Corbyn’s sums need to add up

Labour and its leaked manifesto

THANKS TO the apparatchik who leaked Labour’s draft manifesto, it can now be said with certainty that Jeremy Corbyn’s 43-page blueprint will not be the longest suicide note in the party’s history simply because it is shorter than Michael Foot’s infamous prospectus for power in 1983.

Irrespective of the motives of the offical concerned, this apparent breakdown in discipline and collective responsibility points to irreconcilable differences in Labour’s high command about strategy. Any deviation at next week’s launch from this text will be portrayed as a split.

Mr Corbyn’s worries do not end here. The socialist manifesto is riddled with inconsistencies – it says Labour will deliver Brexit but warns “that leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain”.

Then there is national security. Though the party commits itself to the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent which goes against Mr Corbyn’s long-held pacifism, it says “any prime minister should be extremely cautious about ordering the use of weapons of mass destruction”.

And then there’s the small matter of the cost. Not one of these profligate proposals, like the commitment to abolish student tuition fees, appears to have been costed – presumably this will come next week once Diane Abbott, the party’s Shadow Home Secretary, has finally worked out the bill for recruiting thousands of new police.

Though the leaking has opened up the policy debate on re-nationalisation – the manifesto appears to be designed to shore up support rather than broaden Labour’s mass appeal – the party is misguided if it thinks it can spend its way out of trouble.

As its plans were being scrutinised, the Bank of England was downgrading Britain’s economic growth while respected commentators, like Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, were noting that planned increases in corporation tax will be counter-productive because reductions introduced by the Tories have actually led to businesses paying more to the Treasury.

Given this, Mr Corbyn now needs to prove that his sums do, in fact, add up. He has his work cut out.