Labour party

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

John McDonnell is taking back control

Over the past few weeks, rumours have swirled in Westminster that the Labour party has acquired a new leader — that John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has almost completed a long, stealthy campaign having stolen more and more power from his beleaguered and exhausted boss. While there has been no announcement, plenty in the party believe that there certainly has been regime change: Corbyn in office, but McDonnell in power. While Corbyn has always seemed like an eccentric grandad who potters about in his allotment, there is something steely and not altogether comforting about McDonnell. Even though he gives broadcast interviews from his sitting room, which looks like the backdrop

Thursday

James Forsyth

Will Leave voters forgive a Brexit delay?

‘It is definitely less than 50 per cent,’ says one Downing Street source when asked about the chances of a Brexit deal. And this is one of the optimists. One cabinet minister warns that the UK ‘is driving into a brick wall’ with its current Brexit proposals; other ministers are not sure if this offer is designed to make a deal or just to make the point that London was prepared to compromise but Brussels refused to budge. So it’s a stand-off. Boris Johnson is determined to take the whole of the UK out of the customs union, and the Irish and the EU are equally robust in their view

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Labour is following in the doomed footsteps of the French left

The left no longer exists as a coherent political force in France. Embarrassed in the 2017 presidential election, the Socialist party has continued to disintegrate, polling just 6.2 per cent of the vote in May’s European elections. That was marginally fewer votes than Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, which mustered a distinctly modest 6.3 per cent. The far-left leader polled well in the first round of the presidential election but as one French commentator wrote this week, his mistake was then to ‘to revert to his original culture, that of the radical left’. As for the Socialist party, since 2007 their membership has plummeted from 260,000 to 102,000. But that

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A Supreme Court ruling, Labour’s messy conference and Donald Trump’s ‘impeachment’

Home Eleven justices of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that in advising the Queen to prorogue parliament ‘the Prime Minister’s advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect’. This was because the prorogation had ‘the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions’. The court was not ‘concerned with the Prime Minister’s motive’. The court cited the Case of Proclamations (1611) to show that the limits of prerogative powers were determined by the courts. The judgment overturned the decision of the High Court that the prorogation should not even be considered by the courts. Lady Hale, the

Toby Young Toby Young

Abolish private schools? Bring it on!

I cannot recall a week in which Britain’s private schools have received better PR. The Labour party has pledged to scrap them because of the huge advantages they confer on their pupils — including ‘lifelong networks for the powerful’, according to Owen Jones. Presumably that’s a reference to Jeremy Corbyn, who, thanks to his private school background, has risen to the top of the Labour party in spite of getting two Es at A-level. Laura Parker, the national coordinator for Momentum, welcomed Labour’s new policy on the grounds that ‘every child deserves a world-class education, not only those who are able to pay for it’. In other words, only private

Paul Embery

Paul Embery: Labour is too much Hampstead, not enough Hartlepool

Arrived in Remain-on-sea (also known as Brighton) for Labour party conference. As an old-fashioned trade unionist hailing from a working-class heartland who supports Brexit, opposes mass immigration and doesn’t believe someone with a penis can be a woman, I feel about as welcome as a hedgehog at a nudist colony. The conference centre and fringe mills with the usual throng of delegates and activists. Many are unquestionably decent people fighting for a better world. But it is largely an army of the woke, liberal middle-classes and young toytown revolutionaries — as though the social services department at Camden council and the Labour club at the University of Sussex have arranged

Wednesday

Rupert Darwall

Labour’s reckless net zero promise

On the face of it, the Labour party conference commitment to bring forward Britain’s net zero greenhouse gas emission target to 2030 is nothing short of reckless. ‘We need zero emissions,’ the economist Paul Johnson and member of the Committee on Climate Change tweeted. ‘Getting there by 2050 is tough and expensive but feasible and consistent with avoiding most damaging climate change. Aiming for zero emissions by 2030 is almost certainly impossible, hugely disruptive and risks undermining consensus.’ The GMB, the union representing what remains of Britain’s industrial workers, warned that it could lead to widespread job losses. The GMB is right. Accelerated decarbonisation is a formula for rapid de-industrialisation.

