Time for others to put country before party

IAN Austin is a life-long Labour man, a faithful servant of his party, as a councillor, ministerial aide and MP. We suspect that he is not a natural Mail reader. But we salute him.

Mr Austin has done us all an immense service in speaking out against the menace of a government headed by Jeremy Corbyn.

It cannot have been easy for him – a Labour member since his teens – to advise voters to back the Conservatives in the General Election.

But in highlighting how Mr Corbyn has incubated extremism and anti-Semitism within his party’s ranks, and befriended the enemies of this nation, the honourable member for Dudley North has indeed acted honourably – putting country before party.

With the election campaign barely under way, the facade masking the rotten reality of Corbynist Labour is already crumbling before our eyes.

Yesterday, we were treated to the economics of the madhouse as selfconfessed Marxist and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell promised to borrow an astounding £400 billion in a single parliament to finance a spending spree of quite staggering recklessness.

Meanwhile, employers will be forced to surrender control of their businesses in the cause of limitless flexibility on working hours – this in the wake of a promised four-day working week.

And while we kiss goodbye to economic prudence, we can also bid farewell to tolerance. Leaders of the Jewish community state starkly that a vote for Corbyn is an endorsement of racism and are appealing to their non-Jewish countrymen to shun him.

A leading rabbi goes so far as to warn that a government led by him poses a ‘danger to Jewish life as we know it’.

Can this chilling assessment really be about the leader of a major British political party aspiring to be prime minister? Frighteningly, the answer is yes.

For years, traditional Labour politicians have kept their heads down in the hope that the Corbyn nightmare might end in his retirement and a return to sanity.

But the Labour leadership is now so thoroughly penetrated by the far-Left that even Mr Corbyn’s departure would make little difference.

The resignation of moderate deputy leader Tom Watson is proof, if any were needed, that Labour is beyond salvation. As this truth dawns, those who have stayed silent for too long must, like Mr Austin, rediscover the courage of their convictions.

For moderate Labour voters, too, this is a moment of truth. For many, going Tory is a very big ask. But it is the only sure way of preventing a Corbyn-led coalition. As Mr Austin says, all roads, except a vote for Boris Johnson, lead to Jeremy Corbyn – and his living hell of a workers’ paradise.