Stella creasy

Stella Creasy is wrong about the ‘motherhood penalty’

If you find yourself frazzled by the Christmas rush, spare a thought for Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, who is struggling to balance motherhood and her hectic social schedule. The other day she tweeted: ‘As I walk past everyone going to Christmas parties and drinks on my way to get the kids from nursery, yet again acutely aware the motherhood penalty is just a gift that keeps giving…. Not just flexible working we need but flexible networking too.’ It’s tough, no? Having to put the drinks parties (and remember, half of political life is conducted on the social front) on hold to do the active parenting of two children is a trade-off. But

Labour MPs cheer ‘drag story hour’

Summer recess is here and MPs are competing for the Tory leadership or jetting off on their hols. For some, though, they prefer to remain in their constituencies. Stella Creasy, the right-on MP for Walthamstow Central, chose to go to ‘Drag Story Hour UK’ with her infant son. She wrote on Twitter yesterday that she had ‘a lovely afternoon’ with ‘the wonderful Greta who put so much energy into story telling and entertaining local children.’ Her colleague Nadia Whittome replied by saying ‘this is so wholesome.’ Yet it seems not all in the UK share the enthusiasm for ‘Drag Story Hour,’ which began with drag queens in the US in

We expect our MPs to be dysfunctional, and then complain when they are

Stella Creasy’s complaint that as an MP she will be unable to take maternity leave is just the latest piece of evidence of Parliament’s dysfunctional nature. The Labour MP has tried – in vain – to get extra funding from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority so she can appoint someone to cover her work while she is off. The pay and expenses regulator says MPs do not officially take maternity leave, and there is no formal system for covering for them when they are off with their baby. This might be excused as a bizarre anachronism from the times when there were no women in parliament were it not for

Who’s afraid of Jeremy Corbyn?

Until now, I haven’t been too worried about Jeremy Corbyn. True, he exceeded expectations two years ago, but that was because no one thought Labour would win. It was a protest vote, a way for Remainers to signal their disapproval of Theresa May’s approach to Brexit. If the good burghers of Kensington thought there was the slightest chance Labour would be elected they never would have returned a Labour MP. And since then the bloom has gone off the rose. It has finally dawned on Remainers that Corbyn has his own, hard-left reasons for wanting to leave the EU and that behind his ‘anti-Zionism’ lurks something more sinister. Not so

Watch: Gender pay gap row – Stella Creasy vs Kate Andrews

Oh dear. On Bank Holiday Monday, Stella Creasy took to the airwaves to promote the #PayMeToo campaign launched to close the gender pay gap. The campaign claims to give working women advice on how to tackle the gender pay where they work. Alas, the Labour MP appeared to be taken by surprise to find the Institute of Economic Affair’s Kate Andrew not only take issue with the campaign – and its close name association to the #MeToo campaign on sexual harassment – but also with Creasy’s use of data. Mr S will leave readers to decide who won this tussle…

Corbynista MP sends his colleagues into a spin over women-only train carriages

Well, that lasted long. Since Jeremy Corbyn’s better-than-expected election result, Labour politicians have done their best to heal old wounds and put on a united front. However, in a sign that the party remains fractious, a row has broken out over an idea many MPs thought to be in the dustbin. During the Labour leadership campaign, Jeremy Corbyn proposed the idea of introducing women-only train carriages. However, the idea was given short shrift by his colleagues, who saw it as a step backwards and it was subsequently dropped. Now shadow fire minister Chris Williamson has brought it back to the fray. Following the news that sexual offences on trains have more than doubled in the past

What part of ‘devolution’ does Stella Creasy not understand?

