Marxist fantasies and hard economic facts

LISTENING to Jeremy Corbyn, voters might think Britain a land of vast inequalities in wealth, with a heartless Tory Party obsessed by ‘tax cuts for the rich’.

They might also believe that if only the Government were more compassionate, it could raise limitless billions to spend on cruelly underpaid public sector workers.

The facts tell a dramatically different story. True, a tiny minority, mostly in the City, are paid colossal salaries out of all proportion to their performance – which, as the Mail has long argued, is socially divisive and morally unjustifiable.

But overall, the gap between rich and poor has shrunk under the Conservatives. According to the internationally accepted measure, Britain now has the third most equal income distribution in the G7 group of developed nations.

Meanwhile, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies reports, the UK tax burden is the highest for 30 years – with an increasing proportion borne by the richest 1 per cent, who pay 27 per cent of all income tax.

Significantly, this figure has risen almost every year – except when Labour increased the top rate to 50 per cent. Then the amount raised fell, rising again only after George Osborne cut the rate to 45 per cent, proving the economic axiom that the more you tax the rich, the less they pay.

In other words, Mr Corbyn’s plan to raise the top rate would reduce revenues, not increase them – while hammering companies would inevitably drive jobs abroad.

In contrast, the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax have helped achieve the lowest unemployment rate since the 1970s.

As for the pay gap between the public and private sectors, the IFS finds that even after years of ‘austerity’, state workers are on average 13 per cent better off than those in the private sector. And total public spending remains higher than before the crash.

Which brings us to Labour’s biggest lie – that there’s a bottomless pit of money to finance a huge expansion of the state.

In fact, the nation’s debt is approaching £2trillion, putting our credit rating at risk and raising the spectre of growth-crushing borrowing costs if we don’t cut the deficit.

Can voters really be so gullible as to fall for Mr Corbyn’s fantasies – and destroy all hope for our children and grandchildren?