Labour party

Can Jeremy Corbyn reach out to – and win over – Tory voters at a general election? It sounds like an unlikely prospect but that’s exactly what the Labour leader pledged to do in the party’s latest hustings last night. Corbyn said that his aim is to convince people ‘by the policies we put forward…(including) some people who have been tempted to vote Tory’ before. It certainly sounds as if Corbyn himself isn’t wholly convinced by his statement, as many of those hearing it are unlikely to be either. An Ipsos Mori poll recently gave Corbyn a woeful net approval rating of -33, so it’s true he needs to broaden

In the past few minutes, the Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the Labour Party’s block on anyone who joined after 12 January 2016 from voting in the party’s leadership election. This means – until there is an appeal to the Supreme Court – that around 130,000 members, most of whom are believed to be sympathetic to Jeremy Corbyn, will not be able to vote. As I explained earlier this week when the High Court ruled in this matter, the impact of this may merely be the size of the victory that Jeremy Corbyn wins against Owen Smith. But it does also make the Labour party more divided and

Another honours list comes and goes and yet again my name is not on it. I don’t think either the Prime Minister or Jeremy Corbyn realises the hurt that this flagrant oversight engenders, both in myself and of course in my public. For countless years I have tried, selflessly, to make the world a better place, to illuminate the poor and the downtrodden with the light of love. I have endeavoured, wherever I can, in my own way, to bring comfort to the sick — not only those who are physically infirm, but also mentals. And yet — nothing, nix. More pertinently, with regard to the latest honours list from

We are still not entirely sure when the Labour leadership contest will end, but in these dusty days of recess, it is certainly keeping everyone nicely busy. Today Owen Smith received a boost from trade union GMB, which decided to endorse his bid to take over from Jeremy Corbyn. Its members voted 60-40 to endorse Smith, and General Secretary Tim Roache said ‘GMB members cannot afford for Labour to be talking to itself in a bubble for the next five years while the Tories run riot through out rights at work, our public services and our communities’. This drew yet another combative – and slightly curious – response from Team

Imagine the reaction of Her Majesty’s Opposition if the government announced that it was to introduce a new ‘voter charge’ – a levy which citizens had to pay before they were allowed into the polling station. Just as they did with the ‘Community Charge’ over a quarter of a century ago Labour would undoubtedly – and quite reasonably – call it a ‘poll tax’. How could a democracy possibly try to exclude the poor from the vote, they would ask, before backing a legal challenge on the grounds of human rights? Why, then, is Labour so determined to introduce its own internal poll tax? Yesterday, the party lost a High

Spare a thought for Eddie Izzard. Every campaign the cross-dressing comedian attaches himself to has a tendency to end in failure. After backing Ed Miliband in the General Election, Izzard found himself on the losing side once again in the EU referendum campaign when his tour of university campuses failed to swing it for Remain. Today he has missed out on a place on Labour’s National Executive Committee. Izzard had hoped to be elected onto the party’s NEC as part of his efforts to carve a career in politics. However, he ended up coming eighth, with the six available seats going to more Corbynista candidates. Obviously disappointed not to get elected to

Thoughtful writing about the Corbyn phenomenon is not just impossible to find, it is impossible to imagine. Admirers live in a land of make believe as closed to the rest of the world as North Korea. They barely know how to explain themselves to outsiders because they cannot imagine any honourable reason for outsiders disagreeing with them. Disputes with ‘Jeremy’  must be the result of ideological contamination – you have become or, perhaps secretly always have been, a ‘Tory’ or ‘Blairite’ – financial corruption  – you have sold out – or racial corruption – you are a ‘Zionist’. My colleague Janice Turner of the Times posted a copy of a

Brits sometimes think that ‘personality politics’ is a bad thing. Jeremy Corbyn has certainly suggested as much; just before he won the Labour leadership last September, he dismissed the concept as juvenile and egoistic. Instead, he said: ‘We are not doing celebrity, personality or abusive politics – this is about hope.’ But although Corbyn has stuck to that belief, he’s wrong – and a big part of his problem is not realising that. While some say the idea of personality politics is an American import, in reality Brits have been doing it for decades. Take Harold Wilson’s advisers planting hecklers at TV hustings so the Labour leader could deploy his best put-down lines. That was in

Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith have faced off in their first hustings of what has already proved to be a bitter leadership campaign. That disunity and turmoil was on display on stage in Cardiff last night. The Labour leader hit back at Smith’s dig about the ‘fractured’ state of the party by saying it was hard to preach about unity when Smith and others had ‘resigned from the shadow cabinet’. This was business as usual then. So whilst Corbyn and Smith made it clear they will never see eye to eye, what did they have to say on what they actually stand for? Whilst their clashes on stage only reveal the

Owen Smith takes on Jeremy Corbyn in the first Labour leadership hustings this evening. The moderates are desperately hoping that these head to heads can change enough minds among the Labour electorate to give Smith a chance of beating Corbyn, hence their eagerness to have them televised and the Corbynite desire to keep them off air. But as I argue in the magazine this week, Labour’s problems go far beyond Jeremy Corbyn. He is a symptom of what ails the party, not the sole cause of it. Even if he announced tonight that he was off to spend more time on his allotment, Labour would still have big, existential questions

Whilst Labour tangle themselves up in civil war, the Prime Minister is making a move for the party’s economic territory. On her first day in Downing Street, Theresa May said her Government would stick up for everyone, not only the ‘privileged few’. Today, she’ll start work making good on that promise when she chairs the first meeting of her Cabinet committee on the economy and industrial strategy. So what does that all mean? It’s obvious the sentiment suggests an attempt to beat Labour at its own game. From the politician who coined the description of the Tories as the ‘nasty party’, May is doing her best to show the Conservatives