McDonnell takes aim at bankers’ huge bonuses as he warns: Change is coming

JOHn McDonnell has warned that ‘change is coming’ as he threatened a ban on bankers’ lucrative bonuses.

The Shadow Chancellor said a Labour government would go much further than Clement Attlee’s post-war administration.

He said he would consider outlawing the huge rewards handed to financiers unless the City takes action to curb excessive payments. And he warned: ‘People want change. Change is coming; as simple as that.’

Mr McDonnell, an avowed Marxist, also said that a government led by Jeremy Corbyn would try to ‘rebalance the power between capital and labour’.

His intervention comes days after he faced a huge backlash over his plans to crack down on the buy-to-let market by giving private tenants the right to buy.

He is also looking at plans to hand £300billion of shares to workers, which critics say is one of the biggest interventions in the operation of business ever in Western democracy. In an interview with the Financial Times, the Shadow Chancellor said of the City: ‘If it hasn’t learnt its lesson, we will take action, I’ll give them that warning now. It’s a reflection of the grotesque levels of inequality that people now find so offensive. Action will be taken, full stop.’ Mr McDonnell claimed the Tory approach to Brexit has meant business leaders looking to Labour ‘for stability’.

He said his tax-and-spend reforms would be more ambitious than that of Mr Attlee, the former Labour prime minister who established the NHS and much of the rest of the welfare state 70 years ago.

‘We all admire what Attlee did... but I think we will go beyond it,’ he said.

Mr McDonnell also revealed to the paper that he had decided to cultivate a more reasonable persona since becoming Shadow Chancellor after his parish priest told him: ‘Soften your image.’