John McDonnell apologises profusely on Question Time for comments praising IRA - as it happened

For the key news lines from tonight’s Question Time, see 10.30pm and 11.35pm.

But it is not just important what John McDonnell said; it is how he said it, and how he came across. Making McDonnell shadow chancellor has been Jeremy Corbyn’s most controversial appointment, and the success or failure of the Corbyn project will depend what a lot on how well he can do. So what was he like?

In many ways, pretty good. Softly-spoken, engaging (in the literal sense - he seemed to engage well with the questions he was asked) and straightforward, if you were to forget for a moment all the IRA stuff he probably dominated the programme. It helped that he did not sound anything like the wild Trot depicted in the media, and when he made the case that Corbynite policies on, for example, housing were not extreme, he was persuasive.

It was also striking how much better he is at this than his boss. When Corbyn recorded a clip for the broadcasters on Wednesday saying he did not sing the national anthem because he was thinking about his parents, he sounded evasive and not especially credible. McDonnell made the story sound much more plausible.

But did he manage to make his apology sound plausible? Judging by Twitter (see 11.21pm), only up to a point. His Thatcher apology partly took the form of a joke but, given that he was apologising for a joke, that seemed fair enough. His IRA apology came over as genuinely sincere, and even heartfelt. But while he was happy to say sorry for lauding the IRA, he certainly didn’t shed the accusation that he was overly sympathetic to violent Republicanism. Corbyn faces the same problem too. Quite how much this will damage them politically remains to be seen. Those who feel most strongly about this are probably people unlikely to vote Labour anyway, but you don’t have to be a Tory to feel a deep revulsion towards the IRA.

Overall, McDonnell came over as someone who will do well at trying to sell the anti-austerity message to a public still sold on sound money economics. But getting the voters to swallow the Corbyn/McDonnell anti-imperialism agenda at the same time may be asking a bit much, and tonight’s Question Time illustrated the full scale of the challenge. McDonnell made some progress in trying to persuade people that Labour is not now run by IRA apologists, but he certainly did not bury the issue for good.

That’s all from me. Thanks for the comments.

I posted the quotes from John McDonnell containing his two apologies earlier. (See 10.30pm.)

Here are the other key quotes.

• McDonnell said that Jeremy Corbyn told him after the Battle of Britain service that he normally does sing the national anthem, but that this time he was lost in thought.

I said afterwards ‘why didn’t you sing?’ and he said ‘actually I normally do’, but it was quite a moving event and he was casting his mind back to the war…the national anthem isn’t just for those who are monarchists, it’s for everyone and it represents the whole country and that’s why people sing it.

• He said that Labour under Corbyn would be happy to raise the top rate of income tax to just 50p in the pound.
  

On income tax it isn’t an issue for us. The Tories reduced it from fifty to forty-five and we’d like to just go back to the fifty. We think that’s reasonable.

• He said Labour was not advocating withdrawal from Nato.

This is from STV’s Stephen Daisley, but others are making the same point.

Here are some tweets from the Corbyn campaign about the programme.

The next question is about Jeremy Corbyn not singing the national anthem.

McDonnell says he spoke to Corbyn about this. Corbyn said he normally sings. But on this occasion he was lost in thought, thinking about his parents.

Stanley says that, as a schoolboy, he once got into trouble for refusing to sing the national anthem. But he had the excuse of being a schoolboy. Corbyn should have sung it lustily.

Salmond says the fourth verse is anti-Scottish. But he always sang the national anthem. At an event like that, you are supposed to show respect, he says. He says that he likes John McDonnell, but finds his explanation hard to believe.

And that’s it. The programme is over.

I will be posting some more reaction, and a summary/verdict shortly.

Salmond says that, under our current policy, if the little Syrian boy had not died, he would have been turned away as an asylum seeker. That can’t be right, he says.

McDonnell says it was only a month ago that David Cameron was describing refugees as a swarm. But attitudes changed enormously after the death of the young boy.

A year ago he and Jeremy Corbyn were at the Home Office asking for Britain to take more Syrian refugees. At that point only around 100 had been accepted, he says.

He says the government should be taking more Syrian refugees.

The next question is about immigration.

Truss defends the government position.

Salmond speaks up for refugees. Freddie Mercury was a refugee. And Jesus Christ, he says.

Nigel Dodds, the DUP leader in Westminster, has responded to McDonnell’s IRA apology. He suggests it is not truly sincere, and does not go far enough.

And this tweet, with an excerpt from what McDonnell said about IRA violence in 2003, is being retweeted a lot.

This is what some journalists are saying about John McDonnell’s performance so far.

There are more women in work than ever before, says Truss.

But they are paid 21% less, says McDonnell.

Women are not in top positions in the shadow cabinet, Truss says.

But more than 50% of its members are women, says McDonnell.

The excellent BBC Question Time Twitter feed has posted what John McDonnell said about his 2003 IRA remarks at the time.

A member of the audience says she thinks McDonnell will say anything to try to win people over.

McDonnell says he understands why people are sceptical of politicians. There are too many career politicians.

Q: But you are one yourself? And you will say things that people want to hear, even if they are not true?

McDonnell says that he supports the right to recall MPs.

And he says that he wants to extend democracy. There should be more of it in the workplace, he says.

Tim Stanley asks McDonnell to explain why he talked about the British occupation of Ireland. But Britain did not occupy Northern Ireland. It is as British as Surrey.

And he said the bombs and bullets contributed to peace in Northern Ireland. Does he still think that?

McDonnell says he supports peace. He has been involved in groups campaigning for peace. He says he had to use the language that Republicans understood to secure the path for peace. But it was worth it, because now people are not dying in Northern Ireland, he says.

McDonnell says Labour wants to put the top rate of tax back up to 50p in the pound. But that is where it was a few years ago.

McDonnell says that he does not support withdrawal from Nato.

Salmond says printing money is not an extreme proposal. It is what the government has already been doing, under quantitative easing.