Kindergarten politics

IN the past, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has made no secret of his support for ‘insurrection’ (including IRA terrorism) as a means to achieve political ends. Yesterday, told to ‘behave himself’, he kept such bloodthirsty views quiet.

Yet even his best efforts to sound reassuring failed to conceal that he remains a student revolutionary at heart, consumed by class hatred and utterly out of his depth in his new post.

This quasi-Marxist throwback espoused policies straight from a yellowing, hard Left textbook, repeatedly proven to kill jobs and spread poverty.

Inevitably, he threatened swingeing tax rises for ‘ the rich’ ( though, equally inevitably, he didn’t specify which income group he had in mind).

All we know is that Labour has plans to introduce a 60p top rate, reverse any cuts in inheritance tax and increase National Insurance contributions, leaving anyone on £50,000 a year to pay 49p in every £1. So much for encouraging aspiration. Meanwhile, Mr McDonnell pledges an all-out assault on business and the City, reversing the planned cut in Corporation tax and introducing a so- called Robin Hood Tax on every financial transaction.

Thus, he would undermine Britain’s competitiveness, kill off jobs and threaten London’s wealth- creating status as a leading global banking centre.

As for his plan to turn the Business Department into the hub of a command economy – overseeing nationalisation, infrastructure and ‘setting new standards in the labour market’ (i.e. spewing red tape) – has he learned nothing from the serial failure of similar experiments?

Most breathtaking of all, the Shadow Chancellor expects voters to believe that by squeezing the rich and ordering the Bank of England to print money, he will be able to pay off the deficit without cuts.

This is kindergarten economics. Yet in a country where bankers have got away with massive fraud, great inequalities exist and a privileged elite is in charge, the danger is that such simplistic ideas may be attractive to worrying numbers of people. The Tories will be making a huge mistake if they fail to take the Corbyn-McDonnell threat seriously.