Jeremy corbyn

Sunday

Andrew Marr

We pundits were wrong about Jeremy Corbyn. So why are we so sure that he’ll flop?

This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at my own semi-trade — the political commentariat, the natterati, the salaried yacketting classes. Who among us, really, predicted that Jeremy Corbyn would romp ahead like this? Where were the post-election columns pointing out that David Cameron’s victory would lead to a resurgent quasi-Marxist left? And that’s just the beginning: how many of the well-connected, sophisticated, numerate political writers expected Labour to be slaughtered in the general election? Not me, that’s for sure. Going further back, how many people in 1992 told us John Major was an election winner? That Parris, I

Sebastian Payne

Tom Watson covers for Jeremy Corbyn in the new Labour leadership’s first outing

24 hours into his leadership and Jeremy Corbyn is already defying the conventions of being an opposition leader. He cancelled a long-scheduled appearance on the Andrew Marr Show — but found time to attend an event in his constituency — leaving it to the party’s new deputy leader Tom Watson explain to the nation what Labour has just done. Watson’s appearance suggested he is not going to be an easily-controlled disciple — he has his own agenda to reform the Labour party. One of Watson’s main areas of concern is to reform the party’s internal structures: ‘I’ve stood on a platform … I’ve got my own mandate to reform the Labour Party. I think the Labour

Steerpike Steerpike

Owen Jones’s election advice falls flat with Alastair Campbell

With Jeremy Corbyn appointed as the new leader of the Labour party, few could be more pleased by the news than the left-wing messiah’s personal cheerleader Owen Jones. In fact the Guardian columnist was one of the first to celebrate the Labour MP’s victory yesterday, praising Corbyn during a string of media appearances. He then moved on to offer some advice to the New Labour wing of the divided party over what they should do to support Corbyn’s election campaign; urging them to ‘turn away from the negativity of your media champions’ and ‘come up with a vision’ as ‘that’s how you win’. Alas these comments did not go down well with Tony Blair’s

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Labour moderates try to stop the march of the Left after Corbyn victory

Naturally, today is not a good day if you’re a Labour moderate. The Blairites’ troubles have been well publicised, but the old right, or moderate, wing of the party, represented by Labour First, is licking its wounds too. The faction did see Tom Watson elected Deputy Leader (which shows firstly that Watson and Corbyn are not from the same part of the party at all, and secondly that ‘moderate’ is quite a wide term), but it tried to encourage members to fight Corbyn every way they could, particularly by blocking him using second and third preferences. Labour First is now trying to stop the Corbynites taking control of the policymaking

Sebastian Payne

Podcast special: Jeremy Corbyn is Labour’s new leader

Jeremy Corbyn’s momentous victory in the Labour leadership contest is going to have a dramatic effect on British politics. In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss what Corbyn’s victory means for British politics and the Labour party, as well as what we can expect to happen over the next few days. We also look at Tom Watson’s victory in the deputy leadership contest and how he will work with the new leader. 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

Jeremy Corbyn’s boiler plate victory speech was no move to the centre

No one in the hall was in any doubt about the result, the only thing in question was the scale of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory. In the end it was overwhelming, 59.5 per cent on the first round. Corbyn led in every single section and the scale of his triumph will make it very hard for the Parliamentary Labour Party to move against him even in the medium term. Though, large numbers of the Labour figures here today are making no effort to hide their dismay at the result. Corbyn’s victory speech, delivered without a tie, was no move to the centre. It did contain some unifying themes, his tribute to

Steerpike Steerpike

John Prescott caught in live TV gaffe: who is Jamie Reed?

