A very relaxed-looking Gordon Brown gives Corybn a gentle kicking, agreeing that he is “a phase”. Brown continued: “we’re all phases… politicians have a short shelf life in terms of life at the top”. He would know…
Tracey Ullman has done a sketch on Labour Live. The tweeting left are not amused. The response of the Corbyn cultists is actually funnier…
“Would it be published in advance of the EU Withdrawal debate next week?@jeremycorbyn to @theresa_may on White Paper publication date #pmqs pic.twitter.com/osnOgR9E4M
— BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) June 6, 2018
A farcical outing from Theresa May at PMQs, who refused to answer any of Corbyn’s questions on when the Brexit white paper is coming or how the government’s customs policy is coming along. This is getting ridiculous. It is nearly two years since the referendum. If she can’t make any decisions…
Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs:
“When it comes to Brexit, this government has delivered more delays and more cancellations than Northern Rail. The government’s white paper is delayed, its customs proposals have been cancelled and it’s ripped up its own timetable.”
Jeremy Corbyn appears to have sold out his decades-long position on the EU and backed a bosses’ Europe where the UK becomes a rule-taker to the internal market. Here is Corbyn’s new amendment in which he seems to pledge to sign up to EU rules on state aid and free movement:
EXCLUSIVE: Labour about to announce major shift towards soft Brexit. Corbyn will table “internal market” amendment to the withdrawal bill, customs bill and trade bill pic.twitter.com/2gPJUUh4QY
— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) June 5, 2018
This is a totally mad, unrealistic objective that could only be achieved by staying in the EU. Earlier today Corbyn said he rejected the Norway model and also claimed that under his proposed customs union the UK would be free to strike new trade deals with other countries. He is living in a fantasy land…
Tracey Ullman has been filming in Walton-on-Thames this morning dressed in full Corbyn attire standing in front of a mocked up Labour Live tickets stall. The writers have had plenty of inspiration. Sure this is going to go down well with Corbynista Twitter. Guido can’t wait…
Corbynistas are totally triggered by Tracey Ullman’s sketch lampooning Jeremy Corbyn. Some discussed threatening the BBC with legal action… 
Anyone would think they are an utterly humourless leadership cult…
Bar staff at Labour’s troubled summer festival Labour Live will work for free as volunteers and won’t be paid, Guido can reveal. Booze at ‘Labour’s Glastonbury’ – dubbed ‘JezFest’ – will be served by the trendy Workers Beer Company, who will run festival bars on the White Hart Lane Rec site. The Workers Beer Company states:
“All the frontline staff in Workers Beer Company bars are volunteers. They are from trade union branches, the Labour movement, grassroots organisations, community groups and charities. For every hour they work money is donated to the organisations, campaigns and charities they support. This was, and still is, a pioneering model that both raises funds and inspires people…”
The firm says volunteers working behind bars:
” Get well looked after with food, good facilities and a few free beers to quench your thirst afterwards…”
But they will not be paid a wage for their labour, despite the firm demanding they must be:
“Able to spend long periods of time on their feet, able to function well in very a busy and sometimes noisy environment. It can be demanding work and servers have to keep motivated and cheerful in challenging conditions.”
Corbyn claims Britain suffers from an “epidemic of low pay” and has been strongly critical of unpaid labour. He has argued for “decent jobs, jobs which pay a real living wage”. John McDonnell, who will speak at the Labour Live festival, says Labour “stands for fair pay and respect in the workplace”. He is currently leading campaigns in the food and drink sector including on staffing and pay practices at McDonald’s and TGI Fridays. Just yesterday the Leader’s Office slammed Chuka Umunna for advertising an unpaid internship.
A Labour spokesman told Guido:
“Workers Beer Company has run bars at music festivals and events including Glastonbury and the 2012 Olympics since 1986. Bar staff volunteer on the basis that a donation equivalent to the London Living Wage of £10.30 per hour is made to a charity or campaign of their choice. Millions of pounds have been raised for charities and campaign groups using this model.”
Chuka is more influential than we think…
Jeremy Corbyn is making his first visit to Northern Ireland as Labour leader today. He has already managed to annoy, well, just about everyone. And he’s only just arrived…
Corbyn’s decision to speak at Queen’s University, Belfast, where the IRA shot 29-year-old-law lecturer Edgar Graham in 1983, is being seen as a deliberate provocation. Yesterday the DUP called on Corbyn – once and for all – to categorically renounce and condemn the IRA. DUP MP Sammy Wilson has demanded he specifically condemns that killing…
Meanwhile, victims groups are incensed as Corbyn has declined multiple invitations to meet with them. Corbyn’s team actively ignored emails asking for a meeting until he was confronted after PMQs yesterday. Jezza was apparently too busy to spend time with those bereaved and injured during the Troubles…
Local business leaders are infuriated by the Labour leader’s ambiguity on Brexit. John McGrane, director-general of the British-Irish chamber of commerce, said: “It’s getting late in the day for continued vagueness.” Jezza faces an awkward showdown with business leaders tomorrow…
Labour’s sister party the SDLP are angry that Corbyn wants to leave the single market. The party has written to all Labour MPs at Westminster asking them to defy Jezza…
Outstandingly, Jezza has even managed to rile up his own Labour members by snubbing them too – he will not meet with any representatives of the Labour Party in Northern Ireland, his own closest supporters. LPNI’s Dugald McCullough said: “Some members feel it’s a snub”…
Jezza’s own party are also irked that he has not allowed members to stand. Labour does not currently field candidates in Northern Ireland but let the SDLP have a free run instead. Corbynista activists want their own ticket. Corbyn is annoying them by resisting…
Perhaps worse of all, Jezza’s key announcement – that he wants to resurrect the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference – is a highly sensitive and somewhat hypocritical intervention. The BIIGC is part of the Good Friday Agreement, which Corbyn’s own Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner dismissed as a “shibboleth”. Perhaps Jezza should have just stayed at home…
This has to be the saddest GDPR begging email yet: Labour members are being told they will “ruin Jeremy’s birthday” unless they consent to receiving communications from the party by Friday. Definitely not a cult…
Today’s déjà vu PMQs was little more than a throwback to the worst recurring terror in the panoply of British political nightmares: Theresa May vs Jeremy Corbyn on ‘Our National Health Service’. Across the despatch boxes the topic is life-sucking, it has the signal-jamming effect of blocking all thought, locking onto any form of intelligent argument and blowing it up as would an interceptor missile. To watch May and Corbyn on the NHS engenders a particularly strong sensation of their detachment from reality; we too are trapped in their eternal feedback loop of massaged statistics, meaningless platitudes and over-hyped, baseless accusations, always – wave to the sheep – diverted via Wales, fated only to end up where we began. These exchanges are as incisive as a blunt scalpel and enjoyable as a bout of haemorrhoids…
This morning’s poll showed The Kids Are Alright, now Corbyn must be worried people of “My Generation” are refusing to get on the Magic Bus. Brexit-backing musical legend Roger Daltrey has told Event magazine that You Better You Bet voters Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Seeker of the keys to Number 10:
“Jeremy Corbyn is not a socialist… He’s a communist. Be honest about that and see how many votes you get, Jeremy, because otherwise you’re going to be moving in to Downing Street under a false premise.”
He Can’t Explain that’s the Real Me…
Mike Smithson notes that Corbyn’s lead with young voters has evaporated since the turn of the year. For the first time since the election with Opinium, May now leads with 18-34 year olds. So much for the Youthquake?
Entries in the comments…
Lewisham East by-election candidate Claudia Webbe – who is backed by Corbyn’s office and the Unite and CWU unions – praised Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as a “visionary” and hailed the regime of Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez. Webbe, who is Jezza’s pick in the fight for the candidacy, tweeted her “condolences“ on Casto’s death, despite the despot’s rule seeing widespread human rights abuses, particularly of homosexuals. Last year Webbe jointly hosted a quiz evening for the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, where she spoke alongside Len McCluskey, Richard Burgon and a representative from the Cuban Embassy. What a night…
Webbe also praised Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez, whose revolution ultimately led to the collapse of the country’s economy and mass violence. Chavez is now so hated by Venezuela’s poor that last year residents of his hometown burnt down a statue of him. Not hard to see why she got Jezza’s backing…
Albert Einstein defined madness as “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. Jeremy Corbyn today topped-off a staggeringly poor PMQs performance – naturally, in blindingly severe contrast to last week’s outing – by calling on the Prime Minister to resign. He screeched:
“If the prime minister cannot negotiate a good deal for Britain why doesn’t she step aside and let Labour negotiate… Step aside and make way for those who will.”
In October last year Jezza stood in exactly the same spot and wailed across the despatch box:
“Isn’t it the case that if the PM can’t lead, she should leave?”
Just three days before last year’s general election, when asked whether he would call on May to resign over police numbers, Corbyn replied:
“Indeed I would.”
The same month he said May must:
“Go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country.”
Then in September he demanded of her:
“For Britain’s sake pull yourself together or make way.”
