When John McDonnell recently greeted a business executive, he quipped: “Hello, are you looking forward to having a Marxist in No 11?” But at Labour’s “Future of Finance” conference at Bloomberg’s new European headquarters, the shadow chancellor had a more reassuring message for the City of London. “There are no tricks up my sleeve,” McDonnell declared in his speech. “What you see is what you get.”
It’s a line McDonnell has used before. “We’ve got nothing up our sleeves,” he told Financial News last month. “There is no [hidden] side to us.” What explains this reassurance mission?
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