John McDonnell has just made his first U-turn as Shadow Chancellor, announcing that Labour will vote against the fiscal charter on Wednesday – having previously told the Guardian that it would support it. Labour’s support for the charter was previously to show that it wants ‘to balance the books, we do want to live within our means and we will tackle the deficit’, but in a letter today to MPs, McDonnell says:
‘I believe that we need to underline our position as an anti-austerity party by voting against the charter on Wednesday.’
Labour will publish its own statement on budget responsibility before the debate. The new politics does look rather like the old politics right now, with straight talking still apparently including rapid changes of heart. That Labour will oppose the charter isn’t a great surprise. It was more surprising that McDonnell was ever prepared to say his party would support it: but his intervention in the Guardian came at a time when he and Corbyn were trying to neutralise every attack line about them, from their foreign policy allegiances to their views on public spending, ahead of the Labour conference.
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