One of the convenient things about having a Neo-Marxist opposition is that it makes the business of policy prediction a whole lot easier.  With New Labour, you could never be quite sure where its ‘triangulation’ would lead.  It mostly served up policies that were ‘Thatcher-lite’ in nature, whether on the economy or law or order and even foreign policy.  Only occasionally would it proffer a policy that was unmistakably Labour, for instance the ban on fox hunting; and when it did, it did so through the gritted teeth of the ever-smiling, but clearly reluctant, Tony Blair.

No such disorientation with Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell — public good, private bad; soak the rich, champion every underdog.  So it is surprising that it has taken them so long to get onto the topic of price controls.

Many of us expected a series of new caps on different kinds of lending to be included in the Party’s June election manifesto.  But nothing appeared.  Indeed, it was Theresa May’s Conservatives who made the running on caps with a promise to limit our energy bills, a commitment she seemed to drop in the election’s catastrophic aftermath but then picked up again during her equally catastrophic speech to conference in Manchester last week.

But, finally, the dog has barked.  At the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell delighted delegates in the hall — and shadow delegates at the Momentum conference across the road — with a commitment to limit the amount of interest and fees credit card companies can charge their customers.  Under Labour’s proposals, credit cards will not be able to charge more than the amount lent.

Leaving aside the motivations for the policy, it is undoubtedly well targeted.  It was announced alongside commitments to renationalise previously privatised industries and to take all PFI deals ‘back in-house’.  These have been calculated to hit areas of maximum public frustration with market-provided services (notably rail and the utilities), and to scapegoat areas of public provision that have been outsourced to private companies (i.e. PFI).

Labour’s arguments are difficult to argue with not because they’re right necessarily, but because it’s impossible to prove the counterfactual (i.e. that energy prices are actually lower, or rail efficiency higher, than they would have been had they remained in public ownership). This now becomes the Conservatives’ job and an unenviable one it is, particularly for a demoralised party.

Coming back to credit, Labour’s efforts to inflict damage on the Government over personal and household debt will be made more effective by a new-found state of unity between the Corbynite and moderate wings of the parliamentary party. Old enmities have been put aside, or at least muted, in the interests of political potency. Thus, McDonnell’s assault on credit cards coincided with a joint call from the Labour chairs of two heavy-wright select committees for an ‘independent public inquiry’ into household debt levels.

They are unlikely to get a public inquiry.  But in the run up to the next election, which could come any time, Labour will be seeking to use high profile parliamentary offices like select committee chairmanships to depict rising, problem debt as an important indicator of government failure.

Busy times ahead.