Labour party

Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party has been dogged by rumours of anti-semitism in certain factions of the party. Matters were only worsened last week with the re-admittance and then re-expulsion of Vicki Kirby, a former Labour parliamentary candidate who has suggested that Isis ought to attack Israel. Now there are concerns that the negative publicity could damage Sadiq Khan’s London mayoral bid. Last week, Jonathan Arkush — the President of the Board of Deputies — claimed that the Labour candidate could struggle to win votes from London’s 180,000 Jews. While Khan has made clear that Labour needs to ditch its ‘anti-Jewish’ image, he may wish to take a closer look

‘Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?’ asked C.P. Cavafy in his poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’: Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. All through your and my life the Labour party have been at the gates of Downing Street, and often enough stormed them, only to be beaten back at a subsequent election. What might happen to the Conservative party if those barbarians disappear? At first, Tories rejoiced at the Labour leadership

When an ICM phone poll this week had Labour level with the Tories for the first time since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, even the pollster cast doubt on the finding. But today, YouGov has Labour ahead by a point—34% to 33%. YouGov’s Anthony Wells says that this suggests ‘something is genuinely afoot’. Now, as the election reminded us polls are not all seeing. It is also doubtful what the value of a poll is this far out from a general election: Ed Miliband was regularly ahead by large margins during the last parliament and still went on to lose the election. One also suspects that if Labour was being covered

It has become commonplace to remark that there exists in Britain a mainstream political grouping that seems to be dwelling on another planet. Lost in fantasy, harking back to days long-gone, it lives on illusion. Time and the modern world have passed it by. Fleet Street and fashionable opinion rage against these mulish daydreamers for turning their backs on the voters and depriving Britain of an effective opposition. And all this is true. In only one detail are Fleet Street and fashionable opinion mistaken. They’ve got the wrong grouping in their sights. It is not Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and their crew who fit this picture: it is the Labour

The saying ‘the House of Commons at its best’ is normally a pompous description of parliamentarians agreeing with one another on something it is impossible to disagree on. However, when MPs come together to scrutinise legislation involving the security services, they do come rather close to being at their best, as they grow rather anxious about whether the legislation will actually work. So far the debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill has largely been detailed and thoughtful and without much silly knockabout. But the closest the second reading session has come to knockabout was when Andy Burnham was offering Labour’s response. The Shadow Home Secretary had the difficult job of

Look! All this sniping at Jeremy Corbyn is wrong and now we have proof. The Labour leader is not in fact trashing his party’s brand. Today a poll from ICM puts the Conservatives and Labour level on 36 per cent, a jump of four points for the opposition and a drop of three for the governing party. But before Corbynistas have had a chance to gather up their red flags and take to the sunny streets to celebrate, ICM has already issued a clarification which, in essence, trashes the poll’s finding. You can read the full list of caveats to the poll here, but the key lines are that ‘the

With the Budget due next week, George Osborne appeared on the Andrew Marr show to warn of the need for further spending cuts. Keen to put forward an alternative vision for the UK economy, Labour’s Treasury team have also taken to the airwaves this morning. John McDonnell told Marr of the need for more long-term investment, arguing that at least 3 per cent of GDP should be used for investment compared to Osborne’s 1.4 per cent. Alas it seems that Labour’s shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury had failed to catch this. When Seema Malhotra appeared on the Sunday Politics to help explain McDonnell’s vision she appeared to lack knowledge of any of the specifics.

What is Labour’s biggest obstacle to getting back into government any time soon? Those who’ve spent any time thinking about the general election result – and the party still doesn’t talk that much about May 2015 – will say that until voters trust the party on the economy, it is not going to succeed. John McDonnell’s team clearly agrees, briefing the media today that the reason the Shadow Chancellor is making a major intervention on the economy as he prepares for the Budget is that voters were wary of Labour on the economy.  McDonnell’s speech today sounds remarkably similar to the messages Ed Balls offered before the election, that Liz

Over the past few weeks, talk of a potential coup against Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader has grown, with most expecting some sort of move from some section of the party in the summer. The chance of that move not dying the same embarrassing death as most Labour coups is still pretty slim, no matter how tough the plotters talk about the number of meetings they’ve had. But whatever happens with the official party leadership, there is already a serious coup underway in the party. Dan Jarvis gave a speech to think tank Demos this morning which is being written up as part of his long-term bid to lead the Labour

Later today, barring last minute developments, Labour and SNP MPs will temporarily unite with the Conservatives’ religious right to defeat the government’s plans to liberalise Sunday trading laws — echoing the defeat which Mrs Thatcher suffered on the same subject 30 years ago. The Left will chirrup, but why is it apparently in favour of keeping Sunday special when logic dictates that it ought to be against? The Reverend Giles Fraser aside, the Left nowadays is generally quite anti-God –– or it is certainly against the promotion of Christianity as an established religion. In the diverse, multi-cultural society of its dreams, no religion is superior than any other and none

There is no small irony in the fact that Labour MPs were this evening reminded by their colleagues not to brief details of tonight’s parliamentary Labour party meeting before a spokesman for Corbyn went out into the Committee Corridor to, er, brief journalists about what happened at the meeting. The official account is that there was a ‘sea change in the atmosphere’ and that ‘Jeremy faced down his critics’. MPs coming out did say that the meeting wasn’t as shouty as previous encounters, but one moderate suggested that this was because there is a greater sense of resignation and that ‘people just can’t be bothered to get angry any more’.

Brexit campaigners make the argument that the European Union just isn’t working when it comes to Britain’s interests. While some are yet to be convinced, it’s safe to say that some parts of  the EU parliament just don’t work full stop. Last night Paul Brannen, the Labour MEP, found himself stuck in a lift in parliament, in Brussels. When door of the lift opened, a steel wall appeared. After waiting for 20 minutes, Brannen decided the only thing to do was to film himself in case he didn’t made it out of the lift alive: ‘I’m somewhere between the 13th floor of parliament and the 3rd floor of parliament, and I’ve been here for about