NByNW Diary: UKIP's Implications Leave us Little Room to Infer

Friday 4^th December

1.00am

In the end, it wasn’t a catastrophe for Labour. Not even close. Jim McMahon held Michael Meacher's long-held seat of Oldham West and Royton comfortably with a majority of 10,811 (given the reduction in turnout, that’s broadly the same result as in May 2015).

This was contrary to the reports which had been put about by many of the perennial arms of the Murdoch and Right Wing Press, namely The Guardian and The New Statesman.

Ultimately, no-one expected Labour to lose, but no-one can use this result (as they expected to be able to) to claim that Jeremy Corbyn is a doomed prospect.

However, UKIP will use any fact to prove anything, and what this result apparently shows is that a bunch of people who look different have imposed their will on people who don’t look different. If UKIPers get upset with me when they infer that that was what I thought their Deputy Leader Paul Nuttall was implying when he said that Labour had engaged in “dangerous identity politics”, then let me say that he implied and I inferred. And I inferred from his implications that the phrase "identity politics" was undoubtedly attempting to divide people on the grounds of race. Which is, if I am right in this assessment, entirely shit.

Furthermore, Mr Farage says that the Postal Vote was bent. He claims this comes from an impeccable source. Easy to tweet, but you better substantiate it you frog-faced divisor.

Evidence from an impeccable source that today's postal voting was bent.

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) December 4, 2015

Have I got it wrong? If so, please explain to me how? I’d so hate to think you’re bigots simply because you’d left some grey area on that matter. I normally like my non-bigots to be unequivocally non-bigots, and explicitly non-bigots. But, you know, maybe that’s too much for me to expect from a 21^st century multicultural democracy.

P.S. If you didn't want me to misinterpret, you might have tried speaking clearly rather than insinuating. After all, if you're not bigots, why would you feel the need to obfuscate.

NByNW Diary: Hilary Benn's Mysterious Phone Call

Thursday 3rd December

6.00am

Hilary Benn wakes up. Same time as he does every day. Nothing feels any different from any other day.

6.01am

Hilary Benn’s phone rings. He answers

“Hampsted 001138, Benn Household, Mr Benn speaking.”

“Is it safe?” says the posh voice on the other end of the line.

“I hope so,” says Mr Benn. “I’m still in my pyjamas”.

“You cannot know who I am.”

“You sound like Tristram Hunt.”

“No, no. I’m definitely not him.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Mr Benn, putting his trade mark specs on.

“I am a member of the insurgency.”

“Insurgency?” asked Hilary.

“Against Jeremy Corbyn.”

“I thought he was the insurgency.”

“We’re the insurgency against the insurgency,” said the posh voice.

“That’s rather confusing. Like a party with a leader and foreign secretary with completely different foreign policies.”

“Okay. We’re like the rebellion in Star Wars.”

“Don’t let a Corbynista hear you say that,” warned Mr Benn. “They’ll beat you to death with a plastic lightsabre.”

“The point is – we’re trying to save the Labour party from Corbyn.”

“Oh, but he’s a decent man and he has a mandate,” said Mr Benn.

“No! Hilary – your speech last night. It’s changed the way people see you. People are talking of you as a future leader. A future Prime Minister.”

“Oh – I’m not interested in that. I just want to do my job and my duty and then come home and cook excellent vegetarian food, washed down with ginger beer.”

“No!” said the voice once more. “It has to be you.”

“Look, last night I just spoke from my conscience and said what I thought was right.”

“Yes, and it was the first time a Labour moderate did that since Robin Cook. It was electrifying.”

“I just want to go and have my Corn Flakes and go to work.”

“Look – when Corbyn speaks from his conscience, all of his fans think that he’s some kind of vegan, atheist Jesus. When one of us speaks from his conscience, the Corbynistas think that we’re evil, agnostic Jesus. But you could be different.”

“I want an atmosphere of free debate and to work with the elected leader of the Labour Party.”

