Andrew Marr: You’re one of the seven MPs who lost the whip and have been interviewed by the chief whip over the last few days. What’s the latest?
John McDonnell: Not heard anything. The chief whip before told us that he’d come back to us. We’ve served our sentence of six months – we were suspended for six months.
I’m hoping everyone will just have the whip restored. I think there’s going to be a delay with me, because I was involved in the Palestine demonstration two weekends ago, and I was brought in by the police, and interviewed under caution, about whether we’d gone beyond the boundaries that the police had set us for the demonstration. We’re just waiting for the police decision on that. So I’m hoping that will be cleared up and then I’m hoping the whip will be restored.
The reason I want the whip restored is I was elected as a Labour MP. I’ve been in the Labour Party now – blimey – 50 years. The Labour Party is me; I’m the Labour Party; the Labour Party is part of me; and I just want to ensure that we can just get back to normal.
There’s elements within the party: a few of them would quite happily see me either leave the party or get chucked out. I’m not leaving – this is my party – and I just want to continue my work within it.
The issue was the rebellion over the two-child benefit cap, and it’s been suggested that people have been kind of presented with, as it were, something to sign saying, “I won’t rebel in future if I get the whip back on those kinds of issues.” Do you think that’s true, and do you think any one of you would actually do that?
That’s not been put to me. But, of course, even when we’re suspended, we still have to abide by the Labour whip. So we’ll be told you’ve got to abide by the Labour whip in the future, just like every other MP has to. But these things are always matters of principle. And there’s always been a sort of understanding within the party that, on some issues, people will be allowed to express dissent. That’s democracy.
Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, that’s always been the case. And I just want us to return to normal practice. I’ve always worked on the basis that, when an issue comes up, I look at what’s best for my constituents, what’s best for the country, and also look at my own principles, and then you take into account the party. I’ve always followed that line. I know it’s got me into trouble sometimes, but I think it’s the correct thing to do. And actually it’s the thing that Keir reiterated – he said, “Country before party”, and that’s what I’ve always done.
I just feel that if the No 10 hope is, “We’ll let John McDonnell back, but what we want is a smooth, reticent, safe John McDonnell”, that’s not likely to happen. Given that things like the two-child cap are going to come back for sure in the spring, and there’s going to be great debates inside the PLP and the party generally about welfare and welfare cuts. You are an MP for a constituency right close to Heathrow and there’s a third runway issue coming up and I don’t really see you being quiet about that. And then of course there’s the Gaza issue as well. There are so many things that you are going to carry on speaking out on and you’re going to carry on when necessary rebelling on, that it’s going to be hard to let you back in.
See, I’d never use the word rebel. I actually think if we’re a democratic party, the way in which you get best decisions, the best policies, is you have debate and you take into account other people’s views. And then, on some issues, particularly around constituency issues, you recognise that you may not agree and you allow the person to disagree.
On a constituency issue, you mentioned the third runway. We’re talking about anything between eight and ten thousand of my constituents losing their homes if it goes ahead. You’d expect a constituency MP to fight for them, wouldn’t you? Historically, there’s always been a tradition where if there’s a strong constituency interest, you allow that flexibility, you allow the member of parliament to speak up on behalf of their constituents, and yes, if necessary, vote that way as well.
But also on more general issues of principle, there’s always been that element of respect for different views. So, for example, one of the biggest issues while I’ve been in parliament was the Iraq War. And Tony Blair allowed a vote on that, and a large number of us voted against, and yet there was no disciplinary measures that came out after that, because it’s such a principled issue. And I do think you get better decisions when you’re not ruthlessly using the whip.
Andy Burnham, in one of his recent books, said we should drop the use of the whip overall. Now, I believe you need an element of party discipline. The whip should be a guidance. But if you overuse it, and you’re heavy with the whip, that’s where bad decisions get made. So what I’m saying is, let’s just get back to the normal Labour Party practice where there is that element of respect. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown weren’t withdrawing the whip from people on the basis of a particular vote on an issue. Usually the whip withdrawal is on standards of behaviour, that sort of thing.
So why do you think that Keir Starmer has been more disciplinarian, if you like, than, for instance, Tony Blair, not normally regarded as a man of the left?
I think there’s two things. One, with regard to Keir, he hasn’t been in parliament that long, to be frank, and he hasn’t got the experience, particularly in government, of a more confident style of government where you allow people to express different views. And the second thing is, I have to say, elements on the right of the party are exploiting the situation to try and eliminate sections of the left. There’s no doubt about that. And that’s where a leader comes in and you tell them, “Look, calm down. We’re a broad church, we always have been, and we’re going to maintain that tradition.”
And I’ve been a strong advocate of the broad church. I’ve never, ever, called for anyone on the right to be kicked out of the party or anything like that, because I think that concept of the broad church that we founded our party on, of bringing all elements of the progressive left together, respecting different views, strengthens us. Keir – like me – is an admirer of Harold Wilson. If you look at Harold Wilson’s cabinets, God, they were rumbustious. They had rows and all sorts of things. But they came out with better decisions as a result. And there was respect for one another. And you had some momentous characters in there. It was the same in the Attlee cabinet as well. Attlee allowed debate. And then that was it. But he wasn’t kicking people out of the party, left, right and centre.
