Margaret McDonagh

Baroness McDonagh
Born	26 June 1961
Interests	• New Labour • The Pipeline
General Secretary of the Labour Party  In office 1998 - 2001

Margaret Josephine McDonagh, Baroness McDonagh (born 26 June 1961) is a British Labour Party politician and was General Secretary of the Labour Party from 1998 to 2001.

In 2012, Baroness McDonagh co-founded with Lorna Fitzsimons management consultants The Pipeline which are described as leading Diversity and Inclusion specialists.

Political career

Margaret McDonagh was part of the New Labour leadership inner-circle for the 1997 UK General Election campaign and was one of the inner-core deciding the official party position on specific issues.

In 1998, Margaret McDonagh became Labour's first female General Secretary, after serving as deputy GS the previous year, and was not always popular with the grassroots and parts of the Parliamentary Labour Party due to her perceived 'control-freakery'. She was considered to have badly mishandled the party's London mayoral candidate selection process, which resulted in Ken Livingstone winning 2000 London mayoral election as an independent candidate, leaving the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson in third place, with subsequent disaffection amongst the party members. McDonagh later apologised for the mayoral electoral loss. Her organisational skills came to the fore however in the delivery of a second landslide victory at the 2001 General Election. She was also criticised for accepting, without consultation, a £100,000 donation from Daily Express newspaper and adult magazine publisher Richard Desmond, and still counting as party members those in arrears of up to 15 months to delay news of declining membership emerging.

Synonymous with New Labour

In May 2020, following Keir Starmer's selection of David Evans to be General Secretary of the Labour Party, the SKWAWKBOX reported a number of concerns:

In the late 1990s, David Evans was Labour’s Regional Director in the North West and then assistant General Secretary advising Margaret McDonagh, working on Tony Blair’s 2001 election campaign.

Margaret McDonagh was then appointed General Secretary of the Labour Party. The BBC says “her name became synonymous with the creation of New Labour”.

While McDonagh was General Secretary, and while David Evans was her right-hand man, trade unions were sidelined and their views generally disregarded.

In addition, this closeness to Margaret McDonagh raises issues because her sister Siobhain McDonagh is very good friends with Greg Cook, who is named in the recently-leaked Labour report. How can a new General Secretary with a personal connection to those accused by the report fairly oversee an investigation into those accusations?

Businesswoman

After stepping down as General Secretary of the Labour Party following the 2001 General Election, McDonagh took a short Harvard University business course and became General Manager of Express Newspapers. She has been a non-executive director of Standard Life, TBI plc and CareCapital Group plc. She is Chair of the Standard Life Charitable Trust.

Margaret McDonagh was created a life peer on 24 June 2004 taking the title Baroness McDonagh of Mitcham and Morden in the London Borough of Merton.

In 2013 Baroness McDonagh was appointed chair of the Smart Meter Central Delivery Body, which then became Smart Energy GB, an independent organisation that aims to inform consumers about smart meters and their national rollout across Great Britain.

Her sister is Siobhain McDonagh, MP for Mitcham and Morden.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 27 December 2020.
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