New shadow chancellor says he is more combative than Jeremy Corbyn and raises questions over Labour leadership’s Europe policy

Jeremy Corbyn’s closest political ally, John McDonnell, has admitted he is more combative than the new Labour leader, as signs of fierce resistance emerged within the parliamentary party to his appointment as shadow chancellor.

McDonnell told a fringe meeting at the TUC conference in Brighton that he was not very good at the consensual style of politics Corbyn has promised to usher in or at respecting people who disagree with him.

He also told the Guardian that Corbyn would only take a view on the EU referendum package when David Cameron presented a deal.

“Jeremy has made it clear that what we should be working with parties across Europe for is a reform package across Europe itself. Whatever Cameron comes back with, we will have to assess what that is,” he said.

“If it is any attack on employment rights or the promotion of TTIP [the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] we will be rejecting that package, but we will have to come up with a reform programme as well. Jeremy has not supported withdrawal, but has not given Cameron a free pass on it.”

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However, Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Corbyn would fight to stay in the EU “under all circumstances”. It was not clear who was stating Corbyn’s position.

McDonnell’s appointment was seen among senior Labour figures as a disavowal of Corbyn’s commitment to create a political consensus, and a failure to create gender balance at the top of the party.



Charles Clarke, a former home secretary, said on Today that he was aghast at the appointment and took it as an indication that Corbyn was appointing hard-left allies instead of building a broad-based shadow cabinet.

Benn declined to offer a full endorsement of McDonnell. Asked if he was 100% behind the appointment, he said: “This is the choice that Jeremy has made. I respect the choice that Jeremy has made as leader.”

McDonnell acknowledged his reputation as a political bruiser at a meeting organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) at the Corn Exchange in Brighton on Sunday night.



An hour before he was named shadow chancellor,, he told the audience: “Jeremy’s style has been consensual and what has been appreciated throughout the campaign of the last 12 weeks was to introduce something which hasn’t been in British politics for a long while. It is called kindness. It means that you respect one another in a debate even if you disagree.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

“But I am not very good at that. That is why I am not the leader of the Labour party,” he said, to laughter and a round of applause.

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At the PCS meeting, McDonnell defended the shadow cabinet appointments which were soon to be announced, but hinted that the process of putting together a frontbench team had been fraught.



“I am hoping that within the hour we will have a shadow cabinet put together,” he said. “As you know, that has been slightly more challenging than the traditional shadow cabinet. It will be as broad-based as we could possibly make it and as inclusive as possible.”

Speaking to Sky News on Monday, he defended Corbyn’s failure to appoint any women to what have traditionally been seen as the top positions - shadow chancellor, shadow home secretary and shadow foreign secretary.

“They are not top jobs,” he said. “I don’t accept that. You can’t say that foreign secretary is more important than delivering education to our children or the health of the population. We don’t accept those hierarchies.”

A full list of shadow cabinet ministers has now been unveiled, with more than half of the key posts going to women.

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McDonnell, who served as head of finance at the now-defunct Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone, shared a platform at the PCS meeting with Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister.

He quipped that some people were already trying to compare him to Varoufakis because of his anti-austerity views. “Someone said to me: ‘Are you going to be Britain’s Yanis Varoufakis?’ And I said: ‘I could never be that cool,’” he said to laughter from the audience.

McDonnell joked that the only reason that he had come to the meeting was to ask Varoufakis to sign a copy of his book. “Our politics were formed in the late 1970s and 1980s ... I was a member of the NUM, a full time official in the National Union of Mineworkers, in strikes that saw our communities decimated. I was also chair of finance on the GLC – I was chancellor of the exchequer for London at the time,” he said.

He recalled how police in the 80s had falsified statements to bring a prosecution against him and several women activists who were protesting against nuclear weapons and were arrested in Westminster.

“I think I was prosecuted for GBH, jumping under a barrier, hitting the back of an officer and thumping him to the ground. Three different officers and a detective sergeant and a PC gave evidence to this effect. But thank God there was an American woman there with a cine camera, it shows how long ago it was, and we all got off singing in the dock. That formed our politics in the struggle at the time,” he said.

He described the government’s trade union bill, which was debated in parliament on Monday, as an existential threat to the Labour movement.

“The Labour party is unanimously opposed. We will be working with the other parties in opposition. There are a number of Conservatives who are anxious about the bill, because employers are worried about the change in the industrial relations climate as a result,” he said.

“So what we are going to try and do, if we can’t defeat the bill, is ameliorate the bill. One of our big demands is for electronic balloting in the workplace. If we can’t get that in the Commons, we will have to focus on the Lords campaign by putting it in a civil liberties context.”