John McDonnell’s response showed how irrelevant Labour has become

No-one envies the person whose job it is to respond for the Opposition to an economic statement that has just been made to the House of Commons. But perhaps John McDonnell’s job today was rather less terrifying given few people were seriously worrying about what he had to say. 

The House of Commons was rather quiet as the shadow chancellor spoke. There was no obvious organised heckling of McDonnell from the Tory benches. Previously George Osborne’s Treasury Support Group of dozens of backbenchers would arm themselves with special insults to fling at Labour to wrong-foot the frontbencher responding to an autumn statement or budget. Today those MPs didn’t seem to have had their pre-statement meeting: John Bercow only had to rebuke general chuntering rather than the wall of noise that we used to hear in response to Ed Balls standing up at the dispatch box.