Corbyn is making bullish noises when it comes to co-operation between his new party and Starmer’s rebellious backbench MPs. Owen Jones (40) sat down with Jeremy Corbyn for an interview yesterday to talk about his new party. Name to be determined at its founding conference in November…
Aside from some Starmer bashing, Corbyn said that after a year of “insipid, weak, unmemorable” and “worse than expected” Labour government, backbenchers are quietly coming to find him to say “you’re doing the right thing.” Having previously treated him as if he had the “bubonic plague” when Starmer first entered office…
On whether Labour MPs and ex-Labour turned Independent MPs would join his party he said:
“Are they going to come over tomorrow? No. But are they going to work with us? Yeah. So we are therefore a force in parliament for social justice and we work with Rachael Maskell with John McDonald and others opposing the two child benefit cap etc.”
Jones will be disappointed to hear his mission to unite the Corbyn party with the Greens has already hit a roadblock, with Corbyn confirming there would not be an alliance. The fractured left providing yet another headache for No10…
Ex-IFS head Paul Johnson said Reeves misled the nation with her pre-Budget spin after it was revealed the OBR had uprated expected tax receipts long before November:
“I think it [her November 4 ‘tax rises are coming’ press conference] probably was misleading. It was clearly intended to have an impact and confirm what independent forecasters like NIESR and the IFS had been saying. It was designed to confirm a narrative that there was a fiscal black hole that needed to be filled with significant tax rises. In fact, as she knew at the time, no such hole existed.”