Star comment: Long haul for Labour to regain vital trust

Many will be pleased to hear that he wants multinational corporations like Amazon and Google to pay their fair share.

He doesn't want the poorest in society or the squeezed middle classes to pay disproportionately high taxes while vast conglomerates pay next to nothing.

Mr McDonnell's idea is designed to ease the burden on those in society who have the least. It will, of course, help everyone; from the richest to the poorest. The only companies that will suffer are those who make vast profits in the UK, then ship their money overseas.

Whether or not his idea to raise taxes on the rich will be as popular is a moot point. While the nation broadly supports a progressive tax system, there must also be an acknowledgement that many high earners help to create jobs for those lower down the economic scale.

If a tax regime becomes punitive, they can migrate elsewhere, taking their businesses with them. It may seem counter-intuitive, but penalising the richest can sometimes have a negative effect on the poorest, too.

Mr McDonnell, however, faces a greater challenge when it comes to balancing the books. The biggest issue is this: will anyone trust Mr McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party to balance the nation's books?

Labour's governance of the economy may have been skewed by the financial crisis of 2008, but the hard facts remain: people trust the Conservatives more than Labour with the management of our finances. And if Mr McDonnell wants to win back voters he needs to convince the electorate that he can be trusted. More new ideas are what will count when voters are in the privacy of the voting booths in 2020.

Labour's ratings when it comes to the economy are lame. Arguably the greatest factor in their 2015 election defeat was their economic mismanagement. So if the party is to have a realistic chance of winning power in 2020, it needs to re-establish trust. Corbynomics must be proven to work in practice, not just principle.

Whether people will be put off by talk of the capitalist system and Marx – a rather more academic view than we are used to in the world of soundbite politics – remains to be seen. What is certain is that this is the beginning of a difficult journey for Labour.