Mick Hartley

Rachel Sylvester in the Times today (£) – Corbyn likes protest, McDonnell wants power:

As a general election nears, and the prospect of power looms, the differences between the two men at the top of the Labour Party are emerging. Although they are still in many ways ideological soulmates, there is a growing rift between the shadow chancellor and the leader and his team over political purpose and electoral strategy. With Mr Corbyn described by MPs as an increasingly absent and indecisive figure, Mr McDonnell is taking charge. “John has seen the lack of leadership and is providing some rational thinking at the centre,” one frontbencher says. “It’s not so much him moving in as him filling the vacuum.”…

In fact the Labour leader is so lacking in clout within his own party that insiders say the real tension is between Mr McDonnell and Seumas Milne, Mr Corbyn’s director of communications. According to one frontbencher: “It’s John versus Seumas with Jeremy in the middle of the tug of love.” A former minister says that the shadow chancellor is plugging a gap. “McDonnell is much cleverer, more diligent and better organised. I don’t think Corbyn really wants to be prime minister, he’s spent his life striking poses but being in government is about making difficult choices.” 

If the Labour leader prefers the purity of opposition to the compromises required by power, the shadow chancellor is a pragmatist who will do what it takes to win. A few years ago, Mr Corbyn’s policy adviser Andrew Murray, a former member of the Communist Party, denounced Labour’s periods in government as a “miserable litany of disasters” because they put “reformism” over “revolution”.

The shadow chancellor would never make that argument. A self-described Marxist, he wants to “move on from capitalism” but he also knows that this economic revolution can only be achieved in government. “For the left, I want people to realise the responsibility that is on our shoulders,” he said in our interview. “Our society needs change, this is an opportunity to . . . implement our ideals and therefore if you do screw up it will be held against the left for the future.”  […]

Confident in his own ideas, the shadow chancellor is happy to try to win over opponents. Mr Corbyn prefers to be surrounded by those who share his views. One senior MP says that the Labour leader once told him: “I’m the stupid one in my family, that’s why I went into politics.” According to the MP: “Corbyn has an intellectual insecurity and he is attracted to factional politics because when someone else is giving you the line you don’t have to think with great clarity or depth. Where he is most challenged now is when the faction cannot agree.”

In other words – as we knew – Corbyn is the friendly Grandpa Jeremy figurehead; McDonnell is the one we have to worry about.

Or, as one commenter notes: "The only thing more terrifying than having an incompetent communist in charge is having a competent communist in charge."