Abortion is a matter devolved to Northern Ireland’s representatives. Today, Belfast’s Court of Appeal ruled abortion law in Northern Ireland should be left to the Stormont Assembly, not judges – which overturns an earlier ruling that the current abortion laws are incompatible with human rights laws. Yet Stella Creasy has taken it on herself to carry on a campaign to undermine abortion law in Northern Ireland by requiring the NHS to fund terminations for women travelling from there to England. That’s why the government conceded today that when Northern Irish women travel to Britain for an abortion, it will be funded by the NHS, so they won’t, as now, have to pay

Tom Goodenough

The Government backs down over Queen’s Speech abortion amendment

In the face of a possible rebellion over an amendment to the Queen’s Speech, the Government has backed down. Chancellor Philip Hammond announced this afternoon that women from Northern Ireland will be given the right to an abortion in England on the NHS. This wasn’t a change ministers wanted, but for a weak minority Government propped up by the slenderest of margins, this is the new reality. It’s unlikely this will be the last time in this Parliament that ministers relent where they would have once stood their ground. Ever since the amendment was tabled by Labour MP Stella Creasy, the Government had looked under pressure. There were reports that as many as 40 Tory MPs

Katy Balls

The abortion amendment is the first proper ambush for this government

The first proper government ambush of this Parliament is upon us. The Speaker has announced which amendments to the Queen’s Speech will be put to a vote this evening. Along with the official Labour Brexit amendment calling on the government to negotiate an outcome that prioritises jobs and the economy, there are two amendments from Labour MPs that will ruffle feathers on both sides of the House. Chuka Umunna’s amendment criticising the Queen’s speech for not keeping the option of single market membership on the table could see many Labour MPs rebel from their party’s ‘official position’. Meanwhile, Stella Creasy’s amendment on the abortion rights of Northern Ireland women looks set to cause

Stella Creasy: England team’s problem? Too many privately-educated players

The English football team have a problem and everyone knows it. After a string of disappointing results, many fans are beginning to lose faith that their team will ever come out on top again. Happily, Labour’s Stella Creasy thinks she has got to the bottom of what’s going wrong for our boys. The issue? Too many of the players attended private school. Yes, the Labour MP suggested this in the Commons today in debate on education and social mobility. Her comments came after John Redwood said it was fair that ‘elite sportspeople are selected at young age for special training’. In response to Redwood, Creasy argued that they were missing out on talent from comprehensives

Stella Creasy hits back over Priti Patel’s suffragette comments: ‘Brexit is the spirit of surrendered wives’

On International Women’s Day, Priti Patel managed to divide members of the fairer sex after she claimed that the suffragettes fought for the same cause as those who back Brexit. Speaking at the Women for Britain launch, Patel said it was the duty of Out-ers to protect the ‘democratic freedom’ the women had fought for: ‘As a suffragette, Pankhurst fought for the rights of women to have a vote, a voice and a say in how their society is governed and who governs it. In many ways, Women for Britain are fighting for the same cause. The suffragettes fought for our democratic freedom. Now we are the ones who must fight

PMQs sketch: Kamikaze Creasy

The referendum is slowly (very slowly) breaking up Cameron’s cabinet. It’s put him in a weird mood. Yesterday he was striding about in shirt-sleeves like a bogus realtor selling flats on the moon. At PMQs today he was calmer and prepared for some rough weather. It failed to materialise. Jez We Can (Do a U-turn on Europe) didn’t want to discuss the In-Out decision in case viewers spotted that his love of Brussels is a mere summer crush dating from his election as Labour boss. Previously he was a committed Europe-nobbler. With his mentor, Tony Benn, he used to trudge along to every anti-EU meeting available. Alas, no one noticed.

Corbynglish as a second language: a political dictionary of terms

Corbynterpretation [n]: The inevitable process of debate, after Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed, over what he actually meant. Does the Labour leader believe the killing of Osama bin Laden was a tragedy, or not believe this? Would he like Britain to negotiate with Daesh or would he be opposed to that happening? Would he, or would he not, abandon the Falkland Islands? As in, ‘Well, that’s a matter of Corbynterpretation’ or, ‘No, no, those remarks have been totally misCorbynterpreted.’ In order to Corbynterpret [v] one must first consider 1. Whether the Labour leader brought up the disputed view himself (invariably not) 2. Whether the Labour leader clearly said ‘yes’ after somebody

John McDonnell tweets abuse at himself

While the abuse Labour MPs — including Stella Creasy and Ann Coffey — have received since they voted for airstrikes has been much-reported, what about the Labour politicians who voted against airstrikes on Syria? According to John McDonnell, these MPs are subject to online abuse too. The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to try and prove this point over the weekend, by sharing a tweet directed at McDonnell which criticised him for showing ‘sympathy towards the cause of terrorists’. Alas, the mentioned abuse came from his own account, so he was in fact just tweeting abuse at himself: As users began to question whether he had meant to tweet abuse at himself from a

Jeremy Corbyn’s New Politics has ushered in an era of appalling online bullying

It was meant to be about open debate and discussion, consensus through dialogue. But so far, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party and the arrival of the so-called New Politics has resulted in division and a lot of abuse and bad feeling. In light of last night’s vote on Syria airstrikes, Twitter and Facebook have been exploding with extraordinary levels of comments and abuse that no one, MPs or otherwise, should be subjected to. For example, hard-left groups such as Lefty Unity, have been using Twitter to stir up agitation against the MPs they disagree with: Again here is the list of the 66 Labour MPs who voted to

Nick Cohen

The Corbyn crack-up

Jeremy Corbyn is a rarity among politicians. All his enemies are on his own side. For the Tories, Ukip and the SNP, Corbyn is a dream made real. They could not love him more. As the riotous scenes at the shadow cabinet and parliamentary Labour party meetings this week showed, his colleagues see Corbyn and John McDonnell as modern Leninists who are mobilising their cadres to purge all dissidents from the party. Conversations with Corbyn’s aides show a gentler side to the new regime, however. They suggest the Corbynistas are unlikely to be able to control Labour MPs when they can barely control themselves. ‘Chaos’ was the word that came

How Stella Creasy helped boost Bernard Jenkin’s Eurosceptic cause

Although Stella Creasy has proved to be one of the most vocal pro-European politicians, the Labour MP may have unwittingly managed to convince one Tory MP of the cons that come from remaining in the EU. David Cameron is facing a potential Commons defeat over the ‘tampon tax’ after a group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs decided to vote with Labour to demand an end to the EU regulated tax on sanitary items. While the amendment is tabled by Labour’s Paula Sheriff, Bernard Jenkin is one of several Tory MPs who have jumped on it, in the hope that they can use it to gain a wider renegotiation of the UK’s relationship with the European

Stella Creasy’s deputy leadership campaign is hit by online glitch

Given that Labour’s next deputy leader will need to take on a pivotal role when it comes to both campaigning and communicating on behalf of the party, Stella Creasy’s campaign took a hit over the weekend. A message about a conference call taking place today was sent to a number of Labour supporters who had no involvement – or interest – in a telephone campaign meeting. Creasy hastily sent an email apology: ‘Of course, I would love to have a conference call with each and everyone of you!’ the Labour MP told disgruntled recipients. If only the feeling was mutual.

The ‘anyone but Tom Watson’ campaign has its first success

Five candidates have made it onto the ballot paper for deputy leader of the Labour party. Tom Watson and Caroline Flint have long had the 35 nominations required to make it into the contest, but until this morning, it was looking to be a two-horse race. But with just under an hour to go until the nominations closed, Rushanara Ali, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, withdrew her candidacy to help get others on the ballot paper. In the nick of time, her 24 backers flocked elsewhere to ensure Stella Creasy, Ben Bradshaw and Angela Eagle (who were all struggling to find 35 backers) had enough support. With a good

Can MPs really refuse a pay rise anyway?

If you’re a Labour leadership contender, or keen for other reasons to look in touch with people – or perhaps you really do disagree with MPs getting a 10 per cent pay rise, then the fashionable thing to say is that you’ll be turning down the pay rise. This morning Andy Burnham has said he will refuse the extra £7,000 that Ipsa plans to pay MPs per year, tweeting that he ‘will turn down at source or give to local groups’. Stella Creasy, campaigning to be elected Labour’s deputy leader, has said similar. I have always been clear that 10% pay rise for MPs cannot be justified. I won't accept