Labour party

A vandal smashing a window and calling it air conditioning. A mother marrying her son and declaring it a lesson in advanced sexual morality. A shoplifter caught with a chicken up his jumper and congratulating the store detectives on their commitment to property rights. That’s how David Cameron ducked the tax-abuse row at PMQs today. He basked in hypocrisy. He wallowed in smugness. He luxuriated in panic measures and called them far-sighted statesmanship. He chose to posture as the brilliant leader of a brilliant government whose brilliant new policy is to rip down the cloaks of secrecy that protect Britain’s tax-dodge paradises overseas. And he contrasted his zeal with the

As David Cameron finds himself in hot water over his admission that he once owned shares in an offshore fund, today ought to be a walk in the park for Labour. In fact, all Jeremy Corbyn need do is give the press a few soundbites on the Tories’ troubles and then sit back and relax. Alas this is Corbyn we’re talking about so things were never going to be that simple. Instead the Labour leader has managed to become the story after he was filmed scolding an LBC journalist outside his home after she attempted to ask for his thoughts on Cameron’s admission. Rather than answer, Corbyn told her that he

During the Labour leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn found himself in hot water after he appeared to claim in an interview with the Independent on Sunday that he wanted to reinstate clause IV of the Labour party constitution. The clause — which Tony Blair scrapped — commits the party to nationalising industry: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.’ Corbyn’s apparent desire

Jeremy Corbyn has launched Labour’s local election campaign today with the promise that his party will stand up to the government, and the claim that it is being effective in doing so. He said: ‘Now, being in Opposition is never easy, I think we all know that. But Labour in Westminster has proved you can still have influence and you can still make a difference. it was by speaking out and standing up with people with disabilities that we shamed the government into abandoning their disgraceful cuts to personal independence payments. ‘But we’re not done yet. We will continue the campaign to stop the cuts to disabled people’s ESA that

Sajid Javid is the driest and most Thatcherite member of the government. So, it is no surprise that he is — rightly, to my mind — rejecting calls for the nationalisation of the steel industry following Tata’s announcement that it plans to sell its UK steel-making business. But the steel issue has now got caught up in the EU referendum, with the Out side pointing out that EU state aid rules limit what the UK government can actually do to help the steel industry. Now, personally, I doubt that the government would want to do more even if it was allowed to. Yet, some ministers keep suggesting that the government

The upcoming EU referendum has proved to be a divisive issue for families as well as politicians. With Boris Johnson the lone Out-er among his siblings, another famous family are now to take different sides in the great debate. Although Jeremy Corbyn is known to have held Eurosceptic views in the past — recently deleting articles scathing of Brussels from his website, the Labour leader insists that he is backing Remain. However, Mr S understands that his brother Piers is to get behind the Leave campaign. In a series of tweets, Corbyn’s older brother has begun to make the left-wing case for leaving the EU: What’s more, Piers — a climate change sceptic — is

It’s been a bad week for the Tories, but it hasn’t exactly been a great week for Labour. After a list categorising Labour MPs as ‘supportive’ or ‘hostile’ towards Jeremy Corbyn was leaked, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse, because it appears that Corbynistas are now ranking MPs in terms of how ‘politically black’ they are. The Evening Standard reports that during a speech given by Marlene Ellis – a Momentum activist and member of Chuka Umunna’s local party – she claims that her local Labour party branch in Lambeth is ‘very, very right-wing’. In a recording passed to the Standard, she is reported to claim that she

Why have David Cameron and George Osborne overreached? Why are so many in their own party no longer disposed to obey them? Obviously the great issue of Europe has something to do with it. But there is another factor. Victory at the last election, followed by the choice of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, has convinced too many Tories, including Mr Osborne himself, that they will be in power for ten more years at least. So they get careless and cocky. Then they make mistakes. Then they come up against the most admirable fact about parliamentary democracy, which is that you can never guarantee being in power for ten years.

George Osborne turned up in the Commons chamber with a clear plan to get through this Budget debate: turn it into a partisan slug fest. His aim was to make it a straight Labour/Tory fight and by doing that, rally the Tory benches to him. With some help from the whips and the PPSs, he largely succeeded in doing that. Crucially for him, he got through the speech without incurring any further damage. As soon as Osborne began talking about the Budget, Labour started trying to intervene on him. Chris Leslie was first up, demanding an apology for the proposed PIP cuts. Osborne, in a response that set the tone

With the Scottish Parliament elections set to take place in May, the SNP are expected to once again top the polls. As for the other parties, Kezia Dugdale’s beleaguered Scottish Labour will be attempting to fight off Ruth Davidson’s conservatives for second place. So, with Dugdale desperately needing to win back disillusioned voters, she may live to regret sending Jackie Baillie, the Scottish MSP, onto yesterday’s Sunday Politics. In an interview with Gordon Brewer, Baillie attempted to put forward her party’s new economic policy which claims to offer a way to end austerity which is not ‘prescriptive’. Alas Brewer was unconvinced, suggesting that the policy amounted to promising to put people’s taxes out without

‘Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?’ asked C.P. Cavafy in his poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’: Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution. All through your and my life the Labour party have been at the gates of Downing Street, and often enough stormed them, only to be beaten back at a subsequent election. What might happen to the Conservative party if those barbarians disappear? At first, Tories rejoiced at the Labour leadership

When an ICM phone poll this week had Labour level with the Tories for the first time since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, even the pollster cast doubt on the finding. But today, YouGov has Labour ahead by a point—34% to 33%. YouGov’s Anthony Wells says that this suggests ‘something is genuinely afoot’. Now, as the election reminded us polls are not all seeing. It is also doubtful what the value of a poll is this far out from a general election: Ed Miliband was regularly ahead by large margins during the last parliament and still went on to lose the election. One also suspects that if Labour was being covered