“BETTER fewer but better” was a slogan advanced by Lenin when discussing the type of men and women the new Soviet state apparatus required.

It was therefore startling to hear it reprised by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves last week, since neither Reeves’s firmest friends nor her sternest critics have ever identified her as a Leninist.

Nevertheless, Reeves told the Financial Times that it was great news that Labour Party membership was declining — plummeting in fact — since many members were the wrong sort of people.