000 attended. The bogusness does not stop there. Despite its demotic name, the People’s Assembly is no spontaneous uprising of the angry British public. On the contrary, the organisation, which counts the comedian Russell Brand and the Guardian columnist Owen Jones among its noisiest advocates, is bankrolled by the trade unions, those wealthy institutions

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn’s first shadow cabinet is going to be divisive

Well, Corbyn really has gone for it. Although the new shadow cabinet is not made up entirely of hard-left appointees, the new Labour leader is taking his mandate seriously. Crucially, making John McDonnell shadow chancellor, whose has said some interesting things about the IRA and wants to nationalise the banks, is a bold move by Corbyn and not one that is going down well. On the Today programme, the former home secretary Charles Clarke said he was ‘aghast’ at the appointment of McDonnell and predicted that Labour MPs would end up creating their own economic policy alongside whatever McDonnell does. Even Corbyn’s new shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn failed to