John McDonnell covered a lot of ground in his conference speech: the barbaric effect of austerity on

disabled people; a well overdue, but deplorably fresh, sincerity towards tackling tax avoidance; the
exposure of the faade of an objectivity that the economics establishment (and particularly its support
for austerity politics) is widely perceived to espouse. But something potentially seismic may well slip
under the radar due, perhaps, to the fact that although it is by no means a novel idea it has found itself
out of fashioned for the good part of a century. I am referring to this statement of McDonnells: well
also promote modern, alternative, public, cooperative, worker-controlled and genuinely mutual forms
of ownership across our economy.
Why, you might ask, am I almost certain that this signal towards meaningful workers empowerment
will not be given the attention it deserves in the mainstream media? For the right-wing media, this
adjective-packed, slightly cumbersome sentence threatens to topple their entire narrative surrounding
Corbyns victory. The two words overwhelmingly chosen by a panel of undecided voters for
BritainThinks to describe Corbyn after his first week as leader were old-fashioned and socialist. In
essence, that should read: old-fashioned state socialist, conjuring connotations of Frances
inefficient dirigisme and even of Soviet Russia. Bloating state, withering liberty could succinctly
capture the multitude of right-wing predictions for a Corbyn government that will no doubt continue
to gush forth from the venom-soaked pages of the Mail et al. Unfortunately for them, this move
towards workplace democracy on a nationwide scale strips them of the privilege of invoking the bad
old days of state socialism and of dismissing Corbyn as a hopeless throwback to a bygone era.
Furthermore, McDonnells promotion of an emancipated workforce at the forefront of the economy
rather than a monolithic, faceless bureaucracy does not solely serve to dispel this myth. More
troubling for the right is the fact that this new direction occupies the rights hallowed territory. Since
the fruition of neoliberalism in the late-70s, the right has styled itself as the ideological home of
proponents of freedom freedom from regulation, from tax and from subsidising idleness and
incompetence. The positioning of equality as diametrically opposed to liberty has served as the
justification for all the gross injustices of the free market ever since. For Corbyns Labour to collapse
this false binary and empower workers in the communal sphere (in the workplace) instead of in the
private sphere (on the tax form) is to defeat the Tories on their own terms. Replacing the hierarchies
of the modern capitalist plc with a flatter, egalitarian model will be the biggest redistribution of
freedom this country has ever seen. Moreover, it dispels the other myth that the face of todays Labour
is one of reckless abandon and self-indulgence, one naval gazing its way to destruction. No longer will
commentators be able to depict the Labour leaderships head as in the clouds if it is slugging out with
the government over the same hymn sheet. Principle will be at the heart of modern British politics
without everyone with any ounce of conviction being derided as stubbornly framing their outlook of
the world within the confines of their head.
My plea is for the left-wing media not to ignore this unanticipated swerve in narrative, which it
currently seems in risk of doing. For so long has the narrative of austerity framed the terms of political
debate in this country that the left are on the defensive from the get-go. No doubt, in coverage of the
first sketchings of Corbynomics, the left-wing media will stress how an aversion to austerity does not
make you a deficit-denier. McDonnell himself was keen to highlight this point, in explaining
Labours plans not to tackle the deficit on the backs of the middle- and low-earners, and especially
not by attacking the poorest in our society, instead growing the economy before making cuts to
government expenditure. Given that Labours dire performance in May was, in part, due to a 5-year
long failure to adequately rebuke the accusations thrown at it which would, in turn, seep into the
consciousness of the wider public, this emphasis is very much needed. However, I implore the Left to
grasp the opportunity it has been granted with this fresh leadership to know when it is time to come
off the defensive and to, so to speak, go for the jugular. This means making McDonnells stance on
deficit reduction crystal clear without eclipsing Labours more lethal, hope-inducing stances the
kind of stances that will reclaim the Lefts control over the shape of political debate and, with any luck,
our control over government come 2020.