Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
John McDonnell and Labour’s New Deal
McDonnell’s plan is not about filling in potholes. It is the wholesale transformation of how we live, work and protect, writes ALAN SIMPSON

WHEN former US president Franklyn Roosevelt launched his 1930s New Deal into the United State’s depression-era politics, wealthy elites in the American Liberty League were incandescent. Their denunciations focused on a claim that Roosevelt had “betrayed his own class.”

For fairly obvious reasons, Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell will not face the same denunciations. But be in no doubt, the neoliberal right are already after him.

The Tory Party HQ has unleashed a pack of house-trained journalists and back-bench MPs, hounding the shadow chancellor with “Trivial Pursuit” questions about the annual cost of servicing government borrowing.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Workers pack orders on the warehouse floor at the Amazon UK Fulfilment Centre in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
Features / 22 July 2025
22 July 2025

From Amazon’s monitored warehouse hell to delivery workers being paid per package, exploitative work destroys collaborative relationships young people need — more screen time and 12 new AI ‘friends’ will only make things worse, writes ALAN SIMPSON

Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves the end of a press conference on the Immigration White Paper in the Downing Street Briefing Room in London, May 12, 2025
Features / 19 May 2025
19 May 2025

ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right

Franklyn Roosevelt, November 1932
The Futurue / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all

US President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box as
Features / 20 March 2025
20 March 2025
As the ‘NRx movement’ plots to replace democracy with corporate-feudal dictatorship, Britain must pursue a radical alternative of local food security and genuine wealth redistribution to withstand the coming upheaval, writes ALAN SIMPSON
Similar stories
Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves the end of a press conference on the Immigration White Paper in the Downing Street Briefing Room in London, May 12, 2025
Features / 19 May 2025
19 May 2025

ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right

US President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box as
Features / 20 March 2025
20 March 2025
As the ‘NRx movement’ plots to replace democracy with corporate-feudal dictatorship, Britain must pursue a radical alternative of local food security and genuine wealth redistribution to withstand the coming upheaval, writes ALAN SIMPSON
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, September 23, 202
Editorial: / 14 January 2025
14 January 2025
STANDS TO REASON: Climate change protest in Whitehall, centr
Features / 2 December 2024
2 December 2024
Undaunted by Big Oil success, ALAN SIMPSON looks at alternatives to lack of courage and imagination stifling the Labour government and it policies