Extraordinary moment McDonnell is accused of lying on live TV... by his own MPs
JOHN McDonnell was accused of lying over anti-Semitism by two Labour MPs in an extraordinary row on live television.
The Shadow Chancellor was challenged after he boasted about the swift action taken against his former parliamentary aide, Labour MP Naz Shah.
Mr McDonnell claimed she was ‘immediately suspended’ from the party after her offensive Facebook posts were discovered in April 2016.
But Lisa Nandy, who was in the Shadow Cabinet with Mr McDonnell at the time, and fellow backbencher Wes Streeting, said he was not telling the truth.
Appearing on ITV’s Peston programme, Mr McDonnell said there had been an exemplary response by the party after it emerged that Mrs Shah had shared an image arguing for Israel’s population to be ‘transported’ out of the Middle East to America. He said: ‘Look what happened when Naz Shah was my PPS [parliamentary private secretary].
‘We immediately suspended her. We suspended her [as my PPS] and from the party, she apologised, she went through an exercise through her local Jewish community. She’s now held up by her Jewish community as a shining example of how you address these things.’
Miss Nandy interrupted: ‘I was in the Shadow Cabinet at the time and I was trying to get answers out of the leader’s office... The official line coming out of the party was “we’ll draw a line under it”, and that changed under pressure from members of the Shadow Cabinet.’ Mr McDonnell replied: ‘I took that decision. I’m sorry, you’re wrong.’ But Miss Nandy insisted: ‘It’s not true.’ Mr Streeting joined in, saying: ‘I’m not going to name individual members of Labour party staff, but you know as well as I do that the most senior member of staff for strategy and communication did not think she should be suspended, did not think that she should resign.’
This appeared to be a reference to Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications.
Mr McDonnell replied: ‘I’m sorry Wes that is just unfair. I dealt with Naz, I think it is a shining example of how we deal with things effectively.’
He added: ‘The issue for me was why we weren’t quicker on other cases as well.’