Borrowing to invest isn’t burning money – it’s how Labour will fix the economy | John McDonnell

While the Tories have strangled the life out of the economy, we will support the new infrastructure, technology and ideas that are vital to growth

This is the pivotal period in which the battle of ideas over the future of our economy will be lost or won. All the evidence of the failure of austerity has been exposed, and the neoliberals are fighting for their ideological survival. The terrain they have chosen is over state intervention in the economy; they deploy media outriders using trite journalistic tactics to sow fears over the costs of state investment. Since I became shadow chancellor my aim has been to raise the level of economic debate and challenge the hegemony of this egregious ideology.

The budget gives us the opportunity to confront and overrun the bogus economic arguments that have dominated political and economic policymaking for so long. The official figures released alongside the budget this year were utterly damning, a litany of failure not only for this government but for the entire economic philosophy it lives and will die by.

There lurks a belief that government borrowing is akin to burning money

Related: Philip Hammond must ditch deficit reduction and invest. But he won't | Larry Elliott