Stephen Pollard
voters who put an X by Labour six months ago that they are better off with the Tories.
The stakes are huge. This isn’t just about party politics but something fundamental – because a Corbyn government would be a catastrophe for the country.
Venezuela, home to one of Mr Corbyn’s heroes Nicolás Maduro, shows how easily a functioning and stable democracy can collapse into terrifying chaos. This is the country that Mr Corbyn described in 2013 as having “a different and better way of doing things” – at the very time when Venezuela was in meltdown as a consequence of the revolutionary socialism so beloved of the Labour leader. Last week Mr Maduro effectively banned all opposition, ruling that opposition parties would be barred from next year’s presidential election.
This matters and not just because the collapse of Venezuela is a disturbing preview of Britain under Mr Corbyn. It also matters because we have already seen here in Britain the ruthlessness and contempt for democratic norms shown by the hard Left when it gets its hands on power.
In 1981, a man called Andrew McIntosh led Labour into the elections for the Greater London Council. The Tories warned that if Labour won the moderate
BUT the reality is that the likes of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and the backroom staff around Mr Corbyn are hard-core revolutionaries. This isn’t a smear but a description of their writings and speeches.
They believe, for example, that mob rule on the streets is more valid as a form of authority than Parliament. In 2010 Mr McDonnell described students who rioted as “the best of our movement”. The following year he attacked the prison sentence given to a student who had thrown a fire extinguisher from a roof during those riots, almost hitting a police officer: “Actually he’s not the criminal… We’ve got to encourage direct action in any form it can possibly take.”
Direct action will also, you can bet your mortgage, include seizures of private property by the state without compensation – a classic move in regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela.
At this year’s Labour conference, for example, the Shadow Chancellor said that he will nationalise the railways, water and energy – and that compensation would be set by the government rather than at a market rate. Similarly, after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Mr Corbyn called for neighbouring private property to be seized: “Properties must be found – requisitioned if necessary – to make sure those residents do get rehoused locally.”
They pretend, for now, that this isn’t what it seems. Some think they mean well. But these are ruthless revolutionaries. Unimaginably they are now within sight of power. That is simply terrifying.
‘The pretence is that Labour is mainstream’