Brave of Jeremy Corbyn to opt to put John McDonnell up for the first Question Time of the #newpolitics. Sure, McDonnell is a long-time friend and close political ally of Labour’s new leader, and a formidable political persuader – as anyone who has witnessed him on the campaign trail or felt the steely force of his Commons rhetoric can testify.
But one might have imagined Corbyn would have used the opportunity to send one of the really big power players of the new shadow cabinet – his transport spokeswoman Lilian Greenwood, say, or Nia Griffith, who has the Wales portfolio – rather than his lowly shadow chancellor. To consider them less central to the opposition operation than the four men who got what used to be considered the top jobs, after all, is such a dreadfully 19th century view.
In the event, though, it was McDonnell who stepped up to the plate, amid a box-office panel that also featured the SNP’s Alex Salmond, comic Sandi Toksvig, the environment minister Liz Truss and Tim Stanley, a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph. It didn’t take them long to get stuck in.
“Is Labour any more electable under Jeremy Corbyn than it was under Ed Miliband?” asked the first questioner, as if the dilemma that has convulsed the parliamentary party and much of the Labour movement since Saturday’s poll result was something that could be settled in a sentence or two.
Salmond, unsurprisingly, felt it could. “No, I don’t think so,” was his summary. Toksvig considered it the wrong question: “That’s just old-fashioned politics,” she said. With Corbyn’s election, thought Truss: “It feels like we’re in a really retro world.”
And McDonnell? “Something has changed. It’s a new politics.” Something had certainly changed for those who were expecting the threat to national security promised this week in Conservative attack ads. McDonnell was calm throughout, softly spoken, advocating “a kinder form of politics, where you respect the other person’s point of view”.
“Are you going to change?” asked David Dimbleby with a twinkle, an acknowledgement that some of those watching, who have encountered the indomitable McDonnell over the years, may have just spilt a little of their Ovaltine. “I think Jeremy is teaching me to be a nicer person,” he said with a dogged grin. Yes, he did get angry sometimes, he said with a shrug.
It was, it must be said, pretty effective, and he was warmly received by many, even when challenged over a historical quip about assassinating Margaret Thatcher. “It was an appalling joke that has ended my career in standup.”
He apologised for that, but there was a more lengthy apology when challenged by another audience member, for remarks that he made in 2003 that the “bravery” of IRA members should be “honoured”.
“I accept it was a mistake to use those words,” he said, but he was concerned that “we were going to lose the peace process”.
“If I gave offence, and I clearly did, from the bottom of my heart I apologise, I apologise.”
For all the impressive novelty of Wednesday’s PMQs, Labour was wounded by a passionate denouncing of McDonnell’s position by the DUP’s Nigel Dodds, which Cameron echoed in the chamber. Whether or not his apology can draw the sting from the offence – and many of the audience seemed inclined to forgive – what it showed most clearly was that, after four days in which they scored some political hits but made a number of clumsy errors, Team Corbyn had at last started playing defence.
