Labour party

In normal times, by-elections are bad for governing parties and good for oppositions. But it is an indicator of how much trouble Labour is in, as I say in The Sun this morning, that they are the ones who are nervous ahead of Thursday’s by-elections. Some in the Labour machine seem almost resigned to losing Copeland to the Tories and are concentrating on trying to hold off Ukip in Stoke. Given that Labour is polling as low as 24% and Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings are worse than Michael Foot’s were at this point in his leadership, and the epic defeat Foot led Labour to in 1983 paved the way for 14

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage to find a new low. The latest nationwide poll puts them at 24 per cent, trailing the Tories by 16 points. No wonder Labour MPs look so boot-faced around Parliament, and an increasing number are hunting for jobs elsewhere. If a general election were called now, the Conservatives would win a huge majority. Labour would be further than ever from power, arguably even finished as a major parliamentary force. Polls are not rock-solid indicators of future electoral success or failure, but Labour’s ratings are so abysmal as to suggest a

Modern British history is largely a history of Tory rule and misrule. The Tories governed Britain from 1886 until 1905 with only the Gladstone/Rosebery minority administration of 1892 to 1895 breaking their dominance. They were in power every year from 1916 until 1945, either on their own or in coalition, except for 11 months in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931, when minority Labour governments clung to office. The Tories governed on their own from 1951 to 1964, and from 1979 to 1997. They governed first in coalition and then on their own from 2010 until…Well, think of a number then double it. Opponents who know that the Conservatives are

Oh dear. It’s safe to say that Labour’s candidate for the Stoke-on-Central by-election has not had a good day. After Guido published tweets in which Gareth Snell called a variety of women ‘sour-faced’ and ‘annoying’, the Sun revealed that he had said Deirdre from Coronation Street deserved a slap. Meanwhile, Mr S notes that Snell also found time to tweet an expletive-laden message telling Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight book series, ‘f— you very much’. So, what does Snell make of today’s female politicians and his potential colleagues? Well, he has blasted Ukip’s Suzanne Evans for having the audacity to ‘moan’ about sleaze and sexism in the Tory party: Claire Perry, the Conservative

With the latest polling on voting intentions from ICM putting Labour on 27 and the Conservatives storming ahead on 42 points (the Lib Dems and Ukip are on 10 and 12 respectively), it’s no surprise that, as James Forsyth writes in this week’s magazine, the Tories are hugely confident of winning the next general election. But Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson, speaking on Marr this morning, wasn’t about to give up on his party’s hopes anytime soon, stating that ‘we can certainly win a general election.’ ‘We’ve had a tough eighteen months. We had a damaging second leadership election, so we’ve got an uphill struggle ahead. The polls aren’t great

The government has no majority in the House of Lords and a majority of peers were pro-Remain. But despite this, the Article 50 Bill will get through the Lords I argue in The Sun this morning. Why, because the reason that we still have an unelected chamber in the 21st century is that the House of Lords has a strong self-preservation instinct: it knows its limits. If the Lords were to try and block something that had been backed in a referendum and had passed the Commons with a majority of 372, then it would be endangering its very existence. Indeed, I understand that the Labour front bench have already

Jeremy Corbyn has called reports of his departure ‘fake news’. This despite the Labour leader having a net approval rating of minus 40 per cent and polling suggesting that only 15 per cent of voters think Corbyn stands any chance at all of triumphing in 2020. It seems that, at any cost, the Labour leader is determined to stumble on. Yesterday, he announced a reshuffle – shaking up the cast of nobodies in his shadow cabinet. Whatever Corbyn does, though, if he stays put it’s clear that these next few years are going to be a ‘miserable experience’ for him, says the Daily Telegraph. It’s inevitable that whether the Labour leader has a

The Tory backbencher James Duddridge has formally tabled a motion of no confidence in the Speaker John Bercow. Duddridge’s attempt to remove the Speaker follows Bercow’s outburst against Donald Trump from the chair on Monday, which further called into question his impartiality and his judgement. Duddridge’s motion is unlikely to succeed. The SNP and nearly all Labour MPs will back Bercow while the government has no appetite for getting drawn into this fight. The vote, though, will be an embarrassment to the Speaker. There’ll be a sizeable number of Tories who vote for it, 150 is the number being talked about tonight, and it will show how Bercow has lost

The drink will be flowing in the government whips’ office tonight. For the Brexit Bill has passed through the Commons unamended and with an absolutely thumping majority at third reading of 372. This means that a clean bill will go to the House of Lords. This will strengthen the government’s hand there as peers will be more reluctant to make changes to a clean bill and one that has passed the Commons with such a large majority. Despite all the talk of knife-edge votes, the government’s majorities tonight were pretty comfortable—30 or above on all the amendments. In part, this was because of the government conceding just enough—the ‘Dear Colleague’

It’s not been a great few days for Daniel Kawczynski. First the Tory MP had to cancel a controversial Commons reception featuring Putin’s Kremlin spin doctor Maria Zakharova. Now he is struggling to stay on-message when it comes to his party’s position on the economy. Over the weekend Kawczynski took to social media to warn of the danger a Labour government presents to the economy. His proof? A graph that charted what happened to national debt under Labour’s ‘massive borrowing’: Alas, there was a snag. The graph actually shows that it’s his own party that are behind a big increase in national debt. Mysteriously, the tweet has now disappeared.

We have to talk about Harriet again, I’m afraid. Usually I get into trouble when I talk about Harriet. Ah well. Harriet claims that when she was at university a professor offered to bump up her grade if she slept with him. Harperson was studying politics at York University and says that the offer came from a man called Professor T V Sathyamurthy — and that she was most averse to the suggested arrangement. As you would expect. Somewhat demeaningly, the professor offered her only a 2:1 for a shag. You’d think he might have stretched to a first. But perhaps he was saving those up for even foxier students.

The offensives against Uber are coming thick and fast. In October, a UK court ruled against the ride-sharing giant in favour of two drivers demanding minimum wages and vacation pay, even though Uber is a platform, not an employer. At the moment, the company is on trial in the EU, where judges are trying to determine what it actually is after European lawmakers (primarily in France) dragged it to court. And on Monday, Uber lost a case in Quebec on whether its drivers were employees or contractors.  Last week, it emerged that the fight is still raging in the US too, where Uber has just settled a lawsuit for $20

Another day, another front-bench resignation from Labour. After Tulip Siddiq quit the front-bench over Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to impose a three-line whip on the Article 50 vote, Jo Stevens has today followed suit. The shadow secretary for Wales has resigned from her post after coming to the conclusion she could not reconcile herself to voting to trigger article 50 as she believed leaving the EU would be ‘a terrible mistake’. Stevens’ departure is particularly striking as Wales was actually more pro-Brexit than the UK as a whole. However, her seat (Cardiff central) is a Labour/Liberal Democrat marginal that voted heavily to Remain. It follows that this is another example of

Parliament is the cockpit of the nation, but MPs have been on autopilot rather a lot in the past 40-odd years. Ever since the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community, more and more powers have been passed away from Parliament to Brussels and its institutions. Brexit will see these powers come flowing back to Westminster. So it was appropriate that the Supreme Court has decided that Parliament must legislate for the triggering of Article 50, the two-year process by which this country will leave the EU. For MPs to vote against Article 50 would be to vote against the referendum result itself; it says nothing about the terms on