Parliament

After the 72 hours that he has had, I suspect that Jeremy Corbyn is quite relieved to have got through his exchanges with David Cameron unscathed. The evening news tonight will be far better for Corbyn than it was yesterday. Corbyn, who was making his debut at the dispatch box, began by announcing that he wanted to change the style of PMQs and that he had got members of the public to email in questions. He proceeded to ask Cameron half a dozen of them. Cameron, who could hardly attack the question in these circumstances, answered respectfully and with only the odd jab at Corbyn which will have been a

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/jeremycorbynsbritain/media.mp3″ title=”Dan Hodges, James Forsyth and Ellie Mae O’Hagan discuss the impact of a Corbyn victory” startat=40] Listen [/audioplayer]How long does it take to rebuild a political machine? Twelve months? Two years? Three years? Maybe it can’t be done at all. Jeremy Corbyn has won. Everyone within Labour’s ranks acknowledges that now. The issue concentrating minds is how long it will take to remove him, how bloody the process of removing him will be and how much effort it will take to repair the damage once he has been removed — assuming the damage is reparable. This is why Labour MPs are thinking about the machine. Perhaps one or

What should be the response of politicians to mass emailings and Twitter storms? The question is an urgent one, especially for Conservative MPs, given the general truth that mass petitions, in which complex issues are simplified to ‘for or against’ and emotion given a head start over reasoned argument, tend to come from the left. I was astonished to learn that a Tory MP decided his vote on the proposed Hunting Bill would depend on opinion polls in his local newspaper. In the event the Bill was withdrawn, largely, if Nicola Sturgeon is to be believed, as a result of online petitioning. Progressive causes such as the campaign against hunting

The shaming of Lord Sewel was a classic tabloid exposé. The fact that a peer of the realm (albeit one appointed by Tony Blair) was caught on camera apparently ingesting Class A drugs in the company of prostitutes is a good enough story in itself. The fact that the peer in question was chairman of the Lords privileges and conduct committee while he was doing so makes it very near to red-top nirvana. Since the publication of the story — and scores of lavish accompanying photographs — the peer’s Pimlico flat has been raided by police (who battered down a door to gain access), and Lord Sewel has resigned from

Jeremy Corbyn just can’t help making friends wherever he goes. He previously described Hamas operatives as ‘friends’ and now he has found time out of his Labour leadership campaign to meet up with his old ‘comrade’ Gerry Adams in Portcullis House. The Sinn Féin president has tweeted a picture of their meet up, which Martin McGuinness also attended: With Jeremy Corbyn & the comrades @ Portcullis House, Westminster. pic.twitter.com/A6Vgmaglsa — Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) July 21, 2015 Of course the pair go way back. Corbyn, who supported ending British status for Northern Ireland, was heavily crtiticised after he invited Adams — along with other Sinn Féin members — to the House of Commons

The Houses of Parliament are falling down. According to the Independent Options Appraisal of the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Programme – a group of engineers and project managers commissioned to have a butcher’s – the Palace of Westminster is ‘partly sinking, contains asbestos and has outdated cabling’, is ‘infested with rats and mice and in an advanced state of disrepair’ and will take £5.7 billion and 32 years to put right, unless MPs and Lords shuffle off somewhere else for a bit, in which case it’ll be £3.5 billion over six years. Without such repairs, ‘major, irreversible damage’ looms. Several MPs have taken advantage of the report to suggest that

A great test of political leadership is how well you deal with vested interests on your own side. In his first speech as Lord Chancellor this week, Michael Gove has shown himself willing to tackle a profession which has long been comfortable with Conservative governments and whose reform, as a consequence, is long overdue. A legal system designed from scratch would not resemble what we have now. The only thing wrong with Michael Gove’s observation that Britain has a ‘two-nation’ justice system is that he should really have said three nations. Like the central London property market, the courts have become the preserve of the very rich and the very

You might expect to see Lionel Richie pass outside your door, if you were in the Ivy last night, or in the VIP yurt of this month’s Glastonbury Festival. But hello, which peer was he looking for this afternoon? The global superstar and former Commodores front man was accompanied by Lord Levy, after the two hit it off last week at an anniversary dinner for Jewish Care. Lord Levy appeared to be giving him a tour almost up there on the ceiling: Richie was not up there all night long though, however, and was spotted heading off in the direction of the Speaker’s Office. Mr S understands that he did not meet

Is it too cynical to say that the tributes paid to Charles Kennedy in the House of Commons yesterday were excessive, maudlin, and more than a bit silly? Is it pompous to say that the House of Commons should be a chamber for matters of state, not a safe space for sharing grief? A former party leader’s death should be acknowledged in the House of Commons, but did we need 27 tributes? At Prime Minister Questions, there were 4 brief speeches about Kennedy, which seemed about right. In the later session, which lasted 1 hour and 13 minutes, there were 23. Much of the encomium for Kennedy was directed at the gallery, where his former wife

Given that a horde of new MPs have recently descended on Parliament, it’s understandable that staff may have some difficulty remembering everyone’s name. Still, Mr S would have thought that any confusion could have been cleared up by simply looking to Hansard, which provides a report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. However, even Hansard appears to be struggling to keep up. According to Hansard, David Lammy’s middle name is London, while the new culture secretary is called John Flashy Whittingdale: In reality, their middle names are Lindon and Flasby. Happily, these names were at least used for the Votes and Proceedings document: Perhaps Lammy should consider changing his middle name

With 190 women elected last week and the number of ethnic minority MPs hitting record levels, Parliament is slowly beginning to look a little bit like modern Britain. Settling in, one male MP, proudly wearing a green new members’ badge, was sitting on the Terrace on his first night in the Commons. He proceeded to use his iPad to conduct a noisy bedtime video call with his wife and young children back in his distant constituency. The sweet scene did not amuse everyone however, with one member of the Tory old guard nosily tutting and harrumphing about a total lack of ‘decorum’ displayed by new Nationalist MPs. There are plenty of