Karl Marx has "come back in to fashion", according to shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

The author of Das Kapital was one of the "definitive analysts" of how the capitalist system works, although "people might disagree with his conclusions", Mr McDonnell said.

The shadow chancellor, a controversial appointment by Jeremy Corbyn following his victory in the Labour leadership race, has previously claimed "you can't understand the capitalist system without reading Das Kapital".

Asked about Marx on BBC Radio 5 Live, Mr McDonnell said: "If you look at our capitalist system, one of the definitive analysts of how it works - not whether it is condemned, or whether it is right or wrong, just the mechanics of how it works, when it was first formed and how it would be developed - actually was Marx.

"If you look at most of the institutions that are teaching economics today, Marx has come back in to fashion because people have gone back to his analysis of just the basics of how the system works.

"People might disagree with his conclusions about what to do with the system, but actually to understand how the system works he comes up with some interesting analyses that have been built in to traditional and fairly classical economics."