Reading Anneliese Dodds' speech on Labour economic policy and it's fascinating how steeped in neoclassical macro dogma it is. People should probably be aware that on fiscal and monetary policy McDonnell wasn't actually much better though. His strengths were more supply side.

Implicit in her remarks is the belief that there is a natural rate of interest driven by supply side factors (technology, demographics etc) and that the government is essentially lucky that this rate of interest is so low.

She asserts the importance of independent central banks in anchoring inflation expectations. The reliance on mainstream dogma makes some of what she says incoherent

In terms of her fiscal rule, she certainly believes that demand management is the sole job of the central bank (unless under special circumstances when interest rates are zero)

The fiscal rule implies that fiscal policy cannot regulate demand over the long run, this must be done by monetary policy in accordance with the natural rate of interest

Her arguments about the natural rate are based on loanable funds thinking, maybe she's not aware of the incoherence of this framework. There isn't an equilibrium rate of interest equalising saving and investment because these adjust via quantities

Interest rates can always be brought in line with fiscal sustainability. This doesn't remove constraints from fiscal policy, it just means that fiscal policy has responsibility for managing employment and inflation, which is a new constraint

Fiscal rules fail because the budget position is endogenous. It's not in the direct control of the government. The budget needs to be flexible to assure full employment. Monetary policy cannot do that, it cannot reinstate Say's Law and cure deficient demand.

These are all much the same problems that Labour had under McDonnell. It was impossible to sway Labour from mainstream dogma and it hampered their thinking on fiscal policy. The rest of their programme was strong enough to minimise these concerns. Obviously not the case now.

So Labour still doesn't have a strong position on fiscal policy. Then again, I don't think anyone expected it to.