Ross Clark
intentions it didn’t just name the party, it reminded people who the party leader is. We seem to be creeping back to the situation before the election, where May is a net asset to her party.
Conversely, it is clear that there is a pretty immovable group of people who have made up their minds that however shambolic the Government may appear to be they will never vote for a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.
The performance of Corbyn and his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell since the Budget will have done little to dispel fears that a Labour government would take Britain to fiscal ruin. Corbyn seemed to have decided in advance that he would deliver an angry rant against “Tory cuts”.
When the Chancellor failed to make any cuts and instead announced an extra £2.3billion for the NHS, £44billion worth of funding and loan guarantees for housing, £1.5billion worth of reforms of Universal Credit and targeted help for the homeless Corbyn delivered his speech anyway.
There is absolutely no level of public spending and no level on taxation of the rich that would satisfy Corbyn. Even if the wealthy were being taxed at 98 per cent – as some did indeed face under Labour in the 1970s – he would think it an outrage and demand it be raised to 99 per cent.
As for McDonnell, he shows a remarkably poor understanding of the cost of government debt. Asked on the Today programme how much the Government is paying in debt interest he called it “trite journalism” and said he didn’t need to know because he could look it up on his iPad.
The cost of servicing public debt is certainly a figure that I hold in my head: this year it is £48billion – more than the Government spends on transport or defence. A man who wants to be trusted with public finances and is promising to borrow even more money ought at least to have a rough idea.
McDonnell went on to claim that borrowing doesn’t cost the Government anything. Asked to justify this odd proposition he said: “Every infrastructure project you put out there immediately starts employing people, they start paying their taxes and as a result of that you cover your costs.”
AND the logic of this is that Labour is going to splash out on projects that only employ people who are currently unemployed – and then tax them at 100 per cent.
Some infrastructure projects can generate economic growth but there are plenty of bad ones that have done nothing except load debt on to the backs of the public. Remember Labour’s £10billion failed NHS IT system and its PFI schools and hospitals, which are still costing the taxpayer a fortune even though in some cases they have already been closed?
Labour governments spend a fortune, get themselves into debt, leaving the Conservatives to sort out the mess in public finances – whereupon Labour start bleating about “cuts”.
There is nothing to suggest that a Corbyn administration would be any different from previous Labour governments – and a lot to suggest it would be even worse. Whatever the present Government’s difficulties the horror of the alternative is beginning to dawn on the country.
‘Mrs May has shown remarkable resilience’