John McDonnell is a bad, bad bastard being found out

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t use a swear word when describing a Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the man who wants to deliver the UK’s next Budget and set the nation’s economic policy. Ad hominem, as David Waywell pointed out in his magnificent deconstruction for Reaction of Trump’s latest meltdown, is not constructive and there are some basic rules of engagement and manners that generally apply when it comes to writing about leading politicians.

John McDonnell merits making an exception, as a hard left fanatic who shares the blame for what is about to happen to the Labour party on June 8th. Forget the idea of unifying Labour afterwards. There should be show-trials and expulsions for these Corbynite clowns who even now at this late stage don’t have the grace to look ashamed.

McDonnell is one of the absolute worst of the lot. As my colleague Danny Finkelstein on the Times explained earlier this month, in the 1980s McDonnell was too extreme even for Ken Livingstone on the GLC. And he backed the IRA, saying:

“About time we started honouring those involved in [the IRA’s] armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA.”

George Eaton of the New Statesman revealed last year that McDonnell’s thinking is shaped by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky (the architects of an ideology that resulted in the death of tens of millions of people). In an interview with the Trotskyist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, in 2006, McDonnell was asked to name his most significant influences. He said: “The fundamental Marxist writers of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, basically.”

So tumultuous have been the last few years that we are at risk of overlooking the full extent of the horror. The patriotic centre-left party of Smith, Blair, Brown, Callaghan, Castle, Cook and Kinnock has an IRA-sympathiser and virtual Communist as Shadow Chancellor, cheered on by a cult fan club made up of old far left proponents who agree with him and Corbynite youngsters who seem not to know what any of it really means or how it imperils freedom and democracy.

To that end, for the last 18 months since he helped foist Jeremy Corbyn on the poor old Labour party, this guy McDonnell has been going round the TV studios, Uriah Heep-like, grinning and posing as a reasonable, affable, kindly uncle, when he is a menace to Labour and to this country.

Corbyn is one thing. Not the sharpest tool in the box. In love with the attention and adulation from supporters (look at his daft smile on the campaign trail). A hater of America and the West. An IRA-supporter. Actually, that’s four things, not one, and I could go on.

But McDonnell is far worse. He is clever and he is a bad, bad bastard.

There is good news, however. He’s not as clever as he thinks he is and he is being found out in this campaign. It is tremendous. His blasé approach to costing Labour’s manifesto means that the cost of mass renationalisation of water and other industries is missing from Labour’s costings. On BBC Radio 4 Today he was exposed as a bumbler, and he could not answer on the deficit either.

This would be enjoyable, but for one thing. In the carnage created by these Corbynite clowns, good moderate Labour MPs are fighting to resist immolation on election day. They look likely to fail.