In his keynote speech to the Labour annual conference in Brighton, Mr McDonnell said he was “devastated” at the party’s collapse north of the border in May’s general election, which saw the SNP take 56 of the 59 available seats.
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Yesterday’s decision means Labour’s standing support for the renewal of the Clyde-based weapons, which was reaffirmed under Ed Miliband, will remain party policy but Mr Corbyn and the party’s only Scottish MP will continue to voice their own personal opposition.
Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran of the Labour Party’s left, won the party’s leadership this month on an anti-austerity platform, and had said Britain did not need to follow Conservative Finance Minister George Osborne’s timetable for deficit reduction.
Mr Corbyn will tell the Labour conference in Brighton that on the campaign trail he was inspired by the “unity and unanimity” of people’s values.
Setting out his plans for the economy, Mr McDonnell said a Labour government would cut the deficit – but without imposing cuts on funding for public services.
He had already previously said he wanted to raise the income tax threshold to 50%, a policy which had been backed by his predecessor Ed Balls.
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s new leader, is quickly finding out that the unremitting pursuit of hard-line left-wing policies may not be the best way of restoring the party to power. “I’m very relieved he hasn’t”.
Speaking on BBC radio, he said that Karl Marx had “come back in to fashion” and was one of the “definitive analysts” of the capitalist system.
Corbyn, chosen as party leader two weeks ago over better-known rivals on a wave of enthusiasm for change, also sought to portray himself as more moderate on Sunday.
He praised the group UK Uncut for occupying bank offices in London to protest at tax avoidance.
He also did not mention by name Corbyn’s idea of “people’s quantitative easing”, printing money in an economic downturn to invest in infrastructure projects. That leaves a few room for policy flexibility.
Labour’s new shadow chancellor John McDonnell has announced that the party will review both the Bank of England’s mandate and the operation of the HM Treasury.
He told delegates: “We are embarking on the huge task of changing the economic discourse in this country“.
“In reality, the Tories presided over the longest fall in workers pay since Queen Victoria sat on the throne”, he said, adding that the recovery had been reliant on insecure jobs, the housing bubble and rising consumer debt.
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From the transcript of the speech McDonnell said: “There will be cuts to the billion pound tax breaks given to buy to let landlords for repairing their properties, whether they undertake the repairs or not”.
