The highlight of live-band karaoke from Labour Conference’s Mirror party last night was Lisa Nandy and Jon Ashworth reunited to give Rick Astley’s classic “Never Gonna Give You Up” their best shot. Ashworth was in an elevated state judging by the colour of his face…

Hat-tip: Tom Harwood

With “Things Can Only Get Better” almost on repeat, Lisa Nandy and Thangam Debbonaire manned the decks last night at LabourList’s conference disco. Nandy opened her set with an “it’s Britney b*tch” mic-dropper before immediately playing “Oops I Did It Again”. Debbonaire introduced herself in style: “My name’s Thangam Debbonaire, I want to see those hands in the air!“. This was the cocktail of the night…

Neither shaken nor stirred…

With Labour riding high in the polls, the party is doing its best to make itself look like a credible choice for government. In addition to purging the loony left, wooing big business and taking lessons from the blob, they’re now even ditching their own unworkable policies. One such cause is market failure-inducing rent controls. Last night on LBC, Rachel Reeves slammed Sadiq Khan’s favourite pet housing policy:

“If you take Scotland, for example, they’ve got rent controls and yet Edinburgh and Glasgow are two cities in the UK that have had some of the highest increases in rent. So these things don’t always work“.

At least someone in Labour isn’t committed to doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Curiously, Reeves also denied that the party had performed yet another U-turn on the policy, claiming:

“I don’t think under Keir’s leadership, rent controls have ever been our policy. So I don’t think there’s a U-Turn there”. 

This may come as news to Lisa Nandy who, just months ago, called for council leaders to be given the powers to freeze rents. A reminder, as it clearly slipped Rachel’s mind, Lisa Nandy is the Shadow Cabinet Minister responsible for housing policy.

Not withstanding the best efforts of the opposition, the government’s bill banning public bodies making spending decisions based on political judgements of foreign powers, including in relation to the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, was granted its second reading. Co-conspirators could be forgiven for failing to understand Labour’s position in the vote. Despite supposedly opposing BDS, Labour whipped their MPs to support an amendment which would block the bill from passing to its second reading – all after saying they would not repeal the bill should they get into power. On the actual vote, they abstained.

Before opposing the bill’s passage, Lisa Nandy said Labour was “not in favour” of BDS, a movement which “singles out the world’s only Jewish state”. Why would Nandy, who was formerly a chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, oppose a bill banning an action that “singles out the world’s only Jewish state”…

One explanation for Labour’s equivocation could be found in the source of their legal advice. Lisa Nandy and David Lammy commissioned Richard Hermer KC to draft a position. Richard Hermer has previously co-authored a chapter in a book called “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation”, co-edited by notorious anti-Israel activist and crank Asa Winstanley. Amongst Asa’s other publications is a book subtitled “How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn”.

A senior Jewish leader, supportive of the bill, tells Guido:

“After a bruising experience with the Labour Party and its alleged opposition to BDS, you would have thought they would have thought more carefully about who they take legal advice from. Richard Hermer is clearly partial. I would question the Party’s judgement on this one. Richard Hermer’s association with Asa Winstanley of all people should have been a major red flag.”

Guido is at a loss for how Labour came to select Richard as their independent legal expert. On an entirely unrelated note, he gave £5,000 to Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign…