Corbyn activists gearing up to hijack Keir Starmer's agenda after election with 'radical approach'
Left-wing Labour activists are planning to hijack Keir Starmer's agenda if he is elected, Labour MP John McDonnell has suggested
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Left-wing Labour activists are planning to hijack Keir Starmer's agenda if he is elected, Labour MP John McDonnell has suggested.
He said the party needs to be more "radical", adding that there will be the opportunity to "change the agenda" in Starmer's first year in Government.
Speaking at an event on the fringes of the Labour Conference, attended by Labour Party delegates and union members, McDonnell said: "At the moment, Labour is saying little about detail, and I do understand that, the reservations, the Ming vase argument, don’t want to drop it or whatever.
"I can understand it to a certain extent. I don’t agree with it, but I can understand it.
WATCH: Keir Starmer addresses the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool
"So even if they’re not saying much specifically before the election and the manifesto might be lightweight, I think in that first year [of a possible Labour government], that’s our opportunity to change the agenda."
McDonnell said the party needs to introduce a much more radical agenda, specifically in the field of education.
He called for tuition fees to be scrapped, telling the audience education should not be a "commodity to be bought and sold".
Jeremy Corbyn called for the scrapping of tuition fees earlier this year, but the proposal was overturned by the party's leader.
Starmer said the country is in a "different financial situation", making the proposal untenable.
McDonnell said that there "needs to be a much more radical approach to the way Labour will develop education in this country”.
The former shadow cabinet member said: "And so our job, I think, is to make sure two things: one, that we have the radical proposals that we want implemented on the shelf and ready to go, to hit the deck running; and the second is maintaining an alliance with others … that will enable us to influence that government when it goes into office.
"So I think at that stage, all opportunities take place."
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Jeremy Corbyn called for the scrapping of tuition fees earlier this year, but the proposal was overturned by the party's leader
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He added: "The key thing for us now is to ensure that, on the way in which [the Labour frontbench] are approaching the funding of education overall – but in particular higher and further education – we get very specific references in that manifesto about opening up the opportunity of having a real debate about where we go from here.
"We can’t continue on with the neoliberal concept of education as a commodity to be bought and sold."
He said that education "must be free".