John McDonnell launches a campaign to change the shape of the leadership debate

John McDonnell MP for Hayes and Harlington, has launched a website encouraging people to use the selection of a new Labour leader as an opportunity to excite others “about the potential of socialist politics.”

On the website, entitled Radical Labour, McDonnell says his aim is to “host a debate on the issues the Labour leadership candidates have to address and to promote some of the ideas and policies people think any new leader should adopt.”

McDonnell is on the left of the party and he is Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Labour Representation Committee, and the “Public Services Not Private Profit Group”.

On the site, he criticises the current list of people who have put their name forward to be Labour leader. He writes that as it stands the race is “a glamour contest between a group of candidates with little ideologically to choose between them” and he encourages people visiting the website to contribute their ideas about what the Labour leader candidates need to address.