Labour party

The Oldham West and Royton by-election is Jeremy Corbyn’s first test as Labour leader, though the party has not selected a Corbynite candidate to fight the seat. Jim McMahon won 232 votes in last night’s selection, beating Mohammed Azam, who got 141 votes and former MP and ardent Corbynite Chris Williamson, who got just 17 votes. McMahon is a moderate, so it will be interesting how much of Corbyn’s message he ends up selling on the doorstep. He said during his selection campaign that ‘on issues like austerity, I’m very close to Jeremy indeed’, so it’s not as though he’s wholeheartedly against the new leader. What will also be interesting

After Mr S’s colleague Harry Mount wrote in The Spectator that the Labour party has undergone ‘a brain transplant’ under Jeremy Corbyn with a purge of the Oxbridge set, Martin Amis went on to accuse the Labour leader of being undereducated. The best-selling novelist said that he suspected Corbyn — who achieved two Es at A-Level before enrolling at the North London Polytechnic to study trade union studies for a year — possessed ‘slow-minded rigidity’. Now Corbyn’s cheerleader Owen Jones has waded into the debate. Writing for the Guardian, Jones comes to the Labour leader’s defence arguing that an Oxbridge degree isn’t everything. He says that opting to study at a red

How does Labour make its policy? Different factions and frontbenchers are quarrelling about a number of issues such as Trident and action in Syria, but a common theme in each dispute is whose word actually represents official policy. Currently the party has a plethora of different stances on everything. Maria Eagle is having to explain that a Scottish Labour conference vote does not change the party’s official policy on Trident, while her Shadow Cabinet colleague Diane Abbott is explaining that it’s something the UK-wide party really should follow. Hilary Benn is having to explain that Labour won’t consult Stop the War on British involvement in action against so-called Islamic State

24 hours after Scottish Labour voted to oppose renewing Trident, the party’s policy is firmly where it was before this weekend’s conference. On the World at One, the shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle thanked the Scottish Labour conference for their thoughts and said their vote won’t be changing Labour’s policy: ‘I welcome the input of Scottish Labour and its conference into our internal debate, they’re one of many important voices that there are across the Labour movement about this issue. ‘But let’s very clear about what this does and does not mean. This does not change our policy. Defence isn’t a devolved matter, so Labour party policy has to be set at a

After Harriet Harman stepped down from the frontbench earlier this year after 28 years, she was asked by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics which Labour leader had been her favourite to work under. While Harman had praise for Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair — who was nice even when he sacked her — and Gordon Brown, she failed to mention her most recent boss Ed Miliband. So perhaps the MP for Doncaster North will be emitting a bead of sweat on hearing that Harman is in the process of writing her memoirs. The outspoken Labour MP has tweeted a photo of a censored screen as she begins to recount her days on the frontline of

If Labour is ever to clamber out of its cage on the fringe of politics, it will have to convince the 250,000 supporters who voted for Jeremy Corbyn to turn from far-leftists into social democrats. The necessity of persuading them that they made a terrible mistake is so obvious to Labour MPs that they barely need to talk about it. In case it is not obvious to you, let me spell it out. Corbyn exacerbates every fault that kept Labour from power in 2015, and then adds some new ones, just for fun. To the failure to convince the voters that Labour can be trusted with control of the borders

After Heidi Allen gave a barnstorming maiden speech last week criticising her own party over tax credit cuts, the Tory MP has found herself in the firing line within her own party. Mr S’s colleague Isabel Hardman writes in today’s Times that a number of Tory MPs are even refusing to speak to her over concerns that ‘her careless talk could cost them their majorities’. Now to make matters worse, it appears that even journalists are struggling to work out which side Allen is on. Word reaches Steerpike that a producer for a national radio station — thought to be one of the BBC’s radio stations — contacted the Labour party to ask if they would put

George Osborne and John McDonnell went head-to-head at Treasury Questions today and one topic predictably dominated: tax credits. There was a charged atmosphere in the Commons as the shadow chancellor explained ‘the Chancellor has a choice before him’ and outlined his proposal for reversing the planned cuts to tax credits. The plan differs somewhat from Osborne’s: ‘He can push on with the tax giveaways to multinational corporations. He can press on with tax cuts to the wealthiest few in inheritance tax that he announced in his summer budgets. Or he can reverse those tax breaks for the few and instead go for a less excessive surplus target in 2019-20 and be in

As well as the rather big problem of how to get rid of a leader they think is unpalatable to the general voting public, Labour MPs also have to work out how to protect themselves from deselection. Simon Danczuk seems to be the only member keen to talk about the former, claiming today that he’s happy to be a ‘stalking horse’ if Labour performs badly in next May’s local, London and Holyrood elections. But without many colleagues backing him and the leadership contest rules and party membership remaining the same, Danczuk could find that his intervention drops like a dead donkey. On the second question – how to prevent the

Arnie Graf was, for a little while, the man who was supposed to rebuild the Labour party after its 2010 defeat. He was a famed community organiser from the US, brought over by Ed Miliband to have a go at revitalising is party. Graf didn’t last, but last night he spoke about his experiences with the Labour party, and what he thought of the current surge in membership under Jeremy Corbyn. This was his first brush with proper party politics, and while Graf had clearly enjoyed the work he’d done in building up the party in small local areas with community meetings, he said ‘I wouldn’t come back to it