“Fine!” shouted the angry voice. “Do you not want power?”

“No.”

“Oh,” replied the other voice, audibly shocked. “Really? I don’t understand.”

“I just spoke my mind not because I wanted to advance my career but because I thought it was right. You’d think that a supporter of Corbyn would admire that.”

“You think they might?” asked the voice.

“I hope they will,” said Benn.

“Good luck with that.”

Our preview of today's Oldham West and Royton By-Election is here:

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NByNW Diary: Benn Steals the Day by Opposing a Bennite

Wednesday 2^nd December

It has been the sort of day which encapsulates the best and worst of our democracy.

The best in that the most important issue of all – the matter of war and peace – was openly discussed in great depth and at great length.

The worst in that those who made mistakes in the heat of the moment were too proud to apologise for it.

Last night, the Prime Minister let his legendary temper get the better of him and said to those Tory backbenchers who were going to vote against military action in Syria that they would be voting with (amongst others) “terrorist sympathisers”. It was insulting and unstatesmanlike, and at the start of today’s epic debate he attempted to play down the scandal, but like a child who was being told to say sorry for something he didn’t feel sorry about, David Cameron did not apologise.

Then 10 hours of debate followed. Numerous speeches were excellent. Both for and against. Yvette Cooper, Margaret Beckett, Andrew Tyrie, Sir Alan Duncan, Angus Roberston all excelled themselves, to name but a few. Hell, even Tim Farron rose to the occasion. In contrast, David Cameron was hampered by his outburst the previous evening, and Jeremy Corbyn was halting and lacking in coherence.

However, like many a Shakespearean drama, the best moment came from the subplot, which has been about the Labour party and the divisions within it. It was encapsulated when Hilary Benn stood up to speak against his leader’s position.

Benn’s famous father Tony may not have delivered the speech that his son did tonight, but he was somehow, seminally present. His son stood up for what he believed. He spoke with passion and verve and if you closed your eyes just a bit you could have seen his progenitor in the mannerisms and gesticulations that he used. When talking of the “fascists” of Daesh who hold everyone else in contempt, he produced a grand sweep of his arm as he pointed to every member of the House. It was a Bennite expression, and will live long in the memory.

Hilary Benn’s speech was about the matter at hand and he made a clear case. But the speech was also about the soul of the Labour party. His leader sat grim-faced behind him, and he got grimmer and grimmer as Benn’s rhetoric soared and drew purrs of approval from the opposition benches behind. It spoke of Labour’s role in founding the UN, in being a party of internationalism. It was not just opposed to his leader’s view on Syria, but to his leader’s foreign policy almost entirely.

As Daniel Finkelstein noted this morning, after the 1970 election defeat his father asked Harold Wilson whether he still had to speak with the opinion of the Shadow Cabinet. Today, his son took on that spirit but the irony of all ironies is this: Hilary Benn tried to reclaim the soul of the Labour party from a Bennite.

His speech was greeted with applause (unparliamentary, but allowed by the fastidious Speaker Bercow), and cries of “outstanding”. His opposite number, Philip Hammond, called it one of the great speeches. When he sat down next to Jeremy Corbyn the tension was palpable. John McDonnell looked crestfallen. The speech of the day had been given in opposition to their position and by their own Foreign Secretary.

Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, to see someone to speak with such passion and energy and conviction and good conscience and import in such extraordinary circumstances is the true celebration of what our Mother of all Parliaments gives a platform for.

The votes began and a hush descended before the result was announced. The motion was carried by 397 to 223: a majority of 174. The word was that 15 Labour waverers were swayed by Benn.

A severe moment, and it is worth echoing the words of Toby Perkins (Labour, Chesterfield) from the debate: “I envy those who describe this choice as a “no brainer”… It’s not been obvious to me, it’s been very, very difficult indeed.” He voted against military action.

NByNW Diary: Beating Drums

Monday 30^th November

Drums. Drums in the deep.

