Labour has spent the past twenty four hours facing significant backlash over their benefit cap U-turn and one person leading the charge against Starmer is his former party leader. On LBC this morning, Jeremy Corbyn spoke of Labour MPs’ anger at the flip-flop:

“I have spoken to quite a lot of Labour MPs about it yesterday, not so much on the front bench, but I have spoken to many about it, and they are seething with anger. Particularly as commitments have been made regularly by the party that we would take children out of poverty. Even the Blair government, which Keir Starmer often quotes, did do a great deal to lift children out of poverty…”

You know it’s getting serious when Jeremy Corbyn is praising the Blair government…

A long list of Labour politicians have already publicly outed themselves as among those “seething with anger”. This includes MPs John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Ian Lavery, Rosie Duffield, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Stella Creasy, Clive Efford, Stephen Timms, Kim Johnson, Zarah Sultana and Meg Hillier, as well as Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar and Sadiq Khan, alongside three other Labour mayors. Could someone from the Shadow Cabinet be next…

This is not to mention Jezza’s fellow independent, Jamie Driscoll, who resigned yesterday over the issue. In this context Corbyn was also asked about his own plans to stand as an independent Mayor of London. He didn’t rule it out.

In April, Guido asked the perennial question: where will Paul Mason lose next? Now there may be an answer. According to Patrick Maguire, Mason is mulling a bid for the Labour candidacy in Islington North, setting up a ferocious battle against his former pal Jeremy Corbyn. Provided Mason actually wins the nomination this time…

There had been rumours this would be Mason’s next battleground ever since he lost the selection contest in Pembrokeshire…and Sheffield Central, and Stretford and Urmston. The one thing Mason hasn’t lost is his determination. To show his dedication to Islington, he followed the Islington North CLP Twitter account earlier this week. Presumably he didn’t do this sooner because he was too busy dreaming up reasons why he was a local boy done good in Pembrokeshire. Or Sheffield.

Either way, the Islington North CLP are still fiercely loyal to their old comrade Jeremy. In May, they passed a motion with 98% in favour of the absolute boy. Labour still haven’t set out a timetable for the candidacy selection – Sam Tarry was another rumoured contender – so Mason still has time to build some grassroots support, or at least figure out where he’ll contest next after losing again. Will Suzy Izzard give it another go as well?

Just when you thought Starmer had succeeded in putting him out to pasture, Jeremy Corbyn finds a new lease of life courtesy of his local comrades. Under the cover of darkness, socialists in the satellite state of Islington North rallied around Corbyn to sign this defiant manifesto: 

“This CLP would like to thank our sitting MP J Corbyn for his commitment and service to the people, and want to express that it should be our democratic right to select our MP.”

The resolution to be a thorn in Starmer’s side and stand up for democracy was passed by 98%, with 60 constituency Labour party members backing the motion, one abstaining, and nobody objecting. Although admittedly the Islington North Constituency Labour Party has over 4,000 members in total…

Since the odds of Keir U-turning on this are, for once, almost zero, speculation is still rife over which brave fool will volunteer as the Labour candidate to stand against Jeremy. One name that’s popped up in recent days is none other than former Shadow Transport Secretary Minister Sam Tarry. While Tarry may have been sacked and subsequently deselected in Ilford South, there are rumours he could be parachuted in as a palatable leftie alternative. Kevin Maguire reckons he could be used to convince Jeremy to step down after all. Whoever it is, Guido hears the party may keep the decision under wraps for as long as possible to reduce the harassment they’ll inevitably endure with the local cranks…

If Tarry doesn’t end up in Islington North, he’s still determined to land a seat somewhere. As Guido first reported, his “soulmate” Angela Rayner is publicly stumping for him, and Tarry himself is said to be telling allies this week “I’ll be back”…

It is now nearly seven years since Labour last published their press transparency data. Back in April 2021, Starmer’s team promised they would publish a year’s worth of details over their meetings with media executives, following the three-year black hole left behind by Jeremy Corbyn. While they didn’t promise to fill that gap, they did at least say things would change going forward. Guido was assured it was coming, just wait. And wait. And wait…

The seven-year old list is still up on the website, under the “How We Work” tab:

Given Starmer assures everyone that “honesty, transparency, accountability and integrity matter in politics“, Guido looks forward to seeing this cleared up. Yesterday, when the sleaze investigation into Rishi Sunak broke, Angela Rayner quite fairly lamented the “transparency black hole” left by the late publication of the register of ministers’ interests. Guido has once again asked for an update on this, with no feedback yet at the time of going to pixel. If Labour are going to bang on about transparency and they have got nothing to hide, they should commit to publishing the press data before May’s elections so the public can see for themselves…

Speaking on GMB this morning, Diane Abbott took a principled stance against Keir Starmer’s chicanery. The former Shadow Home Secretary questioned Starmer’s decision to block Jeremy Corbyn from standing at the next election:

“Keir Starmer put a motion in front of the NEC to bar Jeremy as a candidate, but that motion said nothing about antisemitism. It said that because Jeremy had lost the 2019 election he couldn’t run. Well, really, if you stop people being MPs because they lose elections, why is Ed Miliband still an MP?”

She also claimed that if Corbyn decides to stand as an independent in Islington “he will win”.

Diane’s comments on Ed Miliband come in the context of Labour’s legalistic justification for blocking Corbyn put forward at the NEC – based on his electoral performance and not antisemitism.  Starmer’s motion states that the party’s “standing with the electorate in the country, and its electoral prospects in seats it is required to win in order to secure a parliamentary majority and/or win the next general election, are both significantly diminished should Mr Corbyn be endorsed”.

As Ann Black points out for Labour List, “the motion was fundamentally dishonest, because the reasons given for blocking Corbyn’s candidacy were not the real reasons”. It’s one rule for Comrade Corbyn and another for Red Ed…