McDonnell ‘lynching’ smear resurrected – the truth

Not content to even let Labour’s party conference pass before restarting their smear campaigns, the anti-Corbyn faction are already at work. The latest manifestation is a revival of the slander of shadow chancellor John McDonnell, claiming he stated that odious ex-Tory Wirral MP Esther McVey should be lynched.

This is ‘old news‘ from 2014 and long since discredited, but that doesn’t stop the smear-mongers using it. Here’s what McDonnell himself said at the time:

I spoke at a packed public meeting … there was a whole group in the audience that completely kicked off quite critical of the whole concept, because they were arguing ‘Why we are sacking her. Why aren’t we lynching the bastard?

(emphasis mine)

An eye-witness present at the event, on condition of anonymity, confirmed that McDonnell’s description is accurate.

That a 2-year-old, already debunked smear is being regurgitated the day after the emphatic (yet under-reported) victory of McDonnell’s close friend and ally Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest, shows how desperate the Labour right is now.

That it’s today being repeated, without proper checking or context, by ‘journalists’ such as Kuenssberg and Peston, shows how deeply embedded is the collusion between the right-wing establishment and the so-called Labour ‘moderates’.