Today, drums in the deep for Jeremy Corbyn. He walked in confident into his Shadow Cabinet meeting. After all, he had received a 3-to-1 measure of support from party members and was sure that the mood had swung behind him.

But he thought this was about the debate over the war. He was wrong.

Shadow Cabinet Members both for and against airstrikes said that they thought that the leadership could not impose its will on this, taking particular ire against the Labour Leader’s infamous letter on Friday – whilst internal party discussions were ongoing.

According to The New Statesman, Corbyn was adamant until he realised that Hilary Benn would retire to the backbenches to voice his support for strikes, and that significant numbers of his Shadow Cabinet would perform their own strike by refusing to leave the room until he relented and gave them not only a free vote, but also leave Labour’s official position unaltered.

Corbyn foiled by a sit-in protest. Even he must see the irony, but he must also know that his assassins are just waiting and waiting and waiting for Corbyn’s very own Ides of March.

Drums in the deep too for Labour in general. None of them comes out well from this, and on Thursday they face a by-election in Oldham. They are still favourites to win but with a majority down from nearly 14,000 to just 2,000. It is easy to just blame it on Corbyn, but this sort of division and adolescent infighting from all sides in the party surely have not helped their electability.

Finally, drums in the deep for war. At least, that would be the dramatic way to conclude this. The truth is that not just a war but war upon wars have been raging for years now. Nor are we seemingly about to join it. We already have. We are potentially about to expand our operation from Iraq to Syria. This is not the crucial moment but a prequel to it.

The drums in the deep shall beat for a good while longer yet.

More content from North by North Westminster is abundant. Below is a story on Philip Hammond's extraordinary excuse for accepting a gift some £1,810 above the government limit.

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NByNW Diary: Should Corbyn Stay or Should He Go If He Decides Not To Rock the Casbahs?

Friday 27^th November

I’m going to get some letter paper headed up with “It’s been another bad day for Labour”. It seems increasingly useful. After all, no-one can claim that Labour have had a good day, but there’s cacophonous squabbling over whose fault that is.

Here’s what’s happened.

Yesterday, after the Prime Minister’s statement on Syria, the Shadow Cabinet went to go and discuss the matter. There was a split in the opinion. Which was fine. It was decided that a decision would be taken on Monday through the Shadow Cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party. So far so good.

Then, Hilary Benn went out and said that there was a “compelling” case for strikes. Two hours later, Jeremy Corbyn wrote a letter to Labour MPs saying that he could not support the strikes because he does not think that they can assist our security.

Cue outrage against Corbyn from Labour MPs, describing this as an attempt to whip up fervour amongst the grassroots pressure group Momentum, in order to scare Labour MPs into voting against their consciences but with the leadership.

Very odd this. It appears that it was wrong of Corbyn to express his opposition, but it was fine for Benn to express his support. Whilst private discussions are ongoing, both men were ill-advised.

Labour Party Members are furious. After all, 6 out of 10 of them voted for this man and they are tired of the Parliamentary Party constantly sniping at him. Furthermore, Labour Party Members are 2 to 1 against the strikes, according to YouGov. Surely, Labour MPs should take this into account?

Ah, but they also need to take into account their constituents, and the same YouGov Poll says that the general public are 2 to 1 in favour of the strikes.

It is a fraught situation, but, nevertheless, the Labour Party looks shambolic, childish and petulant.

Just to throw yet another spanner in the works, Corbynista and the world’s newest campaigner for mental health awareness, Ken Livingstone, was on Question Time, where he said that Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq killed 52 Londoners in the 7/7 bombings, and he repeated the bombers’ justification that they only murdered because of Iraq.

Whether or not he has got a point doesn’t matter much because, so far as it goes now, we are at the highest level of risk anyway and have prevented 7 terrorist attacks this year. Iraq did make us a greater target for terrorist attacks, but the bullseye that conflict brought on us has never gone away.

