Jeremy Corbyn has been confronted, again, by Labour MPs angry about staff in his private office. When all eyes were on the House of Lords on Monday evening, Corbyn was shut away in another fractious weekly meeting with mutinous MPs.
Caroline Flint and Siobhain McDonagh demanded to know what, if anything, had been done about the complaints they raised a week earlier about Corbyn’s adviser, Andrew Fisher. Before the May election, Fisher posted a tweet that appeared to call on voters in Croydon South to vote for an anarchist rather than for Labour’s Emily Benn.
Chuka Umunna – who is soon to be married, it has been revealed – joined the attack. His constituency party in Streatham was “twinned” with Croydon South, which meant that his party members were bussed across London to help Emily Benn’s campaign.
“How on earth can I persuade my members to campaign there when our goal is being thwarted by a member there?” he demanded.
The Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has claimed that the disputed tweet was “satirical”. Not only do Labour MPs not believe him, nor does the anarchist in question, Jon Bigger. He tweeted: “Satirical. Nice try John but that’s just f***ing b******t.”
Not welcome in Warrington
Corbyn’s critics now have another target – his new director of strategy, Guardian journalist Seumas Milne. Hyndburn MP Graham Jones complained to Corbyn about an interview Milne gave on Russia Today before his appointment, in which he forecast “some shake-up in the existing Shadow Cabinet”.
In a Guardian article Milne also wrote that the butchering of Fusilier Lee Rigby “wasn’t terrorism in the normal sense” because his murderers targeted a soldier instead of randomly killing members of the public. These words have been interpreted as belittling the seriousness of the crime.
Helen Jones, MP for Warrington South, where two children were killed by an IRA bomb in 1993, complained: “This is a slap in the face for people I represent, who had an IRA bomb go off, and who have relatives who remain in the armed forces.”
Repeat after me: tampon
Stella Creasy was the undoubted star of the Commons debate on VAT on tampons, and not just because she forced Sir William Cash, a Conservative MP of more than 30 years’ standing, to utter the word “tampons” in the Commons chamber.
There was also the revelation that the Tory MP Bernard Jenkin raised this issue with the Conservative shadow cabinet in the 1990s after he had been berated on it by a sixth-former at a Colchester girls’ high school. That was the young Stella Creasy, who was threatened with expulsion if she ever embarrassed a distinguished visitor like that again.
Easy for you to say
Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, looked very pleased with himself during a Commons debate when he mentioned a Welsh village famous for having a long name – Llanfairpwllgwyngyll- gogerychwyrndrobwllllant-ysiliogogogoch. He even claimed to be the first to reel off the full name in Parliament.
Actually, as recently as 4 June, the Labour MP Albert Owen, whose Ynys Mon constituency includes Llanfairpwllgwyngyll- gogerychwyrndrobwllllant-ysiliogogogoch, pointed out in the Commons that it was where the Women’s Institute was founded. A Welshman tells me his pronunciation was way more accurate than the minister’s.
