By Theo Russell
Jeremy
Corbyn’s Number Two, the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, discussed the
challenges facing a future Labour government with Jenny Manson at the Clayton
Crown Hotel in Cricklewood last week. Jenny is a veteran Labour supporter and
co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Labour
(JVL) movement that was established partly in response to the Jewish Labour Movement's profoundly Zionist
orientation. But the chair made it clear that the discussion would concentrate
on Brexit, Labour’s answer to the economic crisis, and would not deal with any
questions relating to Israel, Palestine or anti-Semitism.
Jenny Manson is firm favourite to be
Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the Finchley and Golders Green constituency
at the next election, and a wide range of issues from a socialist perspective
were taken up, including how a future Labour government will pay for its plans
and how Jenny Manson as a future MP could help realise these.
The first question she put to McDonnell
was why Labour failed to challenge the lie that the 2008 financial crisis was
the caused by government over-spending.
McDonnell replied: “After the 2008 crash I
called for the government to ‘nationalise and stabilise’ the banks, but when
the banks were nationalised the government failed to take control of their
boards of directors.
“As a result, the injection of massive
amounts of quantitative easing into the banking system was to the advantage of
wealthy asset holders, while the rest of the population saw their living
standards slashed. Those who caused the 2008 crisis are not the ones who ended
up paying for it.
“When Gordon Brown lost the election and
resigned as leader there was a vacuum when the myth of the government over-spending
and the deficit causing the crisis went unchallenged.”
Asked by why the Labour leadership had
adopted “austerity light” under Ed Miliband, McDonnell said that this was “one
of the issues that propelled JC [Jeremy Corbyn] into the leadership”.
He described Andy Burnham’s abstention in
the vote on the Tory benefit reforms as “shameful” and said: “Added to that, at
that time people didn’t understand the full implications of what the Tories
were doing.”
McDonnell said that Britain had been
starved of commercial investment, saying “corporations in Britain have funds of
£700 billion which are not being invested. We plan to set up a Strategic
Investment Board bringing together the Bank of England, trade unions and
employers.”
He said Labour also planned to spend £49
billion on the NHS and to abolish university fees.
Speaking about the shocking levels of
poverty after eight years of LibDem and Tory government, he said that in his
constituency, Hayes and Harlington in West London, “there are people sleeping
on the streets, families renting sheds and garages to live in, people living in
abject poverty because of benefits sanctions and bans, and children are out on
the streets every day getting into drugs and gangs because their parents work
such long hours.
“We’ve seen an 83-year-old asylum seeker
taken to hospital in handcuffs where he died, still in handcuffs, and only
recently a homeless person died only yards from the Westminster parliament.
“Record numbers of children are being
taken into care because of families collapsing and we have four-million
children living in poverty, two-thirds of them in families that are working.”
Without an election and change of
government, this situation is only going to get much worse. McDonnell warned
that: “The Tories are now planning cuts of £1.7 billion in the autumn budget
and the Local Government Association has said many local councils can’t go on
much longer. We are now facing a situation in which the entire social fabric of
our society is at risk.”
