Alison McGovern quits policy review group over leadership dispute

Alison McGovern has resigned from a policy review group over disagreements with the leadership.

McGovern, who is chair of Labour pressure group Progress, has resigned from a position on Labour’s child poverty policy group after Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell suggested Progress had planned the resignation of three shadow junior ministers earlier this week.

The MP for Wirral South will explain her decision to resign on the BBC Sunday Politics this morning.

Jonathan Reynolds, Stephen Doughty, and Kevan Jones resigned from their position  Wednesday saying they disagreed with some decisions made in Labour’s reshuffle. Pat McFadden and Michael Dugher lost their shadow ministerial briefs in the reshuffle, while Maria Eagle was moved from shadow defence to shadow local communities. Eagle was replaced with Emily Thornberry.

Commenting on the resignation, McDonnell said: “they do all come from a narrow right wing clique within the Labour Party, based around the organisation Progress largely.”

He said some people within Progress, a group generally considered to represent the right of the Labour party, are “quite hard right”.

The BBC have reported that McGovern and McDonnell had scheduled to meet on Wednesday to discuss the matter. McGovernm has claimed McDonnell was late due to media appearances.

McGovern told BBC’s Sunday Politics: “So I’m there waiting to meet him to talk about it and all the while he’d gone to the TV studio to call the organisation that I am chair of ‘hard-right Conservative’, of having a hard-right Conservative agenda. That’s not OK.”

“We are all Labour members and we believe in having a Labour government – that’s what we are, nothing more nothing less.

“And, as I say, I don’t want to be on the telly talking about this but I have been backed into a corner and I have got no other choice now but to stand up and say ‘this is who we are’ and we should just get on with the business of getting a Labour government.”

Update: A Labour source has said there isn’t a commission for McGovern to resign from, saying this has to be “the first resignation in the abstract”. The source said party discussion over the review group is in the very early stages. However they added it is sad that McGovern is resigning over child poverty “for factional reasons” and that she will “hopefully…come back and contribute at alater stage”.