Shadow Cabinet ‘Unresignation’ – start of a trend?
Senior allies of Jeremy Corbyn say that Sarah Champion, the MP who today crawled back onto the front bench having resigned from it only 3 weeks ago, could be starting a trend.
They believe that the Rotherham MP has clocked that boundary changes will be published this September and mean she could face a challenge to hold onto her seat. One Labour source said the Rotherham MP had been “semi-imposed” on the seat in a by-election and there had been suspicions she’d hadn’t had much of a commitment to the Party before she applied for the candidacy.
Like many Labour MPs, Sarah Champion will face a constituency association where the majority of members support Jeremy Corbyn and have now had a few weeks to communicate their feelings on the mass frontbench walkout.
Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn sound confident that they will see off the challenge from Labour MP Owen Smith, although the latter has just unveiled 400 Labour Councillors who support him. There were 87,000 people who joined the Labour Party in the immediate aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory (not hard to imagine who they’ll be supporting) and the canvassing that’s started of party members so far seems to support the YouGov opinion polls of party members and suggests Mr Corbyn could be re-elected with a sizeable majority.
Tory divisions are also on display as the Commons recess starts. Tory MPs are talking about holding Mrs May’s feet to the fire over Brexit. Former Justice Minister Dominic Raab wrote a column in this morning’s Times warning that there must be no haggling on border control. Britain must have control over immigration policy and any trade-off with the EU that saw us in any way subject to their authority could easily see the rules change and access relaxed without our say-so.
You hear from Tory pro-Leave supporters that they intend to watch Theresa May’s government “hawkishly.” There’s talk of an attempt to get the chairmanship of the new select committee that will shadow the work of David Davis’ new department. Not that they think he’s particularly prone to slippage. The pro-Leave backbenchers talk of mounting an operation to give support to Mr Davis and Liam Fox (responsible for Trade Deals), as other ministers more inclined to cosy up to the Single Market try to pull policy in the opposite direction.
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