Fiscal policy U-turn at 'total shambles' Labour meeting

'A total f.....ing shambles' was how the former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw described Monday's Parliamentary Labour Party meeting.

Rarely - if ever - have passions run so high at what is normally a kind of weekly team talk for MPs.

Waiting in the corridor outside, we could hear them shouting at each other.

The focus of all the anger, a U-turn over voting with the Government on George Osborne's plan to run a budget surplus by 2019.

On the eve of the Labour conference, shadow chancellor John McDonnell surprised colleagues, saying he wanted his party to support the Osborne Fiscal Responsibility Charter.

The idea was not to fall into a 'Tory trap' and be portrayed as 'deficit deniers'.Then at the PLP, he suddenly announced they should oppose it.

He told Labour MPs that things had 'moved on' since the conference.

I think many in his party are beginning to wish he would move on too.