Labour’s lunacy must be opposed vigorously
What matters most in this election campaign is which party and which leader is to be entrusted with the mammoth task of taking Britain out of the EU. So yesterday’s pandemonium could hardly have been worse for Labour. Its manifesto was leaked even before the shadow cabinet and National Executive met to endorse its contents. Jeremy Corbyn abandoned a planned poster launch and was witness to a melee that landed a BBC cameraman in hospital. This air of shambles should be enough to convince the country that a party incapable of organising an election campaign cannot be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. But the danger that Labour poses goes beyond organisational incompetence. It is what Mr Corbyn and his small band of Left-wingers stand for that is really alarming.
The case against the Left’s beguiling nostrums needs to be made over and over again because there will always be people who forget what a mess the country was in the last time they were tried in the Seventies. Renationalisation of the railways might appeal to someone stuck on a train delayed by points failure or a strike and who does not remember what the network was like when it was run by the state. No one pretends that the trains are perfect; but the idea that they would be better back in public ownership and starved of funds, as they would be, is delusional. We should also remember that when the trains were nationalised, passenger numbers were half what they are now.
An energy company customer looking at a large quarterly bill could be tempted to believe that if the government ran gas and electricity distribution it would cheaper. People worried about social care may be attracted to the idea of spending billions more on the service without asking where the money is coming from. They might even be happy to learn that the funds will derive from taxes imposed on high earners and on business, provided they do not have to pay it themselves.
Labour’s manifesto comprises a gigantic wish list of goodies that could be provided were there a bottomless pit of money and if the state could be relied upon to run anything efficiently. But there isn’t and it can’t, which is why the Conservative counterpoint to Corbynism is a belief in the free market, low taxes and a smaller state. These ideas need to underpin the Tory manifesto when it is published next week.