Picture credit: Jim Pickard

This graphic is from a presentation presided over by John McDonnell today. It apparently explains the structure of McDonnell’s proposed Strategic Investment Board. If it looks to you like a diagram of the power grid for the Central Electricity Generating Board circa 1949 it is because it comes from the same mindset that designed the CEGB. Does it look like the kind of nimble financial organisation to take on and beat the Silicon Valley investment giants creating our world?

Not impressed? It is only when you see the kind of nonsense being pumped out by the people around McDonnell trying to update state socialism (with an iPad) that you remember that only 3 years ago McDonnell was typically spending his evenings giving his alternative economics briefings to two old tankies, an adolescent plastic-bag carrying trot and a confused old lady keeping warm. Now the FT comes along to wonder at his ideas.