This newspaper unreservedly withdraws the complaint it made about the Labour Party earlier this week. We said that the problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was that it offered neither a bid for the centre-ground nor a radical socialist alternative; instead we were being presented with a series of lame gimmicks, such as extra bank holidays. The leak of the draft of Labour’s manifesto shows we were wrong. The Corbyn leadership is preparing to put forward the most Left-wing programme for government that the country has seen in over 30 years.

There are proposals to recapture the commanding heights of the private sector with the nationalisation of the energy network, the railways and the postal system. There is a plan to tax the better off until the pips squeak with higher income tax, and punitive rises in corporate tax on businesses. The trade unions are returned to the centre-stage with new collective bargaining powers. There is an unapologetic increase in public debt and deficits, to pay in part for a larger welfare state. Prices and incomes policies are to be reintroduced, the prisons are to be emptied and pacifism becomes the guiding principle of British foreign policy.

This paper welcomes this draft manifesto. But not because we believe any of it will work, or deliver a more prosperous, fairer or safer world — indeed, if adopted it would be likely to produce a rise in poverty, inequality and insecurity. Rather, we welcome the draft manifesto because it means that this election will be a proper test of whether the British people are interested in electing a radical Left-wing government. There was a risk that the ineptitude of the Corbyn leadership — exemplified by the daily display of woeful interviews by shadow cabinet ministers — would become the excuse for any failure to win at the polls; and the far-Left would have been able to claim that they never got a chance to put their radical alternative before the people. That might have provided a platform for the likes of John McDonnell, Rebecca Long-Bailey or Clive Lewis to mount a leadership bid.

Now that excuse will be removed. Labour is offering radical socialism. We shall see whether the British public buys it. If not, then the more moderate voices in the Labour movement can claim that the experiment of taking their party to the Left has failed — and that they should instead occupy the emerging hole at the centre of British politics with a programme of economic efficiency to pay for social justice akin to that put before the French people by Emmanuel Macron.

That depends on whether there are courageous Labour moderates ready to mount the challenge. It assumes too that there is something left of the Labour Party to lead after the reckoning of June 8. For the problem with radical experiments is, they sometimes kill the patient.

Wanted: a perfect hall

The search is on for an architect to design London’s new concert hall and help win support for the project, which the City of London Corporation is already backing. Crucially, Sir Simon Rattle, who is to lead the London Symphony Orchestra, will be one of the judges. The LSO will eventually move into the finished building on the site at London Wall now occupied by the Museum of London.

One of the crucial aspects of the hall is that it should be acoustically perfect as well as beautiful, so Sir Simon’s contribution will be especially important. London deserves a concert hall that stands comparison with the best in the world, such as Hamburg’s. It is an important project: an acknowledgement of the importance of classical music in our cultural life, besides promising to be a big attraction to visitors. It would enrich us all, in more ways than one.