Mcdonnell’s transparent charm offensive with his newfound comrades in the City

‘For those of us used to hearing him hold forth at the Dispatch Box, clanging doomily away like a funeral toll, the change in tone took some getting used to’

Are you an evil greedy neoliberal Thatcherite capitalist dog? Don’t worry. John Mcdonnell says you have nothing to fear from him. Ignore the “scaremongering”, he told an audience in the City of London yesterday, heaving his facial muscles into his best approximation of a smile. He wasn’t some “raving extremist”. He wasn’t plotting to send them to a “reeducation camp somewhere up north”.

Of course not. It’ll be in the Midlands.

For some time now, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow chancellor has been waging a campaign to persuade the financial sector that he means it no harm. He’s been holding meetings with bankers and fund managers, and in January he even went to Davos in Switzerland to attend the globalists’ Glastonbury: the World Economic Forum. Yesterday he continued his charm offensive by giving a speech at the opulent new HQ of Bloomberg, the financial news specialists. His aim, he explained, was to open a “dialogue” between the Left and the City, and to explain why it was in everyone’s interests for them to work “together”.

He had, it seemed, made an effort to look less forbidding than normal: he was dressed in businesslike blue, rather than his usual undertaker black, and his voice sounded softer and gentler than in the Commons. He also told some self-deprecating jokes. For those of us used to hearing him hold forth at the Dispatch Box, clanging doomily away like a funeral toll, the change in tone took some getting used to. Like seeing the Grim Reaper in a pair of Bermuda shorts.

The City, he insisted, could trust him. “There are no tricks up my sleeve,” he promised. “What you see is what you get.” Sure, he might have one or two policies “that, well, you’ll be less enthusiastic about”, such as the introduction of a “small” financial transactions tax. But he would never lie to them. “We are,” he declared, “completely open and transparent.”

Maybe he meant it. Then again, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d heard Mr Mcdonnell boasting about his openness and transparency before. Five years ago, while he was still an obscure backbench MP, Mr Mcdonnell told a meeting of Left-wingers: “Look, I’m straight, I’m honest with people: I’m a Marxist.” Since joining the Labour front bench, however, he’s become strangely reluctant to repeat this admission.

During last year’s general election campaign, the BBC’S Andrew Marr asked him several times whether he was a Marxist, “yes or no”. For some reason, Mr Mcdonnell wouldn’t say; the most he would concede was that there was “a lot to learn from reading Das Kapital”. He said it so offhandedly, he might have been talking about an interesting little book about fieldmice he’d picked up for 50p at a bring-and-buy sale.

Mr Mcdonnell finished yesterday’s speech to the City with a joke. “I’m tempted to say: ‘Thank you, comrades!’” he said.

His newfound comrades lightly applauded. Well, best to be on the safe side.