Jeremy corbyn

Thursday

Steerpike

Rupert Murdoch comes out in support of Jeremy Corbyn

First Russell Brand, and now Rupert Murdoch has joined the list of ‘endorsements Jeremy Corbyn might not actually want’. The News UK media mogul, whose papers backed the Tories in the general election, says that Corbyn is the only Labour leadership candidate who actually believes in something: Corbyn increasingly likely Labor winner. Seems only candidate who believes anything, right or wrong. — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) August 20, 2015 The praise is somewhat limited for Corbyn — who Murdoch says will most likely win — with the newspaper proprietor hastily adding a disclaimer that Corbyn’s beliefs may not actually be right. ‘Seems only candidate who believes anything, right or wrong,’ he says. While Mr S is unsure

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the clean eating fad and what happens if Corbyn wins

Is ‘clean eating’ a trendy new fad or something more dangerous? On the View from 22 podcast, nutritionist Ian Marber discusses this week’s cover feature with Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast. How is the advice to eat healthier given out by these self-made personalities actually detrimental to your health? How much of the #eatclean movement is about celebrity? And do these gurus have any qualifications for doling out nutritional advice? Isabel Hardman and George Eaton also discuss what happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership contest. How long will be last in the job? Could he be removed by Labour MPs in the near future or next year? Will the new leader be able to hold the Parliamentary

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs’ next choice: which leadership coup to back

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thecleaneatingcult/media.mp3″ title=”Isabel Harrdman and George Eaton discuss what happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins” startat=696] Listen [/audioplayer]Jeremy Corbyn’s close friend Tony Benn had five questions he always asked of those in power: ‘What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how do we get rid of you?’ Labour’s leadership election has a month left to run, but most of those involved think Corbyn will triumph. So they’ve already started working out how they’ll get rid of him. John McTernan, a former Blair adviser, recommends deposing him immediately. As he said on The Spectator’s podcast:

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Bisexuality is now everywhere (and nowhere)

I’m not aware of knowing many bisexual people. Or indeed, off the top of my head, any bisexual people. Which is odd, really, because back in my student days you couldn’t move for them. Being bisexual was quite the thing. Or, at least, claiming to be was. The girls really dug it. This was back in the mid-1990s, not long after the lead singer of a band called Suede, who is a man called Brett Anderson (married to a lady now; two kids) had declared himself ‘a bisexual man who has never had a homosexual experience’. That, at the time, was very much the sort of sexual identity that a

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn: suggestions I’m anti-semitic are ‘disgusting and deeply offensive’

Jeremy Corbyn has hit back at suggestions he has been hanging out in a rather bad crowd. The former Conservative MP Louise Mensch has dug up a press release on her blog that suggests Corbyn invited Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese extremist who once said the ‘death of every British soldier is a victory’, to speak in Parliament. On the World at One, Corbyn responded to the accusation he invited Jahjah to speak in Parliament: ‘Sorry who? I saw the name this morning and I asked somebody who is he?’ He went to dismiss the idea that he is racist or anti-semitic: ‘My views are that the Holocaust was the most disgraceful and vile

Steerpike Steerpike

Russell Brand comes to Jeremy Corbyn’s defence

Jeremy Corbyn has been having a difficult time of late. The Labour leadership favourite has become increasingly tetchy with the media after facing questions about his links to a Holocaust denier, as well as being the subject of criticism from a host of former Labour bigwigs. However, there is one man who he can rely on to fight his corner; step forward Russell Brand. Although Ed Miliband had to pay a late night visit to the comedian-turned-revolutionary’s £2 million apartment in order to win his endorsement during the general election, Brand has come out for Corbyn all on his own accord. Joining a long list of celebrity Corbynistas — who so far include Charlotte

Sebastian Payne

Our railways are better than ever. They don’t need renationalising

Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn have both pledged to bring back British Rail. Why? In a speech yesterday, Corbyn justified his position: ‘I think the public mood is there, absolutely there, saying, “Bring our railways back into public ownership.” And we’ll all get a better and much more integrated system as a result’. Headline figures from recent polls suggest he may have a point: a YouGov survey from early August said 58 per cent supported ‘bringing the railways, water companies and other utilities back into public ownership through renationalisation’. But this could be classified as a ‘would you like a pony’ polling question; it offers no explanation of what renationalisation would entail, only hinting

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn is far less popular with Labour MPs than he is with members. Is that a problem?