Still, why shouldn’t Ken bring up the past? After all, it’s where he lives.

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Listen to our regular quiz of smaller news stories, which we call Quiz News. Which was highly original of us.

NByNW Diary: Don't Be Rude to Ken Livingstone - He'll Insult Entire Sections of Society

Wednesday 18^th November

Today, Labour’s National Executive Committee has decided to appoint former Mayor of London and newt-fancier (no, really – he is) Ken Livingstone to be the joint head of the party’s policy review on Defence, alongside the Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle.

This seems like a definite attempt to ensure that the anti-Trident camp are given as big a voice as possible, and as such it caused a bit of stir.

Kevan Jones MP, who served as a Defence Minister in the Labour government, told PoliticsHome: “I’m not sure Ken knows anything about Defence. It will only damage our credibility amongst those that do and who care about defence.”

To which Livingstone responded: “I think he might need some psychiatric help. He’s obviously very depressed and disturbed. He should pop off and see his GP before he makes these offensive comments.”

Which was inappropriate both generally and specifically. Generally because there is a widespread effort – not least from Jeremy Corbyn – to change attitudes towards mental health, and specifically because Kevan Jones actually has been very depressed, and opened up about this in 2012.

A lot of people were naturally upset, and Mr Jones expressed his offense at the comments.

To which, Mr Livingstone refused to apologise, saying that he grew up in South London where “If someone’s rude to you, you are rude back.” Always a good idea to try and defuse a situation by citing the moral system of a teenager but, given that he grew up in the 50s, I suppose we can just be thankful that he didn’t grow up in the Bronx, where if someone was rude to you, you'd pop a cap in their ass.

With further outcry, Ken finally gave into the pressure:

1/2 I unreservedly apologise to Kevan Jones for my comments. They should not have been made at all, let alone in this context.

— Ken Livingstone (@ken4london) November 18, 2015

2/2 I also make this apology because Jeremy is right to insist on a more civil politics and as a party we should take this seriously

— Ken Livingstone (@ken4london) November 18, 2015

Given that he refused to apologise at 12.30pm, and then volte-faced at 2pm, we can assume that Jeremy did a lot of insisting over a post-PMQs lunch by peering over his glasses and waiting for Ken to stop behaving like an unthinking adolescent.

The North by North Westminster Diary - Labour's Queen Beyond the Wall Begins to Regret Experiment with Democracy

Monday 2^nd November

There’s trouble for the new Labour leader.

No, not that one. The other one.

I’m referring to Kezia Dugdale, Labour’s Queen Beyond the Wall, who today is dealing with the irony that, having successfully campaigned for Scottish Labour to have greater independence from the national party, Scottish Labour is now, in return, trying to get greater independence from her.

It all boiled down to a vote at conference on the thermonuclear thorn in Labour’s side, Trident. Ms Dugdale had urged caution, arguing for disarmament on a multilateral rather than unilateral basis. However, Scottish Labour voted overwhelmingly for the abolition of Trident, which now means that the Labour Party’s leader in Scotland has a different position from her party, which has the same position as the national leader, who has a different position from a large amount of his parliamentary party, all of whom are waiting on the national party who, as it stands, has no position at all.

Confused? Well, welcome to the contemporary Labour movement. And we haven’t even mentioned the divides in the unions, though their internal debate is easier to explain. It goes like this:

Union Member #1: Having a nuclear deterrent is a commitment to having the capability to obliterate entire cities and wiping out millions of people. That’s morally reprehensible.

Union Member #2: Yes. I agree. But… jobs?

Union Member #1: We’re talking about nuclear holocaust.

Union Member #2: Yes, which probably won’t happen. So, my question is: jobs?

Union Member #1: Dead people!

Union Member #2: Yes, yes, yes. But… jobs?

It’s the classic dilemma of the left. There is a policy which seems to be utterly morally reprehensible when we all want to join arms and sing the Red Flag, but if we were to change it we would cause sizeable unemployment for hard-working people on the lower end of the pay scale. It’s very much a lose-lose, and that’s before we talk in detail about whether the deterrent works or not.

