Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday delivers his first speech to a Labour Party conference as its leader. It’s often said that he has basically given the same speech, in some form, for the past thirty years, but usually to a much smaller – and generally exclusively sympathetic – audience.
- Follow live conference coverage from The Guardian here.
- Follow live conference coverage from the BBC here.
The FT’s Janan Ganesh writes, on Corbyn’s rise:
Corbynism is likened to continental convulsions such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. But these countries were brutalised by the euro crisis and its remedial austerity. Britain was not. The far left cannot even stand up its claim that inequality is rising here.
Their movement has more in common with the psychic disturbances going on in anglophone democracies than with anything in Europe. Mr Corbyn became Labour leader for the same reason that Australia, which has not had a recession since 1991, cannot hang on to a prime minister; and America, with 5 per cent unemployment, is toying with the idea of President Donald Trump or President Bernie Sanders.
https://twitter.com/harrydcarr/status/648761466515030016
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WORLD
Monday evening’s meeting between Presidents Putin and Obama, scheduled for an hour, ran just over 90 minutes.
Earlier, Putin told the UN General Assembly that, as Joshua Keating at Slate puts it, ‘America is destroying the world, and only we can stop it.‘
Speaking shortly after Obama dismissed Russia’s view that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad can be a partner in fighting ISIS, Putin, making his first address to the General Assembly in a decade, blamed foreign—read: U.S.—interference for helping the spread of extremism in the Middle East. “Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in the brazen destruction of institutions,” he said. Addressing “those who’ve caused the situation,” Putin said he’s temped to ask, “do you realize now what you’ve done?” (Putin never referred to the U.S. specifically, only to an unnamed Voldemort-like malevolent presence doing terrible things in the world.)
In domestic US politics, the Senate advanced a bill to avoid a government shutdown while Ted Cruz found himself apparently isolated by his own party.
Meanwhile, in the GOP presidential primary, the policy debate is being honed.
Tuesday will see some big players giving evidence to Congress on Benghazi.
And on that big Nasa announcement,
they didn’t say intelligent life. So that’s fine.
(of course, everyone knows Nasa’s announcement wasn’t part of any “leftist agenda” since it was obviously part of the marketing campaign for this…)
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BUSINESS
More worries over China, and mining, and emissions. Meanwhile, a big rate cut in India.
https://twitter.com/dlAsianews/status/648791940268355585
And this is interesting..
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MEDIA
Will the FT’s new owners give a commitment to journalistic independence?
John Cassidy interviews FT chief executive John Ridding for the New Yorker and writes:
Ridding, a former F.T. journalist himself, pointed out that Nikkei is largely owned and run by ex-journalists. Still, Japanese reporters, and those who work for Nikkei in particular, have a reputation for going easy on the country’s corporations. Ridding said that he didn’t think that was fair. “When you talk to them as journalists about news, they love news,” he said. “But I think the most important thing is they understand our values and editorial independence. I’m not going to tell them how to run Nikkei, and they are not going to tell us how to do editorial independence at the F.T. They are very clear about that.”
We’ll see, I guess…
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CULTURE
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah officially launched last night. As Noah said: “one more job rejected by an American now being done by an immigrant.” And he did a nice job. Once he hits his personal stride, the show will continue to be as must-see as it was with the departed Jon Stewart. (Nice shout out to the Mets, as well..)
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/648580523196026880