Jeremy Corbyn was right to say 'Jeff', who wanted to pay same tax as Google, 'spoke for millions'

It would be easy to scoff at the hundreds of people who claimed they had the missing £33m lottery ticket – including the “Lotto Gran” who said she had put it in the wash. How did they think they would get away with it? But, then again, when companies such as Google are winning millions of pounds on the HMRC lottery every week, who can blame some of those would-be Lotto winners for chancing their arm? Google says it has abided by UK tax laws, which it has, but it doesn’t seem fair to we “ordinary” taxpayers who are fed up with massive corporations like the tech giant similarly “getting away with it” by paying a paltry 3 per cent tax rate. It is hard to not feel a sting of resentment – particularly those of us who have just dutifully filed our tax returns to HMRC – at Google striking a deal to pay £130m of unpaid taxes over 10 years, when they could have paid so much more.

That’s why Jeremy Corbyn was right to say at Prime Minister’s Questions that “Jeff”, the “working man of over 30 years” who wondered whether there was a scheme he could join that pays the same rate of tax as Google, “speaks for millions”. The Labour leader is laughed at by Tory MPs opposite when he quotes members of the public at the Dispatch Box, but on issues like this, invoking the everyday voter works – and portrays David Cameron as the defender of big-business tax avoiders. We can all empathise with Jeff.

PMQs exposes a paradox in Corbyn’s leadership. Many Labour MPs who would rather he wasn’t leader went away from the exchange feeling pretty happy with his performance. There are some of Corbyn’s policy positions, such as on Trident, that are simply insurmountable for them. And yet as long as Corbyn speaks up for the “ordinary” man or woman at PMQs, who should be typical Labour voters, it is difficult to make a case for why he should go. They can express legitimate rage at the Trident policy, or at the concerted attempts to target moderate Labour MPs by far-left groups, or at Corbyn’s dismal personal and party poll ratings – and yet so long as the Labour leader quotes people like Jeff at the Dispatch Box, there is little that can be done.

PMQs isn’t everything – remember how Ed Miliband stormed the clash on 27 January one week before nosediving the next? – but it is a party’s front-of-house, the most prominent part that the public sees. It is no use complaining that the lifts are on fire and Momentum has taken over the third floor when the front-desk receptionist is just smiling and waving. So anti-Corbyn Labour MPs have to acknowledge when the leader has struck a chord, and sit tight. As it happens, I maintain that Corbyn does not have Labour’s winning ticket, but I’m sure it will all come out in the wash.

Reality bites for Barbie...

Mattel has produced a new range of more “realistic” Barbies after acknowledging that parents like me did mind the (thigh) gap. There is still a slim, long-haired Barbie who looks like she always did – ie, that she’s on her way to a yoga class in California – but there are also shorter (or “petite”) dolls and “curvy” ones. I showed a picture of the new range to my five-and-a-half-year-old daughter (who doesn’t own a Barbie but has somehow osmotically absorbed the classic image of the plastic supermodel into her brain and I don’t know how to get it out) and asked her what she thought. She said the glamorous Californian one was “the real Barbie” and looked at the others before saying “that’s not Barbie”. “I don’t like her clothes,” was how she described one of the “curvier” dolls. Actually, the girl has a point: in the promotional photos, slim and tall Barbies are dressed more elegantly, while those with the more realistic body shapes are in chunky, unflattering denim skirts and tie-dye cut-offs. As someone who has never owned a waist, I can tell you these are not good looks. I now have my work cut out to change my daughter’s view of Barbie – and so I will go and buy “curvy” Barbie, perhaps also treating the doll to some nicer outfits. But Mattel’s efforts cannot be enough: while Disney princesses have tiny waists and sucked in cheeks, changing little girls’ ideas on body image will be impossible.

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... and for Sam Cam

Samantha Cameron’s canapés and surfing trophy cake won her Star Baker in the Great British Bake Off special for Sport Relief last week, but will her husband’s old foe Ed Balls win his round, making it a hung parl-au-vont? I know these specials are really about charity, but there were also touching moments in Sam Cam’s victory: when she was handed a bouquet she remarked that she’s used to getting flowers as the Prime Minister’s wife, but not in her own right. Then, after giggling at her own attempts inside the Bake Off tent, she said she hadn’t “laughed that much since I was at the back of the classroom” at school. Judging by the Prime Minister’s terrible jokes at PMQs, which include lame gags about Back to the Future and Shakespeare, I can see why.

The wets are all going dry

It’s no laughing matter for MPs who want to have a drink while waiting for late-night votes in the proposed temporary House of Commons accommodation at Richmond House, where the Department of Health is now located, after it was revealed on 29 January that alcohol is forbidden because the building has been financed by an Islamic bond. During the relocation, while the Palace of Westminster undergoes a £4bn revamp, MPs will be blocked from going to their cut-price bars. But, as one MP pointed out to me, while the sale of alcohol is banned under sharia rules, there’s nothing to stop our politicians carrying a hip flask and having a nip – bringing a whole new meaning to “Ways and Means”. But why can’t they queue with the tourists and special advisers who cram into the Red Lion pub a short distance away on Whitehall for a full-price pint?

Twitter: @janemerrick23