The rift between UK Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, which has been growing in recent months, widened post the Budget. McDonnell, despite being even further left, didn’t oppose Hammond’s tax cuts with his eye on the road to power; while Corbyn stuck to his ideological guns. Corbyn avoids what his aides contemptuously call “the MSM” (mainstream media) and bristles about criticism of anti-Semitism. McDonnell on the other hand has gone on a media blitz recently and has been frank about his doubts about how the anti-Semitism allegations were handled.
They stuck together through the wilderness years with a common enemy but nearly winning the last election has sent them off on different trajectories.
McDonnell’s ultra-determined Mars Pluto in flamboyant Leo is conjunct Corbyn’s Pluto and square Corbyn’s equally do-or-die Mars in Taurus. Those are powerful energies and useful when focussed outwards; but once they start to creep into a relationship it ends in a bitter power struggle.
Their relationship chart is volatile at best with a composite Mars Uranus conjunction and that is getting knocked sideways this year with tr Saturn in opposition. Plus tr Neptune is undermining the composite Saturn till late 2019 for suspicion and doubts between them; and the pressures will increase probably to breaking point in 2020/2021 with tr Pluto opposition the composite Sun Mercury. It’s almost more conflicted than the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown relationship which did so much damage to the Labour Party.
McDonnell, 8 September 1951, looks seriously jangled this December and January 2019, and undermined till late 2019.
So close yet tantalisingly so far.
See Jeremy Corbyn post: August 15 2018