'GRENFELL FAMILIES WERE MURDERED'
SHADOW chancellor John McDonnell said the victims of the Grenfell Tower were fire "murdered by political decisions" during a speech at Glastonbury today.
McDonnell, a close ally of leader Jeremy Corbyn, told a crowd of thousands in the festival's Left Field tent that democracy "didn't work" for people living on the 20th floor of the death tower.
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Yesterday Corbyn was given a rock star welcome as he was mobbed by young female fans before addressing crowds on the main Pyramid stage.
Chants of "Oh Jeremy Corbyn" have been echoing across the campsite all weekend in anticipation of the Labour leader's appearance.
Other Labour politicians spotted at the festival include deputy leader Tom Watson, Corbyn's former leadership rival Yvette Cooper and her husband ex-MP and chancellor Ed Balls.
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McDonnell said today: "Is democracy working? It didn't work if you were a family living on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower.
"Those families, those individuals - 79 so far and there will be more - were murdered by political decisions that were taken over recent decades.
"The decision not to build homes and to view housing as only for financial speculation rather than for meeting a basic human need made by politicians over decades murdered those families.
"The decision to close fire stations and to cut 10,000 firefighters and then to freeze their pay for over a decade contributed to those deaths inevitably and they were political decisions."
He made the comments during a debate on whether democracy is broken.
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Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley and economist Faiza Shaheen also took part in the hour-long debate, chaired by Guardian journalist John Harris.
But Ed Balls, the former Shadow Chancellor, slammed Mr McDonnell's "shocking" comments.
Speaking at the Politics Festival in North London tonight, he said: "I disassociate myself from those remarks, I think that's a shocking thing to say.
"Murder is premeditated, you have to want to do it - that wasn't what was going on."
At least 79 people were killed in the devastating tower block blaze in Ladbroke Grove, North West London, last Wednesday.
Earlier McDonnell told BBC Radio 5 Live he believed Labour would have won the election with a few more weeks of campaigning.
He said: "We are the centre of politics now - politics has moved on to our ground and that's why we got such a good result."
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The Hayes and Harlington MP also called for electoral reform during the festival debate, drawing cheers from the crowd.
He said: "The House of Lords - 92 of them are there on the basis of who Charles II shagged at some point in the past.
"It can't be right that we have a House of Lords that's based upon those people appointed rather than elected.
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