page_title: John McDonnell
section_title: Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (2015–2020)
hierarchical_section_title: John McDonnell / Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (2015–2020)
caption_attribution_description: English: Parliamentary Launch of the British Sikh Report 2018 with the Rt Hon John McDonnell MP
context_page_description: John Martin McDonnell is a British Labour Party politician, serving as the Member of Parliament for Hayes and Harlington since 1997. He served as the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn from 2015 to 2020.
  He served as chair of the Socialist Campaign Group in Parliament and Labour Representation Committee; McDonnell also chaired the Public Services Not Private Profit Group. He is also parliamentary convenor of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Group of eight left-wing trade unions representing over half a million workers. McDonnell attempted to stand for the position of Labour Party leader following Tony Blair's resignation in 2007, but failed to get enough nominations. He was a candidate for the party leadership again in 2010 following Gordon Brown's resignation after Labour's electoral defeat, but withdrew in favour of Diane Abbott, feeling that he would be unable to secure enough nominations.
  Following his election as Labour leader in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn appointed McDonnell as his Shadow Chancellor. Alongside Corbyn, McDonnell has been seen as a key figure on the left-wing of the party.
context_section_description: McDonnell was one of the thirty-six Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn (who was elected as Labour leader with 59.5% of the vote) as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015. McDonnell managed Corbyn's leadership campaign, and he was appointed Shadow Chancellor in September 2015.
  
  In an article in The Guardian in the previous month, he set out the economic principles that a Corbyn government would follow:
  Let me make it absolutely clear that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is committed to eliminating the deficit and creating an economy in which we live within our means. ... We accept that cuts in public spending will help eliminate the deficit, but our cuts won't be to the middle-and low-income earners and certainly not to the poor ... alongside deficit elimination, the Corbyn campaign is advocating a fundamental reform of our economic system. This will include the introduction of an effective regulatory regime for our banks and financial sector; a full-blown Glass-Steagall system to separate day-to-day and investment banking; legislation to replace short-term shareholder value with long-term sustainable economic and social responsibilities as the prime objective of companies; radical reform of the failed auditing regime; the extension of a wider range of forms of company and enterprise ownership and control including public, co-operative and stakeholder ownership; and the introduction of a financial transactions tax to fund the rebalancing of our economy towards production and manufacturing.
  McDonnell's first speech as Shadow Chancellor was at the 2015 Labour Party conference in Brighton. In the speech, he set out Labour's thinking and priorities in key areas, as well as encouraging Labour MPs who had refused to serve under Corbyn to return.
  He surprised many by calling upon Labour MPs to back Conservative Chancellor George Osborne's Fiscal Charter, arguing that supporting the proposed deficit reduction framework showed Labour's commitment to "living within their means." However, he reversed that call in October, citing his trip to visit former steelworkers at a recently closed plant in Redcar as the reason for not wanting to be associated with supporting government cuts. McDonnell repeated the word "embarrassing" five times in his Commons response to the U-turn, adding that "a bit of humility amongst politicians never goes amiss".
  In a November speech ahead of Osborne's Spending Review, McDonnell pledged that a Labour government would spend 3.5% of GDP on infrastructure and fund research through an Innovation Policy Council, describing his vision for the economy as "socialism with an iPad".
  McDonnell has explored ideas surrounding "alternative models of ownership", publishing a report on the subject in June 2017 and hosting a discussion conference in London in February 2018. The report sets out the "practicality and necessity of a shift to a variety of alternative forms of ownership and control of productive enterprises, including co-operatives, municipal and locally-led ownership forms, and ... new democratic forms of national ownership".
  During his response to the 2015 Autumn Statement in which he accused George Osborne of "sheer economic illiteracy", McDonnell highlighted that the government was "selling off at least £5,000,000,000 worth of our own assets" to foreign investors, emphasising China. To make this point he quoted from a copy of Chairman Mao Zedong's Little Red Book and then threw it across the despatch box towards the Conservative front bench. A clearly amused Chancellor Osborne, responded by quipping that it was McDonnell's own signed copy.
  On 29 September 2016, he was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and may therefore use the title The Right Honourable.
  In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, McDonnell said those who died in it were "murdered" by political decisions, arguing "The decision to close fire stations and to cut 10,000 fire fighters and then to freeze their pay for over a decade contributed to those deaths inevitably". The use of the word "murder" was questio
caption: McDonnell with members of the British Sikh community in April 2018
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