Jeremy corbyn

The French have their uses, don’t they? They offer us their food, their wine and their bankers, and they also offer some reassurance. No matter how demented our politics may seem, things are never quite as dramatic, as emotional, as they are over the Channel. The best Britain offers Nigel Farage is an embarrassed slap on the back in the hope he’ll move down the bar to tell his war stories to someone else; the French are considering making Marine Le Pen head of state. As if that wasn’t mad enough, they’re now taking Jean Luc Melenchon, the Gallic Chavez, seriously, or at least seriously enough to ruffle the markets. More proof

When a shell-shocked Ed Miliband stepped down as Labour leader following the party’s defeat in the 2015 election, he concluded his speech by saying that: ‘The course of progress and social justice is never simple or straightforward. Change happens because people don’t give up, they don’t take no for an answer, they keep demanding change’ The change that party members demanded from the blank slate of Labour’s election defeat turned out to be Jeremy Corbyn; and Miliband slunk back to Doncaster to not ‘take no for an answer’ – from the scenic climes of the backbenches. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Last week, I voiced my frustration that Miliband was appearing

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is coming to resemble a drunk trying to get home on a bike. Most of the time he just pushes it along, but occasionally he mounts the saddle and whirls into action — only to find himself swiftly spread-eagled on the road. Take next month’s local elections. Corbyn launched his party’s campaign trying to bemoan the state of Britain. There are plenty of statistics which he could have trotted out to depict a country underperforming on living standards, debt levels and social mobility. But he chose to cite a supposed decline in life expectancy — which is demonstrably and famously wrong. Life expectancy

The sorry saga of what Labour decides to do about Ken Livingstone isn’t over yet. In the last few moments, Jeremy Corbyn has released a statement saying Livingstone will now face a fresh probe into comments that he made about Hitler since yesterday – when he avoided being booted out of the party for doing exactly the same thing. Corbyn said that it was ‘deeply disappointing’ that Livingstone had refused to apologise for his remarks. He also criticised the former London mayor for continuing to do what he seems to do best these days: talk about Hitler. The Labour leader said: ‘Many people are understandably upset that he has continued to make

Tactics! At long last. Jeremy Corbyn actually used tactics at today’s PMQs. For the first time ever he divided his six questions into two three-ball overs. He spent the initial trio on last week’s terror attacks. Then, after an unsettling delay, he used three more on Mrs May’s fibs about school budgets. She says they’ve been ‘protected’. He says they’ve been ‘cut’. Protected. Cut. Cut. Protected. On it went. Mr Corbyn had a superb ally in the Public Accounts Committee which seems to support his view. The exchange might have been tricky for Mrs May but Mr Corbyn still can’t ram home a simple advantage. Rather than forcing her to

Given that Owen Jones, Glenda Jackson and Derek Hatton are just a handful of the figures to recently turn on Jeremy Corbyn, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Labour leader is turning people off Labour. So, Mr S was surprised to learn of Labour’s latest recruit, in today’s issue of the Times. Step forward Clare Foges. Yes, David Cameron’s former SpAd and speechwriter — who earned the affectionate nickname ‘the Prime Minister’s Larynx’ — has joined… the Labour party. Writing in the Times, Foges says that she is as surprised as anyone by her decision: ‘I tapped out the words somewhat guiltily, late at night. This was entering a corner of

In spite of everything against them, the Labour party scored an historic victory last night in the City of London. Five Labour councillors were elected in wards that are traditionally contested by ‘independents’ (usually retiree residents who are inclined towards the pomp and ceremony). It was their highest ever total. People will, of course, be quick to point out that the City of London is the 325th smallest authority in England, out of a total of 326. It has 25 wards covering the area that would, in most authorities, be designated to a single ward. Labour also only has 5 Commoners (the antiquated term the City uses in favour of

A bizarre exercise in diplomacy from Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs. He manoeuvred the PM into a tricky corner and then stepped gallantly in to disperse the trouble he’d arranged. She’d been caught violating a manifesto commitment to protect school funding. The statistics proved it too. Corbyn’s back-room elves had devised a clever way to summarise the difficulty. Averaging out the cuts will mean, in effect, that every primary school loses two teachers and every secondary loses six. It was good stuff. Danger for the PM. But Corbyn, for some unfathomable reason, decided not to pursue his advantage and he proceeded to flannel his way out of his opponent’s problem. He

Theresa May has once again ruled out a snap general election but that doesn’t mean the temptation to hold one will go away. Today’s ICM poll shows why: the Tories, on 45 per cent, have a 19-point lead over Labour. This pushes the Government’s poll lead up by three points following a fortnight dominated by Philip Hammond’s Budget debacle, his subsequent u-turn over hiking national insurance rates and Theresa May coming under pressure from the SNP. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the Labour party, the usual rules that a government would be punished for a bungled budget need not apply. In fact even after a raft of dismal headlines for Philip Hammond,

The government’s decision to announce a U-turn on the planned rise in Class 4 National Insurance contributions minutes before PMQs meant that Jeremy Corbyn was left with the wrong homework for the session. Still, presented with an embarrassing government climbdown on a key Budget pledge, surely Corbyn could still come out on top? It wasn’t to be. Instead the Labour leader stumbled around for things to say in one of his worst performances to date. Corbyn began by offering May an easy pot shot when he accused her of leading a government in chaos. The Prime Minister responded with an effective — if predictable — retort that while she usually does not take lectures

Last night Jeremy Corbyn gathered with thousands of supporters on Parliament Square to protest against the government’s failure to guarantee the rights of EU migrants in the UK. Upon hearing the chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear – all EU migrants welcome here!’ Theresa May performed a sensational U-turn. Britain now has an open doors policy to anyone with a pulse and a dream. Or so might have been the case, had Jeremy Corbyn bothered to turn up to his own rally. Instead, a motley rabble of speakers from such august institutions as Stop the War, the Socialist Workers Party, and the National Union of Students, preached to

Philip Hammond had, in his first few months of Chancellor, gained rather a reputation for being an ‘Eeyore’ about the consequences of Brexit. In the run-up to today’s Budget, it was briefed that he would be much more upbeat about things, while also storing up a ‘war chest’ to guard against any future shocks to the economy caused by Britain leaving the European Union. In the event he barely talked about it at all.  He told the Chamber that ‘as we start our negotiations to exit the European Union, this Budget takes forward our plan to prepare Britain for a brighter future’, and ’our task today is to take the