Marxist fantasy of the Labour throwbacks

JUST in case there was any doubt about how far adrift labour is from being electable, Shadow Chancellor John Mcdonnell yesterday came up with a brilliant strategy to revive his party’s flagging fortunes – embrace the teachings of Karl Marx.

Apparently blissfully unstirred by a comprehensive drubbing in the local elections, he extolled the virtues of das Kapital, the textbook of Marxist theory. he then trotted out a set of dated, hard-left economic policies which – if voters were ever reckless enough to let him in – would be guaranteed to leave Britain both fiercely divided and bankrupt.

Naturally, they began with sweeping tax rises for the rich, defined by Mr Mcdonnell as those earning more than £80,000 a year. does he really believe that head teachers, GPs and senior public servants (not to mention trade union officials) belong to the ranks of the super-wealthy? Such rises would serve only to penalise hard work and enterprise, and kill aspiration.

he claims tax increases would be ‘modest’, but with labour needing some £45billion to meet the costs of an orgy of public spending, who could possibly believe him?

he has hinted at a 60p top rate of income tax, refuses to rule out imposing VAT on currently zero-rated items, or raising employers’ National Insurance contributions – and has pledged to thump businesses with higher corporation tax.

Curiously, Mr Mcdonnell denied yesterday that he himself was a Marxist, which is surprising given that in a 2013 speech he claimed to take pride in his Marxism and welcomed the financial crash as a sign that capitalism was crumbling.

But however this incorrigible class warrior defines himself, it’s clear that he and his friends are reducing a once-great party to rubble. The mass political movement of hardie, Macdonald and Attlee is in serious danger of becoming little more than a shrivelled hard-left pressure group.

under throwbacks like Mr Mcdonnell, his boss Jeremy Corbyn and the risibly innumerate diane Abbott, the big question is not whether labour can win the general election (voters are surely too sensible to let that happen).

It is whether the party can survive at all as a force in British politics.