Labour party

Labour’s £25 voting fee is essentially a poll tax

Imagine the reaction of Her Majesty’s Opposition if the government announced that it was to introduce a new ‘voter charge’ – a levy which citizens had to pay before they were allowed into the polling station. Just as they did with the ‘Community Charge’ over a quarter of a century ago Labour would undoubtedly – and quite reasonably – call it a ‘poll tax’. How could a democracy possibly try to exclude the poor from the vote, they would ask, before backing a legal challenge on the grounds of human rights? Why, then, is Labour so determined to introduce its own internal poll tax? Yesterday, the party lost a High

Eddie Izzard’s kiss of death catches up with him

Spare a thought for Eddie Izzard. Every campaign the cross-dressing comedian attaches himself to has a tendency to end in failure. After backing Ed Miliband in the General Election, Izzard found himself on the losing side once again in the EU referendum campaign when his tour of university campuses failed to swing it for Remain. Today he has missed out on a place on Labour’s National Executive Committee. Izzard had hoped to be elected onto the party’s NEC as part of his efforts to carve a career in politics. However, he ended up coming eighth, with the six available seats going to more Corbynista candidates. Obviously disappointed not to get elected to

Isabel Hardman

Labour members win court case on leadership contest

Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast discuss what’s next for Labour: Could Labour hold its autumn conference without a confirmed leader? The party’s QC is to appeal this morning’s High Court decision that it cannot have a six month freeze date for members voting in the leadership contest, and this could delay the contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith. Five new Labour members won their case against the party’s application of a six month freeze on eligibility to vote. If the election is delayed, and Labour has no leader in the autumn, which is when political parties and leaders traditionally fire up their grassroots and show how strong their authority

Must Corbyn win?

Thoughtful writing about the Corbyn phenomenon is not just impossible to find, it is impossible to imagine. Admirers live in a land of make believe as closed to the rest of the world as North Korea. They barely know how to explain themselves to outsiders because they cannot imagine any honourable reason for outsiders disagreeing with them. Disputes with ‘Jeremy’  must be the result of ideological contamination – you have become or, perhaps secretly always have been, a ‘Tory’ or ‘Blairite’ – financial corruption  – you have sold out – or racial corruption – you are a ‘Zionist’. My colleague Janice Turner of the Times posted a copy of a

Boring Corbyn has got it all wrong on personality politics

Brits sometimes think that ‘personality politics’ is a bad thing. Jeremy Corbyn has certainly suggested as much; just before he won the Labour leadership last September, he dismissed the concept as juvenile and egoistic. Instead, he said: ‘We are not doing celebrity, personality or abusive politics – this is about hope.’ But although Corbyn has stuck to that belief, he’s wrong – and a big part of his problem is not realising that. While some say the idea of personality politics is an American import, in reality Brits have been doing it for decades. Take Harold Wilson’s advisers planting hecklers at TV hustings so the Labour leader could deploy his best put-down lines. That was in

James Forsyth

Why an early election would be bad for the Tories

Ten points ahead in the polls, Theresa May regarded as the best Prime Minister by a majority of voters and both Labour and Ukip in disarray. It is little wonder, as I say in The Sun today, that some Tories are beginning to get excited about an early election. But going for an early election would be a massive mistake for the Tories. First, what the public seem to like about Theresa May is that she is a no nonsense politician who gets on with the job in front of her. Voters appear to like her refrain that politics isn’t a game. But calling an early election would destroy all

Will Labour finally stop sweeping anti-Semitism under the carpet?

In February, the co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, resigned after having publicly accused the Club of harbouring and articulating rank prejudice against Jews and other minority groups. Mr Chalmers – who is not Jewish – declared that a ‘large proportion’ of Club members had ‘some kind of problem with Jews‘. He also suggested that individual members of the Club’s executive had employed offensive language ‘with casual abandon’, and that some had gone so far as to voice support for Hamas, the terrorist organisation that currently controls Gaza and which is proud to be governed by a charter that calls upon its followers to murder Jewish people. These

Owen Smith looks to 1945 to inspire Labour

Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith have faced off in their first hustings of what has already proved to be a bitter leadership campaign. That disunity and turmoil was on display on stage in Cardiff last night. The Labour leader hit back at Smith’s dig about the ‘fractured’ state of the party by saying it was hard to preach about unity when Smith and others had ‘resigned from the shadow cabinet’. This was business as usual then. So whilst Corbyn and Smith made it clear they will never see eye to eye, what did they have to say on what they actually stand for? Whilst their clashes on stage only reveal the

Labour’s problems go far beyond Jeremy Corbyn

Owen Smith takes on Jeremy Corbyn in the first Labour leadership hustings this evening. The moderates are desperately hoping that these head to heads can change enough minds among the Labour electorate to give Smith a chance of beating Corbyn, hence their eagerness to have them televised and the Corbynite desire to keep them off air. But as I argue in the magazine this week, Labour’s problems go far beyond Jeremy Corbyn. He is a symptom of what ails the party, not the sole cause of it. Even if he announced tonight that he was off to spend more time on his allotment, Labour would still have big, existential questions

Ross Clark

Can Labour be trusted with Britain’s security when it can’t manage its own?

During the Blair years the security guards at Labour party conferences had a reputation for over-zealous intervention – remember the sight of octogenarian Walter Wolfgang being manhandled out of his seat and ejected from the chamber for daring to heckle Jack Straw over the Iraq War? Appropriately enough, under Corbyn, Labour’s conference security has the opposite problem – it seems to have been unilaterally-disarmed. As Guido Fawkes reveals this morning there is a serious possibility that this year’s event, scheduled to take place in Liverpool next month, will have to be cancelled owing to the party’s inability to organise security for the event. The problem goes back to last year

James Forsyth

Who can lead Labour?

