With Labour’s bloody leadership contest behind them, John McDonnell wants to get back to business. This is a man who lists ‘fermenting the overthrow of capitalism’ as his pastime on Who’s Who. Now he is the Labour Party’s shadow chancellor. So with the renewed Corbynista mandate, what now? Having picked the brains of Ed Miliband and others, he says a Labour government would be defined by its willingness to step in – but only gently – to help out business. For McDonnell, that plan to intervene would take the form of a mammoth spending scheme backed by a national investment bank pumped with £100bn. He said his big idea was that:
‘The state has a role to play in the economy of working with entrepreneurs and wealth creators, developing and investing in the long term in patient and long term investment, helping people develop their products and in that way you create a prosperous society.’
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