Why haven’t some Labour MPs ever met Jeremy Corbyn? Mr Steerpike picks up on the discussion between former Miliband aide Anna Yearley, and MPs Barbara Keeley and Lucy Powell about his non-attendance at PLP meetings and the fact that Powell has ‘never, ever met or spoken to him’. This is odd: Corbyn has been a member since 1983 and has managed to find time to befriend Ukip’s Douglas Carswell, who cheerily offered to introduce Yearley to Corbyn in the tearooms at some point. It’s not unusual, though: on Sunday night Tory backbencher Mark Field was singing the praises of the friendly Corbyn on Westminster Hour. But when I was discussing

Douglas Murray

The left is rapidly losing its moral authority on racism

On Monday, Jeremy Corbyn was questioned by Channel 4 News about yet another Holocaust denier and anti-Semite of his acquaintance.  And now the BBC’s World at One has asked Corbyn about another. There are plenty more, and this will be able to go on for quite some time.  But Corbyn’s defence was interesting in that it went to the heart of the political inequality of our time: that is the assumption that the motivations of the left are good even when they do bad things, while the motivations of their opponents on the right are solely bad even when they do good things. If you doubt that, imagine the outcry now on

Steerpike Steerpike

Lucy Powell’s Mean Girls moment: ‘I have never, ever met Jeremy Corbyn’

After the Queen’s Speech in May, a number of Labour MPs including Chuka Umunna and Rachel Reeves enjoyed a group trip to Nandos. Alas the invite didn’t manage to make its way to blunder-prone Lucy Powell who took to Twitter to awkwardly point this out. Now it seems Ed Miliband’s former deputy campaign chief has put her foot in it once again. Last night Powell engaged in some gentle bitching about Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of social interaction with her. After Miliband’s former political secretary Anna Yearley (who says she will be voting for Liz Kendall) tweeted that Corbyn’s bad attendance record at Parliamentary Labour Party meetings would make it interesting for him to chair one if elected, Powell

Tuesday

Hugo Rifkind

Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite but he is reaping what he sowed

People keep asking me if I think Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic. I don’t. Or at least I think it’s vanishingly unlikely. Why would he be? For all his political unorthodoxy in various directions, his antipathy towards bigotry seems wholly genuine. Indeed, it seems the whole point. I don’t see how it could have such a big blind spot. If the question gets asked, however, and angrily, I don’t think he’s blameless. My own political awakening came with the pending Iraq war in 2003. I was against it, noisily. I remember quite clearly the first anti-war march I attended, probably in late 2002. Everybody had the same placard, handed out by

Sebastian Payne

Can we trust the Labour leadership polls?

Is Jeremy Corbyn’s steaming ahead in the Labour leadership contest? Is he going to win on first preferences alone? The best quantitate answers we have come from two YouGov polls conducted for the Times — one in July and another last week. The first poll put Corbyn 17 points ahead of his nearest rival on first preferences and six points ahead in the final round. In the second poll, Corbyn was 31 points ahead on first preferences and 14 points in the final round. Can these polls be trusted? Given that YouGov, like all the other pollsters, called the general election incorrectly, scepticism is rife in Westminster about any polling. On the World at One today, Peter Kellner of YouGov pointed out his company correctly

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party: one of them must go

I suppose I’d insult Jeremy Corbyn if I compared him to an American. Jews (sorry ‘Zionists’) and Ukrainians rank high in the far-left’s demonology. But Corbyn and his comrades agree that Americans are the worst. So I should say that I mean no offence when I point out that ‘if Corbyn were American’ his campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party would make sense. In the United States, or any other presidential democracy, the winner of a party’s nomination selects his or her team from among their supporters. If they win power, they appoint their own cabinet. The executive and legislature are separate. Whatever deals they must cut with

