McDonnell refuses to apologise for McVey slur he claims was just ‘stand-up comedy’
JOHN McDonnell yesterday refused to apologise for repeating a vicious joke about Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey.
The shadow chancellor was accused of having quoted activists ‘approvingly’ who suggested Miss McVey should be ‘lynched’.
Last week a Cabinet minister called the remarks ‘utterly disgusting’. But confronted by Andrew Marr over the comments yesterday, Mr McDonnell claimed it was a ‘stand-up’ comedy event and he had retold the story to prove how ‘rough’ politics is in Liverpool.
In 2014, the hard-Left politician spoke about a visit to Miss McVey’s former Merseyside constituency, where she faced a union -backed campaign to oust her from the marginal seat.
To laughter, Mr McDonnell said: ‘I was up in Liverpool a fortnight ago where Alec McFadden, one of our [union] organisers, launched the Sack Esther McVey Day on her birthday. I spoke at a packed public meeting. There was a whole group in the audience that completely kicked off, quite critical of the whole concept, because they were arguing, “Why are [we] sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the b ****** ?”.’
A recording of the event was made public for the first time last week. In an interview on his BBC1 show yesterday, Mr Marr asked the shadow chancellor if he wanted to hear it, saying: ‘Well, the problem is people think that you weren’t simply quoting people, but that you were somehow quoting them approvingly.’
He replied: ‘No, I don’t. You don’t need to, I know exactly what was on it... It was a stand-up thing and I was saying, look this is how rough politics is up there and it’s ridiculous.’
Mr Marr then asked whether the shadow chancellor now wanted to apologise to Miss McVey, ‘if she was upset, as she would have been by what was said?’
But Mr McDonnell refused, and instead criticised Government policies over the disabled.
James Cleverly MP, the Conservative Party deputy chairman, said last night: ‘John McDonnell has demonstrated yet again why Labour are not fit to govern.
‘In the course of a single interview, we see Labour have no plan for Brexit, won’t say what their reckless renationalisation scheme would cost taxpayers, and despite promising “kinder, gentler politics”, the shadow chancellor has today repeatedly refused to apologise for sickening abuse.’
Miss McVey lost her Wirral West seat in 2015 after she was targeted by hard-Left activists, but returned to Parliament last year after winning George Osborne’s old seat of Tatton.