Perhaps this is why Labour is outsourcing decision making to the ordinary members. It just seems like a lot of hard work.

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The North by North Westminster Diary: If you U-turn when you're not going anywhere, does it make any difference?

Monday 12^th October

The campaign to stay in the EU launches today as Britain Stronger in Europe, led by Lord Rose, the former boss of M&S. It is packed with leading lights from the worlds of business (Lord Rose), politics (err… Caroline Lucas) and former presenters of T4 (June Sarpong). In fairness, all of them are passionate and effective campaigners and, no doubt, their numbers will be added to.

However, they face accusations that they are using fear to ward off people from changing the status quo. These accusations are dismissed, before the campaign describes leaving the EU as a “leap in the dark”.

Clearly, Lord Rose has enjoyed many relaxing, fearless leaps into the dark. I tend to associate them with falls, bruises and getting into regrettable situations in nightclubs.

Tuesday 13^th October

It was only a matter of time.

The leadership of the Labour party was always on a collision course with the parliamentary party, and at last night’s meeting of the PLP, it all kicked off. John McDonnell told MPs that he has u-turned on the Fiscal Charter; George Osborne’s attempt to bind governments into running a budget surplus.

Labour MPs are disbelieving, not because they necessarily dislike this stance, but rather because they cannot believe they’ve got to this point in the first place. It looks inept and this flip-flopping has sparked accusations of incompetence. Ben Bradshaw MP described it as a “total fucking shambles”.

The weird thing is that many backbench MPs are considering defying the party whip, despite the fact that they describe the charter as “non-credible” and “not a good idea”. It seems that some will abstain just to register discontent with the leadership.

It appears that the Labour Whips’ job is now to take a near-daily no confidence motion on Jeremy Corbyn.

Wednesday 14^th October

Rifts in the Labour Party are as obvious as the Grand Canyon, but those in the Conservative Party are a little more like the San Andreas Fault: very dangerous but seemingly ignored.

Today, there’s news that the Cabinet is split over the scrapping of a controversial £5.9 million contract to train Saudi prison officers. Michael Gove was against it. Philip Hammond was for it. As was Theresa May, whose interest in the Saudi penal system is concerning, given her recent hardline views on other issues.

With a high-profile human rights case in process, it appears that the PM has decided that this deal doesn’t look good. However, two similar contracts with a system which regularly lops people’s hands off are A-OK apparently, and so the government is maintaining those.

Supporters of the deal say engagement with such regimes is a way of achieving change, whilst disengagement achieves nothing. Perhaps, but it does seem curious that the theory of engagement meets with such absolute resistance from Corbynites. After all, what will his Middle Eastern “friends” think of that position?

Thursday 15^th October

Unsurprisingly, George Osborne passed his Fiscal Charter last night. The Commons debate was largely for show, but John McDonnell still managed to use it to make his face even redder than it was earlier in the week.

He did so by acknowledging that his U-turn had been “embarrassing”. Unfortunately, a Tory wag made a funny just before McDonnell said the word “embarrassing”, causing Conservatives to explode into hysterics. So, whilst waiting for the noise to die down, the Shadow Chancellor ended up mindlessly repeating the word “embarrassing” four times, on top of his initial use of the word “embarrassing”.

Which was embarrassing.

Friday 16^th October

The Fiscal Charter Fallout continues. The 21 Labour abstainers have been inundated with abusive e-mails from Corbyn supporters, demanding resignations and calling them “Tory lite” and a “waste of a space”. All for abstaining on a vote that the Labour leadership didn’t have a coherent position on. So much for the kinder politics.

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph has an anonymous quote from a Shadow Minister who said “Jeremy Corbyn has got no control over his party... It is only a matter of time before there's a resignation.” So much for party loyalty.

