Labour party

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Diary – 18 May 2017

On the heels of the Today programme’s invitation to discuss ‘cultural appropriation’ (again), the New York Times reported the disheartening fate of a Canadian magazine editor, Hal Niedzviecki. ‘Anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,’ he wrote, gamely proposing an Appropriation Prize for the ‘best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him.’ After the usual social media shitstorm, Niedzviecki had to resign. The Times correctly quoted me asserting that this cockamamie concept threatens ‘our right to write fiction at all’. You can’t claim exclusive title to a culture as to real estate, territorial incursions into

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Workers Revolutionary Party march on the Daily Politics

Although the Mainstream Media would have you believe that the major political force in this election is the Tories, is it actually the Workers Revolutionary Party who are on the march? Mr S only asks after the WRP’s Frank Sweeney appeared on the Daily Politics to explain why it has to be the Trotskyist group at this election. However, if you don’t have a WRP candidate in your area, Sweeney says settle for Labour (even if they have sold out): ‘The leadership of the Labour party has sold out because of its political outlook. It’s a reformist outlook. If you look at their present manifesto, it’s a Fabian conception that the economic

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Election 2017: Do you believe in miracles?

If you want to imagine the future of British politics, consider the tale of Kristy Adams, the Conservative candidate in Hove. Her campaign is an insult to the electorate, but it is hardly alone in that. After the crash, the expenses scandal, Savile and phone hacking, it became a cliché to say that trust in institutions has collapsed. If the House of Commons is to restore its reputation, candidates must be honest. I don’t mean MPs have to tell us about their sex lives or publish their bank accounts, just be straightforward. Theresa May wants to make this a Brexit election. Taking her at her word, reporters from the Brighton

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Ten Labour MPs that Tories should vote for

The Conservatives are going to win the election — that much we know. The question is what kind of opposition Britain is going to be left with. If a slew of moderate Labour MPs are swept out, the Corbynite grip on the party will strengthen. The leader will not go and Labour will take a great leap forward in its journey to oblivion.  Tories should not relish this outcome. It would do serious violence to our parliamentary democracy, which was not designed to cope with one dominant party and no real opposition. Legislation would not face proper scrutiny, ministers would become less accountable, and the business of government would be less

Quentin Letts

‘Our children are horrified’

Wrexham, North Wales   To window cleaner Andrew Atkinson, Theresa May’s ‘blue-collar Conservatism’ is not just a slogan. It’s what he is. For the duration of the general election, gap-toothed, 32-year-old Atkinson has hung up his chamois leathers and water-fed poles and taken to campaigning on doorsteps in a bid to become Wrexham’s first Conservative MP. The campaign is costing him a fortune in lost jobs. Atkinson is a broad-shouldered lad who left home at 17 to earn a living as a self-employed squeegee wallah (‘glass hygiene technician, please,’ he jokes). He has the square jawline of Buzz Lightyear and an unaffected way with housewives. You half expect them to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Corbyn is the real heir to Blair

Alastair Campbell once famously punched the Guardian’s Michael White in the face. A commendable thing to do, undoubtedly, as Mr White is the very incarnation of pomposity and self-righteousness. Quite possibly the best thing Campbell has ever done. But the brief spat (White hit back, according to White) was revealing in another way. Robert Maxwell had just drowned by falling off his yacht and Campbell, then working in the lobby for Maxwell’s paper, the Daily Mirror, took exception to White’s glee at this watery end to the proprietor’s life. ‘Captain Bob, Bob, Bob!’ White chortled, so Campbell punched him. He adored Maxwell and was his ‘close adviser’, no matter that

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

The one question Theresa May should ask Labour voters — in order to win them over

Prime Minister, I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that you have been denounced in the letters page of the Daily Telegraph. One correspondent huffs: ‘I wonder if Theresa May and her small group of advisers closeted in Westminster are aware of the fact that each initiative they introduce in an attempt to win over traditional Labour voters risks having the opposite effect on traditional Conservative voters.’ Another damns your energy price cap as ‘wrong-headed’ and even accuses you of ‘play[ing] into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn’s muddle-headed electioneering economics’. Lord Tebbit echoes these fears: ‘The further Labour goes Left, that would mean the further we go

Matthew Lynn

Labour’s manifesto adds up… to economic ruin

Another day, another tax rise. So far in this campaign, the Labour party has rolled out one hit or another on the wealthy and big business just about every morning. The City is getting a Robin Hood tax on every financial transaction. Companies are getting a one-third increase in corporation tax. Anyone on more than £80,000 will see their income tax go up, and a new levy in high-earners will whack any business paying a star performer more than £330,000. They haven’t slapped a 50pc VAT rate on Range Rovers and Marc Jacobs crocodile handbags – but heck, it is still only Tuesday and there are still three more weeks

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Labour’s manifesto steals from the rich – and gives it back to the wealthy

The consequence of last week’s leak of a draft Labour manifesto is that all eyes today have fallen on what was missing from the draft: the costings. There is a very big assumption in Labour’s figures: that when you raise taxes you get all the extra revenue that you would expect to receive. The reality, of course, is that when you raise taxes you change people’s behaviour which might lead to them paying less tax. With a 45 per cent income tax levy above £80,000 and a 50 per cent rate over £123,000 higher rate taxpayers would have a greater incentive to find some way of avoiding tax – either

The Spectator

Labour Party manifesto 2017 (official version): full text

Labour have this morning launched their manifesto for the election. A big part of being the leader of a political party is that you meet people across the country and hear a wide range of views and ideas about the future. For me, it’s been a reminder that our country is a place of dynamic, generous and creative people with massive potential. But I’ve also heard something far less positive, something which motivates us in the Labour Party to work for the kind of real change set out in this manifesto. It is a growing sense of anxiety and frustration. Faced with falling living standards, growing job insecurity and shrinking

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

This election isn’t about policy – and it shows

One of the complaints that allies of Jeremy Corbyn often issue is that his critics – whether in his own party, the media, the Tory party or the general electorate – tend to focus on the man, not his policies. His policies are, those allies argue, actually very popular with voters — when you test them without mentioning either Labour or Jeremy Corbyn. Which seems to be proving rather difficult in this election. There are two problems with this. The first is that voters don’t give a fig about your wonderful policies if they don’t trust your party’s leader to be competent enough to enact them. Every Labour MP I

Sunday

Charles Moore

To tax the rich, introduce a tax cut

Jeremy Corbyn wants to put up income tax only for people who earn more than £80,000 a year, he says. Anyone below that figure is safe. This reminds me of John Smith’s ‘shadow Budget’ in the 1992 general election. Smith said that the top rate of income tax would rise to 50 per cent for everyone earning more than £36,375 a year (which would be just under £72,000 today). Most people earned much less than the sum chosen, but voters decided they did not like such a clear intention to damage the higher earnings they hoped they might one day achieve. The shadow Budget was said to have lost Labour

Saturday

Brendan O’Neill

Labour’s plan to ban unpaid internships will do more harm than good

Nothing better sums up middle-class millennials’ sense of entitlement than their demand that they be paid for interning. ‘Paid internships now!’ has become the rallying cry of young media people and the Twitterati and now the Labour Party, too. Its throwback manifesto, leaked this week, promises to ‘ban unpaid internships’, on the basis that ‘it’s not fair for some to get a leg up when others can’t afford to’. Self-regarding youths will cheer this, as will their sad-eyed supporters in the press, but the rest of us should raise a collective eyebrow. There are many grating things about the call for paid internships. Here are just three of them. First,

Friday

Isabel Hardman

What politicians mean by a ‘great response’ on the doorstep

It’s that time of the year when politicians start posting pictures of groups of people smiling eerily while holding party placards and claiming that they’ve just had a ‘great response’ on the doorstep.  For the uninitiated, this sounds as though the people opening their doors in each street are just thrilled to see said eerily smiling groups of campaigners striding up their garden paths. For those of us who spend election campaigns following politicians of all hues around on doorsteps, we know that a ‘great response’ is more likely to mean that only three people in a very long street were both in and disposed to opening their front doors. 

