The late Sir Gerald Kaufman famously dubbed the 1983 Labour manifesto “the longest suicide note in history”. The draft version of the party’s programme for the election on June 8 runs it a close second. It is as if the Blair years had simply not happened.

A government led by Jeremy Corbyn would renationalise energy and the railways. It would impose wage caps on businesses. It would water down the controls put in place to mitigate the levels of immigration caused by the last Labour administration, declare war on private education, introduce rent controls, freeze rail fares, abolish university tuition fees and render Britain’s nuclear deterrent almost useless.

The manifesto seems as rooted in the Seventies as its leader, who was also heavily involved in drawing up the 1983 document that took the party to its worst post-war defeat. One proposal would see the recreation of a Ministry of Labour, last heard of in 1968, to empower workers and the trade unions. It would oversee a 20-point plan which is little more than payback time for Mr Corbyn’s big union backers (who would even have a seat on the Ministry board). Some of the Thatcher-era union reforms, accepted by Labour under Tony Blair, would be repealed.