With Jeremy Corbyn announced as the new leader of the Labour party, shadow health minister Jamie Reed immediately resigned from the shadow cabinet. However, it seems the party aren’t too down hearted by the news. In fact Labour heavyweight John Prescott doesn’t even know who the Labour MP for Copeland is. Speaking on BBC News — seemingly unaware he was live — Prescott admitted he did not know who the former shadow health minister was. When asked by Jane Hill, what he made of Jamie Reed already standing down, Prescott replied that he didn’t know who he was: ‘Who is Jamie Reed? Is he in our party?’ Watch @johnprescott: Who’s Jamie

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Jeremy Corbyn’s acceptance speech was the stuff of Tory dreams

When George Osborne watched Ed Miliband winning Labour leadership in 2010, he shouted “Yes!! Yes!! Yes!!” I imagine he had probably passed out by the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s acceptance speech: it was the stuff of Tory fantasy. In Miliband’s acceptance speech, he had the wit to play down the role that the trades unions had played in his victory. Corbyn boasted about it, in a rambling speech which thanked them by name: the RMT, the FBU – even the Socialist Education Association and Socialist Health Association. I hadn’t heard of either of the last two until today. I suspect, now, we’ll be hearing a lot more about socialist organisations that we had thought

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn has arrived — here’s what happens next

It has happened. Labour has elected Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. The party hasn’t just lurched to the left, but dived headlong in that direction. Never, in the history of the universal franchise, has a leader of one of the two main parties been so far from the political centre. Just because something is absurd doesn’t mean it can’t happen. This is the lesson of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership contest. At first, the prospect of Corbyn leading Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition was seen to be so ridiculous that bookmakers put the chances of it at 200 to 1. Labour MPs were prepared to nominate him to broaden

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How will Labour MPs hide their disgust at Jeremy Corbyn’s victory?

Funny to see Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, warm Labour activists up for the bad news. “Isn’t it remarkable that so many people have joined Labour?” he says. “I look forward to seeing them on the doorstep, alongside the members who have campaigned for years and decades.” This was a bit of a dig – it’s an open secret that McNicol and others are appalled at the way these new members have been able to pay £3 and dictate the result of the leadership election – and these guys are highly unlikely to spend any time on the doorsteps. Tristram Hunt wrote in the Spectator about these new members. There is, he

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour leadership results due shortly

We will get the Labour leadership result rather shortly. The candidates know already and their teams have gone into lockdown with their phones confiscated.I am hearing that Jeremy Corbyn has won and there is a strong chance he has won on the first round, which would be extraordinary and reinforce his mandate as he tries to move his party to the left.We will bring you full results and analysis as soon as we know.

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Corbyn wins: a delicious humiliation for the liberal Left

The groans that must be coming from the newsrooms of the Guardian and the BBC right now! With a descant of coloratura shrieks from right-on luvvies. And, needless to say, vigorous hand-wringing – they’ll be sending out for Band-Aids to treat their sore fingers by the end of the day. ‘Progressive’ Labour supporters in higher income brackets did not want Jeremy Corbyn to win today. You only have to read the agonised Twitter streams of just about every liberal journalist in the country to realise that. You don’t have to tell me that the man’s policies are bonkers and the sympathies of his far-Left supporters verging on the sinister. But the Guardian/BBC

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jez, he did – Jeremy Corbyn is the new leader of the Labour Party

Jeremy Corbyn has won the Labour leadership in the first round with an extraordinary 59.5 per cent of the vote. Andy Burnham came second. This is the result everyone was expecting: or at least what they had come to expect after initially expecting Corbyn to be at worst the joke candidate and at best the figure who enabled a debate about the ideas of the Left. We are not surprised today that a backbencher from Islington has won the party leadership, but the party is still trying to work out how it has changed this much, and how its conventional leaders in waiting failed to inspire the membership in the

Friday

Isabel Hardman

How Labour’s left can push out centrist MPs without mandatory reselection

A number of backroom staff in the Labour party have been in touch today to say goodbye ahead of an exodus of frontbenchers and staffers who disagree with Jeremy Corbyn. Most expect him to win the leadership contest, and know that their bosses won’t serve in his Shadow Cabinet, or suspect that they will struggle to last very long in an HQ under his leadership. The Sun reports a clear-out in the whips office. Corbyn himself has been very careful to talk about the party coming back together, and has denied that he will bring back mandatory reselection of Labour MPs: something the Left deployed in the 1980s to threaten

Sebastian Payne

Will a high turnout benefit Jeremy Corbyn tomorrow?

