This weekend, the Labour party will convene in Liverpool for its annual conference. By that point it will have a new leader who, if all current polling is to be believed, will be the same as its old one. Jeremy Corbyn looks set to defy the wishes of his fellow MPs and strengthen his grip on the party. In his cover piece this week, James Forsyth looks at the whole of the far left movement, from the leader’s office to the grass roots activists, and observes that ‘they are tightening their grip over the party from top to bottom, something the Blairites never did.’ So, what’s next for the Labour party? Does it have a future appealing to moderate social democrats? Or has it truly been lost to the momentum of this new movement? James Forsyth thinks the race is over:
‘We await the result on Saturday, I don’t think we can say with baited breath because everyone is operating under the assumption that Jeremy Corbyn has won. All of the arguments in the Labour party take it as a given that he has won and Owen Smith’s message to his supporters this morning seems like a valedictory message rather than a short of ‘keep your fingers crossed and see you on Saturday’ message.’
Joining us on the podcast, Nick Cohen said that:
‘What is very depressing for anyone who is opposed to Corbynism is: all the faults that make it so easy for the Conservatives and SNP to attack him, have made it very hard for Labour party lefties who are opposed to Corbyn to unseat him. There was one poll done of Corbyn supporters which said 90% believed a PR agency had organised what they called the ‘coup against Corbyn’. This is completely untrue.’
Is Hong Kong really the future of Britain’s Brexit? In his column this week, James Delingpole says he’s seen the future and it lies in the colony that Britain created when a Scottish colonial administration decided to cut taxes, cut regulation and see Hong Kong go from one of the poorest parts of the world to one of the richest. As James Delingpole observes:
‘My step-son was like a lot of middle-class children in this country who were not uber-bright, but are currently being failed in Britain by our culture, which is not as can-do as Hong Kong. I wouldn’t say that Hong Kong’s success is all to do with the legacy of British administration, because I think you also have to factor in the business acumen of the Hong Kong Chinese, but nevertheless I think we British sowed the seeds for Hong Kong’s success.’
But Spectator editor Fraser Nelson counters:
‘I wish I was as sure as James about this. Of course, you can go to Hong Kong and you can admire it, but you have to work out how much of that Cantonese culture you can import in Britain. And the other thing, which underlines James’ optimism also underlines my sense right now of foreboding, because there is a certain logic amongst some Brexiteers that, once we pull out of the EU, we can start slashing regulations, start slashing the tax burden, start being a proper free trading country. I don’t think it’s going to be anything like as easy as that.’
And finally, this week’s sees the rare occasion that two of the Spectator’s longest serving and most respected columnists are under the same roof. Taki’s High Life and Jeremy Clarke’s Low Life have been magazine favourites for decades, sitting side by side on the page, even as they describe two very different ways of living. I’m joined now by Taki and Jeremy Clarke to answer the age old question: which is better, the high life or the low life? As Taki observes:
‘With High Life, I have to keep a certain standard, where Jeremy has nothing to live up to except Jeffrey Bernard. I think both of us have a very good time – he’s younger, so he has more stamina, but I have more experience.’
For the juiciest bits of Jeremy and Taki’s conversation, tune into the full podcast!
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