"Jeremy Corbyn: The Outsider" is a sad film

We are so used to this behind-the-scenes view of politics being used in satire that it is hard to view this film from VICE News without looking for opportunities to laugh.

What it confirms is that the operation around Jeremy Corbyn is shambolic and that his decades on the far left have given him a weird view of the world.

In those circles the enemy is not so much the Tories as moderate Labour people and the press. Note that it is the Guardian and the BBC, where those two tendencies tend to come together, that particularly annoy Corbyn.

So in the end this film is not funny but sad. Sad because it makes you fear that, though they are incompetent and split down the middle, the Conservatives may well walk the next election.

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"His father was a foreign correspondent for The Times, and he was a great-grandson of civil engineer Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel, and a great-great-nephew of Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, the first Baron Rendel, a benefactor of William Gladstone." Paul Walter pays tribute to David Rendel, who has died aged 67.

Ferdinand Mount dissects the Brexiteers: "No one since Greta Garbo has said ‘I want to be alone’ with such feeling. Or perhaps it’s not so much Garbo as the chant sung by the fans of Millwall FC that I should be thinking of: ‘No one likes us, we don’t care.’ At the time of writing, Millwall are lying fourth in Football League One. For the uninitiated, this is really the Third Division."

Jeremy Corbyn is acting like the leader of a minor party and Nick Clegg acted like the leader of a major party, argues William Barter.

Memphis Barker says the next leader of the Greens should not be a water melon.

Lynne About Loughborough attended the commemoration of the centenary of the Zeppelin raid on the town.

The comma splice is becoming more common, Daniel McMahon will tell you why it is wrong.

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Why Labour did surprisingly well in the South of England yesterday

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One of the features of yesterday's local elections in England was that Labour managed to hold on to what the Telegraph calls "key southern outposts like Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough".

Earlier today I heard someone on radio or the television suggest that this was because Jeremy Corbyn's views go down better with university-educated Southern voters than they do with more traditional working-class voters.

And I thought of the Richmond and Barnes constituency in the 1983 general election.

This was a knife-edge contest between the Conservatives and the Liberal Party (or Liberal Alliance, as we called ourselves in those days).

I was to find myself arriving on a doorstep 10 minutes before the polls closed, just as a Conservative activist arrived there too. We compared notes and found we were chasing the same voter.

The Liberals were eventually to lose by 74 votes and I am convinced we would have won with a more dynamic candidate.

On the last weekend of the contest the young activists (this was a long time ago) were sent out to call on the Labour supporters identified in our canvass and ask them to consider a tactical vote for the Liberals.

This approach received two distinct reactions. Working class voters were generally happy to consider the idea, even if they had a Labour posters in their window.

Middle-class Labour voters, typically teachers, however, were often offended to be asked. You had to vote for what you believed, they told me, even if your candidate had no chance of winning.

It is this second group of voters, I suspect, that Jeremy Corbyn appeals to. Which means that he may well be surprisingly successful in maintaining his party's Southern outposts.

But it also means that he may struggle to resist the appeal of Ukip to working-class Labour voters.

Incidentally, the Labour candidate I was urging people not to support was Keith Vaz. I think I did the right thing.

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"Labour is standing up, not standing by"

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That's what Jeremy Corbyn told the Welsh Labour Conference in February.

And that phrase has since been adopted as the party's slogan for this week's local elections.

But is it any good as a slogan?

Standing up for your principles or your friends is admirable. So is standing up to bullies.

Just standing up, however, is a pretty neutral act. (And it can be irritating to stand up if everyone else was sitting down.)

And then there is standing by.

Standing by while others suffer is a bad thing, but for the most part standing by is something positive. It means you are ready for action or there if you are needed.

If disaster threatened, you would be relieved to hear that the emergency services of the Army were standing by. It is what you would expect them to do. And, in the mean time, you wouldn't care if they were standing up or sitting down.

So "Standing up, not standing by" doesn't really work.

I suspect at the back of it there is an attempt to match Tony Blair's "I will not pass by on the other side."

But that a richness and biblical echoes (it came, after all, from Blair's early Son of God period) that Corbyn's slogan lacks.

Back to the drawing board, Christopher Robin.

