Labour’s defeat in Copeland is nothing short of a disaster – but you won’t hear that from the shadow chancellor. Instead, John McDonnell said the fact that the Tories snatched away the seat – becoming the first Government to win a by-election since the 1980s – was a ‘disappointment’. His biggest concession to those who say this result shows it’s time for Corbyn to go was to admit there are ‘mixed views’ on the Labour leader. So if it isn’t Corbyn’s fault, who is to blame? McDonnell offered several answers to that question. He said that the ‘macho leaders we’ve had in the past’ were responsible for some of the ‘disasters’ we’ve had. There are no prizes for guessing who the shadow chancellor might have been thinking about:
‘We can’t have a circumstance again where a week before the by-election a former leader of our party attacks the party itself.’
So it was Tony Blair’s fault?
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