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn’s Chatham House speech, full text

Chatham House has been at the forefront of thinking on Britain’s role in the world. So with the General Election less than a month away, it’s a great place to set out my approach: on how a Labour Government I lead will keep Britain safe, reshape relationships with partners around the world, work to strengthen the United Nations and respond to the global challenges we face in the 21st century. And I should say a warm welcome to the UN Special Representative in Somalia,  Michael Keating, who is here today. On Monday, we commemorated VE Day, the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in Europe. VE Day marked the defeat

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Labour’s manifesto: the newspapers’ verdict

Labour had a day to forget yesterday: the party’s leaked manifesto was plastered all over the newspapers, its leader was a no show at Labour’s poster launch and Corbyn’s car collided with a BBC cameraman. On the plus side, the party has succeeded in snatching the headlines away from the Tories. But is this wall-to-wall coverage a good thing? Here’s what the newspaper editorials are making of Labour’s manifesto: Labour’s plan for government is a ‘misguided bid to turn the clock back’, according to the FT. In its damning editorial, the paper says that its clear the opposition wants to ditch the ‘market economy’ which has ‘delivered prosperity for Britain’ for

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Labour’s manifesto is a fiscal fantasy land – but the Tories would be wrong to ignore it

Labour’s leaked manifesto is, predictably enough, a fiscal fantasy land with lots of spending pledges and rather few tax rises to pay for them –  higher taxes for the top five per cent of earners would not necessarily earn an extra penny in revenue if they encouraged more avoidance or flight to tax havens. But does that mean it is all rubbish? Not at all. Conservatives would do well to refrain from the dismissive talk about the manifesto being a suicide note and recognise that there are some good ideas which they should emulate. No conservatives, for example, should be sneering at a promise to scrap the plan to force small

Thursday

The Spectator

No left turn

It would be easy to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn’s launch of the Labour party’s election campaign this week on the grounds that hardly anyone believes he has the slightest chance of becoming prime minister. But given that David Cameron was given a 0.5 per cent chance of winning a majority, and Donald Trump a 1 per cent chance of the presidency, it would be foolish not to take the main opposition party seriously. At the very least, Corbyn’s ideas need to be examined in order to understand why Labour finds itself in the position it does, and why no party leader to the left of Tony Blair has won a general election

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The counter-revolution begins, comrades, on 12 June

Think of the Parliamentary Labour Party as a regiment ordered over the top in the First World War. The soldiers know the generals haven’t a clue. They know the battle was lost before it began. The only question in their minds is who makes it back from the slaughter. The projected casualty rates vary. Corbyn’s supporters want to justify the left continuing to cling onto the leadership by getting close to Ed Miliband’s share of the vote in 2015. If they succeed they will keep the Labour party at 30 per cent and give the Tories a majority of 60 or 70. London Labour MPs also feel that the losses

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Labour’s manifesto reveals one thing: the Left has run out of ideas

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for Labour, Noam Chomsky goes and endorses Jeremy Corbyn. ‘If I were a voter in Britain, I would vote for him…He’s quiet, reserved, serious, he’s not a performer,’ Chomsky told the Guardian. But the more you read of Chomsky’s endorsement, the more you wonder if he was put up to it for a bet. He says that: ‘The shift in the Labour party under Blair made it a pale image of the Conservatives.’ Tony Blair, that infamous electoral dud. Chomsky is regularly cited as the world’s ‘top public intellectual’. It’s a slippery phrase. Friedrich Hayek called his ilk ‘the secondhand dealers in ideas’. I