That’s it for the live blog today, at least as far as above the line is concerned. Thanks for all the comments and discussion. See you tomorrow morning.
Updated
A few more interesting links courtesy of our readers below the line.
- Peter Hain has been telling the BBC he’s backing Yvette Cooper for the Labour leadership. HT: michaelsylvain
On #wato @PeterHain announces he's backing @YvetteCooperMP, saying @andyburnhammp is too "austerity-lite" pic.twitter.com/s5MA7Y7m0r
— The World at One (@BBCWorldatOne) August 11, 2015
- There has been some talk in the thread about the betting odds on the Labour leadership election. I’m not a gambling man, but even I can glean the odds on Jeremy Corbyn winning have changed somewhat.
The great Corbyn betting rush goes on. Hills now make him 1/3 to be LAB leader. A few weeks ago he was 200/1
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) August 11, 2015
- The Mirror has been looking at which of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are popular with the public, according to public opinion. HT: PCSmith
- Is Jeremy Corbyn’s rise due to entryism? Channel 4 News’ Michael Crick has blogged on the subject. HT: Clare1888
Thanks for all the links to suggested reading: keep them coming.
In further Andrew Sparrow news, he has taken to Twitter to remind us the government’s plan to halt benefits for young workers in order to keep their migrant pledge started out as a joke.
How making EU migrant benefit pledge legal by cutting ALL benefits was once just a ministerial joke http://t.co/MKvPos1frj h/t @nicholaswatt
— AndrewSparrow (@AndrewSparrow) August 11, 2015
Updated
Andrew Sparrow has put on his analysis hat and written about whether YouGov’s poll suggesting Jeremy Corbyn is on course to win the Labour leadership election is credible. Spoiler: he thinks it is.
A few more links from below the line.
- Is David Cameron set to go on and on? Some unnamed Tory sources think Cameron will stand for a third term as leader, according to this Telegraph story. HT: PCSmith
- The New Statesman’s Helen Lewis has interviewed Deputy Labour leader candidate Stella Creasy. HT: me
- As we linked to Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall’s campaign videos yesterday, it’s only fair that today we post one from the Jeremy Corbyn campaign. HT: LeftistLibertarian
Our usual host Andrew Sparrow has filed on the news that the government are weighing up halting benefits to young workers in order to comply with one of their manifesto pledges.
Ministers are considering plans to stop young Britons claiming in-work benefits because they have been told that the Tory manifesto pledge to apply such restrictions solely to EU migrants would be illegal, it has emerged.
Under the plan, a rule intended to stop EU migrants claiming benefits during their first four years in the UK would also stop Britons aged 18 to 22 claiming benefits like tax credits and child benefit.
And here are some links from below the line and elsewhere on the Labour leadership election, in the wake of the YouGov polling placing Jeremy Corbyn comprehensively in the lead (a few readers here are understandably cynical about polls after the pre-election failures).
- Adam Bienkov has written for politics.co.uk on why the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn are failing, drawing parallels with the Labour party’s attempts to stop Ken Livingston becoming its mayoral candidate. H/T: michaelsylvain
The similarities between Corbyn and Ken’s campaigns are no coincidence. Both have at their helm a relatively little-known political figure called Simon Fletcher. Fletcher, who served as Livingstone’s chief of staff in City Hall, before working as an aide to Ed Miliband, never does interviews and is little known outside of the party. However, he is a wily and canny operator who helped Ken beat Frank Dobson into third place in 2000 and now looks set to win a landslide for Corbyn in 2015.
- Commenter Csakagondamunka has pointed to this Steve Richards opinion piece in the Independent, in which he argues Labour needs to unite and distance itself from the past.
In truth, a modern equivalent of Blair would not have cited the Blair era as persistently as his more ardent admirers do now. Blair did not go around in the mid-1990s pointing out that Harold Wilson had won four elections. He did the opposite, establishing distance with the past. New Labour was itself a reaction to the party’s traumatic defeats in the 1980s, a beautifully orchestrated response. But the seeds of New Labour’s success also led to the downfall of its main, brilliant orchestrators. This is what the current contest struggles to make sense of, the significant triumphs and the ending.
Updated
Andrew is not writing his usual Politics Live blog during summer recess but, as an alternative, here’s Politics Live: readers’ edition. It’s intended to be a place where you can catch up with the latest news and find links to good politics blogs and articles on the web.
Please feel free to use this as somewhere you can comment on any of the day’s political stories - just as you do during the daily blog. It would be particularly useful for readers to flag up new material in the comments - breaking news or blogposts or tweets that are worth passing on because someone is going to find them interesting.
The countdown til voting opens for the Labour leadership election continues. Continuing our profiling of each of the candidates, today you can read all about Andy Burnham.
A YouGov poll has put Jeremy Corbyn in the lead.
Latest YouGov/The Times Labour leadership results – Corbyn leads with 53% of first preferences http://t.co/O2GfmpVCnW pic.twitter.com/eWguzHNIzd
— YouGov (@YouGov) August 10, 2015
We’ll have analysis on this later on.
Angles on this or on any of today’s breaking politics news? Share them, along with links and arguments below the line.
All today’s Guardian politics stories are here and all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here.
