John McDonnell hosted a political conference call for Labour activists tonight. He and Faiza Shaheen, Labour’s candidate for the key target seat of Chingford and Woodford Green, were joined by 3,600 supporters on the ‘Zoom’ chat. Here’s what we learnt…

Labour wants activists to use digital tools.

McDonnell highlighted Momentum’s ‘mynearestmarginal’ website – though actually that was the 2017 general election version. It has now turned into mycampaignmap.com. The name was changed because the latest version shows you in which seat your support would be most helpful, as well as campaign events that are simply near to your location.

The party also wants supporters to use the ‘Dialogue’ app, which allows any member to phonebank from anywhere with an internet connection. The tool means anyone can set up a “phonebank party”, i.e. phone canvass as a group. A community organiser gave a mini-tutorial during the conference call.

Heads-up for the weekend.

Jeremy Corbyn will appear on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, McDonnell revealed to activists on the call tonight.

The date of the manifesto release.

Just kidding. McDonnell did not drop a super-exclusive on the call. Asked by Shaheen for the date, he replied: “Erm, it’s confidential at the moment. If I told you, I’d be in real trouble! It’s soon.”

The Shadow Chancellor went on to explain the manifesto-making process, saying: “After all the discussions at Labour conference, all the consultations that have been going on literally since the last general election, what then happens is – in the national policy forum and elsewhere – we put those policies together, we draft them up.

“Then it comes to me to do the costings, and the funding source. Then we have what we call the ‘Clause V’ meeting. That is this Saturday… We literally go through the draft line by line. It’s a really democratic process.” He told activists on the call to “watch this space”.

Something about McDonnell’s ‘grey book’.

As the manifesto is released, McDonnell will publish the ‘grey book’, which consists of costings that show how each manifesto pledge will be funded. “I’ll let you into a secret,” the Shadow Chancellor said. “It was meant to be red, but when at the last general election it went to the printers, it came back grey. So we never complained. It’s become a tradition – it’s now grey.”

Three key elements of Labour’s media strategy.

McDonnell was asked about Labour’s response to a “hostile media”. He listed three key parts to the party’s approach.

1. “There is a semblance of broadcast balance now, legally. They have to give us some element of balance. If we’re not getting that, we’ll complain,” he said, which we know to be true because Labour has complained about the ‘Brexit election’ tagline of Sky News. As well as getting Labour spokespeople on broadcast media, he added: “The phone ins are quite important to us as well. We encourage party members to actually phone in and express their views.”
2. “We’ve reinvented word of mouth as a form of political communication,” he declared, pointing out that there are 500,000 party members and many more supporters talking to people on the doorstep. “Talking to people is absolutely key.”
3. His final point: “What we have now is social media, which we never had before. We have large numbers of our members, our activists, they’re on social media and they’ll get our message out – whether it’s Twitter or Instagram or other forms.”