John McDonnell's economics: Milibandism freed from New Labour

With the Marx-reading campaigner as shadow chancellor, renationalisation is back on the agenda along with wealth tax and a higher living wage

Chris Leslie, Labour's short-lived post-election shadow chancellor, said the party should pitch its appeal to "the Which? magazine strata of society" made up of cost-conscious middle-class consumers and buy-to-let landlords. His successor, the veteran leftwing campaigner John McDonnell, is more likely to be found reading Karl Marx.

Marx's Capital, with its prognosis - as yet unrealised almost 150 years on - that capitalism's inherent contradictions and periodic crises would eventually bring about its collapse, is the first book O'Donnell recommends reading to understand the thinking behind Labour's new economic policy.

Related: John McDonnell: unreconstructed on the left, but with allies on the right