Jeremy corbyn

Thursday

Richard Madeley

Diary – 26 October 2017

To ITV’s London headquarters at the ungodly hour of 3.30 a.m. Piers Morgan is sunning himself in Beverly Hills and I’m sitting in for him on Good Morning Britain. I’ve known and liked Piers for 30 years, from the days when he used to scribble for the Mirror’s showbiz page, and although we could hardly be more different we do have one thing in common: we’re both television Marmite. People either like us or loathe us. But in the mysterious, perverse alchemy of TV ratings, detesting a presenter doesn’t necessarily mean shunning their show. Viewers enjoy shouting at their bêtes noires, so it’s all good for business. I too have presenters I

Sunday

Steerpike

Labour Youth vote to leave Nato

Oh to be young and free and a member of Young Labour. Labour’s youth wing held its annual conference this weekend. On the menu? Votes for 16-year-olds, comradely debate and… a vote to leave Nato. Yes, in a bid to free themselves of American imperialism, the Labour MPs of tomorrow backed a motion calling for the UK to leave Nato. This motion that Labour Youth passed attacking NATO is breathtaking in the scale of its historical inaccuracy. I mean where to bloody start? pic.twitter.com/trOajS0PHY — James Bickerton (@JBickertonUK) October 15, 2017 No doubt fellow Nato-critic Corbyn will be proud… Update: In other news, the latest young Corbynista fashion trend appears to be

Friday

Ed West

The best way to learn about socialism is to experience it

I think it’s fair to say that Theresa May did not have a cracking conference, but the sympathy vote might even help her. I certainly felt sorry for the Prime Minister, and instinctively don’t like the nasty playground teasing from the Men of Twitter. (She does have diabetes, too, which can’t help.) But she has to go nonetheless, not because she’s unlucky but because she has a tin ear; why else would she choose to raise such issues as racial discrimination in mental health, sores that can’t be healed but which invariably paint the Tories as the ‘Nasty Party’ – a Ratnerism she coined. Ditto with tuition fees. As for

Thursday

Peter Jones

Friends – or foes?

As the breeze of popular opinion — popularis aura — blows sweetly over the much-loved Corbyn-McDonnell Old Labour tribute act, the Tory party is faced with a dilemma: how to counteract it. This dilemma seems to centre on Mrs May’s leadership, and if that is the case, those ambitious to displace her need to consider what leadership entails. The word for ambition in ancient Greek was philotimia, ‘love of high esteem in the eyes of others’. This was considered a virtue in a society in which competition was endemic and winning meant everything. The problem was the tension between the desire to win and the desire to be liked at

The Spectator

Letters | 5 October 2017

What do the Tories offer? Sir: I have been hoping that someone more eloquent than me would respond to your contributors’ rants about Jeremy Corbyn, but as they have not, I thought I’d chip in (‘Corbyn’s big chance’, 30 September). As someone who is reasonably financially secure, the Tories would probably consider me a shoo-in voter. But what do they offer? Tax cuts, while paying for them by cutting services and benefits to those less fortunate, and in effect, pulling up the ladder behind me. ‘Capitalism’ to many in this country is really only a description of how Thatcher sold, or destroyed, the country’s wealth-creation industries, and a few years

Toby Young Toby Young

Boris, the conviction politician

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference where I can report that Boris Johnson, who has just wowed the blue rinses with a barn-storming speech, isn’t preparing a leadership bid. At least, that’s the line from all those closest to him. Without exception, they say if he was planning something they’d know about it and they don’t. It’s a media concoction. He’s a man without a plan. I know, I know. That’s exactly what Boris’s team would say if they had just press-ganged the last of 48 MPs to sign a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which is the magic number needed to trigger a leadership

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Tories had an election-winning conference – for Jeremy Corbyn

