John McDonnell has pulled out of a Stop The War rally after being warned he faced losing the Labour whip if he turned up.
HuffPost UK revealed that the former shadow chancellor was scheduled to speak at the ‘No To War In Ukraine’ event tonight.
Senior Labour sources said McDonnell would be kicked out of the party if he had attended the rally.
But barely three hours before it was due to begin, the Hayes and Harlington MP said he would no longer be going.
He told LabourList: “I have seen all the speculation about my attendance at tonight’s Stop The War meeting and reports of threats if I do.
“My response is that people are dying on the streets of Ukrainian cities. This is not the time to be distracted by political arguments here. Now is the time to unite and do all we can to assist the people of Ukraine desperately seeking asylum and to do all we can to bring about peace.
“Nothing is more important at this time. Nothing should distract us from that. So I won’t feed into that distraction by going tonight.
“I do think many Labour Party members will want clarity over the Labour Party’s attitude to attending demonstrations organised by Stop The War or by them jointly with other groups.”
McDonnell’s no-show comes just a week after he and 10 other Labour MPs removed their names from a Stop The War letter on the crisis after being told to do so by Keir Starmer.
At a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday, Starmer made it clear than any member who does not support Nato would be kicked out.
He said: “Labour’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law and the sovereignty of independent nations is unshakable.
“Vladimir Putin is attacking all those things. Nato is defending them.
“There are groups in this country who haven’t seemed to understand that difference.
“Let me be very clear. There will be no place in this party for false equivalence between the actions of Russia and the actions of Nato.”