John McDonnell said he won’t remain in the U.K. shadow cabinet after Labour elects a new leader in the wake of the party’s worst result in a general election since 1935.
Jeremy Corbyn said on Friday he will step down as the leader of the opposition party after losing some seats in its northern heartlands to the Tories for the first time in history. McDonnell, 68-year-old follower of Marx, is seen as Corbyn’s closest ally and has been the party’s Treasury spokesman since 2015.
McDonnell told the BBC that Labour’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee, will meet next week to decide the timetable for a leadership election –- and he expects it to be a couple of months.
Asked who he would back as the next leader, he picked out Rebecca Long-Bailey, Angela Rayner and Richard Burgon, from what he calls the “new generation.”
“You can see a coalition forming that can give us, I think, the future that this country needs,” McDonnell said.
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