If Labour’s party conference in Brighton suggested the party was in a celebratory mood, that sense of triumphalism has been vindicated by the shambolic gathering of Conservatives in Manchester. The comparison between the two parties has been starker than ever: the buoyant Corbynistas laying out Marxism to unwavering applause, whilst bickering Conservatives can’t even sell their policies to a paying audience. If the Labour party looked in rude health last Wednesday, they look an even more attractive proposition after the Maybot suffered an all too human malfunction during her headline address yesterday. A circular that went out to Labour party members after the Prime Minister’s speech was clearly drafted before

Peter Oborne

Imran’s biggest test

It’s been a long journey for Imran Khan. He founded his political party, PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice), in 1996, and for many years made no real progress. Many mocked him. The Guardian journalist Declan Walsh dismissed him as ‘a miserable politician’, whose ideas and affiliations had ‘swerved and skidded like a rickshaw in a rainshower’. PTI did make a limited amount of progress in the 2013 general elections, when it emerged as the second largest party by national vote and with 30 parliamentary seats. Furthermore, Khan’s party secured control of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier Province). But none of this was enough to challenge for national power. The outlook

James Delingpole James Delingpole

If only the Tories understood economics

‘I don’t think I’m quite as Austrian as you are,’ a Tory minister said to me the other day. And I knew then that the party is doomed. It wasn’t what he said so much as the way that he said it: in the fond, amused, each-to-his-own tone you might use to dismiss a friend’s enthusiasm for Morris dancing or Napoleonic re-enactment or dogging… But personally, I think free market economics (of the Austrian or any other classical liberal school) is far too important to be left to wonks, think-tankers and out-there right-wing commentators. So did Margaret Thatcher. ‘Hayek’s powerful Road to Serfdom left a permanent mark on my own

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Is Boris Johnson unsackable?

Theresa May – We’ve listened on student fees The Prime Minister marked the start of the Conservative party conference (and her 61st birthday) with a customary appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. First on the agenda was the announcement of a change in the government’s policy on university tuition fees. May stated that she wanted to raise the threshold at which students start to pay back their loans, and that she intended to scrap a planned increase in level of fees to a maximum of £9,250 a year. Marr accused the Prime Minister of presiding over a screeching U-turn: AM: The policy that you stoutly defended for years, which ended

Friday

Stephen Daisley

Slugs, melts and centrist dads: How to talk like a Corbynista

Are you considering a career in Labour politics but fear you may be left behind amid all the exciting changes the party is undergoing? Maybe you want to be a part of the Jez revolution but can’t get your head around the ever-developing terminology.  Perhaps you are eyeing up a safe seat but aren’t sure which paramilitary cell’s endorsement would most impress the selection panel.  Help is at hand with this guide that takes you through the key terms of Corbynspeak.  Centrist dad: Anyone old enough to remember when Labour was a political party and not an evangelical tent ministry. Owns more than one pair of chinos and only uses

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 28 September 2017

Fight and fight again Sir: In her Florence speech, Theresa May yet again declared that: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal.’ Yet in his piece ‘Brexit Wars’ (23 September), James Forsyth claims that minimal planning is being made for a ‘no deal’ under WTO rules. If true, this is insulting to the electorate as it means that the Prime Minister is being neither serious nor truthful. It is inexcusable for our civil service not to prepare for an event that is a clear possibility when it would be catastrophic if we had no plan. Couldn’t the 80 MPs in the Tory Research Group start preparing for a WTO

The Spectator

It’s time to talk trade

Thirty years ago, the Conservatives would have had no problem countering what Jeremy Corbyn had to offer in Brighton. But as they gather in Manchester for their own conference, they know they are going to have to find a new way of appealing to a generation born after the fall of Soviet communism, which has no memory of (or interest in) the 1970s, with its industrial strife and moribund state-run industries. Socialism, as we found out in June, is this year’s surprise hit. For younger voters struggling to find a way on to the property ladder, a bigger, all-embracing state may seem to be the answer. As for financial crises,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 September 2017

