SHADOW chancellor John McDonnell is ‘worried and saddened’ by the prospect of a Labour Party split and has appealed to MPs considering leaving the party to engage in dialogue with the leadership.
n an exclusive interview with Jason Cowley in this week’s New Statesman, he admitted that he wanted to avoid a split ‘at all costs’. Addressing the right wing fake anti-Semitism witchhunt against leader Jeremy Corbyn, McDonnell pledged to resolve the issue ‘as quickly as possible’.
The shadow chancellor told the New Statesman that it would be ‘disappointing’ if Labour MPs were considering splitting for the sake of ‘individual personal careers’. In a direct appeal to colleagues considering quitting the party, he stressed that the leadership had an ‘open door’.
Stressing that disagreements over anti-Semitism, Brexit and MPs’ careers could be addressed internally, the shadow chancellor said he was worried that colleagues could leave. He said: ‘If those are the issues that people want to split on, these are all issues which can be dealt with within the party.
‘And I don’t see them as fundamental issues that would encourage a split because there are opportunities for people not just to express their views but actually sometimes to win the argument as well.
‘So I don’t understand why there is this sort of pre-emptive move to split off. So I’m worried and I’m saddened by that and I think that open door is always there to prevent that happening because any split is automatically damaging.’
Asked whether he believed Labour would be better off without those MPs considering leaving, he said: ‘I don’t think any split is good. My view is that this concept of the party as a broad church is a good thing.’
Warning against a damaging breakaway as happened with the SDP, he said: ‘The issue for me is I’d want to avoid at all costs a split if we can. That’s why I’m saying I don’t understand why people are more motivated in that way on any of these issues. There’s open democracy within the party. They may well win their arguments on some of these issues, and if it is about individual personal concerns just come and see us because there’s a role for every order.’
McDonnell acknowledged that Labour’s alleged anti-Semitism crisis had led some MPs to consider their position and said: ‘Basically we’ve got to resolve it and we will resolve it and that’s it.’
He also revealed that he personally assured Margaret Hodge, the veteran Jewish MP who was threatened with disciplinary action by Labour after calling Corbyn an anti-Semite, that he would resolve the row. He nonetheless defended Corbyn’s role in handling the row and said the Labour leader was ‘listening to people now, and then coming to a consensus view’.
