Team McDonnell: shadow chancellor to meet advisers Stiglitz and Piketty

Labour's elite team of economic advisers, which includes Nobel prize winner and rock star academic, to meet in run-up to Conservative autumn statement

John McDonnell's team of economic advisers is to meet for the first time as the shadow chancellor prepares his response to the autumn statement, increasingly confident that an intellectual and political tide can be turned against George Osborne's call for an overall budget surplus by the end of the parliament.

McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn set up a team of high-profile leftwing advisers in part to give some depth to the new leadership and counter their relative inexperience. Although the group was announced in September, it has not yet met and some critics have suggested it will be little more than academic window dressing for long established anti-austerity politics.

Related: Joseph Stiglitz: 'GDP per capita in the UK is lower than it was before the crisis. That is not a success'