by Conrad Landin and Joana Ramiro

RIGHT-WING Labour MPs were rebuked for starting an opportunistic fuss yesterday, after Labour firmed up its opposition to George Osborne’s fiscal charter.

Critics of the party’s new leadership took to TV studios to slam shadow chancellor John McDonnell for reversing his position.

Their interventions came after Blairites shouted down Labour MP Richard Burgon at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, where the left-wing shadow Treasury minister attempted to speak about the new left campaign organisation Momentum.

The fiscal charter, under discussion in the Commons today, would enshrine austerity in law, binding the government to achieving a budget surplus in five years’ time.

Mr McDonnell said last month that Labour would support the charter as part of a commitment to ending the deficit.

But on Monday night he reversed the party’s position saying the rigid contours of the document would not allow for the large-scale investment he would seek to implement as chancellor.

“I went to Redcar and I met the steel workers and families were in tears about what has happened to them as a result of the government failing to act, failing to intervene,” he said.

At Monday night’s PLP meeting MPs harangued Mr McDonnell for a “lack of consultation” on changing the party’s position — despite some of the same figures urging him to do so.

And Mr Burgon was heckled by fellow MPs. “It looked at one point like they weren’t even going to let him finish,” one MP told the New Statesman.

A posse of MPs on the right of the party suggested they would rebel by abstaining in today’s vote.