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McDonnell says he thinks that, just as the Attlee government is remembered for founding the NHS, the Corbyn government will be remembered for setting up a national education service.
Education is not a commodity, he says. He says it is a gift from one generation to another. The national education service will transform lives, he says.
Q: Why were you not more explicit about the Waspi women pledge in the manifesto?
McDonnell says he was working on this for 18 months. He was worried if it got announced on manifesto day, it would be swamped by other issues. And he says he wanted the policy to be launched on a day when Labour could also launch its calculator, to show how much women might get. That took a lot of work, he says.