Jeremy corbyn

Today’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions was pointless. Describing any session as pointless is in itself a little pointless, as it takes you into the sort of territory where, like the author of Ecclesiastes, you end up declaring everything meaningless. But today really was a pointless session. The most obvious example of pointless behaviour came from the Tory side, with Conservative MPs deciding that they should return to the old days of roaring and jeering just as Jeremy Corbyn was asking questions about cuts to tax credits. David Cameron helped them out by chortling with exasperation as he responded without answering to yet another question from the Labour leader about

How does Labour make its policy? Different factions and frontbenchers are quarrelling about a number of issues such as Trident and action in Syria, but a common theme in each dispute is whose word actually represents official policy. Currently the party has a plethora of different stances on everything. Maria Eagle is having to explain that a Scottish Labour conference vote does not change the party’s official policy on Trident, while her Shadow Cabinet colleague Diane Abbott is explaining that it’s something the UK-wide party really should follow. Hilary Benn is having to explain that Labour won’t consult Stop the War on British involvement in action against so-called Islamic State

The far left controls the Labour leadership because the centre left did not take it seriously until it was too late. For a generation indeed, Labour and much of the rest of liberal-left Britain has lived with the comforting delusion that there was no far left to fight. The left, on this reading, was one family. It may have had its troublesome teenagers. Their youthful high spirits may have made the little scallywags ‘go too far’ on occasion. But everyone was still in one family, still on the same side. The old notion that the far left was the centre left’s enemy died away as the Labour party gave up

When all else fails, I suppose, you can just plead for mercy. That appears to be the message emanating from the Scottish Labour party’s conference in Perth this weekend. The theme, Kezia Dugdale says, is “Take a fresh look” at Labour. OK. [Awkward silence.] Now what? The thing is, you see, that “Take a fresh look” has been the unofficial theme of every meeting of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party since, oh, at least 1997. When you are reduced to pinching lines from the Scottish Tories you are probably in a position similar to the lost traveller seeking directions to Limerick who was told “Well, I wouldn’t start from here”. Here is where Labour

If Labour is ever to clamber out of its cage on the fringe of politics, it will have to convince the 250,000 supporters who voted for Jeremy Corbyn to turn from far-leftists into social democrats. The necessity of persuading them that they made a terrible mistake is so obvious to Labour MPs that they barely need to talk about it. In case it is not obvious to you, let me spell it out. Corbyn exacerbates every fault that kept Labour from power in 2015, and then adds some new ones, just for fun. To the failure to convince the voters that Labour can be trusted with control of the borders

Jeremy Corbyn’s growing confidence at Prime Minister’s Questions is almost perfectly in step with his growing unpopularity outside the Chamber. He has perfected his geography teacher stare of disapproval to the extent that Tory MPs now automatically fall silent when he talks for fear of being kept behind after class. And he isn’t leaping all over the place with a phone-in format that doesn’t hold the Prime Minister to account. This week, the Labour leader focused on tax credits, and highlighted David Cameron’s inability to answer his questions about whether he could guarantee that no-one would be worse off as a result of the changes. Cameron didn’t answer the questions

When Chuka Umunna pulled out of the Labour leadership race earlier this year, he explained in a statement that he had decided it was time to prioritise his personal life over his political career: ‘I’ve said that I could live without leading the Labour party or politics. For once I decided to put the rest of my life first,’ the former bookies’ favourite mused. While Umunna may have been led to question his decision in the months following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as the leader of the Labour party, his efforts in regards to his personal life have at least paid off. Umunna has proposed to his solicitor girlfriend Alice Sullivan,

With a gossamer Tory majority in the Commons and no majority at all in the Lords, confrontation between the two chambers was always inevitable. Tonight’s defeat over tax credits will be the first of many. But it would be a great error for the Conservative government to choose this as the issue over which to go to war with the Lords. For a start, their Lordships are right: taking tax credits away from low-paid workers, rather than phasing them out, is cruel and and unnecessary. Next, this was not in the Tory manifesto: the party said they would cut £12 billion but didn’t say how — and had hinted that they would

After Mr S’s colleague Harry Mount argued in the Spectator that the Labour party ‘has had a brain transplant’ under Jeremy Corbyn with a purge of the Oxbridge set, Martin Amis has accused the new Labour leader of being undereducated. Writing for the Sunday Times, the best-selling novelist has launched a verbal attack on Corbyn over his ‘slow-minded rigidity’. The life-long Labour supporter — who says he found himself ‘close to the epicentre of the Corbyn milieu’ in his twenties when he worked for the New Statesman — has criticised Corbyn for his lack of educational achievements: ‘He is undereducated. Which is one way of putting it. His schooling dried up when he was 18, at which

Arnie Graf was, for a little while, the man who was supposed to rebuild the Labour party after its 2010 defeat. He was a famed community organiser from the US, brought over by Ed Miliband to have a go at revitalising is party. Graf didn’t last, but last night he spoke about his experiences with the Labour party, and what he thought of the current surge in membership under Jeremy Corbyn. This was his first brush with proper party politics, and while Graf had clearly enjoyed the work he’d done in building up the party in small local areas with community meetings, he said ‘I wouldn’t come back to it