Tackling the climate crisis is where Labour’s manifesto can be truly radical

Editorial: Gimmicks such as basic income pilot schemes are all very well, but what really matters is whether the party has done the serious policy work to deliver real change

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, is a contradictory figure. He is depicted by his opponents – many of them in his own party – as a street-fighting Marxist hell-bent on confiscating the property of the rich.

Sometimes he enjoys playing with this image, as when, in his interview with The Independent today, he promises that Labour’s manifesto will be “more radical” than the one on which the party fought the 2017 election.

Given that some Labour staff feared that the last manifesto could be credibly costed by the Conservatives at £1 trillion, and were surprised that it was not, a “more radical” prospectus is a remarkable promise.

Yet at other times Mr McDonnell comes across successfully as a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth pragmatist, the very model of a reassuring bank manager. Thus his tax-and-spending plans for this election have been described as more sustainable than those of the Conservatives because, while both parties promise huge increases in public spending, he plans to increase taxes, on the top 5 per cent of incomes and on corporations, while Sajid Javid talks of tax cuts.

The contradictions run through his interview today. He continues to advocate a universal basic income – a utopian scam that would either pay a nugatory stipend or would be ruinously expensive – but cautiously restricts himself to promising a pilot scheme.

He makes an important point about using the immense power of the state to shift economic activity away from London, but his plan to relocate some Treasury civil servants to Liverpool seems tokenistic and unconvincing.

The one important respect in which Labour’s manifesto is likely to be different, and more radical than last time, however, is in policies to mitigate climate change. All the main parties have responded to the growing urgency of global warming articulated by Extinction Rebellion, but Labour has sought to go further than the government.

Mr McDonnell has shown some skill in balancing idealism and pragmatism on green issues. As an MP with a longstanding constituency interest, he has always opposed Heathrow expansion, but now he makes a measured case that expanding air travel capacity runs counter to the needs of climate policy. For the moment, Labour’s policy is that the environmental tests of a third runway have not yet been met. That is a sensible holding pattern, even if Mr McDonnell cannot resist a cheap shot at private jets. (Asked if they should be banned, he says yes.)

When Labour’s manifesto is published, one of the important tests by which it should be judged is how it meets this challenge. Gimmicks such as basic income pilot schemes and moving the Treasury out of London are all very well, but what really matters is whether the party has done the serious policy work to deliver real change in public services, and a credible shift to a carbon-neutral economy that is capable of mobilising public opinion in its support.