John McDonnell

Early life and personal life

Born in Liverpool, McDonnell's family moved to the south of England when he was very young; his father became a bus driver and was a branch secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union. McDonnell attended Great Yarmouth Grammar School, but left at the age of 17. Afterwards, he held a series of unskilled jobs. After marrying his first wife, he studied for A-levels at night school at Burnley Technical College, and at the age of 23 he moved to Hayes in Greater London, attended Brunel University, and took a Bachelor of Science degree in Government and Politics. During this period, he helped his wife run a small children's home in Hayes, and was active on behalf of his local community and for National Union of Public Employees. After completing his Master of Science in Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of London, he became a researcher and official with the National Union of Mineworkers from 1977 to 1978, and later the Trades Union Congress from 1978 to 1982. From 1985 to 1987, he was head of the Policy Unit at Camden Borough Council, then chief executive of the Association of London Authorities from 1987 to 1995 and the Association of London Government from 1995–97.

McDonnell has two daughters from his first marriage, which ended in 1985, and a son from his second marriage to Cynthia Pinto in 1995.

Greater London Council

In 1981, McDonnell was elected to the Greater London Council (GLC) as the member for Hayes and Harlington. He became the Chair of Finance, responsible for the GLC's £3 billion budget, and was Ken Livingstone's deputy leader. In an interview with Ronan Bennett for The Guardian newspaper, he described his role during this time as being "to translate policies into concrete realities on the ground." He further discussed his performance by indicating, "I was a fairly hard-nosed administrator. We set in train policies for which we were attacked from all sides but are now accepted as mainstream: large-scale investment in public services; raising the issue of Ireland and arguing for a dialogue for peace; equal opportunities; police accountability. We set up a women's committee, an ethnic minorities committee".

Livingstone removed McDonnell from the post of deputy leader in 1985, shortly after they came into conflict over the GLC's budget. Margaret Thatcher's government first cut central government funding to local government, and then introduced rate capping, preventing selected councils from raising local taxation beyond a set level as a means of reducing public spending. Encouraged by the success of the Liverpool City Council, which delayed issuing a budget in 1984 until the government agreed to restore some funding cuts, twelve Labour councils that had the cap imposed on them chose not to set a rate at all in the spring of 1985, demanding that the government lift the cap. The GLC faced capping, and McDonnell headed a campaign among Labour members to adopt this strategy in response. Unlike the local councils, however, the GLC faced a legal obligation to set a rate by mid-March. McDonnell contended that accepting the cap would lead to a reduction in spending and prevent the GLC, which had already lost all of its funding from central government, from honouring the manifesto pledges Labour had been elected on in 1981.

Post GLC

Following the abolition of the GLC, McDonnell was employed as head of the policy unit at Camden London Borough Council. In 1987, he became Chief Executive of the Association of London Authorities (eventually the Association of London Government), where he represented all the London Boroughs in their relations with central government and Europe. Having previously unsuccessfully contested Hampstead and Highgate in 1983, McDonnell fought for his home town seat of Hayes and Harlington in the 1992 general election, but lost by 53 votes. During the campaign, his Conservative opponent Terry Dicks sued for libel over critical material in McDonnell's campaign leaflets; McDonnell settled and paid Dicks £15,000 plus legal costs, which amounted to £55,000. An appeal for funds through left-wing campaigning groups paid the bill.

Parliament

McDonnell became the MP for Hayes and Harlington at the 1997 general election, with a majority of 13,000. He made his maiden speech on 6 June 1997. He has been involved in several local community campaigns, including one against the expansion of Heathrow airport and its impact on local communities. He voted against New Labour government policies such as the 2003 Iraq war, stating in 2007 that:

He opposed New Labour policies of foundation hospitals, student top-up fees, trust schools and anti-terror laws. In May 2003, he made controversial comments about the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), saying: "It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the 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."

Threatened with expulsion from the Labour Party, he went on to offer a rationale for his comments in an article written for The Guardian in June 2003 ("Expulsion would be an odd reward for telling hard truths"), stating:

According to a report in The Times published in November 2015, McDonnell in 1985 made similar comments at a Labour Committee on Ireland meeting, before the start of the Northern Ireland peace process. The Deptford Mercury asserted at the time that McDonnell had suggested there was a role for "the ballot, the bullet and the bomb" in bringing about a United Ireland, and joked about "kneecapping" the "gutless wimp" Labour councillors who had declined to join the meeting.

In September 2015, McDonnell apologised on Question Time for any offence caused by his remarks on the IRA.

