ARTICULATED in the vocabulary of economics rather than the standard lexicon of political soundbites, young rising star of the labour movement Grace Blakeley is proving to be a formidable challenger to the established commentariat of broadcast media, with memorable television appearances including explaining the economics of democratic socialism to a bemused Andrew Neil on his own BBC show and debunking former Tory MP Michael Portillo’s attempts to justify a decade of austerity.

The Labour Party’s proposals to move in the direction of democratic socialism have provoked alarm from right-leaning media, but much of the party’s manifesto is modelled on the orthodox economics of John Maynard Keynes, which formed a basis of the 1945-1979 post-war consensus.

During this period, Conservative governments retained some Labour policies — including the nationalisation of key industries plus the creation of a broad welfare state and National Health Service, following the landslide victory for Labour’s Clement Attlee in 1945.