The standard response to Jeremy Corbyn is to make him more interesting than he really is. To be sure, the Labour Party’s disgraceful licence to antisemites is, sadly, interesting. Yet on domestic policy the Labour leader speaks rarely and when he does he has nothing to say. That is the verdict that has to be entered on his economic policy, which he set out in a speech in Birmingham this week. This was not, in essence, a crazy left-wing fantasy which will bankrupt the nation. It was nowhere near that interesting.

The title of the speech, Build It In Britain, recalled George Osborne’s conference speech about the march of the makers. Mr Corbyn counterposed the bankers (boo!) to the manufacturers (hurrah!) and offered a perfunctory