John McDonnell tries to get voters to trust him and his party on the economy

The Shadow Chancellor’s speech at Labour conference has always been the second biggest slot after the leader. But in a sense John McDonnell’s speech today, just before lunch, is the most important slot of the whole conference because he is talking about the policy area that did the most to put voters off Labour in May. A review by Jon Cruddas found that voters were well-aware of Labour’s anti-austerity message, and that they didn’t like it, even though all the retail offers on energy bills and so on were popular.

But McDonnell believes that voters need to be told of the dangers of austerity, which they haven’t, and then they will come over to his way of thinking. He also clearly knows that before he can get a hearing for this argument, he will need to convince voters that he’s worth trusting, and that’s why he spent so much of his Today programme interview sounding calm, mild, reasoned – not quite the impassioned speaker that those who’ve watched him in the Commons know.