Without a massive free enterprise campaign, Corbynite chaos looms

Investors and big business need to find the courage to fight against the coming far Left economic calamity

Readers of a certain age may recall Mr Cube, the pro-capitalist, freedomfighting comic character who came roaring to Winston Churchill’s rescue almost exactly 70 years ago. Featured on millions of Tate & Lyle’s products, as well as on lorries and ration books, ahead of an election, in 1950, where Labour had pledged to nationalise the sugar industry, Mr Cube was a brilliant, persuasive propagandist for free markets.

The slogans were perfectly pitched for those grim times of socialism, austerity and smog, when sugar was a hugely valued necessity and budgets were tight: “State control will make a hole in your pocket and my pocket,” the cubes would argue. “Tate not State” or “Take the S out of State”, they would cry, waving a free-market sword. “Leave it to private enterprise.” One favourite was simply: “If they juggle with sugar they’ll juggle with your shopping basket.”

This was the most visible element of a massive campaign sponsored by Tate and others, but organised by Aims of Industry, the Vote Leave of its day: a ruthless, professionally run group, in this case dedicated to fighting the

Left, nationalisation and extortionate taxes. Millions of leaflets were handed out by shopkeepers; there were stalls at exhibitions; and even a film, All in Favour, shown in clubs and factories, as Ron Noon recounts in Goodbye, Mr Cube. There are other reasons why Clement Attlee’s Labour was subsequently defeated, but Mr Cube captured the public’s imagination. Sugar was never nationalised.

In today’s staid, uber-corporate, super-cautious world, where firms spend their time trying not to offend, can anybody imagine this kind of response when Jeremy Corbyn comes calling? Will any big company take him on and make the case for genuine capitalism? Faced with a party that wants to confiscate their assets and tax them into oblivion, will we see CEOS and large institutional investors stand up for themselves?

Of course not: corporate Britain is gutless, and its lobby groups, led by the CBI, are useless. Many are soft Left-wingers, or so obsessed with stopping Brexit that they (absurdly) believe Corbyn would be “less bad”. Others believe that their social responsibility programmes make them immune. Most prefer to cobble together back-room deals, rather than slog it out in the public sphere.

All are deluded. Listed firms shouldn’t engage in party politics, but this is different. Firms that are being threatened with nationalisation – with the state refusing even to pay proper compensation – and the annihilation of their business or shareholder base are entitled to fight back.

Every few decades, Britain falls victim to an outbreak of socialism: it’s a disease that one cannot inoculate against permanently. It happened in the 1940s: Attlee nationalised coal, rail, electricity and water, the Bank of England, land-use planning and created the NHS. It happened during the 1970s, when the union barons ran riot, state monopolies ground the economy down, the Exchequer was broke, taxes were eye-wateringly high and inflation was out of control.

We are on the brink of another such moment: Corbyn is eerily close to No 10, thanks to Theresa May’s incompetence. Socialism is reinvented for every era: Corbyn’s variety will be lawless, and will see assets confiscated at below market prices, Venezuelastyle, in breach of basic rights. It is also likely to see the introduction of a proper wealth tax, something that the 1974 Labour manifesto promised but which proved a step too far in those days. A Corbyn government may destroy the private schools. He will attack newspapers, and force the Bank of England to print more money.

You would think that every business lobby, City firm and large company would be devoting vast resources to fight all of this. The papers and social media ought to be full of pro-capitalist adverts; pressure groups ought to be in full swing, making a detailed, modern case for free markets, commerce and the private sector. Yet there is nothing: no fightback, no counter-offensive, no latter-day Mr Cube. As ever, the corporate world is gormless and politically illiterate. Its biggest mistake is its obsessive hatred of Brexit, which has alienated parts of its natural support base.

There is another way in which too many industries have failed: they aren’t addressing public concerns. Take the water sector. It has proved useless at defending itself from the Labour onslaught, for good reason. When an industry is privatised, and becomes for-profit, expectations increase radically. We demand a high level of performance, of the sort found in the most consumer-friendly firms. Intellectuals may not like supermarkets, but the public love them and do not care how much profit they make. Why? They fight for customers and have an obvious, visible incentive to keep prices down.

There has been progress in the water industry since privatisation, with huge investment, environmental changes and a reduction in leaks. But the public expect even more of the private sector: why do we still have hosepipe bans? Why haven’t we built desalination plants, or pipelines from Scotland? Yes, the latter would cost billions, but not as much as Labour’s plans to confiscate assets at cost price.

The only hope for the utilities and railways is to find a way of improving service and dramatically enhancing competition. Yes, this hits profits in the short term, but a properly competitive industry with lots of choice would be more popular and less likely to be nationalised. The ideological tectonic plates have shifted, but big business doesn’t get it. Being “woke” isn’t enough: they need to be a lot better at their day job.

In the meantime, we need an organised campaign for a competitive, consumerist capitalism, a 21st-century Aims of Industry, a new pro-capitalist mass movement led by brilliant political campaigners, not think-tankers or apparatchiks. There needs to be an alliance of investors and savers, of homeowners and all of those who stand to be trashed by a hard-left Corbyn government, from shareholders in Royal Mail to private school parents.

Just as in the 1940s, relying on the Tories won’t work: they cannot be trusted. Business, investors and consumers must urgently take matters into their own hands.