John McDonnell left red-faced after secret footage of him gloating about global financial crisis emerged

A SECRET tape has emerged of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell celebrating the global financial crisis, saying he’d been “waiting for this for a generation”.

Jeremy Corbyn’s right hand man has been left red faced after the footage of him claiming to be a Marxist and welcoming the 2008 financial crash surfaced.

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The video, posted on YouTube in March 2013, shows Mr McDonnell telling an audience not to “waste” the economic crisis and instead use it to explain that capitalism does not work.

In the footage he is filmed saying: “Look, I’m straight, I’m honest with people: I’m a Marxist.”

“This is a classic crisis of the economy — a classic capitalist crisis. I’ve been waiting for this for a generation.

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He added: “For Christ’s sake don’t waste it, you know; let’s use this to explain to people this system based on greed and profit does not work.”

But speaking at Bloomberg alongside Mr Corbyn yesterday, Mr McDonnell insisted he was joking.

He said: “It was a joke. I also said ‘The bankers have done more to undermine capitalism than any of the Socialist Worker Party’s activities in the last 40 years’.

“I think it was taken as a joke, and if you listen to the tape, people fell about laughing as a result.”

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A Labour source told the Telegraph: “The recession hit working and middle-class people hardest and it is telling that John considers their pain a necessary, even welcome, sacrifice.”
In public Mr McDonnell has pledged his economic policy is to balance the books but he has previously spoken about how the aim of the Labour Party under him and Mr Corbyn is to bring down capitalism.

During a New Yorker magazine interview back in March he quoted Fredric Jameson, an American literary theorist and Marxist scholar, saying: “It is easier for people to imagine the end of the earth than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.

“And that is what we are about, aren’t we?”

And on Budget Day he read from Chairman Mao's 'little red book' before throwing it at the then Chancellor George Osborne.

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This episode comes as hapless Mr Corbyn’s poll ratings hit a new low last night – as his challenger Owen Smith warned there were just “five days to save the Labour Party”.

Fewer than a quarter of voters think Mr Corbyn is “a capable leader”, according to a devastating new poll by from Ipos-Mori.

More Labour supporters see the PM a good leader, compare to Mr Corbyn by a margin of 58 to 46 per cent.

Last night Labour leadership challenger Owen Smith pleaded with Labour members to vote out the veteran socialist.

As the close of ballots approached, Mr Smith claimed there are just “five days left to save the Labour Party”.