Labour’s fiction will be our cold reality

Yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies tore apart Labour’s sums. On the basis of its manifesto, the party would raise spending and taxes to their highest levels in peacetime – but it would not stop there. IFS director Paul Johnson said: “Their vision is of a state with a far greater role than anything we have seen for more than 40 years”, including an extra £80billion in current spending and £55 billion for investment. On top of that goes £58 billion to women affected by changes to pensions, including pensioners who are comparatively well-off. It is “remarkable,” said Mr Johnson, that Labour has found “more money for a small number of, on average, well off ” women than it has for working-age families who have lost out from benefit cuts. Why not means-test the compensation? This is part of a pattern: Labour’s proposals are not truly progressive at all.

Moreover, it is pure fantasy to say that Labour’s tax plans will only penalise those earning over £80,000. As the IFS concluded, it is “highly likely” that this radical splurge will require “more broadbased tax increases” in the future – and as business and capital flee the country, those taxes will presumably get broader and higher. There’s a fundamental dishonesty at the heart of Labour’s programme that reflects the leader’s ambivalent position. Mr Corbyn cannot say what he really wants to do because he is still holding together a ramshackle coalition: hence his bizarre new strategy to emphasise to Leave voters that he will remain neutral in a second referendum. He has also failed to provide an adequate response to charges of anti-semitism in Labour.

Spending other people’s money often appears to be the only thing he is unequivocal and passionate about, yet it is cushioned by a monstrous fib, namely that he will only squeeze the richest to pay for it.

Tell that to anyone who stands to lose their marriage allowance, or who will have much of their inheritance redistributed, or who will see the value of their pension destroyed by nationalisation. Also that their job will be threatened by a rise in corporation tax that, if it brings in as much revenue as Labour predicts, will be one of the highest revenues in the developed world.

While Labour peddles ridiculous fictions about the NHS being privatised under the Tories, the reality of its economic plans is there for all to see. Britain simply cannot afford a Labour victory.