Red Ed has zero clue how business works

LISTeNING to the BBC news, anyone might believe ed Miliband is telling the unvarnished truth when he suggests ruthless employers are exploiting British workers on an epic scale.

Drill more deeply and it becomes clear the Labour leader is being less than straight when he speaks of an ‘epidemic’ of zerohours contracts, keeping staff on standby for work only when it suits the boss.

For one thing, just 2.3 per cent of the workforce have such contracts (some epidemic!), of whom most are happy with the deal. Indeed, two-thirds – including many mothers and students – say they have no wish to work more hours. But Mr Miliband has never allowed reality to interfere with his quasi-Marxist convictions. So he pledges a crackdown on the contracts (whose worst aspects have been outlawed by the Coalition). Leave aside that Labour councils employ 22,000 zero-hours staff – while 68 of the party’s MPs, including ed Balls, have used them over the past two years.

In the real world, isn’t Mr Miliband’s policy sure to cost thousands of jobs, as employers find they can’t afford his guarantees? But then what does the Labour leader know about a world in which firms must compete to survive?

After all, this is a man who describes producers as ‘predators’, who wants to seize private land and force energy companies to sell gas and electricity at a loss – and now plans the first rise in corporation tax for 40 years. No wonder more than 100 leading business figures – including at least five who once backed Labour – have endorsed Tory policies, warning that a change in course would endanger recovery.

Whose judgment should voters trust more? These 120 executives who employ more than 600,000 workers between them? Or a self- confessed ‘geek’, who says he ‘blubbed’ over a film showing the London lesbian and gay community helping miners in Wales – and who learned his economics from a Marxist textbook?