Steven Fielding

Is this the beginning of the end for Jeremy Corbyn?

Did Labour’s conference help or hinder Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming prime minister? For some, Corbyn ended up stronger than ever. There will be a review of the post of deputy leader, one likely to see the authority of Tom Watson, his severest internal critic, greatly diminished. Corbyn also won a critical vote on Brexit which endorsed his position of neutrality going into a general election. The conference also passed a raft of policies that confirm support in the party for Corbyn’s desire to dramatically extend state intervention in the cause of promoting economic growth, greater equality and tackling climate change. As John McDonnell, the ultimate architect of the party’s

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Jeremy Corbyn would destroy the market for specialist medicines

Amid Labour’s jubilation over the Supreme Court decision yesterday it would have been easy to miss Jeremy Corbyn’s latest attack on the market economy. But it shouldn’t go unremarked because what Corbyn proposed would seriously damage the pharmaceuticals industry – either meaning that taxpayers would have to bear the enormous costs of developing drugs, or would mean fewer drugs being developed at all. Corbyn cited the case of nine year old cystic fibrosis sufferer Luis Walker, who is being denied the medicine, Orkambi, because the drugs manufacturer is refusing to sell it to the NHS at an affordable cost. Labour, he said, would end the outrage of drugs companies which put

Tuesday

The Spectator

Full text: Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech

This is an extraordinary and precarious moment in our country’s history. The Prime Minister has been found to have acted illegally when he tried to shut down parliament.The highest court in the land has found that Boris Johnson broke the law when he tried to shut down democratic accountability at a crucial moment for our public life. The Prime Minister acted illegally when he tried to shut down opposition to his reckless and disastrous plan to crash out of the European Union without a deal. But he has failed. He will never shut down our democracy or silence the voices of the people. The democracy that Boris Johnson describes as

Steerpike Steerpike

Ken Loach: Tom Watson is the biggest threat facing Labour

What’s the biggest threat facing the Labour party? The Tories? The Lib Dems? Brexit? All wrong, says pro-Corbyn film director Ken Loach. The Kes filmmaker reckons its the likes of Tom Watson and other Labour MPs failing to line up behind Jeremy that is the thing to worry about right now. Loach told Mr S’s favourite paper, the Morning Star, that ‘the right inside Labour are the biggest obstacle to a Labour government’. He said: ‘The right wing of the Labour party is the biggest threat we face. These are the inheritors of Ramsay MacDonald, Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley, Blair and Brown. The right, embodied by Tom Watson, aims

Monday

James Johnson

Tories should be terrified of John McDonnell

Once again, question marks surround Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. This is not new. While I was at 10 Downing Street, with the small but significant possibility of a sudden Corbyn departure, we spent some time exploring the electoral impact of who might come next. To work out who might put up the best fight and how best to counter them, I discussed potential candidates in focus groups, played videos to voters, and polled frontbenchers’ perceived attributes. The most consistently effective potential leader? Shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.  This may seem surprising – and as a Conservative it was a painful discovery. But he ‘focus grouped’ remarkably well. Voters described him as ‘strong’, that he ‘knows what he is doing’ and that he understands the economy. When I played interview footage, including to those who do

Warren Morgan

Labour’s anti-Semitic followers aren’t welcome in Brighton

When Labour last came to Brighton for its annual conference, I sat in a studio listening to people who had faced abuse because they were Jewish. I heard statements recorded at a fringe event suggesting it was fine to question whether the Holocaust had ever happened. As leader of the city’s council, I had to act. I wrote a letter saying Labour would not be welcome back in Brighton if it failed to sort out its issues with anti-Semitism. Two years on, I have been forced out of the party I loved. But Labour’s dark problem remains. The backlash against my message was swift and took me by surprise. I

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Fury at Labour conference over Brexit votes

