Labour party

Monday

Cindy Yu

Coffee House Shots: Labour’s leadership election

Labour’s leadership contest has finally been triggered as Angela Eagle made her bid for the position today. So how will this contest shape up? And will Jeremy Corbyn appear on the ballot paper? Isabel Hardman tells Fraser Nelson: ‘It’s going to be very bloody because Jeremy Corbyn wants to get back on that ballot paper, thinks he’s entitled to. If the NEC, the party’s ruling executive, says that he shouldn’t be back on that ballot paper unless he can get 51 nominations, the wrath from the membership will be enormous.’ If Corbyn prevails in this contest, might the moderates of the party then break away to form their own party? With

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour party split over whether to split

As well as all the other things that Labour MPs are anxious about at the moment, there is genuine anxiety in the party today that some MPs are considering splitting off to join a new, moderate group in politics. Certainly Labour MPs are pretty miserable about the state of their party – and about the way many of them are being treated by their own local parties. And many Labourites are starting to believe that a split is inevitable, with many arguing that it is wrong to be wary because of what happened to the SDP, as this would be a much larger chunk of MPs who would break off

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Angela Eagle picks the worst possible moment to launch her leadership bid

As leadership launches go, the timing could not have been worse for Angela Eagle. Moments before she was due to set out her pitch, rumours started to circulate that Andrea Leadsom was dropping out of the race for the Tory leadership. By the time Eagle had actually started speaking, Leadsom was elsewhere reading a statement confirming the news to a scrum of journalists. All of this seems particularly unfortunate for Eagle given how long she appears to have spent mulling the decision. In the end, she couldn’t have picked a worse moment to actually show her hand. Though the publicity was snuffed out by this morning’s other events, what about the

Sunday

Katy Balls

Angela Eagle flounders as she makes her leadership bid to ‘heal Labour’

After weeks of uncertainty, the Labour coup is officially on. While Jeremy Corbyn made clear on Marr that he has no intention of stepping down, Angela Eagle has done the rounds on Peston and Sunday Politics declaring that she will run for leader if Corbyn refuses to go. So with a fresh leadership election on the horizon, it’s now on Eagle to make the case for her candidacy. In an interview with Andrew Neil on Sunday Politics, Eagle argued that Corbyn’s position was untenable now he had lost the confidence of the majority of the PLP — stating that he couldn’t ‘lead behind a closed door’. She also argued that Labour’s electoral performance under

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn hints at legal challenge if he’s kept off the ballot paper

Jeremy Corbyn was insistent this morning on the Andrew Marr Show that he isn’t going anywhere. More than that: he insisted that Labour is ‘changing the way politics is done’. His opponents in the party would agree, as it happens. Corbyn is going nowhere, certainly not anywhere near to Number 10, but also nowhere near being a functioning Opposition leader. And he is changing the way politics is done, by making it more and more difficult for Labour to ever get into power. The interview itself was proof that under Corbyn, Labour cannot function as an Opposition. Even those in the party who support the direction in which he is

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Angela Eagle threatens Labour leadership bid on Monday

Finally, the Labour coup is about to begin. Or at least, Labour MPs are talking about the fact that the Labour coup is about to begin, after weeks of threatening it. After talks between the party’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson and Labour’s trade union backers broke up today, Angela Eagle has said she will launch her leadership challenge to Jeremy Corbyn on Monday. The talks broke down because Corbyn would not resign and the parliamentary Labour party would not accept his leadership after voting overwhelmingly in favour of a motion of no confidence two weeks ago, and so there was no possible compromise to reach. Corbyn’s camp are confident that

Steerpike Steerpike

John McDonnell compares the Labour coup to the Thatcher government at rate-capping rebellion event

Although John McDonnell has been busy of late helping fight off the Labour coup, he was able to find time this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the rate-capping rebellion of the eighties. The Shadow Chancellor joined forces with Ted Knight —  the former leader of Lambeth council who once warned ‘no compromise with the electorate’ — to reminisce about the patch of history which saw the group earn the tabloid title ‘the loony left’. Speaking at Clapham library in front of a crowd of Momentum activists — who regularly referred to the Labour MPs behind the no confidence vote in Corbyn as the ‘172 Judas Iscariots’ — McDonnell talked about his time as the GLC’s finance

Friday

Isabel Hardman

What has happened to Labour’s coup?

Things have gone mysteriously quiet in the Labour party. Every so often, Len McCluskey and Tom Watson emerge from a meeting, asking their comrades to give them a little bit more time before any of them move against Jeremy Corbyn. And nothing seems to happen. How much more time do the plotters need to give the unions and the party’s deputy leader before they give up and make a move on the leader? Or have thy already given up, and decided that they can’t defeat him and that it’s all over? Some reports in the past few days suggest that Labour MPs have marched all the way up the hill

Thursday

Peter Jones

Jeremy Corbyn and the oracle

Inscribed in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo in Delphi were the famous words gnôthi sauton (‘know yourself’) and mêden agan (‘nothing in excess’). They should be re-inscribed in the chamber of the House of Commons, and especially on every piece of paper that passes across the desk of the hapless Jeremy Corbyn. The ancients were all too aware that life was characterised by man’s weakness, ignorance and vulnerability to sudden, unpredictable reversals of fortune. Although one reaction was to eat, drink and be merry, pessimism was the Greeks’ default position to the world about them. Struck by the way in which their myths returned again and again to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Forget the Grand Mess, here’s the fun stuff