Infighting, division and accusations of incompetence and betrayal are serious – symptomatic of ineffective opposition, which was brought into sharp focus by the appearance of Michelle Dorrell on Question Time. She broke down whilst describing her forthcoming hardship in the face of the tax credit cuts, and the betrayal she feels given that she voted Tory in May, when they promised that child tax credit would not be cut.

Mr McDonnell said this week that he had not changed policy, but parliamentary tactics. Funny, because the policy changed, but the parliamentary tactics remained ineffective. Had he always avoided Osborne’s crude political trap, by abstaining from a vote on the stunt and asking how it helps people who are about to be vastly worse off, then this diary would have been very different this week, and the narrative would have been so too. 

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The North by North Westminster Diary: Labour (And Several Thousand Entryists) Hold Their Breath

Monday 7^th September

It’s a case of off the beach and into the fire for David Cameron as Parliament returns from the Summer Recess.

He has to face Parliament and provide a response to the Migrant Crisis which, as everyone in Westminster knows, started last Tuesday 1^st September when newspaper photo editors returned from their holidays.

He announces, in line with a recent U-turn, that 20,000 extra Syrian refugees will be settled in Britain before May 2020, whilst talking of the need to use “both head and heart” in this matter. The Government’s heart was taken from the same organ suppliers that the Daily Mail used for its new ticker last week.

Tuesday 8^th September

Of course, this week is mainly the hush before the storm that will be Saturday’s result in the Labour Leadership Contest. Those soothsayers in the bookies have Jeremy Corbyn as the odds-on favourite. To that end, last night’s Panorama, was almost exclusively devoted to Red Jez.

There was more dwelling on his worldview and choice of protest companions, leading to more clarion calls from supporters and opponents alike. Chiefly, however, there was a spurious examination of the secret of Corbyn’s apparent success.

The answer might actually lie in the closing part of the film, when he sings Bandiera Rossa and does a little bit of light, avuncular jigging. Now, he doesn’t set the floor alight, nor stir the heart with his soaring baritone, but he looks very… well, genuine.

Let me put it this way: Corbyn does dad-dancing better than Ed Miliband ate a sandwich or Cameron eats a pasty, and he didn’t ask the cameras to watch him do it.

Wednesday 9^th September

Today sees the final PMQs before Labour gets a new leader, which means it is Harriet Harman’s last day as Professor McGonagall. This is overshadowed by the Queen, as she becomes the UK’s longest reigning monarch.

This leads to plenty of tributes to HMQ (Gawd bless you ma’am, and all that), which seems a little odd when what they are paying tribute to is her not dying. On this occasion, David Cameron, Harriet Harman and countless others have stood up and said “Well done to Her Majesty on not snuffing it for longer than her great-great grandma could manage”; or describing her as “record-breaking” which, whilst true, makes her sound like some sort of geriatric Usain Bolt.

Thursday 10^th September

And the polls are closed. The next Labour leader has been chosen.

But by whom? A very pertinent question in what has been nothing short of a catastrophically mismanaged election. First, there was “entryism”. One mischievous Tory registered four times, once under the name of John Major. Then came attempts to weed out interlopers who “did not share Labour values”, which led to leading trade unionist Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commerical Services Union, being denied a vote.

Yesterday, a helpline designed to assist people in casting their vote was shut 24-hours before the polls were and, last of all, it appears that thousands haven’t received their ballots.

All of this is the last echo of Ed Miliband’s glorious reign. He set the rules for this campaign, and in doing so set the scene for the most compelling farce since Noises Off. It’s hard to imagine even UKIP achieving these levels of incompetence, though to be fair that is partly because they would skip the leadership election and just ask Nigel back.

Friday 11^th September

Meanwhile, in the working world, a fresh sexism row is brewing, bringing back memories of the row which engulfed Professor Tim Hunt. You know, the older man who made an inappropriate joke which, it later transpired, might have been taken wildly out of context, but a whole bunch of people on Twitter ruined his life anyway. Such larks.