Sebastian Payne

Cheat sheet: what Jeremy Corbyn stands for

Given by most metrics Jeremy Corbyn is on track to win the Labour leadership contest, his policies deserve to be examined and discussed. Based on his speeches and pamphlets, here is a summary of what Corbyn has pledged to do in key policy areas. There is a surprising amount of detail. Economy Corbyn’s economic ideas have been outlined in a document: The Economy in 2020. His approach for ‘growth not austerity’ is one of his most comprehensive policy areas. Corbynomics, which we’ve looked at in the past, is based on raising taxes and using the proceeds to invest in the economy. He has promised to ‘cut some of the huge tax reliefs and subsidies on offer

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Yes, Jeremy Corbyn actually is the most dangerous man in British politics

No, Nicola Sturgeon does not have much reason to be worried about Jeremy Corbyn. But the rest of the country does. To borrow from the tabloids, Corbyn is The Most Dangerous Man in Britain because, though no-one in London seems to appreciate this, he could be the man whose leadership of the Labour party leads to the end of Britain as we know it. Now I know people in England have tired of Scots banging on about the constitution. And I know that some things don’t have to be viewed through the prism of the constitution. Nevertheless, it’s a much more important issue than anything anyone says about trains. Or the health

Sebastian Payne

Andy Burnham: it’s not ‘three against one’ with Jeremy Corbyn

The Labour leadership race is rapidly turning sour. None of the warnings from party grandees are denting Jeremy Corbyn’s support, so talk has turned back to whether candidates should drop out. Yvette Cooper’s campaign has called for Andy Burnham to quit the race. ‘If he isn’t prepared to offer an alternative to Jeremy, he needs to step back and leave it to Yvette’, a spokesman said last night. On the Today programme this morning, Burnham hit back at this idea, arguing that ‘some of the language needs to be more considered than it is’ and defended his position in the race: ‘I find this call disappointing but actually quite strange, given that all the other leadership camps

Monday

Adam Memon

Corbynomics: A path to penury

The expansion of capitalism and free markets in recent decades has led to incredible economic and social progress; the fastest fall in extreme poverty in human history, rising life expectancy and plummeting levels of global hunger. Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-capitalist economic programme seems simply to ignore that history of success. The premise of Corbynomics is therefore that free market capitalism has failed in the UK with sectors ranging from energy to housing showing that markets cannot function to the benefit of society. This is deeply misguided. As John Maynard Keynes once said, this is ‘an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam’. Of course

Douglas Murray

At least Labour is still a party worth crashing

The Labour party includes many sensible and intelligent people who want what is best for our country.  But all of them are currently gnawing their hands and weeping into their sleeves as they watch their party prepare to take this great leap backwards.  I know of Labour politicians who hoped that putting Jeremy Corbyn up for the leadership would shine a light on him and his ilk and thus chase out for ever the IRA/Hezbollah wing of their party.  Alas for them the infection turned out to be what the body most welcomed, and so here the sensible members of the party sit, sadly mulling their electoral mortality. In such

Sebastian Payne

Could Jeremy Corbyn be removed as Labour leader?

If Jeremy Corbyn is elected as Labour leader, how long would he last? Blairities, such as John McTernan, have promoted the idea of an instacoup — taking him out as soon as possible. Or the party might decide further down the line they’ve had enough. In either scenario, there is a formal procedure for removing a leader. Under the 2014 Labour rule book (produced after the Collins review), clause two of chapter four explains how a leader can be challenged: ‘Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers each year prior to the annual session of Party conference. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20 per cent of the Commons members of

Sunday

The Spectator

A Twitter snapshot of the Labour leadership struggle

Who would win the Labour leadership contest if it were decided by the number of Twitter followers? Jeremy Corbyn 94,200 Andy Burnham 85,400 Yvette Cooper 72,800 Liz Kendall 35,900 And the nascent Tory leadership battle? Boris Johnson 1.43m* George Osborne 135,000 Theresa May 0† *For @MayorofLondon; his personal handle has another 73,200. †She doesn’t tweet.