Mr McDonnell also used his Question Time appearance to apologise for an “appalling joke” in 2010 about wanting to assassinate Margaret Thatcher.
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Speaking on Question Time, he said at the time he made the comments it had looked like “we were going to lose the peace process”.
She said: “I would just ask people to wait and see”.
“I should not have said the issue about the honouring”.
“There was a real risk of the republican movement splitting, and some continuing with the armed process”.
But we will get closer to it everyday, because when you say what you actually, think and believe, it really hurts when it’s dismissed, angrily dissected and ridiculed.
Earlier this summer, Mr Corbyn said he would recommit Labour to a publicly funded NHS, pledging to eradicate private finance initiative (PFI) funding, the repayments for which he claimed were leading to staff and service cuts at trusts. “If I gave offense, and I clearly have, from the bottom of my heart I apologize”.
“The appointment of the unelected Lord Falconer to his shadow cabinet is a complete contradiction to his long-standing opposition to the absurd House of Lords”.
Since Mr Corbyn won an election to lead Labour last Saturday, his party has sent mixed messages on how it would campaign in the referendum, with senior figures adopting seemingly conflicting positions.
Mr Corbyn hopes the FT article will settle once and for all the uncertainty that he has sown about his approach to Mr Cameron’s in/out referendum, which could take place as soon as next year.
“Both John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, given the fact that they both had always in the past been on the backbenches and not accepted any kind of collective responsibility, have huge personal as well as political challenges in front of them”. “We are people who are economically competent and economically literate but don’t think shrinking the state is aspiration”, he said.
Colin Parry, whose son Tim was killed in the 1993 IRA bomb attacks in Warrington, responded to Mr McDonnell’s comments on BBC Radio 4 this morning.
Pontefract and Castleford MP Yvette Cooper has congratulated Jeremy Corbyn after his landslide victory in the Labour leadership contest.
The former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling has urged Jeremy Corbyn to outline his position on the economy in the next few days to try to regain ground after a summer in which the party “chose to blow itself up”. People became fed up with politics before as there was never a straight answer.
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The DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said Mr McDonnell’s apology was not enough.