There’s something a little-dispiriting about waking up one morning to find that our elected politicians are even more psychopathic, deranged and-disloyal than one had always suspected. I don’t just mean Gove and his cackling, somewhat ambitious missus. Charming though Michael undoubtedly is, and agreeably owlish in-public, I have imagined him in-darker moments standing in a blood-splattered hallway with a kitchen knife in his hand muttering over and over: ‘I did it for you, Mummy, I did it for you.’ Somehow I always thought that was in there, with Michael. No, the other lot as well, Labour; as one embittered clown after another traipsed into-Forrest Gump’s office and pretended to feel sad

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Labour coup enters its ‘last throw of the dice’ as Tom Watson turns on Corbyn

Tom Watson this evening told the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party that he is taking a ‘last throw of the dice’ before there is a move against Jeremy Corbyn. The party’s deputy leader held a 20-minute meeting with Corbyn this morning in which he warned him that he had to have the authority of the parliamentary Labour party, and that it wasn’t good enough just to have the support of the members. In response, Corbyn told Watson that he wanted to continue as Labour leader, but Watson’s spokesman said it was clear that there wasn’t a solution that involved Corbyn staying on as leader. Neil Kinnock also gave

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour struggles with empty frontbench after series of resignations

‘Well this does seem like an upside down house,’ remarked Nick Gibb at Education Questions today. ‘We have the frontbench on the backbenches and the backbenches on the frontbench.’ The session was in fact rather weirder than that. It wasn’t just that Labour’s former frontbenchers such as Tristram Hunt and Lucy Powell were asking questions from a few rows back, or that Angela Rayner, the new Shadow Education Secretary, was only a few days into her new job following the appointment and swift resignation of Pat Glass. It was also that Rayner had to ask nearly all of the Opposition’s questions herself, because most of the frontbenchers sitting next to

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s message to Labour members: ‘I’m carrying on’

After a week of Shadow Cabinet resignations amid a Labour coup to oust Jeremy Corbyn, there have been several theories doing the rounds as to what it means for the party. While some have suggested that Corbyn’s director of communications Seumas Milne is stopping Corbyn from resigning, there have been reports that he will resign and allow John McDonnell to run. However, today Corbyn has decided to set the record straight. In a — rather clunky — video message to Labour members, Corbyn declares that he is not going anywhere: ‘I have a huge responsibility, I’m carrying out that responsibility and I’m carrying on with that responsibility.’ After the events

Saturday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Tory leadership contest turns nasty | 2 July 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. A week after Britain backed Brexit, politics shows no sign of slowing down. David Cameron has resigned, Michael Gove has pulled out of Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign before launching his own. And Boris has decided not to run in the contest. We now have a final slate of five candidates vying for the top job. In his Spectator cover piece this week, James Forsyth says the Tory party is in a ‘deeply emotional state’. But he also points out that the leadership candidates who

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Why Labour has gone eerily quiet – and what happens next

Labour has gone oddly quiet today, and that’s not just because the party is enjoying the mayhem in the Conservative leadership contest. After a very well-organised week of resignations, the rebels have now decided to sit back and wait for Jeremy Corbyn to come to terms with what the party he leads now looks like. The leader today appointed Angela Rayner as Shadow Education Secretary, which was a matter of necessity as it is Education Questions in the Commons on Monday, and the party didn’t have anyone to face Nicky Morgan. But the Labour frontbench generally looks like a Swiss cheese after the mice have been at it. There are

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 30 June 2016

Home David Cameron, standing in the middle of Downing Street with his wife Samantha alone near him, announced his resignation as prime minister after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union by 17,410,742 votes (51.9 per cent) to 16,141,241 (48.1), with a turnout of 72.2 per cent. The result surprised the government. Mr Cameron said he’d stay on until a new Conservative party leader and prime minister could be chosen, before the party conference in October. In Scotland, 62 per cent of the vote was to remain and in London 59.9 per cent. The area with the highest Leave percentage was Boston, Lincolnshire, with 75.6, and the highest

Toby Young Toby Young

Labour: my part in its downfall

A few weeks ago, I took part in a debate at the Cambridge Union about the future of the Labour party. I argued that a combination of factors, such as the decline of Labour’s working-class support, the election of Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s near-universal backing for the EU, meant that Labour would struggle to survive in its present form. But I thought the crisis point would come after the next general election, not after the referendum. It didn’t occur to me that the party would be in its death throes by the end of the month. I suppose I have to accept a small amount of responsibility for this. During

Geoffrey Alderman

Why Jeremy Corbyn is absolutely right not to resign as Labour leader

Jeremy Corbyn is absolutely right not to resign as Leader of the Labour Party. Those calling for his resignation – including those members of the Parliamentary Labour Party who supported the vote of no confidence against him – betray an astonishing misunderstanding of what the project called ‘The Labour Party’ is all about. Here’s the history lesson they all need to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. The project now called ‘The Labour Party’ owes its origin to a conference called in London in 1899 to discuss the palpable erosion of trade-union rights as a result of a succession of legal judgments. Out of that conference something called ‘The Labour

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Tory leadership contest turns nasty

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. A week after Britain backed Brexit, politics shows no sign of slowing down. David Cameron has resigned, Michael Gove has pulled out of Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign before launching his own. And Boris has decided not to run in the contest. We now have a final slate of five candidates vying for the top job. In his Spectator cover piece this week, James Forsyth says the Tory party is in a ‘deeply emotional state’. But he also points out that the leadership candidates who

Emily Hill Emily Hill

Why I lie about voting Leave

There are lies, damned lies and pretending to back Remain. I lie because I am a coward. I hug friends who burst into tears, petrified by life without the European Union. I sympathise with strangers, who act like Lady Di just died and there’s nowhere to lay flowers. I obfuscate, I mutter, I am evasive. And I am not alone. There are hordes of us who’ll not admit we voted Leave to our best friends, our next of kin. We learned to keep schtum a long time ago — thanks to social media — since they’d defriend us if said we’d vote to leave. Now they are outraged, deeply confused