On paper, Labour’s conference has managed to unite around the Brexit position set out by the leadership. Delegates this afternoon overwhelmingly approved the NEC statement endorsing Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to decide how the party will campaign in a referendum at a special conference after a general election. They then voted down the rebel composite motion which called for the party to campaign unequivocally for Remain from now on. But what happened in the conference hall was chaotic and means the issue is unlikely to feel resolved for a lot of party members. The NEC vote was overwhelming, but the vote on composite 13 was much closer. So close, in fact,

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson would be foolish to underestimate Labour

In the next election, as in the last one, McDonnellism will prove a serious challenge to the Tories. John McDonnell, as chancellor, confirmed that in government, he and Jeremy Corbyn would make a full frontal attack on 40 years of economic and industrial orthodoxy, the precepts that markets know best and that our prosperity depends on trusting the private sector. During the first 30 years, this orthodoxy may have delivered relatively steady income growth for the economy as a whole. But over the full 40 years, we’ve seen the greatest shift in history between the share of national income that accrues to workers and what is taken by the owners

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Emily Thornberry’s political wardrobe malfunction

These days everyone in politics is obsessed with ‘optics’, with making sure they never do or say anything that might look bad to the public. Which makes Emily Thornberry’s European Union outfit all the more extraordinary. Thornberry paraded around Brighton in a blue-and-gold EU dress like some wide-eyed devotee of the cult of Brussels. What the hell was she thinking? It was at the ‘People’s Vote’ march in Brighton to coincide with the Labour conference. (Those quote marks around ‘People’s Vote’ are necessary because of course we already had a people’s vote, in 2016. What these people really want is a second referendum to try to erase the people’s vote

Christopher Snowdon

Labour should scrap state schools, not private ones

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has promised that if Labour wins the next election it will use its first budget to ‘immediately close the tax loopholes used by elite private schools and use that money to improve the lives of all children.’ This slab of red meat went down well with the class warriors at the party’s conference in Brighton, where there were doubtless plenty of teachers in attendance, but it wasn’t enough. Labour conference not only voted to withdraw charitable status from private schools, but to abolish them altogether. This was described, rather euphemistically, as ‘integrating all private schools into the state sector’ by Holly Rigby of the not

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Labour conference defy Jeremy Corbyn and back Remain?

Labour conference will this afternoon vote on three different motions on its Brexit position. There are two – one from the NEC, and one from delegates – which endorse the leadership’s plan to put this decision off until after the next general election, and then to hold a special one-day conference to decide instead. Then there’s an unambiguously pro-Remain motion. It’s going to be tight. Those around Jeremy Corbyn are anxious that conference doesn’t back the Remain stance, seeing it not just as a debate about policy, but as a move that could seriously undermine the Labour leader’s own position. Len McCluskey has just spoken to the conference hall, ostensibly

Sunday

Katy Balls

Watson-mania hits Labour conference

This year’s Labour conference is proving to be a rather sedated affair after a difficult few days for Jeremy Corbyn. Rather than Corbyn-mania taking hold of attendees, attendees report of a flat atmosphere following the high drama of John Lansman’s botched attempt to oust Tom Watson as deputy leader. After the first vote failed on Friday night, Jeremy Corbyn intervened to stop plans for a second vote. However, that hasn’t stopped internal rows – with infighting becoming the main story of conference so far and rumours growing over Corbyn’s exit. There is one politician, however, who is clearly enjoying conference and that’s Watson. Watson allies are delighted with how this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

As top aide quits, is Corbyn’s leadership now sinking?

The best way to understand the chaos engulfing the start of the Labour party conference is by looking at the instability of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Even if this is not immediately obvious from the outside (which, with such terrible personal poll ratings for Corbyn, it should be), it is the underlying factor in yesterday’s attempt to abolish Tom Watson, and in the resignation of Andrew Fisher, the leader’s policy chief. Fisher isn’t a Labour man through and through: he endorsed a  Class War candidate standing against Labour in the 2015 election. But he is – or was – a Corbyn man through and through. He was involved in the first