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"Oakeshottian conservatives prefer the devil they know; idealists, rationalists and managerialists think they can improve upon it." Chris Dillow returns to one of his favourite themes: the trouble with the Conservatives is that they are no longer Conservative.

Anoosh Chakelian meets Piers Corbyn, brother of the Labour leader.

"Our National Parks are dominated by sheep farms and grouse or deer estates, leaving almost all our hills bare. Nature is protected in isolated reserves which provide important refuges for biodiversity. But these refuges are not joined up, and so are very fragile in the long-term." Helen Meech makes the case for rewilding.

St Peter's Seminary, Cardross, is a celebrated modernist ruin on the Firth of Clyde. John Grindrod has photographs of it from the 1960s: "What's immediately apparent is how beautiful the building is. The arches, the windows, the concrete, the strange forms and shadows."

Richly Evocative introduces us to the elusive, slippery territory that is Ashley Vale in, St Werburghs, Bristol.

Taylor Parkes celebrates The Professionals.

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How Jeremy Corbyn has changed prime minister's questions

Cameron makes almost 2x as many personal attacks as those aimed at him from Corbyn says @drpeterbull of @BPSOfficialhttps://t.co/kuIOevfN3H

— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) April 27, 2016

Dr Peter Bull, a psychologist from the University of York, appeared on Daily Politics today talking about his research into Jeremy Corbyn's approach to prime minister's questions.

As you can see above, he found that Corbyn's tactic of sourcing questions from members of the public has reduced the confrontational nature of PMQs in that David Cameron is less likely to reply to such questions with a personal attack on him.

It happens that the programme picked up this research from a press release I wrote in my day job.

Dr Bull is presenting his research tomorrow at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Nottingham.

I had originally wanted to aim the release at last Sunday's papers, but it was not possible to finalise it in time. Then a colleague had the bright idea of giving it a Wednesday embargo to coincide with today's PMQs.

In February I blogged here that Cameron had learnt how to deal with these questions from the public.

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Jeremy Corbyn grows up 30 years overnight

"I knew him when we were 18 or 19, and his views have not changed. We are talking about the thick end of 50 years ago."

So said one of Jeremy Corbyn's old friends when interviewed by the Shropshire Star last year.

That planting a red flag on top of the Wrekin is the most endearing thing I have read about Corbyn, but his friend's comment did play into the fear that his politics do not represent an engagement with the world around him.

So it was good to hear him today accepting political reality and arguing Britain should remain in the European Union.

As Martin Kettle says:

The Labour leader finally caught up with the pro-EU shift that his party made under Neil Kinnock in the 1980s.

That pro-EU shift did arise partly out of despair at Margaret Thatcher's repeated victories, but it also recognised that the world was changing. Westminster was not the only seat of power, and battles that could not be won there might be won somewhere else.

Throughout this period, Jeremy Corbyn clung to his anti-EU beliefs. He was a supporter of the Labout left's 'alternative economic strategy' and its emphasis on import controls.

There is a danger in getting less radical as you grow older - "I used to be a bit of a firebrand when I was your age, but you can't change human nature" - but there is a greater danger in living inside your head and not engaging with contemporary problems.

Somewhere in the background of every young radical is the ghost of Billy Liar and his imaginary kingdom of Ambrosia.

So I was pleased to see Corbyn accepting reality and arguing for continued British membership of the EU.

For the result of Brexit would not be the socialist paradise of his dreams, but - as he recognised - a more right-wing government glorying in the opportunity to remove protection from British workers.

Someone should tell Jenny Jones the same thing when it comes to environmental legislation.

Martin Kettle goes on to say:

Meanwhile the feebleness belongs to David Cameron. He called this referendum. He always knew he would be campaigning to stay in Europe. But he did little to prepare the ground and has given practically no thought to the alliances that will be required to ensure a remain win. A reckless budget and an inept response to the Panama Papers means that Cameron comes to the campaign starting line like an athlete lining up for the race of his life after a night on the tiles. 

All of which adds up to the extraordinary truth that, for once, Cameron desperately needed Corbyn to rise to the occasion. Labour votes will be crucial on 23 June, and until now Corbyn has allowed the idea to get around that he is not massively bothered by the outcome of the referendum. That made Thursday a speak-for-England moment for a Labour leader who is an instinctive sectarian – yet it was one that he seized.