McDonnell is a leading member of a number of all-party groups within Parliament, including groups representing individual trade unions, such as the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and justice unions such as NAPO. He is also a leading member of groups on a wide range of issues such as Britain's Irish community, the Punjabi community, endometriosis and Kenya. McDonnell is a member of the Labour Land Campaign, which advocates introducing a land value tax.

McDonnell chairs the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), a left-wing group of Labour activists, local parties, trade unions and MPs that campaigns for the adoption of a raft of socialist policies by the Labour Government. The group was founded on Saturday, 3 July 2004, and currently has more than 800 members and 90 affiliates. He also chairs the Public Services Not Private Profit, an anti-privatisation campaign that brings together 16 trade unions and several campaigning organisations, such as the World Development Movement, Defend Council Housing and the National Pensioners Convention. An early day motion in support of the campaign attracted more than 90 MPs. The campaign held a mass rally and lobby of Parliament on 27 June 2006, attended by more than two thousand trade unionists.

On 31 October 2006, McDonnell was one of 12 Labour MPs to back Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party's call for a parliamentary inquiry into the war in Iraq. According to an article in TamilNet, McDonnell and another signatory, fellow MP Jeremy Corbyn, signed a petition calling on the UK to lift a ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (also known as the Tamil Tigers), which is listed as a terrorist group by the European Union.

During a debate on the expansion of London Heathrow Airport on 15 January 2009, McDonnell was suspended for five days by Deputy Speaker Alan Haselhurst after disrupting Commons proceedings. McDonnell picked up the ceremonial mace and placed it down on an empty bench in the Commons while shouting that the lack of a vote on the third runway was "a disgrace to the democracy of this country." In February 2013, McDonnell was among those who supported the People's Assembly Against Austerity in a letter published by The Guardian newspaper.

2007 Party leadership campaign

On 14 July 2006, McDonnell announced his intention to stand for leadership of the Labour Party when Tony Blair announced the date of his resignation. He called for "a challenge to the present political consensus", and, "a real Labour government based upon the policies that our supporters expect from us". McDonnell said he would like to see a return to the Labour Party's more traditional areas. He wished to re-nationalise the railways, scrap student tuition fees and remove foundation hospitals.

Initially, McDonnell and Michael Meacher were the two candidates representing the left-wing of the party. McDonnell's campaign concentrated on grassroots efforts, which earned him endorsements from the Trades Union Congress, ASLEF, the annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee, and various other left wing groups. In a YouGov opinion poll of more than 1,100 Labour Party members on their preferred choice in the leadership contest, McDonnell received 9% support, and was ranked second to Gordon Brown who led with 80% of the vote. Declared supporters included Diane Abbott, Tony Benn, and Ann Cryer. In total, eleven Labour MPs declared their support on McDonnell's campaign website.

Labour Party rules require candidates to be nominated by 12.5% of Labour MPs (45 out of a total of 355 in 2007). McDonnell and Meacher's campaign teams reached an agreement that when the contest began, the candidate with the fewest pledged nominations from MPs would drop out. Meacher withdrew on 14 May 2007, endorsing McDonnell. However, Gordon Brown received 308 nominations, making it impossible for McDonnell to collect the 45 nominations required to proceed to the Electoral College. As the only nominated candidate, Gordon Brown was declared leader by the NEC.

2010 Party leadership campaign

On 18 May 2010, news broke that McDonnell wanted to stand in the Labour Party leadership election, to be held following the resignation of Gordon Brown, and would announce it the following day at the Public and Commercial Services Union conference in Brighton. McDonnell noted that it would be "difficult" to get the 33 nominations needed from the parliamentary Labour Party required to stand in the election.

During a hustings for the GMB Union on 7 June, McDonnell was asked what single act he would do to improve the world if he could travel back to the 1980s. His off-the-cuff reply was that "I was on the GLC that Mrs Thatcher abolished, I worked for the NUM and we had the NUM strike, I think I would assassinate Thatcher". Conservative MP Conor Burns told the BBC that "[it was] very distasteful" and "a very silly remark". McDonnell told the BBC: "I'm sorry if I have caused offence to anyone. It was a joke and in that audience it was taken as a joke... it was taken out of context, I can see if people are upset about that and if I have caused offence to anyone of course I apologise."

On 9 June 2010, the deadline for nominations, he had secured only 16 nominations and withdrew from the election.

Shadow Chancellor

McDonnell was one of the 36 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 would be followed under Corbyn:

McDonnell's first speech as Shadow Chancellor was at the 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 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."

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 £5bn worth of our own assets" to foreign investors, including particularly the Chinese state. To make this point he jokingly 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 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.