Corbyn & McDonnell ‘did not speak for months’ during rift

Labour left in chaos as long-time allies fell out

JEREMY Corbyn and John McDonnell did not speak to each other “for months” as the row over anti–Semitism engulfed the party, it was claimed yesterday.

The pair, Labour’s most powerful figures for nearly five years as leader and Shadow Chancellor, had been close for decades.

But it is claimed they stopped talking and would walk straight past each other in Parliament after the party began a probe into veteran Jewish MP Margaret Hodge.

The investigation came after Dame Margaret was said to have shouted at Mr Corbyn in a corridor, accusing him of racism and being anti-Semitic.

A new book by journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire claims the relationship fell apart because Mr McDonnell felt it was wrong to hold the probe.

The book says: “A question that preoccupied aides was whether McDonnell and Corbyn were comrades or personal friends first.

“For a period that summer it was clear they were neither.”

It said McDonnell “exploded” over the 2018 investigation into Dame Margaret, a party member for more than 50 years.

The book claims: “One senior aide said, ‘They never spoke for months. Never spoke the whole summer.’ The leader refused to contact the man to whom he had once been a lone friend in politics. By the end of the summer, neither was answering the other’s calls.”

The book quotes another Labour staffer saying: “They were walking past each other in the corridor and blanking each other – it was that level of not talking.”

The book, serialised in The Times, says Mr Corbyn’s senior policy adviser Andrew Fisher was sent to Norfolk, where the Shadow Chancellor was on holiday on the Broads, to negotiate a settlement.

It adds: “After a call with Corbyn and his aides, McDonnell agreed to bury the hatchet.”

The book, Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, adds: “A question that troubled some was whether Corbyn categorised anti-Semitism as the kind of racism he set himself against.”

It quotes close Corbyn ally and trade unionist Andrew Murray saying: “He’s empathetic with the poor, the disadvantaged, the migrant, the marginalised.

“Happily, that is not the Jewish community in Britain today.

“He’d have had massive empathy in the 1930s and would have been at Cable Street, no question.”

They’d just pass by in corridors, it was that level of not talking

LABOUR STAFFER QUOTED IN BOOK