Every few weeks, at an increasing frequency, perhaps altered by imperceptible changes in the earth’s magnetic field (observable only to Piers Corbyn) – or due to signal fluctuations received from the short wave radio housed in the attic of the Russian Embassy – Jezza’s behaviour suddenly enters an almost lycanthropic mode. In the dead of night he morphs into the ‘resign now’ monster, a humiliating Hyde to his bumbling Jekyll, an embarrassing form of political lunacy. At PMQs the mask slips and we see a lone oddball, repeatedly bashing his head against the proverbial brick wall, endlessly howling at the moon…
Jeremy Corbyn is in Govan today arguing that all Royal Navy ships should be built in the UK. It is thought a £1 billion contract for three Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ships could go to a foreign shipyard. Currently the Navy builds warships in UK yards but non-combat ships can be built abroad…
Labour’s appeal sounds uncharacteristically patriotic – though it is union influence which is driving Corbyn. The GMB has been running a campaign on the issue. There’s just one issue…
Veterans for Britain and UKIP point out that Corbyn’s plans are not possible because of the EU’s Defence Directive. David Banks from Veterans for Britain explains:
“Although Mr Corbyn will cite the ‘defence exemption’ (Article 346 TEU), this does not provide a general exemption from international or EU-wide tendering for government defence contracts. The exemption is only for the most sensitive items of manufacture where an EU-wide tender would put national security interests at risk. The EU tightened these rules further in 2016. The only way to achieve what Mr Corbyn is (rightly) demanding is to leave the EU Defence Directive. The directive stifles UK options in procurement, jobs and strategic capability.”<>
UKIP Defence Spokesman Mike Hookem adds:
”While I agree these RFA ships should be built in the UK; Article 346 of the Treaties demand that military procurement contracts are open to tender across the EU. While there is an exception clause, only the most sensitive items can be guarded for domestic contracts. RFA ships are none front line vessels and therefore, do not qualify as sensitive. Labour either don’t understand EU rules on military procurement contracts or are deliberately trying to mislead the public.”
Jezza all at sea on on this one…
UPDATE: Major-General Julian Thompson, commander of Royal Marines landings in the Falklands War, said:
“We would urge all parties to take a detailed look at the effect that EU policy has on UK interests in this area. We also should not remain associated with a joint EU strategy which would stop the UK making key democratic decisions about preserving essential skills, securing strategic sites, and safeguarding jobs. That is what’s currently being proposed by DExEU civil servants and negotiators via their bid to stay in the EU’s pervasive defence industrial plan, EDIDP.”
The FT has been given access to a Communist Party of Britain meeting and spoken to its leader Robert Griffiths, who says there are “no major differences on immediate issues” between his party and Corbyn’s Labour. Griffiths said that among Corbyn’s top team – which includes former communist Andrew Murray – there is overlap on Brexit and leaving NATO. He suggested communists are now working to build the Corbyn movement rather than develop their own cadres. Griffiths also said “a lot” of communists joined Labour to back Jez at the time of Corbyn’s first leadership election…
The reds think Jezza is delivering their manifesto ‘Britain’s Road to Socialism’, which they say is turning out to be a “good guide” to the current direction of the left. Earlier this year Guido reported on a joint meeting between Labour and the CPB. Last year the party declined to stand candidates against Labour at the general election for the first time in decades. Don’t say you weren’t warned…
Corbyn is doing his bit for the socialist international this week by meeting German hard-left party Die Linke. An interesting bunch of Trots, Marxists and all-purpose protesters born out of the Stalinist East German communist party. Along with the usual rhetoric about the overthrow of capitalism, Jezza would have found common ground on the party’s pledge never to send German soldiers to fight anywhere on any basis. It also wants to withdraw from NATO and proposes a complete ban on arms sales…
The party’s Chairperson Katrja Kipping (who met Corbyn) is a big fan of the universal basic income. She did not deny she wanted to abolish capitalism when she told The Economist:
“We want a plurality of property… small business is alright, but we want more cooperatives, communes and the power grid must be nationalised… hunger is a result of the capitalist mode of production.”
Wonder if they bonded over that East German motorcycle tour…
A white peacock, Shakespeare’s signature in manuscript, the transition of Venus, pure platinum, the albino humpback whale, a Wagyu steak Big Mac, the first-contact of a lost tribe, a blue moon, the philosopher’s stone, blood type AB minus, the St. Francis Satyr butterfly, a complete copy of The Gutenberg Bible, the element astatine, a jeroboam of Château Mouton-Rothschild 1945, a twin tornado ripping across a golden plain of orchids illuminated by a double rainbow: all of them among the rarest occurrences or items found on this mad, spinning, Tory-run sphere we call home. […] Read the rest
