Labour party

Yesterday, after Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Brexit, he moved on from press questions about the substance of his policy change to seeking non-media questions. It was presumably to show that Labour is more interested in the real questions of real people rather than the biased agenda of the press. That real question ended up being ‘please will you hurry up and be our Prime Minister?’ Corbynites would argue that even a question as pointless as this is better than the mocking tone that journalists take as they try to claim, on the basis of whispered gossip, that this is a result of some kind of Shadow Cabinet falling out. Why

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today in which he confirmed that a Labour government would keep Britain in a Customs Union with the EU was about so much more than trade. It was about the future of the Labour party itself. It sent a clear message about what, and more importantly who, Labour is for these days. It confirmed that Labour has finally made its choice between which of its two, quite conflictual support bases it will represent in public life: the better-off ones, the middle-class ones, the Southern ones. This is what Labour’s cosying up to the idea of a Customs Union — which is a betrayal of Brexit, whatever Labourites

Iain McNicol’s departure from the position of Labour General Secretary has been a very long time coming indeed. He wasn’t Ed Miliband’s first choice for the job, and he certainly wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite person at Labour headquarters, either. After the snap election, Corbynites pushed for a ‘purge’ that involved ousting McNicol. They failed, then, but today he announced that he was off to ‘pursue new projects’, which is one of those Westminster formulae for ‘booted out’. Corbynite Jennie Formby is being mooted as his successor. In a sense, it’s admirable that McNicol managed to stay on for so long, given the constant attempts to get rid of him. Insiders

Bit of a rum PMQs today. Jeremy Corbyn, who has always loathed the EU and now pretends to admire it, asked May about Brexit. May, who has always admired the EU and now pretends to loathe it, fobbed him off with glib sound-bites. ‘Take back control of our borders,’ ‘protect workers’ rights,’ and so on. Corbyn asked a long question about the Government’s ‘desired outcome’. He got a four-word answer: ‘A bespoke economic partnership.’ Mr Speaker decided that he should be the star-turn today. Perhaps he sought to wow a posse of French MPs who were witnessing the bun-fight from the gallery. Quelling an early outbreak of shouting, the Speaker

Dear right-wing people, please stop the red scares. Please give the Cold War lingo a rest. Please remember it is not the 1950s anymore and that there’s about as much chance of Kevin Spacey taking the title role in a biopic of Jesus Christ as there is of Commies coming to power in Britain. Please stop referring to Jeremy Corbyn as if he were some Trotskyite firebrand, when in truth his drab politics is closer to Milibandism than Marxism (the Ed variety, that is, not the Ralph variety). You’re embarrassing yourselves with this pinko panic. Even worse, you are unwittingly flattering the Corbynista crew by indulging their teenage fantasies about

Although it’s the Conservatives nowadays who are best known for in-fighting, this weekend we were offered a reminder of the divisions in Labour. At a meeting of the National Policy Forum (NPF), a row broke out between the Momentum contingent and the moderates. The subject of the row was – once again – Ann Black, the veteran activist who was ousted as chair of the Disputes Panel last month (and replaced with Corbyn favourite Christine Shawcroft) after the Corbynistas won a majority on the National Executive Committee. Black was expected to defeat union representative Andi Fox to be elected as chair of the policy forum, which sets Labour policy for future

Most of the time I feel perfectly at ease in my own country, and that would be the case had we voted Brexit or Remain, Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. But just occasionally Britain seems to me an utterly alien place – bizarre even. Today, Jeremy Corbyn launched his manifesto for pets. He wants to ban foie gras, make it mandatory for motorists to report that they have run over and killed cats, and pass a law giving tenants the right to keep a pet. I don’t suspect that he will encounter a great deal of opposition on these things – bar a token protest on the last from buy-to-let investors.

It is easy to mock the most strident critics of capitalism, like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. It’s harder to ask whether they might actually have a point. Consider the past ten years of evidence. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, wages for ordinary workers have been on the floor — even today, the average pay packet in Britain is lower than it was before the crash. The main response to the crisis has been to print money, through quantitative easing and ultra-low rates. This artificially inflates assets. And who benefits? Those who have the most assets: in other words, the very rich. Since the crash, the amount of wealth

If any further evidence was needed about the disingenuousness of Jeremy Corbyn and the dangers a government led by him might pose internationally – not just for Britain but also for Britain’s Nato allies – it is worth watching Corbyn’s interview on Iran with the BBC’s Andrew Marr yesterday. ‘You’ve been very reluctant to condemn the government of Iran. Can I read you what Amnesty International has said about Iran… ?’ began Marr yesterday, to which Corbyn interrupted him with the extraordinary response: ‘I think that actually, if I may say so, you’re spending too much time reading the Daily Mail, do you know that?’ Having failed to read Corbyn

I wonder if we are about to see a mass resignation of women from Labour, furious at the party’s collapse before the shrieking transgender army? Only last week it said that the 50 all-women shortlists for parliamentary seats would indeed be restricted to women, rather than opened up to people with penises and weighty scrotums who like to dress up as ladies. This followed the threat of action under equalities legislation from feminists enraged that their long fight for equal representation was once again under threat from men; this time men in a not-too-cunning disguise. The legal threat was crowdfunded by a bunch of sisters and fellow travellers — but