Westminster prefers to concentrate on one drama at a time. That is why the old rule of thumb was that only one party leader could be under pressure at any given moment. Recent events have upended that convention. The Brexit vote precipitated leadership crises for more than one party. But the spectacle of the Tory leadership election has rather overshadowed the fact that Labour is having its own leadership contest. The contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith, the party’s former work and pensions spokesman, will run all summer. In Labour circles, Corbyn is regarded as the clear favourite. Once again, the hard left appears to have succeeded in getting

Theresa May’s Labour land grab starts today

Whilst Labour tangle themselves up in civil war, the Prime Minister is making a move for the party’s economic territory. On her first day in Downing Street, Theresa May said her Government would stick up for everyone, not only the ‘privileged few’. Today, she’ll start work making good on that promise when she chairs the first meeting of her Cabinet committee on the economy and industrial strategy. So what does that all mean? It’s obvious the sentiment suggests an attempt to beat Labour at its own game. From the politician who coined the description of the Tories as the ‘nasty party’, May is doing her best to show the Conservatives

Corbyn’s shadow puppets

Wrapped in his fantasy world of a Labour party ruling the country in accordance with the diktats of those of its members who support him, Jeremy Corbyn reminds one of Plato’s image of humans trapped in a cave, able only to see the wall in front of them. Behind them, at the opposite end of the cave, is a fire, and in front of that, a puppet show. The shadows of those puppets, cavorting on the wall in front of him, are man’s reality. And Corbyn’s. His MPs are right to want a party connected to the real world, but is a leadership battle the right way to go about

James Forsyth

Big boost for Jeremy Corbyn after court victory

The Labour donor Michael Foster has lost his High Court case attempt to force Jeremy Corbyn to get 51 nominations from MPs and MEPs to be a candidate in the Labour leadership race. The Judge upheld the Labour National Executive Committee’s decision that Corbyn, as the incumbent, should automatically appear on the ballot. Today is a significant victory for Corbyn. If he had to get parliamentary nominations to appear on the ballot paper, he would have struggled badly to do so. Indeed, he might well have lost by default. But now, Corbyn can get on with his leadership campaign. Corbyn goes into this campaign as the firm favourite to win.

My pedigree chum

The backlash has been brutal, unforgiving and, in common with the left’s reactions to so many things, almost hysterical in its hot-blooded fury. My crime? Starbucks shares? Casual racism? Advocating military action in North Korea? No, I have just bought a puppy, a pedigree puppy — and not just any pedigree, but an aristocratic-looking Cavalier King Charles spaniel — the apotheosis of canine privilege. Here’s a sample of some of the more printable rants from north London friends and colleagues. It makes dispiriting reading. ‘That dog looks very posh… what’s wrong with a mongrel?’ ‘I’m shocked and disgusted…’ ‘Why didn’t you get a rescue dog… disgraceful… you are encouraging selective breeding…’. But

Nick Cohen

Enemies of history

At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to understand British and American politics. By 2016, I would say that they have become essential. Admittedly, connoisseurs of the communist movement’s crimes have always thought that 1928 was a vintage year. The Soviet Union had decided that the first period after the glorious Russian revolution of 1917 had been succeeded by a second period, when the West fought back. But now, comrades, yes, now in the historic year of 1928, Stalin had ruled that we were entering a ‘third period’ when capitalism would die in its final crisis. As the

Sarah Champion unresigns and returns to Labour frontbench

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, was one of the Labour frontbenchers who resigned in an attempt to force Jeremy Corbyn to quit as Labour leader. But today, she has asked for —and been given — her job back. Now, Champion was just a frontbencher, not a full member of the shadow Cabinet. But her un-resignation is another straw in the wind suggesting that things are moving in Corbyn’s favour. Champion’s willingness to return to the front bench suggests that she’s resigned to Corbyn winning when the results are announced in September. It also enables Corbyn to say that by allowing her to come back, he has shown that

Len McCluskey warns that the security services might be trying to sabotage Jeremy Corbyn

The Labour leadership election has become even more bizarre today. Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite the Union and a key Corbyn backer, has given a Guardian interview in which he suggest that the ugly behaviour of Corbyn supporters online is actually the work of the security services. He tells Decca Aitkenhead: “Do people believe for one second that the security forces are not involved in dark practices? Decca, I have been around long enough … the type of stuff that we ultimately find out about, under the 30-year rule.” When Aitkenhead challenges him on this, McCluskey continues: “Well, I tell you what, anybody who thinks that that isn’t happening

Sorry Jeremy, shouldn’t Labour’s gender equality review start at home?

Today Jeremy Corbyn has launched his campaign ahead of the Labour leadership election. Corbyn, who is being challenged by Owen Smith, used the launch to announce that — under him — the next Labour government would introduce compulsory pay audits for companies with more than 21 staff — in order to show whether or not they are discriminating against female employees. However when asked by Sky News if this meant he would publish an equal pay audit for his own office, Corbyn failed to commit. Perhaps that’s for the best given that any such report is unlikely to make inspiring reading. Forget comparing the salary difference between women and men in the top jobs, when

Tom Goodenough

Diane Abbott sticks the knife into Owen Smith as she compares him to David Cameron

If we didn’t know it before, Diane Abbott has made it clear that this summer’s Labour leadership contest is going to be very nasty indeed. On the day Jeremy Corbyn will officially launch his campaign, his loyal ally has taken to the airwaves to stick the knife into his challenger Owen Smith. We’ve had a taste of just how the Corbynistas are planning to attack Smith before and it seems his links to Pfizer, where he used to work, will be the main thrust of their attempts to undermine him. Abbott made that much obvious this morning. She managed to concede that Owen was a ‘great bloke and so on’,