Latest news with #JeremyCorbyn
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
ANDREW NEIL: Starmer is shifting Leftwards to save his own skin. And that means one thing: yet more tax rises are coming our way...
I'm a man without conviction, I'm a man who doesn't know,' sang Culture Club's Boy George in his huge 1980s hit Karma Chameleon. It could be Keir Starmer 's theme song. Less than a decade ago, as a rather dull, modestly Left-wing lawyer (he spouted all the usual nostrums of the fashionable North London cognoscenti), he signed up to Jeremy Corbyn 's warmed-over Marxism to become a leading member of the old fraud's shadow cabinet.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
ANDREW PIERCE: Oh Kemi, you're getting too blue for the Commons
Keep an ear out for Kemi Badenoch 's fruity language at this week's PMQs. I hear Commons clerks are worried that the Tory leader is pushing the limits of acceptable parliamentary language. Six weeks ago, she sent them into a spin after inelegantly accusing the PM of 'having no balls' over his woeful record on gender self-ID and protecting single-sex spaces. Then, just ten days ago, the Tory leader followed it up by suggesting he and his policies were 'shafting the country'. It's rare indeed for either the PM or the Leader of the Opposition to be brought up short by the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, during Commons exchanges. But Sir Lindsay will be guided by his bewigged officials before deciding whether to rebuke Badenoch if she pushes it too far again. How long before she reduces Hansard, the official report of parliamentary proceedings, to using asterisks? QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie reveals that a new car is being released: 'Kia has announced a model that performs U-turns unaided – the Kia Starmer.' Labour's bad D:Ream A YouGov poll reveals Labour has recorded its lowest approval rating since the dreaded Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Under Sir Keir Starmer, the party's rating has fallen to 21 per cent. As D:Ream – and Labour – sang in 1997: 'Things can only get better.' Jeremy Corbyn, an Arsenal supporter, has been lamenting the departure from the BBC of Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker. Lineker, said Corbyn, was a 'brilliant sportsman, an outstanding broadcaster and wonderful human being'. Presumably he's forgotten that, in 2017, Lineker tweeted pithily: 'Bin Corbyn.' An outbreak of invasive honey fungus mushrooms has felled a birch tree on the Dorneywood estate, the grace-and-favour country retreat of Chancellor Rachel Reeves in Buckinghamshire. I'm sure it won't be long before Tory wags delight in referring to the Chancellor as 'dead wood'. Lord (Michael) Farmer, a former Tory treasurer, had a clever riposte to Nigel Farage over the Reform leader's decision to support lifting the two-child benefit cap. 'Limiting the number of children the State will pay for is popular because working people sense it is fair and encourages responsibility,' said the hedge fund millionaire, who founded an academy school to help disadvantaged children. 'They are not willing to pay higher taxes to subsidise other families when they have already cut their own cloth to suit their income.' Quite. Talking of Farage, there was a touch of genius about the choice of venue for his 'lift the cap' press conference last week. This was held in Whitehall's Royal Horseguards Hotel, in the same building as the National Liberal Club, the haunt of senior Lib Dems such as leader Sir Ed Davey. The sight of the Farage fox inside their hen house had Lib Dem activists spitting feathers, I hear. Another fine mess, Sadiq On the same day London Mayor Sadiq Khan caused predictable uproar by irresponsibly calling for the decriminalisation of cannabis, he discreetly raised the congestion charge in the capital by a swingeing 20 per cent to £18. The move has been sparked by large numbers of drivers refusing to pay his hated Ultra Low Emission Zone fines. In February, the resulting shortfall was put at £438 million. And they are not the only defaulters. The capital's foreign embassies, who argue that the Ulez charge is a tax and they are therefore not liable to pay it, 'owe' a further £143 million.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Is John McDonnell's criticism of Keir Starmer's Labour fair?
John McDonnell clearly takes responsibility, along with Jeremy Corbyn, for the 'policy platform' they developed together in the hope that 'eventually Labour would return to power' (Starmer and co are trashing Labour's legacy. We must take back control of our party – before it's too late, 28 May). Throughout his article, McDonnell argues for an alternative strategy to that being followed by the current prime minister, Keir Starmer. At no stage does he acknowledge that, when standing on this Corbyn/McDonnell policy platform, Labour lost two general elections. By losing these elections they condemned this country to seven years of Tory rule – seven years during which the Tories wreaked havoc. Yet I note that not once in his piece does McDonnell offer any kind of apology for these years of mayhem. Starmer is at least attempting to put this right. He changed the party's policies in order to make it more electable, and he was (thankfully) successful. Now let him get on and finish the job. Passing 'control' back to McDonnell and his sidekicks will merely send Labour back into the SoperMidhurst, West Sussex John McDonnell has identified Labour's malaise, which, he reminds us, affects not just its members in No 10 (hubris) but the entire movement (disillusionment). Almost a year ago seven MPs – including him – were suspended when they voted against maintaining the two-child cap on benefits, and after Labour's recent U-turn we can only look forward, in hope, to their reinstatement. But, as he warns us, we face a looming crisis. He is right to characterise how Labour is governing as 'timid'. Its tone-deaf acceptance of corporate gifting was dismissed as trivial sniping by the left. Try citing that as an excuse when attempting to retain support on the doorstep and being met with 'they're all the same' while those desperate for change look over your shoulder at Reform. The number of MPs who vote with the government, or abstain, when it attempts to cut disabled people's benefits will be a measure of how deeply unwell the party has Peter ManganBeckenham, Kent John McDonnell's criticism of the Labour government may well be music to the receptive ears of people frustrated by a lack of progress on many issues of concern to those in the labour movement and beyond in these still early days of Starmer's government. I'm reminded