As far as Dave need worry, it’s still Europe that matters most For all the difficulties that have beset Jeremy Corbyn in his first week in charge, when it comes to parliamentary votes, it’s the PM rather than the Leader of the Opposition who should worry. Yes, a more effective whipping operation on the tax credit vote last week would have reduced rather than doubled the government majority but the government would still have won – and a government win…
Will Labour’s winner have a clear mandate? 2015 hasn’t been the happiest of years for Labour. They have had worse ones – 1931, perhaps – but it’s still been a bit of a shocker. Today’s leadership election result ought to close that chapter and open a new and more hopeful one. Unfortunately for those desperate to put the Miliband era behind them, that may not be the case. The irregularities of the leadership election, where many members and supporters haven’t…
But how now to survive in the Social Media age? Jedward may not, on the face of it, have much in common with Jeremy Corbyn. One is an irritating novelty act, swept up in a collective wave of public enthusiasm to a prominence far beyond which natural ability alone would justify; the other is an Irish pop duo. Ba-dum-tish. Unfair? Of course: Jedward mostly hit the right note. And so the jokes go on. This summer might have been witness…
Tuesday’s Sun front page: Wham! Bam! ..Thank you Cam #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/d0S8pTZzeo — Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) September 7, 2015 The world of warfare has changed and its rules need to catch up My wife and I were recently watching the excellent More4 drama series Saboteurs, about the Nazi effort to build an atomic bomb and the Allied operations to stop them, principally by putting the Norwegian factory producing the heavy water needed for the atomic reactor out of action. At…
Thursday morning's front pages via @suttonnick pic.twitter.com/qyPsNJAdTz — TSE (@TSEofPB) September 4, 2015 One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. Trite and perhaps misattributed though that quote is, it has probably never been more true than this week when the image of one young boy on a Turkish beach did more to highlight the plight of Syrian people than any number of reports of the death toll in the conflict (about 240,000 so far, including 12,000 children),…
He really hasn’t thought this one through The reports earlier this week that Jeremy Corbyn would refuse membership of the Privy Council if he’s elected leader of the Labour Party would be more than a symbolic gesture against a seemingly anachronistic body; it would be a serious strike against the country’s unwritten constitution. Westminster is governed by rules evolved by gentlemen for gentlemen and the fact that the Commons is populated by professional politicians rather than the gentlemen amateurs of…
The next three years will be the high point for the Blues There are only two realistic outcomes to Labour’s leadership election. The first, and by far the more likely, is that Jeremy Corbyn wins, either outright or on transfers. The other is that either Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper wins by a relatively narrow margin having come from a long way behind on the first count to win on second- and third-choice transfers, at the same time as no…
Surfing a wave of superficial attractiveness can only get so far There is no good reason for believing that Jeremy Corbyn is not going to win the Labour leadership. The polls have all pointed heavily in that direction, constituency nominations have favoured him ahead of his rivals, union nominations (and organisation) will count for even more, and the late and huge surge of voters joining up to take part cannot rationally be explained other than as an active endorsement of…