Jeremy corbyn

Isabel Hardman discusses the by-election results with Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth: The Tories have won the Copeland by-election with 13,748 votes – a clear 2,107 votes ahead of Labour. The Tories needed a 3.3pc swing to win: they got double that, making this the best by-election performance by a governing party since 1966. And the first gain by a governing party since 1982. So quite a result. Copeland is not a safe Labour seat. But it has been a Labour seat since the 1930s and this is the worst by-election defeat for an Opposition party since 1945. (Matt Singh, from Number Cruncher Politics, says he’d raise that to 1878).

The so-called leader of the so-called opposition gave another so-called performance today. Jeremy Corbyn seems to have challenged the Labour party to a slalom race. Target: rock bottom. Go Corbo! his enemies cheer as they watch his hapless figure slithering and shimmying down the ice-floes of public contempt. Today he came to the Commons with grounds for hope. Which, for Corbo, means a bulletin of despair issued by a public body with a fancy title and some embossed note-paper. The Marie Curie Foundation worries that nurses are struggling to care for dying patients. And the British Medical Association complains that 15,000 beds have been trundled out of NHS wards and

Although Owen Jones, Derek Hatton and Glenda Jackson are just a few of the Labour left to turn on Jeremy Corbyn of late, the Labour leader can always rely on comrade Seumas Milne. Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications has stuck by Jeremy through thick and thin, even ending his leave with the Guardian to move to the Leader’s Office on a permanent basis. So perhaps it’s little surprise the pair have formed a special bond. In fact, word reaches Steerpike that the bromance is so strong the pair even have nicknames for each other. The talk of Labour staffers is that Corbyn refers to Milne as ‘TGM’ which stands

Given the frequency of shadow cabinet reshuffles under Jeremy Corbyn, even the most eagle-eyed Westminster residents now have difficulty identifying who makes up Labour’s frontbench. However, up until now Mr S had thought that the party at least knew. Alas not. Steerpike has been passed an internal Labour party email sent on Friday which details a lucrative job vacancy as a ‘political advisor to the shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs’: Role: Political Advisor to the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Location: Westminster Salary: Dependent on experience Duration: Fixed term contract for the period only that Grahame Morris is the Shadow

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

Another week, another disappointing poll for Labour. This time it’s not even the Conservative’s 16-point lead, with Labour on just 24pc, that’s the party’s biggest problem. Worse still, Jeremy Corbyn’s beleaguered party are now the third most popular party with working class voters, according to the YouGov/Times poll. The working class approval rate puts Labour on just 20pc, with Ukip ahead on 23pc. The Conservatives continue to lead the way among lower income voters, on 39pc. Given Labour’s turmoil over Brexit, it’s not so surprising that blue collar voters are less likely to vote for Labour than Ukip. Corbyn’s party have become more associated with the liberal elite than working class voters for some time

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

Last month, Tim Farron ruled out any electoral pact between the Liberal Democrats and Labour — branding Jeremy Corbyn ‘toxic’. With Labour mourning the loss of over 7,000 members in January, it seems Farron may be on to something. In contrast to Labour, the Liberal Democrats were buoyed by 4,000 new members last month. And just how many new members cited Corbyn as the reason they were joining the Lib Dems? Well, a little (yellow) bird tells Mr S that about 2,000 of them said Corbyn or the ‘state of Labour’ when asked why they are joining. It seems Corbyn’s increased media presence is having a positive effect after all — just for

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

On Wednesday, 52 Labour MPs chose to defy Jeremy Corbyn’s three-line whip and vote against Brexit in the Article 50 vote. With rebels Clive Lewis, Rachael Maskell and Jo Stevens all resigning from the frontbench as a result, Corbyn has today had to begin a reshuffle of his shadow cabinet. The Labour leader says he is ‘pleased to announce’ that Rebecca Long-Bailey will replace Lewis as shadow business secretary, with Peter Dowd moving to fill Long-Bailey’s previous position as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. Christina Rees replaces Stevens as shadow Welsh secretary, while Sue Hayman will succeed Maskell as shadow environment secretary. As for the 14 frontbench MPs who rebelled but are yet to

Isabel Hardman has been investigating the social care issue in Surrey for the Spectator in recent days. Yesterday, she spoke to the man whose texts Jeremy Corbyn quoted at PMQs today, the leader of Surrey County Council, David Hodge. Isabel and Hodge spoke just after Tory-run Surrey County Council had made the decision not to hold a referendum on a 15 per cent council tax increase to pay for social care. He told Isabel that ‘we have always believed that there was a way forward which wouldn’t involve a council tax referendum and I genuinely believe that the government now understands the scale of the crisis’. Hodge seems to think that