Well, this time an older male lawyer has made an inappropriate comment to a young female lawyer on LinkedIn, describing her picture as “stunning”, which we can all agree is just irredeemably awful.

Yes, he shouldn’t have made that comment. It is just not professional, but it’s hardly an assault on another human being. It was misjudged, but now his life is being torn apart. This morning, a report in The Times is quoting a comment he made under his daughter’s Facebook photo where he described her as “hot”, which is a little odd but almost certainly harmless in the context. But no: the undeniable suggestion is that he is an incestuous paedophile.

You see, in the digital age, there’s no evidence if there’s no innuendo, and there’s no justice unless it’s Twitter-lynch-mob justice.

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The North by North Westminster End of Silly Season Special

Dear Reader,

I hope you have had a wonderful summer, and what a summer it has been! It really has been glorious for this observer, apart from the weather. Let me tell you of it.

It all began in early July. I was living in a flat with my insufferably smug Australian housemate, who awoke me every morning with chants of “5-nil! 5-nil!”

This wasn’t entirely bad, for I had to be up and about. You see, I had found a useful little line of business writing fictitious life-stories about benefit claimants. I sold them to the DWP for three quid a piece. Why was I doing this? So that I could register as many times as possible to be part of the social event of the season, namely the Labour Leadership Contest.

Severally, I cast votes under the names of Joseph Starling, Eric Charles Lynton Blair, Denise Thatcher, Mark Serwotka, Lord Douglas Hogg, and Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, amongst others. Of these, a fair few were rejected because I didn’t share the values of the Labour Party (ECLB and Serwotka were right out apparently), but I still got in with Denise and Elizabeth, and with the vote cast by proxy for my cat, Boris.

Upon leaving the DWP one day, after selling a particularly brilliant story about a claimant who hadn’t realised that you had to apply for jobs (IDS loved that one), I bumped into my old friend John, or Lord Sewel as he likes to be called in private life. He invited me round to his place for some tarts and coke, but I excused myself as I was on a diet.

I felt like a fool when I read the following Sunday’s papers. I’d clearly missed the party of the summer. Still, it was probably for the best as our outfits would have clashed, and he pulls off orange so much better than I do.

I had, in the meantime, been informed by a panicking MP that I should be worried. My details were about to be released on the internet after the Ashley Madison hack. I wasn’t that concerned at all, as I am unmarried. I had only signed up to it on a holiday in Ottawa, where it was very popular. In fact, it was so popular that single people couldn’t get the slightest bit of romance at all. People were getting married in order to have affairs.

So I fabricated a marriage and had a whale of a time though, upon the release of the information, my ex-mistress was furious at the deceit. Actually, she claimed to be even angrier at my deception than her husband was at hers. “Who’s the real victim here?” she asked.

Still, life moved on and summer of course brought the prospect of foreign travel. Given that 2015 is the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta and the 750^th anniversary of the first Parliament, I decided to explore the roots of Democracy. So, I visited Athens, and if this is how democracy turns out, then perhaps we should have second thoughts. Everyone was woefully depressed and broke and no-one smiled. It completely ruined my Instagram feed.

So, disappointed and in search of an alternative political system which guaranteed economic success, I travelled to China. Which went well.

And so, I returned here and passed Andy Burnham, who was trying to decide what his political message of the day was going to be by looking at a weather vane. I asked him how the campaign was going.

“South,” he said.

Quite a fantastic summer had been had, and I returned to my flat to find my Australian flatmate, whom I greeted with the now customary salutation of “60 all out!” He was still insufferably smug though, but I love the bugger all the same.

The North by North Westminster Diary will return in full soon.

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The Weekly Diary: A Week in the Life of Labour

Monday 20^th July

The Labour Party faces a crunch moment: does it oppose the Welfare Bill or abstain?