of the early years of Tony Blair's government, during which so many felt frustrated with progress. But look at how that changed and bore fruit, to the extent that by 2010 Labour was deemed an overspending, reckless, leftish government. In 2010, in the dog days of Gordon Brown's tenure, I recall sharing a platform with John McDonnell, who castigated Brown as a rightwing monetarist who had failed the labour movement and the people. What we would all give to have those levels of social spending now. Trevor HopperLewes, East Sussex Like John McDonnell, I am in my 70s, a lifelong Labour voter, and I have been a member of the party for more than 40 years. I would just note that every Labour government in my lifetime, including the great Attlee government, has been accused of betrayal and abandoning principles, mainly by people who claim to be on the left. I would also note that, despite the criticisms, it is Labour governments that have delivered almost every social advance and economic improvement in the lives of ordinary British voters over those more than seven GallagherLargs, North Ayrshire Bridget Phillipson says it is the moral mission 'of this Labour government to ensure that fewer children grow up in poverty' (Report, 27 May). What's with 'fewer'? Shouldn't it be that no children grow up in poverty, or am I missing something?Simon Lauris Hudson Pontefract, West Yorkshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The threat to Starmer may come from the Left
Politicians are adrift. They don't know how to tell people the truth without frightening the horses – and perhaps it's not surprising. Countries with ageing populations, low growth and high migration are unhappy ones, especially if, like Britain, they are running a trade deficit, debt at nearly 100 per cent of GDP, and a budget deficit all at once. We spend more on servicing our debt than on defence. This is unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, the bailiffs will come with the bill. Enter Labour. Its solution to these problems, during last year's election campaign, was a single word: change. Or, to put it another way, throw out the Conservatives. Once they've gone, renewal can begin. Not just because Labour values are better than Tory ones, but because Labour people are, too. Nicer, kinder, gentler, they would – by their mere presence in government – generate national recovery. The result was spectacular: Labour won 411 seats. Two hundred and thirty one of those MPs were new to Parliament – over half. Now imagine yourself as one of them – elected, as you saw it, to distribute ever-larger subsidies to your grateful constituents (paid for by the taxes of those who don't vote for you). First of all, you were ordered, in the wake of your triumph at the polls, to tramp through the lobbies in support of the two-child benefit cap – and told that if you didn't, you would lose the whip. Next, only a few days later, came the news that this new Labour Government would cut the winter fuel allowance. Finally, some six months later, it was announced that £5 billion would be saved annually from the welfare bill by measures including reassessments for incapacity benefits for those capable of work, and the focusing of some disability benefits on those with higher needs. Your response would doubtless be – as many of theirs surely was – to look hard at yourself in the mirror. Did you really come into Parliament for this? To boost child poverty, let needy pensioners freeze and take away support from disabled people? Enter John McDonnell, once Jeremy Corbyn's shadow chancellor. Like Corbyn, he's a man of the hard Left. Unlike him, he won his seat in Hayes and Harlington under the Labour banner last year, only to lose the whip a few weeks later for voting against the two-child benefit cap. Earlier this week, he surfaced to call for a change of leadership: 'Unless party members, affiliated unions and MPs stand up and assert themselves to take back control of Labour … we may not only lose a government. We could also lose a party.' McDonnell is an old stager who has been active in the Labour movement for most of his adult life, has sat in Parliament for over a quarter of a century, and is marinated in the arcana of the party's rulebook, trade union networks and culture. He has nothing to lose and an acute sense of timing: shark-like, he can smell blood in the water. Last week, Sir Keir Starmer conceded that the winter fuel allowance cuts will be ameliorated. Don't know where, don't know when – but it will happen. This looked rushed. And it was. The classic means of executing a U-turn is to reverse the original decision: humiliating, certainly; expensive, usually – but at least closing down the problem (whatever it may have been) and moving events on. Instead, speculation will now run on: how many pensioners will gain from concessions? What will they be? How many will still lose out? The same destabilising process is at work over the two-child benefit cap. Sir Keir now says that Labour will 'look at all options, always, of driving down child poverty'. He is caught in a trap of his own devising. By campaigning on the basis of change – but without a worked-through conception of what the change would be – Labour sacrificed depth for breadth. An Old Labour-type plan would have won the party fewer seats, but given it a clearer mandate. A New Labour-style plan might well have achieved the same. Instead, Sir Keir finds himself with New Labour-flavoured fiscal rules but Old Labour spending commitments. Something has to give. As it does, Labour will move further Left – under pressure from greens, independents, Islamists and the instincts of his own MPs. No wonder Angela Rayner, burnishing her own leadership credentials, is proposing further tax rises. And, let's face it, McDonnell has a point: 'The public got view of the distasteful sight of Labour ministers accepting gifts, tickets and donations from the rich and corporate carpetbaggers,' he wrote. There's the rub. Labour people are no less vain, weak and vulnerable than anyone else – a lesson for its MPs to take to heart, as public contempt threatens to overwhelm them. Lord Goodman of Wycombe is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Al Jazeera
5 days ago
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Jeremy Corbyn on Gaza and Britain's Imperial Legacy
In this episode of Centre Stage, our guest is Jeremy Corbyn, an Independent MP in the UK Parliament. Corbyn has long fought for economic justice, peace and a British foreign policy that tries to atone for its imperial legacy. In this episode, he talks about the cost of standing with Palestine, and why Europe may need to unite against a US-led trade war.
