Labour party

Saturday

Darren Grimes

My mum bought her council house. Can Laura Pidcock explain why that’s wrong?

The moment that has defined my approach to politics came when my mother told me the proudest moment of her life: buying her council house.  Growing up in Consett, a former steel town in the north east, that house seemed to be like any of the other identikit terraced properties in the area. But to my mother, it was an asset she now owned and was able to pass on to me and my siblings. Later in life, I realised that Right to Buy had opened up new avenues for my mother, beyond having a roof over her head: it gave her choice, security, and a sense of achievement and

Friday

Marcus Dysch

Anti-Semitism fatigue is now a normal part of British politics

How did it come to this? Here we are, in 2018, in modern, democratic, fair-minded Britain, and what happens when it turns out the leader of the Labour Party was a member of a secret Facebook group awash with anti-Semitic comments? Not a lot really. As the political editor of the Jewish Chronicle, I have been writing about Jeremy Corbyn’s associations with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and radical clerics since long before he became leader of the opposition. I have also lost count of the number of stories I have written on Labour MPs, councillors, activists and supporters linked to Jew-hate since the summer of 2015. When I saw the work

Sarah Ditum

Labour’s ‘woman’ problem

There are plenty of things you could say about Labour’s All-Women Shortlists (AWS). Tony Blair called them ‘not ideal at all’ in 1995. In 1996, Peter Jepson and Roger Dyas-Elliott – two men who’d been rejected as Labour candidates – called them sex discrimination. An industrial tribunal agreed with them, and Labour was forced to suspend the policy until 2002, when it was able to bring in the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act, permitting positive discrimination in candidate selection. In 2002, Owen Jones called them ‘most successful at expanding the career options of a tiny elite of professional, university-educated women’, Blair’s hesitancy forgotten and AWS rewritten as a tool of

Thursday

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Prince Charming

On this week’s episode of The Spectator Podcast, we look at the new Saudi Crown Prince as he visits the UK. Is he the great moderniser that some imagine, or are we sweeping the more unpleasant elements of his regime under the carpet? We also consider the many strands of Labour’s Brexit position, and look at a rocky week for British sport. First, Mohammed bin Salman, known to some as MBS, is making his first trip to the UK this week since assuming the role of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince last year. He has been heralded by some as the radical modernising force that the country has been calling for,

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP’s fake news

The SNP are a quieter force in Westminster since the snap election. Along with a reduction in size, they now have to face down the equally rowdy Scottish Conservatives each week at PMQs. Alas, it seems the new challenge is proving too great for the party’s digital operation. At PMQs, the SNP’s Mhairi Black criticised the government for singing the virtues of universal credit when her Tory colleagues in Stirling council have called for half a million pounds in extra funding to mitigate its effects. The SNP’s digital operation was quick to go on the offensive – criticising the Tories over their ‘hypocrisy’ on Universal Credit after ‘Tory-run Stirling council

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Did Munroe Bergdorf not expect the digital inquisition?

But for Toby Young, it is possible that few of us would have noticed the appointment of a transgender model called Munroe Bergdorf, who resigned this morning as a member of Labour’s LGBT advisory board. Her appointment might have gone unnoticed, along with her past comments on social media, which included attacking what she described as ‘the racial violence of white people’ – adding: ‘Yes ALL white people. Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism.’ Bergdorf was quick

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Munroe Bergdorf and the left’s monopoly on morality

Munroe Bergdorf has resigned as Labour’s LGBT adviser after just one week in the job. Her appointment looked quite promising until it emerged she had deployed ‘butch lezza’ as an insult, joked that she’d like to ‘gay bash’ a TV character, and described gay Tory men as ‘a special kind of dickhead’. ‘Ever find that sometimes you’re just NOT in the mood for a gay and their flapping arms,’ she once mused on Twitter. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest gay rights advocacy isn’t the career for her.  She has quit, citing ‘attacks on my character by the conservative right wing press’. Of course, there is no need to attack

Sunday

Steerpike

John McDonnell’s bad advice

John McDonnell’s business credentials took another hit on Friday when the shadow chancellor struggled to name a single one of his ‘business heroes’ in an interview with the Financial Times. The pause was so long that McDonnell’s press adviser eventually came up with a suggestion for him – ‘Vince Dale’, the renewable energy entrepreneur: Only there’s a problem. There’s no renewable energy entrepreneur by the name of Vince Dale. Instead, the person in question goes by the name of… Dale Vince. Mr S suggests the pair learn the entrepreneur’s name before going in for a business endorsement…

Thursday

Charles Moore

Jeremy Corbyn’s custom union fantasy

Jeremy Corbyn wants Britain to ‘stay in a customs union’, according to the BBC. The phrase does not make sense. We could possibly stay in the customs union, if the EU decided to let us, but that is not the policy of his party or of the government. We cannot ‘stay’ in ‘a’ customs union, because that would require us to join something which does not at present exist. But the use of the reassuring word ‘stay’, in reference to an as yet unformed, unnegotiated customs union, is exactly the rhetorical sleight of hand which Mr Corbyn seeks. It is designed to persuade Remainer Conservative rebels that they must side

Wednesday

Ross Clark

What are Jeremy Corbyn and Michel Barnier up to?

The Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport recently investigated claims of Russian interference in the UK electoral process. The committee might soon be forced to go one further and investigate EU interference in our political system.  How remarkable that today’s ‘legally-binding’ document from Michel Barnier, which tries to keep Northern Ireland in a customs union with the EU comes just 48 hours after Jeremy Corbyn made a speech changing Labour’s policy in order to commit the UK as a whole to remain within the customs union. I am not party to any conversations Jeremy Corbyn might have had with Michel Barnier or his team, but the Labour leader

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s slow running-down of the media

Yesterday, after Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Brexit, he moved on from press questions about the substance of his policy change to seeking non-media questions. It was presumably to show that Labour is more interested in the real questions of real people rather than the biased agenda of the press. That real question ended up being ‘please will you hurry up and be our Prime Minister?’ Corbynites would argue that even a question as pointless as this is better than the mocking tone that journalists take as they try to claim, on the basis of whispered gossip, that this is a result of some kind of Shadow Cabinet falling out. Why

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Corbynites are right: bin bullies must be stopped

It is another case of Corbynite militants overthrowing a moderate Labour politician. Or so I thought when I read this morning that Warren Morgan, leader of Brighton and Hove Council, has been driven out by the left of his party – he will step down as leader in May and not stand again as a councillor when his term expires in 2019. It has similarities to what happened to Claire Kober, former Labour leader of Haringey council, who recently resigned claiming ‘bullying’ by Jeremy Corbyn supporters. But then I recalled the last time I read the names ‘Haringey’ and  ‘Brighton and Hove’ in the same story.  It was a few weeks

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Are we tired of Brexit yet?

If you wish to understand this government you might begin with Robert Conquest’s third law of politics. Namely, that ‘The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies’. This is certainly a more plausible hypothesis than any obviously available alternative. Indeed, there are times when you begin to think this government’s mission must be to persuade us that, contrary to the evidence hitherto presented, a government led by Jeremy Corbyn might be no bad thing. Or, at any rate, no worse than the government we have now.  Take Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, for instance,

Douglas Murray

The BBC’s coverage of Ben Bradley’s apology to Corbyn is fascinating

The story about Jeremy Corbyn’s contacts with a member of Czech intelligence in the 1980s has not been treated with great seriousness by our national broadcaster.  At first the BBC deigned not to run the story.  Then they treated it like some kind of joke.  For instance, given a chance to question Corbyn over his past record the BBC journalist Steph McGovern last week bowled Corbyn the humorous soft-ball ‘A final question: are you a Czech spy?’  A question which gave much opportunity for laughter and a firm ‘No’ from Corbyn, who now insists (as he does whenever he is caught in similar situations) that he was in fact discussing

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

Labour is no longer ‘for the many’

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today in which he confirmed that a Labour government would keep Britain in a Customs Union with the EU was about so much more than trade. It was about the future of the Labour party itself. It sent a clear message about what, and more importantly who, Labour is for these days. It confirmed that Labour has finally made its choice between which of its two, quite conflictual support bases it will represent in public life: the better-off ones, the middle-class ones, the Southern ones. This is what Labour’s cosying up to the idea of a Customs Union — which is a betrayal of Brexit, whatever Labourites

Steerpike Steerpike

Barry Gardiner’s words come back to haunt him

Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn is expected to back ‘a’ customs union when Britain leaves the EU. To begin Labour’s Brexit blitz, Barry Gardiner was sent onto the airwaves to wax lyrical about Labour’s new pitch. The problem is that of all of Labour’s shadow cabinet – other than Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell – it’s Gardiner who has been the most critical of the customs union. Back in July, Gardiner helpful explained in the Guardian why remaining in ‘a’ customs union such as Turkey has would be a bad idea – saying it would ‘preclude’ the country from ‘making our own independent trade agreements with our five largest export

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Iain McNicol steps down as Labour General Secretary

Iain McNicol’s departure from the position of Labour General Secretary has been a very long time coming indeed. He wasn’t Ed Miliband’s first choice for the job, and he certainly wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite person at Labour headquarters, either. After the snap election, Corbynites pushed for a ‘purge’ that involved ousting McNicol. They failed, then, but today he announced that he was off to ‘pursue new projects’, which is one of those Westminster formulae for ‘booted out’. Corbynite Jennie Formby is being mooted as his successor. In a sense, it’s admirable that McNicol managed to stay on for so long, given the constant attempts to get rid of him. Insiders

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Does Seumas Milne hold Brexit’s fate in his hands?

Could Britain remain in the Customs Union after Brexit? That is the question of the moment, the issue that currently troubles a lot of people in politics and government. It raises another question: who will decide whether we do indeed remain in the Customs Union? Here’s an interesting answer being given, in whispers, around Westminster and Whitehall: Seumas Milne. The theory goes like this: the Tories are split on the CU, so Labour’s position on it will be decisive. If Jeremy Corbyn brings Labour in behind the pro-CU Tories (and the SNP) then there is a comfortable majority for staying in, no matter what either Theresa May, or the DUP

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The terror of Corbynism

This week, the Corbynistas bared their teeth. They gave us an insight into the mob-like authoritarianism that lurks behind the facade of their ‘kind’ politics. They insisted Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t a spy for the Stalinists while at the same time exposing their Stalinist tendencies. ‘How dare you lump us in with Stalinists?’, they cried, while in the next breath making manic-eyed videos threatening the press and forming online mobs to punish those who criticise their Dear Leader. The irony has been dark. For the first time, I feel fearful of Corbynism. Until now, I’ve seen the Corbynistas as a somewhat tragic movement, a kind of cosplay for middle-class millennials who

Thursday

Steerpike

Diane Abbott makes another numbers blunder

Diane Abbott is no stranger to getting her numbers in a muddle, and it seems the shadow home secretary has now done it again. Abbott warned this week that some were using immigration as a euphemism for race, but Mr S was surprised by one passage in her speech. The Guardian reports that Abbott told those in the audience at King’s College London: ‘I remember Enoch Powell’s speech, I think I was in primary school, and I wasn’t following it in huge detail, but I do remember how I felt.’ Given that Abbott was born in 1953, and Powell’s famous speech was delivered in 1968 – making her at least 14