McDonnell attempts fight back after Mao debacle

The shadow chancellor insisted he was being “ironic” and the stunt had successfully raised an important issue in a “flamboyant and jocular” way.

However, he did apologise to a former prisoner in a Maoist labour camp who said she found his use of the communist dictator’s words “chilling”.

The sight of Mr McDonnell reading from a copy of the notorious book and then handing it to George Osborne during his response to the Spending Review caused widespread dismay on the Labour benches.

Shadow Cabinet members Angela Eagle and Owen Smith both conceded the ploy by the veteran left-winger had “backfired” while others complained it had wrecked what should have been a positive day for Labour.

In a round of broadcast interviews, Mr McDonnell was unrepentant, saying such speeches were normally “extremely boring” and he had managed to put the sell-off of British national assets to the Chinese “on the agenda”.

“You need, sometimes, a bit of flamboyance and a bit of a jocular approach to these things, but it’s a serious issue which is about the sell-off of British assets,” he told BBC Breakfast.

“Usually the shadow chancellor’s speech sinks below the surface within hours. Having that done that, we’re now talking about it and I actually think amongst the British public many people share my concerns.

“Of course the media and some MPs are a bit pompous about all this. But I’ve broken through on the issue so it worked.”

Mr McDonnell told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Here is the hypocrisy of it. I raise a quote from Mao - I don’t support Mao, of course not - to get an issue there and I am criticised. This government is selling off to a Maoist regime British assets ... is that what we want?

“People may not like it initially but it is there for public debate.”

Diane Wei Liang, an author who was born in Beijing in the 1960s and spent three years in a labour camp with her parents, told Today she found watching the Commons exchange “chilling”.

“In a way it was chilling for me because it reminded me of the memories I had in childhood when at public meetings, public denunciation meetings, when before sentences are passed, after someone is condemned to either death or jail sentence, always someone quoting from Mao’s Little Red Book,” she said.