Home Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, told the party conference that Labour was ‘on the threshold of power’. The party had been ‘war-game-type scenario-planning’ for things like ‘a run on the pound’, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said at a fringe meeting. Mr McDonnell had delighted conference-goers by denouncing Private Finance Initiatives: ‘We will bring existing PFI contracts back in-house. We’re bringing them back! We’re bringing them back!’ But next day, Jon Ashworth, the shadow health spokesman, said: ‘It’s only a handful which are causing hospital trusts across the country a significant problem.’ Mr McDonnell also promised to renationalise rail, water, energy and the Royal Mail. At a fringe event,

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Corbyn’s big chance

On this week’s episode, we turn our attention to Brighton where Jeremy Corbyn, potentially our next Prime Minister, has been holding court at Labour conference. We also look at how child refugees are managed by the home office, and wonder which whiskeys to lay down for the future. First, before the Conservatives head to Manchester this weekend for their annual conference, it was the turn of the Labour masses to congregate by the sea in Brighton. Buoyed by unexpected inroads made back in June, Corbyn is now the bookies’ favourite to be our next Prime Minister. Can the Tories respond to this, asks James Forsyth in this week’s magazine cover

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A clear run for Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn, Prime Minister. This used to be one of the Tories’ favourite lines. They thought that just to say it out loud was to expose its absurdity. The strategic debate within the Tory party was over whether to attack Corbyn himself, or to use him to contaminate the whole Labour brand. But Corbyn has transformed that brand, not damaged it. He has successfully fused together a Social Democratic party with a radical left one. Labour conference this week was the gathering of a movement that thinks it is close to power; just look at the disciplined way delegates justified the decision not to debate Brexit, on the grounds that

Ross Clark Ross Clark

His first 100 days

Many assume that if an election were held soon, Jeremy Corbyn would win. But what if, say, the government fell in 2020 and Labour won a working majority? At 71, Corbyn becomes Britain’s oldest prime minister since Churchill, and at first is one of its most popular. His appeal grows as he takes on some of the country’s favourite demons. Few listen to the protests of water and electricity shareholders as their stakes are seized — most are focused on their own bills, which surely will come down now. There are cheers at Victoria Station as the news flashes across screens that Southern Railway is to be nationalised. At hospitals,

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn is no longer a joke

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour conference started strongly before flagging in an overly long middle section. But I suspect this won’t matter much. Those in the hall could have listened to Corbyn for hours and the speech will, I suspect, clip down neatly for the news. The speech was a reminder of why the words Jeremy Corbyn, Prime Minister are no longer funny to Tories. At the start of the speech, Corbyn had a grand old time mocking the Tories for their divisions over Brexit, their billion-pound deal with the DUP and the failures of the election campaign. Corbyn’s jokes might not have been great, but they were effective. There

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Labour party has now embraced Corbynism – will the public?

When Jeremy Corbyn gave his speech on Wednesday, the conference hall bore a closer resemblance to a stadium concert than your bog-standard political meeting. The Labour leader was given a hero’s welcome from party members decked out in Corbyn fan merchandise. He received a standing ovation before he’d even emitted a word, and an impromptu chant of ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ soon followed. Corbyn’s position has never been more secure and this year’s conference has  only gone to cement the new normal for Labour – it is a loud and proud socialist party. Buoyed by the snap election, MPs and members alike have embraced Corbyn’s anti-austerity narrative – no-one is having

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech showed how much of Labour’s power comes from the Tories’ mess

What is Jeremy Corbyn’s vision for Labour in government? Before the snap election, that question seemed so very irrelevant and hypothetical, but the 2017 result and the way the Tories have behaved since makes a Jeremy Corbyn premiership far more likely than anyone could have imagined. So his speech at Labour conference was quite understandably upbeat, confident, and well-received. It was the best speech he’s ever given – fluent, well-structured and unapologetic. Though of course it went on a bit too long. It included the mandatory pops at the media, and repetitions of crowd-pleasing policy announcements on nationalising various industries. Labour feels so powerful now that it doesn’t need to