This video shows George Osborne was right when he called a journalist a 'revolutionary Marxist'
Chancellor George Osborne has called former BBC Newsnight and Channel 4 economics editor Paul Mason a "revolutionary Marxist broadcaster". Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Osborne mocked the fact that Labour's Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has signed up Mason and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to speak at his 'New Economics' lecture series.
"The fact that the Labour Party is now getting its advice from Yanis Varoufakis and the revolutionary Marxist broadcaster Paul Mason does not suggest to me that they've got an answer to economic security. Presumably they chose those two because Chairman Mao was dead and Mickey Mouse was busy," Osborne said.
Here's the video via the Guido Fawkes website:
It might sound extraordinary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to accuse a journalist of being a Marxist, but Osborne isn't wrong. This is what Mason told the Independent in 2015:
"I am quite happy to call myself a Marxist at the level of method... because historical materialism as a method is a great tool for understanding history."
In addition, Business Insider has unearthed this video of Mason handing out "Workers Power" newspapers outside the Chesterfield Socialist Conference in 1987. Workers Power is a revolutionary Trotskyist organisation that Mason describes in the video as a "tendency within the Labour Party" - in other words, an entryist organisation.