With under 24-hours to go until polls close in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership contest with Owen Smith, the shadow chancellor also condemned the “disgraceful” way the election had been handled by the Labour Party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).
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Another programme on Monday night, Channel 4’s Dispatches, showed covertly recorded interviews with members of Momentum, a group that backs Mr Corbyn.
“It’s an attempt to further cement his position and use the membership as a means of driving a wedge between the MPs and his leadership”. “To have an elected shadow cabinet, not an appointed shadow cabinet, is one way we do that”, he explained.
As part of his reconciliation efforts, the Labour leader has said he is willing to restore elections to the shadow cabinet.
McDonnell was speaking as Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) chose to postpone a decision on whether to grant MPs the right to elect the shadow cabinet.
Mr Corbyn has been trying to defer any decision on the system of how to choose the Shadow Cabinet until after the conference, at which he is widely expected to be confirmed in his position when the result of the leadership election is announced on Saturday.
Jeremy Corbyn can “very easily” be Labour’s next Prime Minister as long as the party unites concentrates on fighting the Tories, Tom Watson has insisted.
The Labour leader has said there is a “thirst for democracy” in the party and he backs a “widening of the franchise” although it is thought he will not put forward a rival plan at Tuesday’s meeting – instead calling for a review after next week’s party conference.
Later, Mr Corbyn told the online parenting network Mumsnet that his favourite book was James Joyce’s Ulysses, and that he had read it at least three times. I think you’ll begin to see that play out, particularly in local elections next year and after that.
“People are going to have to come to terms with that”.
Smith said: “I would stand against anti-Semitism”.
“I don’t know anybody at all, and they’re people who come up to me who say “I’ve never been involved in politics before, I’m interested in what you have to say, because I’m interested particularly in the economic argument that you have to rebalance society away from inequality towards equality”. “We have got to change what we do, how we campaign, we have got to change how we do our policies and make sure that we prioritise other policy areas that we have not been focusing on this summer”.
Many MPs see elections as a way of constraining Mr Corbyn, should he be re-elected, and ensuring a balance of opinion at Labour’s top table.
Speaking to Scotland on Sunday, Dugdale said that she did not accept that a Corbyn victory would make her life hard as Scottish leader.
He said: “Alan hasn’t fully understood what my concerns were in the past”.
“When he tried to bring in, and indeed did bring in, tuition fees, I opposed him on that”.
“One of the things that makes me most angry about this whole thing is that I’ve ended up as the Jewish MP”.
He replied: “I hope Neil can be a bit more optimistic”.
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Former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown claimed the only way Mrs May could secure a “soft Brexit” deal which appeased her Eurosceptic backbenchers would be to call an early election, adding: “the possibility curve rises now quite sharply towards a May election”.
