Jeremy corbyn

Oh dear. Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, he has had an at times difficult relationship with the ‘Mainstream Media’. From hacks being booed at press conferences to Corbyn avoiding questions, it’s safe to say that the media feel a little bit unloved. Now, it seems Labour’s high command is keen, too, that party members have limited interaction with the MSM. At this year’s party conference in Brighton, the press will not be granted access to the floor. Instead journalists will have to watch proceedings from the balcony. This means that the media will be away from the action – and unable to interact with delegates on the floor. The official

In a raging and rousing speech to the TUC in Brighton this week, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn took aim at the UK’s ‘unscrupulous’ bosses. He reserved particular scorn for the so-called ‘gig economy’, which he presented as little more than a front for ‘bogus self-employment’. Now, it’s certainly true that there are problems in the gig economy. There are indeed a small number of unscrupulous companies who use the confusion in the gig economy to exploit vulnerable workers, denying their rights and forcing them into self-employment. But it would be a serious mistake to tar the whole sector with the same brush. There is much more going on in the

This week marks two years since Jeremy Corbyn was announced as the Labour leader. When he took over, he promised to shake up the way Prime Minister’s Questions was done, to make it more about the voters and less about the political point-scoring. But interestingly, he has now settled into a rather effective political routine. Corbyn now runs through a series of policy areas on which the Tories look weak, almost regarding Theresa May’s answers as incidental to the process rather than the prompt for him to probe more and point out that she hasn’t answered the question at all. This is probably a wise move, given Theresa May tries

Usually when an official party spokesman has to issue a statement ‘clarifying’ what a politician meant to say in a radio interview, you can take it as a sign that something has gone wrong. However, not for Jeremy Corbyn – who appears to have mastered the art of clever* misspeaking Appearing on The World At One this afternoon, the Labour leader appeared to shed some light on his party’s ever-changing Brexit position. With Labour MPs broadly united behind a transition period in which the UK remains a member of the single market, Corbyn suggested that they could go one step further: the UK could continue to be a member even after

Up to now, Labour have managed to have their cake and eat it on Brexit. At the election, Labour MPs in Brexit-backing seats could say their party didn’t oppose leaving the EU and had voted for Article 50. At the same time, Labour hoovered up votes elsewhere in the country from those angry at Brexit. Remarkably, 39 percent of Financial Times readers voted for the party despite Jeremy Corbyn’s hostility to high earners and the City. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, Labour are threatening this coalition by voting against the EU withdrawal bill. Already, Tory MPs are excited at the prospect of being able to attack

Jeremy Corbyn’s interest in veganism has excited far more interest than is necessary, given most people probably assumed the Labour leader was already a follower of this plant-based diet (in between the odd pleasurable shortbread). It has gone down particularly well with the ‘clean eating’ lobby, who hope that the endorsement of a Labour leader who was cheered at Glastonbury will boost the appeal of their trendy diets. Today’s Evening Standard carries a piece by Camilla Fayed, the founder of ‘Notting Hill clean-eating restaurant Farmacy’ (though the ‘clean-eating’ line is only in the paper, not the online copy, which suggests that Fayed doesn’t like being lumped with other clean eaters) who

The victims of foreign dictatorships have become chips in our political games. In our corner of the rich world, for instance, the suffering of Venezuela matters only because Jeremy’s Corbyn’s enemies can use it to attack his support for the Chavist regime when it was unchallengeable, and his cowardly equivocation when the inevitable catastrophe followed. Saudi Arabia matters only because leftists can use it to damn the British establishment’s bootlicking support for the House of Saud and its suppression of democratic, women’s and minority rights. Yet the smallest concern of the Venezuelans is the praise the western far left lavished on their corrupt and massively incompetent dictators. I don’t mean

I’ve been arguing since June that it is at least possible that Theresa May could remain in office longer than the Westminster village consensus dictated, so I’m not too surprised by her statement of intent in Japan. Besides, what else could she say? Like most people, I still don’t expect her to fight the next election, but if she does manage the sort of transformative dogged resurrection I wrote about in June, it could just be possible. For now though, what will hold her in place will be not so much her own talents (whatever they may be) but her party’s fear of confronting the huge and possibly existential questions

Even in Scotland, ‘Name the post-devolution leaders of the Scottish Labour party’ is a pretty decent pub quiz question. There have been so many and so few of them left much of a legacy. The people’s standard has been borne by Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish, Jack McConnell, Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray, Johann Lamont, Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale. Eight leaders in eighteen years. (In the same period, the SNP and the Tories have each only had three leaders.) And now there will be a ninth. Kezia Dugdale’s resignation as leader of the Scottish Labour party surprised even some of her closest allies and senior aides. Many of them are, not

Jeremy Corbyn did better than many expected in the general election, but while some of his allies might not like it, he still lost. Or at least he did unless you’re looking at things from where Labour frontbencher Chris Williamson is sitting. Fresh from coming under fire for suggesting women-only train carriages were a good idea, the Labour MP has now been claiming that Corbyn won a landslide election victory on June 8th. Here’s what he told the Guardian‘s Rowena Mason in an interview today: Mr S would be interested to know where Williamson is getting his numbers from…

For months, Labour has been moving ever closer to the Tory position on Brexit while pretending that it isn’t. First, it backed Brexit. Then in June, John McDonnell told Robert Peston that he couldn’t see continued membership of the single market being ‘on the table’ in Brexit negotiations. He added that people would interpret membership of the single market as ‘not respecting that referendum.’ In July, Jeremy Corbyn told Andrew Marr that single market membership is ‘dependent on membership of the EU.’ Barry Gardiner has even suggested that the UK would become a ‘vassal state’ if it were to remain in the single market after Brexit. Today, Sir Keir Starmer writes in the Observer that, unlike Liam Fox and Philip Hammond,

It’s safe to say that Chris Williamson is not the most popular MP in his party right now, after the Labour frontbencher suggested women-only carriages were a good idea – in order to stop women falling victim to sexual assault on public transport. Since then, several Labour MPs have criticised his comments – with Jess Phillips suggesting Williamson was taking tips on feminism from Saudi Arabia. Now one resident of the Palace of Westminster has taken matters into their own hands. A notice has been placed on the door of Williamson’s office in response to his suggestion: ‘Woman? Sexually harassed at work? How about working on your own floor?’ Commons source sent