John McDonnell took a distinctly Blairite approach to his Mumsnet grilling today, picking easy questions and giving bland, equivocal answers that could have been written by a junior press officer. Probably were…

That wasn’t enough to stop him getting tangled in the thorniest political issue on Mumsnet today – the trans debate and self-identification of women – despite his best efforts to give an Alastair Campbell-style non-answer to the question:

One outraged user responded:

“As a lifelong labour voter and woman I can no longer vote for your party due to its stance on self [ID]… By all means pander to the [pc] student left…but it will not win you a GE. I will never vote Labour again and my membership card is in the bin”

Numerous other Mumsnet users tore into McDonnell for failing to address the issue:

A bad Mumsnet reception was almost enough to sink a political campaign in years gone by. Labour’s policy may play well with woke student unions but Mumsnet is far more in tune with popular opinion as a whole…