Uk politics

You have to hand it to Labour – they certainly know how to make an entrance. In the week that parliament returns, it was announced on Monday that the full slate of Corbynista candidates had been elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC). This included Pete “Trump fanatics” Willsman, who was given a hero’s welcome by activists as he arrived at Labour HQ the following day. This was caught on camera with one activist bellowing through a microphone: “Jews are not oppressed…Jews are not discriminated against. They don’t suffer economic discrimination.” Apart from sending chills down the spines of British Jewry, the main outcome of this NEC election is likely

If as a country we cannot take a big decision about whether or not we should be in the European Union, which is based on sovereignty, which is based on controlling our borders; there are arguments on both sides. We ought to be able to have a reasonable and civilised debate on that, and then have a vote. What we are now getting is not a reasonable or civilised discussion. It is a discussion where both sides seem to be throwing insults at each other. And I find that deeply depressing; and frankly, if a government cannot take action to prevent some of these catastrophic outcomes – whatever position you

There aren’t many EU politicians with a high profile, but Federica Mogherini, the former Italian foreign minister and, since 2014, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, is one of the exceptions.  Mogherini’s five-year term is up next year. Where she will go after her time expires – back to a fractious and circus-like Italian political scene, or somewhere else in the EU structure – is anyone’s guess. But if her address at yesterday’s EU Ambassador’s Conference is anything to go on, she intends to use the twilight of her tenure as Europe’s top foreign policy official to drill home a central point: multilateralism is not a dead or dying concept worth discarding.

It is quite clear what today’s NEC results mean for the Corbynites in the Labour Party: they’ve consolidated their control over the party structures. All the candidates who won were backed by Momentum, apart from Peter Willsman, who had seen the Corbynite grassroots organisation drop its support after a recording emerged of him making anti-Semitic comments. Willsman pushed moderate candidate Eddie Izzard out and will remain on the party’s ruling body. Izzard and ‘independent left-winger Ann Black’ came 10th and 13th respectively. Less clear is the implication for that rather nebulous group of anti-Corbynites generally known as ‘the moderates’. One of the reasons that the implications are less clear is