Why are people falling for John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’?

John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’ was no such thing and I am amazed to see anybody for fall for it. It was obviously insisted upon by Labour party spin-doctors. But as the words themselves show, it was not an apology. Sure, he apologised for causing any offence or upset, but not for the fact that he was wholly and utterly wrong. And wrong not only to have praised people who spent three decades shooting people and planting bombs in public places but wrong on the facts too.

I cannot think how he can get away with this, but it seems like he will, not least because his boss has done so by mounting the same defence. Because of course McDonnell has adopted the Jeremy Corbyn tactic I have written about previously here and here. It was ludicrous enough when Jeremy Corbyn pretended to be doing anything other than shilling for Sinn Fein/IRA all those years. But for John McDonnell to also pretend that rather than being an obscure backbencher he was in fact the advance brigade of the Nobel prize committee is even more ridiculous. The idea that in honouring the IRA he was in fact – like Jeremy Corbyn – ‘working for peace’ is beyond absurd.

Explaining why he told a hardcore Republican audience in 2003 that ‘it’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle’, he was not (as he claimed last night) arguing for peace. When he said, ‘it was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table’ he was not the voice of the Good Friday agreement.

On last night’s Question Time McDonnell explained these words by saying ‘I went out and argued for the peace process’.