Toe-curling video emerges of Lisa Nandy refusing to say if Winston Churchill was a hero or a villain

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy was embroiled in a new wokery row today over a video in which she was unable to describe Winston Churchill as a hero.

The Labour shadow foreign secretary was asked if the Second World War prime minister was a ‘hero or villain’ in an appearance on Question Time, and branded it a ‘stupid question’. 

It came after John McDonnell, Labour’s then hard left shadow chancellor, had branded Churchill a villain for sending soldiers to suppress a miners’ strike in South Wales in 1910. 

Ms Nandy has been embroiled in controversy this week after she accused Boris Johnson of ‘trying to start a culture war over a statue of Churchill’ outside Parliament that was vandalised during an anti-racism protest.

The shadow foreign secretary claimed the Prime Minister has ‘managed to trash our reputation’ as a ‘values-driven’ country as she praised the new US President. 

The statue was sprayed with graffiti during a Black Lives Matter protest last June and was then boarded up ahead of more protests. 

Ms Nandy’s suggestion that Mr Johnson had attempted to start a ‘culture war’ on the issue was blasted by some fellow Labour MPs and Tories who said ‘Labour may think it’s wrong to stand up to mobs attacking a statue of our great wartime leader, we do not’.

Appearing on Question Time in February 2019, on a panel that included Jacob Rees-Mogg, now the Tory Commons Leader, Ms Nandy was asked about Churchill off the back of Mr McDonnell’s criticisim.

She replied: ‘I really do think this is a stupid question and I think this is why you are getting a stupid answer. Frankly I am sick to death of a political debate that tries to reduce things to yes or no, good or bad.

Ms Nandy has been embroiled in controversy this week after she accused Boris Johnson of ‘trying to start a culture war over a statue of Churchill’ outside Parliament that was vandalised during an anti-racism protest. 

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The Labour frontbencher was asked if the Second World War prime minister was a ‘hero or villain’ in an appearance on Question Time, and branded it a ‘stupid question’

‘This is really dangerous stuff, we have seen it with the Brexit debate, we are seeing it with many of the conversations that we have in our political discourse at the moment. It is poisoning it.

‘I happen to think, like probably most people in this country, that there are some decisions that Winston Churchill made that I wouldn’t agree with at all. But at a critical moment in British history he stood up and made the right judgement call that has profound implications for all of us still now today.

‘This debate that seeks to divide us has done, is it has allowed people in politics, on Jacob’s wing of the Tory party, to try to invoke the spirit of Winston Churchill, somehow, as if we are still in this war era and as if we should still be engaged in war.’ 

The row erupted when Mr McDonnell was asked at an event hosted by the Politico website whether Churchill was a ‘hero or villain’, he replied: ‘Tonypandy. Villain.’

This was a reference to the Welsh mining village where Churchill ordered in troops to help police quell riots in 1910. The then home secretary sent 200 Metropolitan Police officers into Tonypandy, while a detachment of Lancashire Fusiliers was held in reserve in Cardiff.

The soldiers were eventually sent on to the streets of the Rhondda Valley village to control striking miners who had vandalised town centre shops and mineowners’ property. Around 80 police and more than 500 civilians were injured in the disturbances.

The move left much bad feeling towards Churchill in the area, although it was largely forgotten after he led Britain to victory over the Nazis.

Mr McDonnell later doubled down, saying he had been ‘honest’ but adding that Churchill was a ‘hero in the Second World War but in many ways for working class families not someone they looked up to’. 

Churchill is a divisive figure on the left of politics. While he is praised for his wartime leadership, his pre-war record is hotly contested.

As well as the Welsh strike he is also criticised for his role in the bungled Gallipoli invasion of Turkey in the First World War, His reintroduction of the Gold Standard while chancellor in 1925 is also seen as one of the contributing factors behidn the following year’s General Strike.

Left wing activists also hold Churchill responsible for the 1943 Bengal Famine in which as many as three million Indians died. His War Cabinet at the time refused to send grain to feed the people because of the war effort.

Churchill is a divisive figure on the left of politics. While he is praised for his wartime leadership, his pre-war record is hotly contested.

At the weekend the Shadow Foreign Secretary faced ridicule after praising a report which suggested replacing Britain’s Armed Forces with a ‘gender-balanced human security’ corps.

She helped to launch a report by the Open Labour group which said the main job of the forces should be to ‘dampen down violence rather than intervene on one side or the other’.

Ms Nandy, 41, said she was ‘inspired’ by the pamphlet, which included the argument that that ‘the UK is no longer a great power’ and cited ‘countries like [the] Scandinavians’ as a model for the UK’s role in the world.

She told last month’s launch: ‘I hear it a lot on the Tory benches, this idea of a country that ruled the waves.

‘Rule Britannia… I think that’s given way to a nostalgia rooted in the history of the Second World War that somehow says that we’re a small island nation that goes out punching above its weight, without ever really stopping to ask why on earth it is that we’re punching at all.’