Acting Leader, Harriet Harman, has called for an abstention because Labour, in the face of an unexpected Tory majority, is more concerned with taking stabs in the dark to see whether this was why people didn’t vote their way, than it is with representing the people who actually did vote for them.

There are rebels, most eloquent of which is John McDonnell who says to a surprised House “Let me be clear: I would swim through vomit to vote against this Bill, and listening to some of the nauseating speeches supporting it, I might have to.”

He and 47 other Labour MPs did just that, though they sailed over the regurgitated sea on a raft made from discarded Labour manifestos.

Tuesday 21^st July

The Government went on to win the vote on the Welfare Bill by a majority of 184. Which sounds comprehensive, until you consider that the number of Labour MPs who abstained was 184. A close shave there for John Bercow, who was spared from having the casting vote and being forced to do something that would benefit David Cameron.

Of the 184 abstainers, 3 of them are running for the Labour Leadership. No prizes for guessing which of the four contenders was the odd-one-out.

Jeremy Corbyn received some very favourable accolades from left-wingers for his defiant and principled stand.

“Not to worry,” says Margaret Beckett who nominated him for the ballot without wanting him to succeed. “He’ll never win. Never.”

Wednesday 22^nd July

Guess what? A shock poll has Jeremy Corbyn on course to win the Labour Leadership.

“Polls?” bellows Harriet Harman. “We’re not going to pay an attention to polls! Lousy, hope-raising, dream-dashing polls!”

“I don’t know,” says Tristram Hunt. “We can’t take the risk of letting this happen. We can’t have a leader that hardly any of the Parliamentary Party supports. We’ve tried that and we ended up in the proverbial, and he ended up in Ibiza. We need to bring out the big guns.”

“Very well,” sighs Harman. “I shall summon him.”

She takes a wadge of £50 notes out of a draw and throws it into the air, and within seconds Tony Blair is there like a demented parrot repeating “Can’t win from the left! Can’t win from the left!”

And so, with bank details exchanged, Tony goes, rather appropriately, to Chartered Accountants’ Hall, for whom he generates a lot of work, and tells the think tank Progress that Labourites who say that their heart wants to be with the sort of leftism Corbyn represents, should get a “transplant”.

Ah yes. Tony doing what Tony does best: pouring oil on the waters. Oil being the operative word.

Thursday 23^rd July

It’s all happening now. Firstly, people are urging Liz Kendall to drop out because they want as wide a debate as possible. Sorry – I misheard that. Apparently, it’s because they want her to release her support to stop Corbyn. Which will happen anyway because it’s an Alternative Vote election, and there isn’t a person in the country who would vote for Kendall first and Corbyn second. Apart from maybe Liz herself for, as we all know because we saw it in The Guardian, she’s a Tory Trojan Horse.

Then another grandee comes in attempting to clear the air, which was a good idea. Shame the only one to hand was Lord Prescott.

He was on The Today Programme (and I quote exactly here¹): “I thought what Tony said was absolutely staggering though I have a lot of respect for Tony Blair I worked for him for years but to use that kind of language is just abuse, and to suggest that someone should have a heart transplant, and Tony said it put a lot of people off voting for us and on the doorstep it was Iraq what stopped people from voting for us, and I just want everyone to calm down!” he rattled off at a furiously calm pace.

Friday 24^th July

Surely all has been said now, as Ken Livingstone wades in by claiming that Corbyn can become Prime Minister.

“If I didn't think Jeremy could win, I wouldn't be backing him,” said the former Mayor of London.

Thus speaks a leftist who lost in the most Labour sympathetic city in the country to Boris Johnson, twice. So he knows what he’s talking about.

Corbyn continues on his merry way, but must surely be fearful he might win this thing. After all, he never intended to.

¹Quotations may not in fact be accurate, but the tone is.

This will be the last Weekly Diary for the summer. We will be back in the autumn on the new website, entitled North by North Westminster.

Events depicted may differ from actual events. In fact, this is a work of fiction, with some facts. But mostly, it's nonsense.