Corbynomics: the real threat to our future
WHAT a revealing insight we’ve had over recent days into Labour’s grand economic plan to turn Britain into a new Socialist Jerusalem. It’s a plan that should make us all very afraid.
In rhetorical terms, Corbynomics offers a seductive message. What could be fairer than to reclaim our energy and water companies from greedy, exploitative capitalists and return them to the people?
Naturally we wouldn’t need to pay full compensation, because these leeches have long extracted massive dividends at public expense. (Ordinary shareholders and pension funds would be fleeced, but let’s not worry too much about that.)
Meanwhile, train travel is expensive and can be unreliable, so let’s renationalise the railways. Then they’ll run like clockwork.
Public services and infrastructure need radical improvement. If we just increase borrowing by £48billion a year plus another £ 250billion over ten years for major projects, everything will be peachy.
The problem with this soft Marxist narrative is that it’s a blatant lie, as anyone who lived through the 1970s can testify.
By the middle of that painful decade, when most of the economy was nationalised, inefficient, and permanently strikebound, the country was effectively bankrupt.
Inflation peaked at 24 per cent, lending rates were into double figures and we had to beg for International Monetary Fund handouts to stay afloat. Britain was dubbed ‘the sick man of Europe’.
Then came the ‘Winter of Discontent’ – power cuts, rubbish in the streets and the dead left unburied because even gravediggers were on strike.
This nadir was brought about by exactly the sort of reckless tax and spend obsessions and obeisance to union power which define Labour’s high command today. When governments raise taxes to unsustainable levels, expropriate private property and borrow vast amounts of money, there are inevitable consequences.
Capital flight, crippling debt repayments, industrial decline, rising poverty and raging unemployment. For an extreme example, look no further than Venezuela.
As Margaret Thatcher once put it: ‘The trouble with Socialists is they eventually run out of other people’s money.’
So how come Labour is ahead in the polls? The truth is that instead of challenging Corbynomics by extolling the virtues of freemarket capitalism, the Tories have lapsed into a Brexit-induced state of suspended animation. If disaster is to be averted, they must wake up and start fighting back.
Two events yesterday may kick-start that process. Firstly, Theresa May agreed her departure timetable. The Mail has huge respect for her efforts to achieve an honourable Brexit, but sadly she fell short.
She plans to give her deal one last push – but its chances are vanishingly slim. So a dignified exit is now probably for the best.
The other event was Boris Johnson’s announcement that he will stand in the election to replace her. While hardly a surprise, this news electrified Westminster. Mr Johnson has manifold flaws and divides opinion like no other politician, as has been forcefully expressed by this paper. But he is charismatic and won two terms as mayor of Labour-dominated London. There are however other strong candidates and we look forward to them setting out their stalls. But whoever wins must have the vision and optimism to revivify and reunite a party which is on the brink of permanent schism.
As well as getting Brexit done, they must trumpet the economic miracle achieved from the ashes left by the last Labour government and proudly state the moral and practical case for Conservatism.
Above all, they must consign Mr Corbyn and his madcap economic ‘theories’ – the real danger to this country – to the dustbin of history.