This is a little strong: I doubt that Corbyn will appeal to the sort of Labour voters who are or have been tempted to vote Ukip,

But he is right that Cameron has been feeble. And not just Cameron.

I wrote in Liberal Democrat News (remember that?) five years ago:

For years the main parties have engaged in something close to a conspiracy. The issue of Europe has been taken out of general elections, with the promise that it will be decided through a referendum. Those referendums never take place. The result has been an infantilisation of debate on Europe, as politicians are allowed to take up self-indulgent, extreme positions they know they will never have to defend to the electorate.

Well, that referendum could not be put off for ever and it is fast approaching.

The political class will survive it unscathed: it is the rest of us who will suffer.

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: What the Liberal Democrats should do is...

Lord Bonkers concludes his visit to the United States.

As for we Liberal Democrats...

Then there is the Labour Party, as the New Party is calling itself these days. They need to dump Jeremy Corbyn, Christopher Robin Milne, Chairman Mao and all that crew and find themselves someone who can connect with the workers, as they flatter themselves they used to do. Frank Byers’ granddaughter is Terribly Keen, some military fellow called Jarvis has the skills you need in a closely fought by-election, but I am not holding my breath.

As for we Liberal Democrats, we need an ingenious new plan that will see us returned to the front rank of politics. What we should do is… Dash it all! My flight has just been called.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

Do you know New Rutland?

My old Friend Rising Star

The New Rutland Primaries

Liam Fox? My dear, I screamed!

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Andrew Grice reminds us that David Cameron and George Osborne should not forget the Lib Dems know where the bodies are buried.

Jeremy Corbyn is "acting as though he is the leader of a 3rd or 4th party, rather than leader of the opposition," says William Barter.

"As Milne walked down a corridor, the six-foot colleague approached from the other direction. They smashed into each other, sending Milne flying, along with the papers he was carrying. 'Seumas was in shock,' recalls an onlooker. 'No one had ever done that to him before. He expected people to show deference to him.'" Alex Wickham profiles the Winchester-educated Stalinist who is Labour's executive director of strategy and communications.

A reader sent me a link to Futility Closet, where Alfred Kahn's concept of the "tyranny of small decisions" is discussed.

Hunter Oatman-Stanford takes us to Scarfolk, a strange land built on the public information films made to terrify children in the 1970s.

"In the 1960s, trip boats from Little Venice would take extended tours across the Thames into the depths of Peckham and Camberwell, and even in the 1970s, some insisted the canal should be saved." Peter Watts on the loss of the Grand Surrey Canal.

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Mary Reid has been reading a report from the Manifesto Club on Public Space Protection Orders.

It's not Bernie Sanders that Jerermy Corbyn resembles, but Donald Trump. Lance Parkin draws parallels between the woes of the Republicans and the Labour Party.

"Our heritage, our history, our quirky collecting natures are being eroded and erased by the need to make financial savings, to economise, to pare down and re-shape." Tincture of Museum on the threat to our smaller museums.

"All this promises well for Mile End, does it not? Think of all the comfortable and respectable suburbs of London, from Norwood to Golder's Green, and try to find one with a series of concerts like this." The Guardian recently republished a 1921 interview with Adrian Boult about his plans to bring classical music to the East End.

The Gentle Author on two unlikely neighbours: Handel and Jimi Hendrix.

The Nottingham Post has a gallery of 30 photographs of the city's Victoria station.

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Income inequality was unchanged over the Coalition years

John Rentoul eats humble pie in the Independent:

Nick Clegg: an apology. I may have given the impression that the Liberal Democrats were a waste of space, and their crushing in the general election was a merited humiliation. Statements such as “Clegg was a fool to have gone into coalition with the Tories” and “the Lib Dems got nothing in return for ministerial posts that David Cameron didn’t want to give them” may have led the reader to believe I thought the whole business a diversion and the resumption of single-party government a welcome simplification. 

If so, there has been a misunderstanding. I now realise, reading Clegg’s interview with The Independent’s Andrew Grice last week, that I agree with Nick. 

For all the overheated language from the left about inequality, the record of the Coalition was surprisingly good. New figures from the Office for National Statistics last week confirmed that income inequality was unchanged in the 2010-15 period. This is something of an achievement at a time when the Government was cutting public spending, and Clegg is justified in claiming to have tried to balance the books “in the fairest possible way”.

