PETER OBORNE
So what if it was Labour’s John McDonnell delivering next week’s Budget…
SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell has been on a charm offensive, touring TV and radio studios to explain how he alone can end the era of Tory-imposed austerity which he claims is destroying Britain. Projecting an image of caring pragmatism, the man who has named Marx, Lenin and Trotsky as his ‘most significant’ political influences wants to portray himself as Santa Claus. He has demanded pay rises across the public sector and massive increases in spending on the NHS, social care, schools and councils. McDonnell has been reluctant to explain fully where all the extra money would come from. Critics, though, have pointed out that if he ever took charge of the nation’s finances, his proposed £17 billion spending binge would require the biggest peacetime tax hike in our history and hugely irresponsible levels of borrowing. Of course, it will be the Tories’ Philip Hammond who’ll deliver next Wednesday’s Budget. But just consider if it were Chancellor McDonnell instead. Here, I imagine the Budget Speech that he might make . . . COMRADE Deputy Speaker. I have had nearly 40 years to work out how a socialist government can return Britain to the Golden Age before it was wrecked by Maggie Thatcher and the evil Tories. Like my Right Honourable Comrade the Prime Minister, I will never forget how much damage was done to this country during the Thatcher years.
First, I must salute our Labour Government’s new Restoration of Trade Union Powers and Immunities Bill, which will reverse some of the most draconian anti-union laws in the world and give unions back the power to go on strike whenever they like.
Equally important is the need to abolish the cap on public sector pay. Public sector wages will be determined by free collective bargaining — and I hope workers in frontline services will obtain double percentage-figure rises to make up for the years they were robbed by Tory governments.
With immediate effect, the Living Wage will rise to £15 an hour [interruptions from the Labour benches]. I beg your pardon, Comrade Deputy Speaker, I meant to say £25 an hour.
The young have been betrayed by the Tories. Things will now change. We will abolish student fees and loans. A new maintenance grant for students will include a special element called the ‘ stress top-up allowance’ to help them deal with the emotional toll of having to attend lectures and take exams.
As soon as resources allow, students will also receive a winter fuel allowance — a benefit enjoyed exclusively for too long by pensioners.
Being the first truly socialist government for almost 50 years, we are committed to a major programme of re-nationalisation. This will include the railways, the water and energy industries and the Royal Mail. Yes , comrades, we’re taking them all back! [Cheers from the Venezuelan ambassador sitting in the Commons Diplomatic Gallery.]
Building an economy for the many means bringing ownership and control of utilities and key services into the hands of people who use and work in them.
We will pay a fair price to compensate shareholders — at a rate determined by a new National Equality Panel which will be established under the chairwomanship of the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, who for years has nobly crusaded for social justice. Now I will turn to spending. I intend, over time, to end the chronic underfunding of all public services.
I shall make a start with health and education. We will reverse all those years of savage Tory cuts.
From midnight tonight, private firms’ involvement in the provision of healthcare will be stopped.
Money will go to patients, not contractors, as our NHS is given the resources to provide a topquality service as part of a programme to transform Britain.
Underpaid and overworked NHS staff should be paid the same as Goldman Sachs bankers. [Loud cheers from the Labour benches.]
Health and education services will be reclassified as ‘investment in human capital’. This will mean that all spending can be categorised as capital rather than current spending, and can therefore be financed from borrowing.
For the same reason, I shall abolish all controls on local authority borrowing.
Turning to Scotland, I am well aware that the funding formula for comrades north of the border is unfair. [Interjections from several Tory MPs who shout: ‘Yes, unfair to England!’]
I have therefore agreed an adjustment. This will guarantee a substantial rising share of public spending for Scotland each year.
The new formula will be replicated for the principality of Wales — a place very dear in my heart as the home of that great socialist Aneurin Bevan, who once said: ‘The NHS will last as long as there’s Labour folk with faith left to fight for it.’
BUT there will be no extra money for Northern Ireland. That is because the province was already given a disgraceful £1 billion bribe by the Tories as part of a shabby deal to prop up Mrs May’s hated — and little mourned — government.
I am also cutting the whisky duty in half. [Wild cheers from both sides of the House.]
Comrade Deputy Speaker, we promised investment but we also promised fiscal responsibility and a strong stance against inflation.
My distinguished predecessor, Comrade Denis Healey (who, I remind you, was a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s) is said to have promised to tax the rich until the pips squeaked. In honour of the memory of Comrade Denis, I propose to eliminate the pips altogether [Labour laughter].
As a preliminary measure, I shall restore the basic rate of income tax to 33 per cent and introduce a range of higher rates from 50 per cent to 98 per cent.
But I propose to go one step further — and confiscate all income above £1 million a year. Furthermore, I shall also confiscate all property and other assets of the Paradise Papers super-rich who hide their wealth from HMRC.
This will honour our long-held policy to requisition homes belonging to the rich and hand them to poor.
Comrade Deputy Speaker, I now turn to Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world.
I regret that until we leave the EU we will be unable to reintroduce capital controls. This means we cannot as yet limit the flow of foreign capital in and out of Britain. Whatever reservations Labour has expressed in the past about Britain pulling out of the EU, we will definitely honour Brexit.
We can then impose controls on capital leaving this country, whether in the form of cash equities, bonds or foreign exchange trades.
Of course, there is a risk that there will be a fall in the value of sterling — but I am confident it will not fall as low as the Zimbabwean dollar.
Meanwhile, comrades, the Honourable Member for Islington North [Jeremy Corbyn] and I have decided that democratic control of all major economic decisions will be restored to politicians. We will end the Bank of England’s control over interest rates.
I have already informed the Bank governor, Mark Carney, and he has since handed in his resignation and is rejoining Goldman Sachs.
If the City resists these measures, then let us make it clear that further controls will follow.
Although I said that all our public services were underfunded thanks to years of savage Tory cuts, there is one major exception — defence.
This Government will scrap the UK’s Trident nuclear programme as soon as possible, thus saving at least £205 billion.
Yes, because of this, Britain may be left unprotected but that is a risk Comrade Corbyn and I are prepared to take.
For with that extra money from Trident, comrades, we will be able to introduce the first of our three five-year plans to collectivise every aspect of the UK economy.
These will end the endemic poverty that so many millions are suffering and help us build a socialist Britain with an economy that works for all the people.
I commend this Budget to the House.