So you would say it’s a lack of self-confidence, if I can put it that way, and an element of sectarianism that is the problem at the moment. Do you think that under Keir Starmer, the government has what it takes to shift direction and reopen the broad church, unlock the gates again?
I think so. And I think it’s inevitable as well. Especially when you’ve got a large majority like this because we have a large number of new MPs – over 200 – who are just finding their feet. And as we go on, they’ll be coming back and saying to the Labour leadership and the whips in my constituency, “This doesn’t work. You need to listen to what’s happening on the ground.”
Let me just turn to economics because you were, of course, shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn. And I’d like your reflection on the really brutal choices and the tough place that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, now finds herself in. Because taxes are very high at the moment, borrowing is very, very high at the moment, and the demands on her from all sides – defence, welfare, social security, the NHS – are growing, not lessening. And one can see a big argument coming in the party in the spring about spending. What’s your thoughts about the dilemma that she’s in?
I have genuinely tried to be as supportive as I can. But I have been honest with people and straight with them. I think early decisions were made that were not the right decisions. In advance, there was not an honest debate by any of the political parties about the economy during the general election campaign. I disagree with that, but I understand it: you don’t want to upset people and you don’t want to give anything to your opponents that they can use as a stick to beat you with.
But then to actually box ourselves in where we deny ourselves the flexibility and room to manoeuvre by saying, “We’re not going to increase income taxes on the wealthy, we’re not going to increase corporation tax, we’ve ruled out a wealth tax.” Rachel Reeves did come some way towards me with regard to the fiscal rule on borrowing – I don’t think she went far enough. I think we just boxed ourselves in.
And then when the Budget came about, I was worried about it because if you’re going to rule out income tax increase on the wealthy, if you’re going to rule out corporation taxes, where do you go? To go towards National Insurance was always a mistake. I never touched it because I actually do think it does become a bit of a tax on jobs. So I just think we boxed ourselves in unnecessarily there.
Then there were a couple of things that happened that just came out of the blue, which no one expected. The winter fuel allowance – I don’t know who thought that was a bright idea, but it’s gone down like a lead balloon in our constituencies. I’m still getting people raising it on the bus and the street in my constituency. You know the sort of people they are. I’ve got Heathrow in my constituency: lots of, particularly women, have worked at Heathrow, not necessarily on high wages, but enough to get a little bit of a decent pension and then that rules them out on pension credit. You’re talking about people on £11,000 or £12,000 a year. They lose the winter fuel allowance. And actually it did mean a lot during the winter, it did help on those energy bills.
So people are pretty angry about that. Then you’ve got the decision around the two-child limit. It doesn’t just affect those with children and living in poverty. It affects all those other people who actually are offended by poverty in our society. And that would have been a method of taking nearly half a million children out of poverty. We’ve just had this week a Joseph Rowntree report with devastating figures about how many children are not just living in poverty but in destitution. So there’s been decisions like that and I think, “Where did they come from?” We’ve alienated section by section of our support. It’s the same with the Waspi women – why didn’t we just do something on them?
So the obvious question then is, what now? One of the things that could happen, at least in theory, is the government could go back to the people and say, “Look, we said we weren’t going to raise these taxes. The situation that we have inherited is so bad and the new pressures on us are so great. I’m really sorry. We have to break that pledge.” Is that what you would do?
I just want to make one final point on strategy. When you come into government and you’re inheriting a mess – and, by God, it was a mess, 14 years of austerity – when you come into government, you want to expose that. You want to blame the last administration because, honestly, they delivered this mess. But when you do that – and it does get doom and gloom, it’s inevitable – alongside it, you say, “This is a mess, but actually this is what we’re going to do to turn it round.”
What seems to have happened in the cycle of things is we’ve had, “This is a mess. Here’s some pain we’re going to inflict on you.” But then the positive side hasn’t been done until only this week: the investment, infrastructure, and all the rest of it. Normally you do those things together. You wouldn’t wait a few months while people are accusing you of talking the economy down. You need that positive hit at the same time as exposing how bad things are. And I think the sequence of those events has been completely miscalculated.
Now we’ve got to get back on track. And I think we just have to be honest with people that part of our problems is that we’ve got grotesque levels of inequality and maldistribution of wealth within our society. So, yes, we are going to come back on tax. We’re going to do exactly as Keir said: those with the broadest shoulders are going to pay the heaviest burden. So we’re going to increase income tax, we’re going to introduce a wealth tax as well, and we’re also going to look at how we tackle corporation tax.
I think we’ve just got to be straight. Otherwise we’re not going to be able to lift people out of poverty, we’re not going to have the money for the public services that we need, and we’ll get to midterm, and disillusionment sets in. Who’s sitting there to feed off that disillusionment? Reform. That’s my biggest fear, and you’re seeing that right the way across Europe now, the move to the far-right as a result of the failure of delivery of social-democratic parties and disillusionment setting in.
So that is the great argument, coming later this year. John McDonnell, are you going to end 2025 as a Labour MP with the Labour whip?
My greatest wish is that’s going to happen, but it’s not within my control. I’ll do everything I possibly can to ensure the Labour government is a success and play the role of a Labour MP to make that happen. I’ve got to be honest where I think they’re making mistakes. I think it would be absolutely irresponsible of me not to point that out because so much is at stake, particularly within my community among working-class people.
[See also: What the left gets wrong about Rachel Reeves]
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