It's good that we are starting to read views like this, but there is a need to enter a couple of qualifications.

First, income inequality tends to decline when the economy is doing badly and to increase when it is doing well and employers have to compete for skilled labour.

Second, as I once blogged, the Lib Dems won't flourish in 2020 by blaming the voters for 2015.

What these figures do show is how dishonest the Labour Party was throughout the Coalition years.

But that dishonesty did not just harm the Liberal Democrats: it harmed Labour too.

It encouraged a mind-set under which Labour and other left-wing activists spoke only to themselves, became increasingly outraged and steadily distanced themselves from the sort of voters they need to win over.

The natural outcome of that process was their choice of a leader who appealed to them and few others people.

Step forward Jeremy Corbyn.

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David Cameron has worked out how to deal with Jeremy Corbyn's emailed questions

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Election campaigns throw up characters who are famous for a day and then forgotten.

Remember Gillian Duffy or Jennifer and her ear? Only just.

The US Presidential campaign of 2008 produced such a figure in the shape of Joe the Plumber.

He was Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who questioned Obama's economic policies at a neighbourhood meeting in Ohio.

The Republicans and the media painted him as the epitome of blue-collar America and he was often mentioned during the campaign.

In November 2008 I blogged about the way that Barack Obama dealt with this:

This is how you win elections. 

In today's Spectator Fraser Nelson describes how Obama dealt with Joe: 

"Joe’s cool," Mr Obama said. "I got no problem with Joe. All I want to do is cut Joe’s taxes. But Senator McCain isn’t working for Joe the Plumber. He’s working for Joe the Hedge Fund Manager."

Today David Cameron used the same tactic at prime minister's questions when Jeremy Corbyn used one of his emailed questions. It came from Rosie who was forced to live with her parents because she could not find or afford her own place to live.

As Lloyd Evans tells it for the Spectator:

He co-opted Rosie’s identity and began putting words into her mouth. Rosie wants this, Rosie wants that. He said ‘Rosie’ half a dozen times. Rosie wants a strong economy. Rosie wants lower tax thresholds. Rose wants a prosperous Britain where the young can purchase their homes thanks to the help-to-buy ISA. 

Rosie – the way Cameron told it – is such a passionate supporter of Tory policy that she might as well declare herself a leadership candidate.

I think we may see fewer emailed questions at PMQs in future.

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: Corbyn sends for Christopher Robin Milne

The old boy turns out to have known Labour's new Executive Director of Strategy and Communications since he was so high.

Jeremy Corbyn sends for Christopher Robin Milne

There is only one area of our national life where the hereditary principle holds greater sway than it does here in the aristocracy. I refer, of course, to the press and broadcasting. There are whole neighbourhoods of London where it is impossible to toss a brick without hitting a Coren or a Dimbleby – not that one would try too hard to avoid doing so. Thus I was not surprised when the son of my old friend Milne went into journalism nor when he became director of communications for the new leader of the Labour Party.

I remember him as a golden-haired little fellow in the Nursery astride his rocking horse in a sailor suit or kneeling at the foot of his bed saying his prayers. Less happily, I remember him down from Winchester or Oxford talking the most awful rot about the need for Socialism. Why, he even spoke up for Stalin! I don’t think he would have been so keen on him if he had met the fellow as I did. Then came the Guardian and endless articles with titles like ‘Did 20 Million Really die?’ Now he sits at Corbyn’s right hand recommending purges every second day.

No, I cannot pretend to care for Christopher Robin Milne.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

A shadow cabinet maker

Giving Isis one up the snoot

Andrew Neil's press gang

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Andrew Hickey is not impressed by the Stronger In campaign.

"Orwell was far more interested, as Corbyn has been far more interested, in speaking truth to power than in holding office. His loyalty was to the movement, or at least the idea of the movement, not to MPs or the front bench, which he rarely mentioned." Robert Colls (who taught me on my Masters course many years ago) on what Jeremy Corbyn can learn from George Orwell.

David Hencke explains how Chris Grayling's attempt to sell prison expertise to regimes with appalling judicial systems like Saudi Arabia and Oman cost the taxpayer over £1m. If he were a councillor he would be surcharged.

