Corbyn has ‘opposed every terror law’
AMID new polls suggesting Labour is eating into Theresa May’s overwhelming lead, Tories yesterday focused fire on Jeremy Corbyn’s record on terrorism and policing to make security a defining feature of the election.
A week after the Manchester bombing, Labour’s pledge to hire thousands more police, prison officers, firefighters and 500 extra border guards received a scathing response from Security Minister Ben Wallace. He rejected opposition claims that the loss of 20,000 police posts under the Tories had made the country less safe and highlighted the millions ploughed into counter-terrorism.
Mr Corbyn has voted at least 17 times against anti-terror laws, Wallace told Pienaar’s Politics on BBC Radio 5. “He would produce James Bonds licensed to do nothing and police officers with one arm tied behind their back. We’ve given them power.”
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said on BBC One’s Andrew Marr: “Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell all have a history of not supporting terrorist legislation.”
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon told ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Corbyn “has opposed every piece of anti-terrorist legislation, does not support our military action in Iraq and Syria... and always questioned the nuclear deterrent”.
Mr Corbyn yesterday said that acts of terror were “not acceptable in any circumstances”.
THE aftermath of the Manchester bombing has further dramatically exposed Labour’s unfitness for office. If Jeremy Corbyn wins the General Election, the governance of our country will be in the hands of a man who has supported violent Irish Republicanism, wanted Nato to be abolished, and sympathised with Islamist organisations.
But the justified focus on terrorism has meant that Labour’s irresponsible economic policy has so far escaped the scrutiny it deserves. Corbyn’s doctrinaire socialist plan, with its massive extensions of tax, spending and state control, is a blueprint for meltdown which will turn into a nightmare for the British people.
Beyond Labour’s rhetoric about economic change lies the whiff of revolution. Both Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell are veteran Marxist ideologues who yearn for the overthrow of capitalism. Indeed, at a May Day rally in Trafalgar Square this year, McDonnell stood beneath an array of Communist and Stalinist banners to deliver another of his rants.
During the election campaign, many families have expressed concern about the Tories’ policy on paying for social care, which they fear might impact on their inheritances. But a reckless, Marxist Corbyn government would wreck the economy, pulverise individual living standards and obliterate our national wealth.
Labour’s expenditure would soon spiral out of control. At a time when the economy is still weighed down by the fiscal deficit, the party promises an extra £50billion of annual spending, with new billions for the NHS and free tuition for students.
BUT not included in that total are the vast bills for nationalisation, nor the additional £250billion for infrastructure development.
Margaret Thatcher once said that “the problem with socialism is that you soon run out of other people’s money”. A Corbyn government will be a perfect illustration of that truth.
Labour argue that they can fund their expenditure by hammering the wealthy and businesses. Corporation tax will be hiked from 19 to 26 per cent. A new tax on financial transactions will be imposed. Anyone earning more than £80,000 will face an income tax rate of 45 per cent, while a new 50 per cent band is to be introduced for those on pay above £123,000.
But none of it would bring in nearly as much revenue as Labour pretends, since the incentives for wealth creation will be lost. In a globalised, financially mobile world, companies and individuals will move elsewhere, reduce their output or adopt tax avoidance.
Last week, independent think tank the Institute of Fiscal Studies said that Labour’s tax plans would “not raise anything like” the sums claimed, adding that the idea it “can all be funded by faceless corporations and the rich” is “a pretence”.
Inevitably, a black hole would develop at the heart of a Labour government’s finances which could only be filled by more taxes and more borrowing. But further borrowing would lead to big interest rate rises, hitting mortgages and businesses. Amid mass repossessions and plummeting house values, the service and property sectors would slide into crisis.
A deep recession would be just one aspect of Labour’s economic disaster. Corbyn is pledging his paymasters in the trade unions far more power, which would mean a disastrous return to 1970s-style militancy. Widespread nationalisation would breed institutional sclerosis while an expansion of the benefits system would breed more dependency.
Similarly, Corbyn’s enthusiasm for open borders would fuel more mass immigration, worsening the burden on public services and driving down living standards.
Poverty and paralysis would be the inevitable consequences of a Corbyn regime. But we don’t need to look to the future to be aware of that. Every grim lesson of his political history points in the same direction.
During the 1980s, for instance, he was a key member of the well-named Loony Left, a movement of radical zealots, hardline Labour councils and militant trade unions that aimed to bring down the Tory Government by making the nation ungovernable. Fighting to bring back sanity to the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock successfully took them on during the mid-1980s, accusing them of fomenting “grotesque chaos” that only inflicted misery on the working-class. Yet now it is the Loony Left that is in charge of Labour.
EVERY experiment in socialism has ended in tyranny and failure. But by far the most revealing guide to the catastrophe of Corbyn’s economic philosophy is the recent experience of Venezuela, where the socialist leader Hugo Chavez seized power in a revolution in 1999, proceeding to adopt a Corybynite programme of nationalisation and wealth redistribution.
Back in Britain, Corbyn was delighted. “Success for radical policies in Venezuela is being achieved by providing for the poorest,” he wrote. The reality was that Venezuela was being transformed from one of the richest countries in South America into an economic basket case. Chavez died in 2013 but the economy shrank by 19 per cent last year alone.
The nation’s currency is almost worthless. Inflation is running at 1660 per cent. Shops are empty. Riots are endemic.
Britain will face its own breakdown if Corbyn wins. For the sake of our economic survival, he cannot be allowed near power.
‘The Loony Left is in charge of Labour’