Turnout in the Labour leadership contest is going to be one of the key factors in deciding who wins. The result of the London Mayoral contest suggests that the tens of thousands who’ve joined the party as members or registered supporters have, as expected, flocked in an anti-establishment direction — which has clearly benefited Sadiq Khan and points towards a Corbyn victory. Rumours are circulating that the turnout in the leadership is varying significantly between the various parts of the electorate. Coffee House understands that the leadership campaigns are expecting the turnout among trade union affiliates to be low, possibly close to 30 per cent, while the turnout among the membership is expected

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan work together

So, Sadiq Khan will be Labour’s London Mayoral candidate, while Jeremy Corbyn looks likely to become Labour’s leader tomorrow. The two have worked together during their campaigns, with their staff consulting closely on tactics. But they’ve also worked together in the past. In Emma Crewe’s book, The House of Commons: An Anthropology of MPs at Work, Corbyn tells an anecdote about what life was like as a serial rebel: Towards the end of the last Labour administration a phone call between then whip Sadiq Khan and Jeremy Corbyn tended to go something like this: Whip: ‘Hello there Jeremy, just wanted to check how you are planning to vote on Tuesday.’ Jeremy:

Sebastian Payne

David Cameron: Corbyn poses a threat to Britain’s financial security

Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t even been elected Labour leader but the campaign to undermine him begins today. David Cameron will give a speech on the economy, in which he will warn that Corbyn will threaten Britain’s security — a strategy I wrote about earlier this week. According to today’s Times, the Prime Minister will make his first significant attack on a Corbyn-led Labour by focusing on the threat to Britain’s financial security: ‘I have watched with some bewilderment the Labour leadership election of the past few months. ‘Whoever wins . . . this is now a party that has completely vacated the intellectual playing field and no longer represents working people. It is arguing at the extremes

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Credible

In a wonderfully dry manual of theology on my husband’s bookshelves, written in Latin and printed in Naples in the 1830s, there is a discussion of whether ‘rustics and idiots’ are supported in their belief by ‘motives of credibility’, such as miracles. The same question has been asked about belief in Jeremy Corbyn, except that the city stands in for the country, and the idiots are often useful ones. ‘I am the only candidate who can offer a bold but credible vision,’ Andy Burnham has said. ‘I’ll have the confidence to reject Tory myths and the credibility to demolish them,’ countered Yvette Cooper. John Curtice, the political scientist, noticed that

Sebastian Payne

Liz Kendall says farewell to frontline politics (for now)

Liz Kendall has all but admitted she is not going to be the next Labour leader. At a speech in Westminster this morning, the shadow care minister spoke about the future of the party and referenced ‘whatever happens on Saturday’ — but she was no longer talking about her plans as leader. Kendall urged Labour to stick together after the new leader is elected, specifically if Jeremy Corbyn wins: ‘First, everyone must – and I believe will – accept the result and mandate of the new Leader. They will have won the right to pursue their agenda and must be given the space and scope to do so. If Jeremy Corbyn wins, it would

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Does David Cameron really need to worry about Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on military intervention?

Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader will make it much more difficult for David Cameron to bring a vote to the House of Commons authorising British involvement in air strikes against the so-called Islamic State in Syria. That’s the received wisdom, anyway, but is it true? Tom Newton Dunn reported in the Sun this week that ‘dozens’ of Labour MPs were prepared to defy their party whip if it forbade support for action in Syria, which would mean the government would be able to cobble together a majority of Conservative MPs and Labourites, even if a group of Tories defied their whip. Yesterday the Prime Minister told the Commons that the