Mad to be Normal is a film on the radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing currently in production. Caron Lindsay finds a Lib Dem connection.

Peter Bebergal is interviewed by Dangerous Minds about his new book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.

"“And Ukraine just wanted to be absolutely sure that the oil and the electricity rolls through." BuzzFeed remembers 19 Eurovision moments from Terry Wogan.

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Luciana Berger shows what it will take to survive in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party

You may have seen the front page lead of today's Guardian: a deeply worrying story about a sudden spike in the number of mental health patients dying unexpectedly in NHS care.

It was based on figures obtained by the former health minister Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk.

The Guardian quoted Norman's comment on the figures:

"Significant numbers of unexpected deaths at the Mid Staffs NHS trust caused an outcry and these figures should cause the same because they show a dramatic increase in the number of people losing their lives,” Lamb said. 

“NHS England and the government should set up an investigation into the causes of this as these figures involve tragedies for families around the country and the human impact is intense.” 

Underfunding of sometimes threadbare mental health services which are struggling to cope with rising demand for care is to blame, Lamb claimed.

One of the best things about politics since 2010 has been the new importance given to questions of mental health. This was exemplified by the 2012 debate in which MPs from both sides of the Commons spoke about their own experience of mental health problems.

So how did Luciana Berger, Labour's shadow mental health minister, respond to Norman Lamb's comments?

Let me show you:

.@normanlamb until 8 months ago u were the Minister for #mentalhealth. What did you do about this during ur 2.5yrs? pic.twitter.com/G4fFEF8vkV

— Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) January 25, 2016

Why did Berger break from the cross-party approach to mental health?

It is certainly not because she is a wild left-winger.

Though, as the great niece of Manny Shinwell, she has some claim to come from the working-class aristocracy, she comes from an affluent background. She attended the private Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls (current fees £15,516 per annum).

When she was parachuted into the Liverpool Wavertree constituency just before the 2010 election she soon became a controversial figure. She was seen as a Blairite, not least because of her friendship with Euan Blair.

But being a Blairite won't do her any favours now. Not with boundary changes in the air and threats of deselection coming from Corbyn loyalists. Certainly not on Merseyside.

Hence the stupid, partisan tweet we see above.

I am sure Berger is intelligent enough to realise that this approach will alienate the moderate voters Labour needs to win over to have any hope of winning the next election.

But she is trapped. And her fellow moderate Labour MPs are trapped too until they see the opportunity and summon the courage to depose Jeremy Corbyn and his strange inner circle of Trots and Stalinists.

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The Labour leadership is split between Kennites and Corbynites

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The cool kids agree that this Labour Uncut article from the end of last year by Atul Hatwal got it about right:

At the heart of the split is a long-running tension between two factions of the hard left: Socialist Action and the Labour Representation Committee. 

In the corner on the left is Socialist Action – a Trotskyist group most closely associated with Ken Livingstone with several of his advisers from his time as Mayor, either members or supporters. 

As Livingstone himself said, “Almost all of my advisers had been involved in Socialist Action,” 

“It was the only rational left-wing group you could engage with. They used to produce my socialist economic policies. It was not a secret group.” ...

Prominent Livingstone City Hall alumni, Simon Fletcher and Neale Coleman, now occupy central roles in Jeremy Corbyn’s office as chief of staff and head of policy and rebuttal while the former Mayor is co-chair of Labour’s defence review.

And the other group?

In the corner even further to the left is the Labour Representation Committee. (LRC) Founded in 2004 (lifting the name of Labour’s original founding committee from 1900) by John McDonnell, the LRC has a more doctrinaire and unbending view of the path to socialism. 

Compromise is to be minimised – the frog needs to be dropped into boiling water with the lid clamped tightly shut to prevent escape. 

The majority of Jeremy Corbyn’s inner sanctum is drawn either from the LRC or sympathetic to its perspective. 

For example, John McDonnell MP remains the LRC chair, Corbyn adviser Andrew Fisher was until recently its Secretary, Jon Lansman, who runs Momentum, is on its national committee and Katy Clark, the former MP and now political secretary to Jeremy Corbyn is a long term supporter. 

Until his election as leader, Jeremy Corbyn was one of the most prominent MPs affiliated to the LRC.

