‘What’s wrong with capitalism?’

This was never going to be a question that could catch John McDonnell unprepared. Shadow Chancellor for just over a year now, McDonnell has spent most of his life fighting for socialism in the UK, from his time under Ken Livingstone on the Greater London Council (GLC) to his period leading the Socialist Campaign Group in parliament.

“It’s exploitative”, he begins. “It threatens our planet and causes immense human suffering if there aren’t interventions from people like us”.

Though of late he has spent a lot of time talking about fiscal responsibility and Labour’s support for business, there is no doubting that McDonnell is the most radical Shadow Chancellor in a generation. On Friday, he addressed members of the Cambridge Universities Labour Club, at the Union.

“In the long term I want to see a transformation of our society”,  he tells me before the talk, “so that we can have an economy that is democratically controlled and based upon cooperation.”

“You know you’re winning the argument when your opponents are taking your argument from you”

After a lifetime of waiting, McDonnell clearly feels that these ideas are finally coming of age. His speech to the chamber cites Thomas Kuhns’ theory of scientific revolutions, which argues that progress is made through huge revolutions in ideas, wherein dominant theories are brought to a point of crisis by initially marginalised criticism.

“I think we might be there with neoliberalism at the moment”, he says – casting himself as the proverbial Copernicus, revealing a new universe of possibility.

The proof of its impending failure, for the Shadow Chancellor, lies in its inability to provide for basic needs. He noted to the Union audience that over one million emergency food packages were given to people in Britain last year: “we have a government on this economic theory that can’t even feed its own people”.

I point out to him that no matter how badly he feels the system is failing, his opponents still hold a great deal of power. When Danny Blanchflower, formerly on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, left Corbyn’s economic advisory committee last summer, he remarked that “if there were even the slightest prospect that he could be Prime Minister, the bond and equity markets would eat him for lunch”

“I don’t believe that”, McDonnell says. “When governments get elected the markets soon react accordingly and settle down and cooperate with whichever government is there.”

He claims that people want a taxation system based on a growing economy in order to “afford public services”, proposing that this be achieved through investment in infrastructure and skills.

When I suggest that this is exactly the aim of Philip Hammond’s Autumn Statement, McDonnell smiles: “you know you’re winning the argument when your opponents are taking your argument from you.”

He criticises the Chancellor for employing “a fiscal framework which simply rolls out the deficit reduction over another couple of years” and for retaining investment in this framework, producing stimulus “not on the scale that would tackle the real problems we face”.

“I’m on the Jeremy Corbyn course of kinder, gentler politics... There are seven parts and I’ve been sent back to part three.”

Regardless, the so-called ‘new economics’ is only one pillar of the Corbyn pitch. The (“kinder, gentler”) ‘new politics’ was another winning slogan in the first leadership election, in 2015.

It’s one that doesn’t seem to sit well with McDonnell, who has long been one of the more abrasive presences in the Commons Chamber. I ask him if the idea is just an empty cliché.

“You can call it new politics, the expression really doesn’t matter that much”, he says. “It’s the climate of opinion that matters more than anything. And what the people got frustrated with was seeing politicians that didn’t reflect their views; that didn’t listen to them.”

“The role that Jeremy Corbyn has played is to try and open up discussion again.”

But what about the “kinder, gentler”, as Corbyn himself put it, element: does McDonnell feel he embodies that vision?

“I’m on the Jeremy Corbyn course of kinder, gentler politics”, he jokes. “There are seven parts and I’ve been sent back to part three.”

“My politics is somewhat different, which is actually to rebut and, if necessary, to be firm.”

Firmness has never been a quality lacking in McDonnell. Indeed, he has something of a reputation for his precarious temperament. During a debate on the expansion of Heathrow in 2009, McDonnell was suspended from the Commons for five days after picking up the ceremonial mace, while shouting that the lack of a vote on a third runway was a “disgrace to democracy”. He also got into hot water in 2014 after calling Conservative MP Esther McVey a “stain on humanity”.

In May, McDonnell told a journalist for The New Yorker that Corbyn’s ability to “[see] the good in other people” is the Labour leader’s weakness, as well as his strength. So, I ask, is Corbyn just the friendly face of socialism – with McDonnell the real power behind the throne?

Others have made the suggestion before, thinking him the more professional and experienced of the two. McDonnell quickly bats it away: “we’ve been comrades for 35 years, we complement each other.”

Though he dismisses his experience as “only in local government”, McDonnell commanded a £3bn budget as Chair of Finance in the GLC in the 1980s, the size of some small countries’ budgets.

This background reflects McDonnell’s overwhelming concern with the practical, which is at odds with a leader who is condemned as naive by a third of working-class voters.

“My tradition has been as a bureaucrat. That’s all I’ve wanted to be. I didn’t want to be a politician. I’ve always wanted to be a bureaucrat or a manager.”

This attitude also shows in his description of his time on Labour’s fringes. “I chaired the Socialist Campaign Group for God knows how many years and I said to the Left: ‘we’ve got to be ready to go into government the next day’”. 

“This is serious business”, he says. “Every year I would stand up and give an alternative budget… it was on the basis that the Left has to take power and government seriously.”

The challenge for Labour – currently polling under 30 per cent – is getting there. When his speech arrived at the Q&A section, the discussion revolved around electability.

“We’ve had to reinvent word of mouth as a form of communication”

McDonnell is admirably self-aware when it comes to the leadership’s numerous media blunders.

“We have to be more professional in the way we use the media”, he admits, joking that “they check me for Red Books now.”

He pointed out that the party was developing new communications and polling operations and claimed that their policies polled 10 or 20 points ahead until you mention Labour: “that’s a brand problem.”

McDonnell is keen to find more convincing ways to communicate their message, saying “we’ve had to reinvent word of mouth as a form of communication”. But he seemed resigned despite his optimism. “We’ll always have the same struggle with the mass media as we do now”, he warned.

He clearly does not see this as a quick and easy process, but a drawn out project of convincing the country: “have we got time to pull this off before the next election? Depends when it is.”

But the clock is ticking, and the Labour leadership can only be worried by the gains of the Right in traditionally social democratic communities across the world.

When I point out that the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives  have come down on either side of the Brexit divide, and suggest that, in attempting to straddle the two, Labour risks being left behind, he gives a politician’s answer.

“We’ve got an electoral machine now that cannot just bring out the vote, but more importantly can bring up the politics”, he says.

“Now what we’re appealing to is certainly those non-metropolitan areas that have been left behind in the past... but in those metropolitan areas as well, where we’ve built up a base of support, it’s about making sure as well that we look at the role of cities in our economy.”

He acknowledges that it will be a challenge to keep the support of metropolitan voters and the traditional working class, but makes no reference to the fact that the desires of the two are diametrically opposed, nor hints at any strategy for reconciling them.

If Brexit comes to define this generation’s politics as much as it promises to, then navigating the 48-52 divide will be the pivotal factor in the success or failure of the major parties. In the recent Richmond Park by-election, which was run along exactly those lines, Labour received fewer votes than it had local members. With that in mind, perhaps it should unnerve Labour’s supporters that this is one question that John McDonnell is not ready to answer