Can Corbyn survive at helm?

Leader Jeremy Corbyn is coming under increased fire from many of Labour’s backroom boys - including some former party heavyweights, who do not believe Labour can ever be elected into Government so long as Corbyn is at the helm.

This is despite Corbyn’s relative and surprising success at the recent General Election called gratuitously by Prime Minister Theresa May, even though the Party had at least an overall majority over their opponents beforehand.

That majority was lost and the Tories had to fall back on support from the Democratic Unionist Party in a bid to get their business through, not an altogether successful operation.

Most of Corbyn’s lieutenants in Parliament are supporting him wholeheartedly, but with the trouble arising elsewhere, he must now feel less safe in the job than he was, say, a year ago.

There have already been resignations from the Shadow Cabinet and from the Party itself because of Corbyn’s leadership, so it looks as though urgent action needs to be taken at the top to restore Labour’s popularity at Westminster and beyond.

Corbyn has suffered and survived two major attempts to oust him from the leadership but has made clear he will stick to his guns come rain or shine.

When the Tory leadership battle is over, we shall perhaps get a clearer idea of the situation at the top of the Labour Party and Corbyn’s prospects for survival at the helm now.

- Ann Widdecombe, one of the new Brexit MEPs elected to the European Parliament, joined her colleagues in turning their backs on the Parliament when the EU anthem was being sung. If that is not an example of childish, fourth-form behaviour then I don’t know what is.

Widdecombe, who once attacked her former boss, the ex Home Secretary Michael Howard in the Commons, told me: “We are all grown-ups now.” But this act of infantile defiance made it clear that these “grown-up” politicians have a lot of work to do before they reach adulthood in a political sense.