The resignation of Neale Coleman suggests the Kennites are losing.

But whatever the truth of that, enjoy the picture of a young John McDonnell above.

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Peter Kelner, interviewed in a podcast, looks at how Labour MPs might depose Jeremy Corbyn - something they will have to do if the party is to stand any chance at the next election.

Suddenly Basic Income is fashionable. Tom Streithorst asks if it could work.

April Peavey remembers when Pierre Boulez met Frank Zappa.

"Replacing the aggressive Irishmen in pubs and stoned out drug dealers, the countryside instead provides aggressive farmers and 'country folk' who have no wish to deal with 'London types'." Adam Scovell points out the importance of landscape in Withnail and I.

The Cottonopolis has some amazing pictures of Manchester's abandoned buildings.

"When I saw the rusted redundant railing on a forgotten walkway above the Ouse I thought about how you can live in a place for so long and still have new things to find, when forced from the usual ways and the beaten track." York Stories encounters a flooded river.

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"When he became leader of the Opposition, Corbyn was an unknown, even to his own side. Really, he was not of the Labour Party at all. He’s hardly followed the Labour whip, he disagreed with large amounts of what the party did when last in government, and he’s spent most of his time surrounded by a small coterie of like-minded outsiders." Jay Elwes on the takeover of Labour by a strange tribe.

Gordon Lishman writes writes about an economics motion the Social Liberal Forum will be submitting to the Liberal Democrat Conference.

You will find a good podcast about Labour's troubles on Political Betting.

"It almost seems as if the Chancellor doesn’t feel that improving house prices is possible. His range of policies set out in the Budget and Spending Review this year all point to him focussing on using public funds to ‘help’ people buy homes rather than improving market conditions. And, unsurprisingly, the problem is most acute in London." Joe Sarling explains how public funds are inflating the bubble in the capital's property prices.

Jim Holt reviews a new book on Sir Thomas Browne.

Footprints of London visits Churchill’s secret wartime facility at the former Down Street Underground station,

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Labour MPs want to oust Jeremy Corbyn and make Alan Johnson new leader

I have no idea if the story is true - and Alan Johnson has shown no enthusiasm for being Labour leader when he has been asked to stand or lead a coup in the past - but the Mirror is reporting this evening:

Moderate Labour MPs want veteran MP Alan Johnson to step in as caretaker leader if they manage to oust Jeremy Corbyn . 

Four senior sources including members of the shadow cabinet have said they see the former Home Secretary as the best man to unite the party if Mr Corbyn was forced to step down. 

One shadow cabinet source said it was “a case of when, not if” Mr Corbyn is forced out by disgruntled MPs.

Liberal England: circulating unfounded rumours since 2004.

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Mark Steel, whataboutery and polytoynbeeism

Outrageous that Corbyn goes to a Stop the War dinner - he should go to dinners held by arms dealers and offshore bankers like a proper MP.

— Mark Steel (@mrmarksteel) December 11, 2015

Back in September I suggested that "whataboutery is pretty much all that enthusiasts for Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party have to offer".

Certainly that trope is alive and well amongst them, judging by the number of times this has been retweeted into my timeline.

The truth, of course, is that it is perfectly possible to believe Corbyn is wrong to hang out with apologists for Putin and Assad and to believe it is wrong for MPs to allows themselves to be wined and dined by arms dealers and offshore bankers.

Still, whataboutery does represent a new departure for Mark Steel. In the past he has relied solely upon polytoynbeeism:

Mark Steel has based a whole stand up and journalistic career on this trick. His every column or routine runs in essence: "So the Tories say X do they? I expect they say Y and Z too!" And everyone laughs. 

They laugh because this technique is a form of political group grooming. It reminds you how generous and sensible you and your allies are, and how cruel and stupid your opponents are.

But then Steel had to broaden his range when he left the SWP in 2008 (but was kept on by Radio 4 even so). For, as Harry's Blog pointed out at the time:

Given that Mark Steel's comedy routine consists of reciting the editorials from last week's Socialist Worker in a "blokey" voice, I wonder what he'll do for material in the future.

So well done Mark. Maybe your comic repertoire will be so broad one day that you will be able to come out against fascists and semi-fascists like Assad and Putin.

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