JOHN McDONNELL promised today to create 50,000 jobs in Scotland as part of an “industrial revolution in our energy sector that could save this planet.”

Speaking at the Scottish Labour Party conference, the shadow chancellor pledged a massive expansion of renewable energy.

He told delegates: “You know that already 60 per cent of the UK’s onshore wind capacity is in Scotland.

“Labour has developed ambitious plans for expanding onshore wind.

“At least 60 per cent of that new capacity will be here and could mean 20,000 new jobs in Scotland.”

Mr McDonnell also said there could be a further 15,000 jobs north of the border as a result of “another 42 gigawatts of capacity under Labour from offshore wind.”

And a UK-wide scheme to retrofit homes to improve their green credentials could create “close to 15,000 more jobs” in Scotland as well.

“That’s a total of another 50,000 new, well-paid, unionised jobs as a result of our green industrial revolution,” he added.

Elsewhere in his address, the shadow chancellor took aim at Conservative austerity, describing foodbank usage across Britain – the world’s sixth largest economy – as “a bloody disgrace.”

Austerity has “destroyed the fabric of our society and left public services at breaking point, with more cuts still to come,” he warned.

"No other UK government in history has been condemned by the UN like this one for pushing so many of its people into, and I quote, ‘destitution’.”

On Brexit, Mr McDonnell reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to “doing everything we possibly can” to avoid a no-deal Brexit favoured by “extremists on the Conservative backbenches”.

He said: “They might proclaim it’s about sovereignty and democracy.

“But the reality is it’s about fulfilling the full-blooded neoliberal dream that they have harboured for the last four decades.”

Closing his keynote address, Mr McDonnell promised that Labour governments in Scotland and Britain would deliver “common-sense, everyday, practical socialist policies that improve the lives of the many.

“That transformative vision will only become real with a Labour government, a government that will deliver the biggest transfer of power into people’s hands that we have seen in generations,” he told the conference.

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard used his own address yesterday to reiterate his support for a wealth tax.

And the party’s Brexit spokesman Neil Findlay said Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit policy was being set by the “eejits, rogues and galoots” of the European Research Group of hard-right Tory MPs.

Mr Findlay called on Labour MPs to “remember who the enemy” is on Brexit and “remember who’s responsible for this fiasco, remember who’s taken us to the brink.”

He continued: “It’s not Jeremy Corbyn, it’s not Keir Starmer, it’s not Richard Leonard. It’s this rotten Tory government, led by one of the most rotten prime ministers since the last one.”