Don’t open the door to a Labour Party land grab
IT IS not exactly the boldest prediction ever to suggest that when MPs vote tonight on the proposed Withdrawal Agreement, the issue isn’t whether it will be defeated but by how much. However, while we can be certain of what will happen tonight, no one has a clue what will follow tomorrow or afterwards. Not a single political commentator, not a single MP, not even the Prime Minister.
Indeed, thanks to the Speaker tearing up the House of Commons rule book last week, Mrs May doesn’t even know if she will be in charge of Brexit any longer.
The law is clear and unless Parliament legislates to change that law, we will be leaving the EU on March 29 with no deal. But a number of Conservative MPs are so opposed to that outcome that they are prepared to do anything to stop it – even if that means bringing down the Government.
Some backbenchers – almost certainly in cahoots with the Speaker – are plotting to overturn the rule that lets the Government set the agenda of the House of Commons. In short, we are on the verge of the collapse of the Government – and of total parliamentary chaos.
AND there would likely only be one beneficiary of this: Jeremy Corbyn. Those MPs who think they are doing the country a service by plotting to prevent No Deal, even if the cost of that is putting Corbyn into Downing Street, are deeply misguided. Because even if they are right, and No Deal would be as bad as every suggestion of Project Fear, it would still not even come close to the disaster of letting Corbyn and his band of revolutionary socialists get their hands on the instruments of power.
The first thing that would happen, the moment it became clear he was about to take power, would be a massive capital flow out of Britain. This would be a catastrophe – not just because of the money that would leave the country. At a stroke, the reputation we have earned since the 1970s as a home for investment and business would be in tatters.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has already outlined plans to force companies with more than 250 employees to hand over 10 per cent of their shares to their workers. He is open about his desire to “overthrow capitalism” and replace it with a “socialist society”.
This is the man who likes to portray himself as an avuncular chap, who speaks only common sense. In reality, he is a hardcore revolutionary who wants to replace democracy with mob rule. In 2010 he described rioting students as “the best of our movement”. The following year he attacked a jail 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 have got to encourage direct action in any form it can possibly take.” As he puts it: “You can’t change the world through the parliamentary system.”
He has hidden none of this. In 2006, he made clear that his party membership has only ever been “a tactic” to advance his ideology of revolutionary socialism. In the foreword he wrote for a 2011 pamphlet from the Trotskyite group, Permanent Revolution, he praised the “timely” proposals and “range of resistance” outlined in it, which included calls for a “militant movement” to carry out a revolution” and overthrow the government. The document also included a proposal for the working class to be “armed” and to replace the Army and police.
He reveres terrorists. In 2003 he told a meeting held to pay tribute to IRA hunger strikers that: “It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets... that brought Britain to the negotiating table.”
His response to the Grenfell Tower blaze was to try to turn the victims’ plight into a form of class war, calling for nearby properties to be seized by the state: “Properties must be found – requisitioned if necessary – to make sure those residents get rehoused locally.”
The Labour leader was calling for land grabs, because in the mind of socialist revolutionaries the state should be able to simply take over private property when deemed appropriate. It has, until now, never been thought necessary to point out that a British prime minister should believe in protecting our national security from our enemies. But Corbyn believes in protecting our enemies from our national security. In 2014, the year before he became Labour leader, he spoke at an anti-West demonstration and repeated his long-standing view that the Soviet Union’s demise was a tragedy for which the West should be punished: “Nato was founded in order to promote a Cold War with the Soviet Union. That resulted in the formation of the Warsaw Pact.”
S‘Our closest allies will simply walk away’
O POLAND should never have been allowed to join Nato because that was a deliberate provocation to Russia. And when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, he said the invasion was “not unprovoked” and President Putin was acting defensively against the US and Nato. No wonder Labour’s first reaction to the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal was to doubt Russian guilt.
The thought of Corbyn and his henchmen taking control of our security services is terrifying, not least because from day one, our closest allies will walk away from the intelligence cooperation that has been so vital in the fight against terrorism.
Here is my message to MPs who oppose No Deal: nothing else comes close to the disaster of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. Do not let your fears of No Deal destroy our nation.