Middle-class liberals are in denial about the true horror of Corbynism
Remainers risk becoming Momentum stooges by supporting Labour just to stay inside the EU
Property is theft – or so claimed Pierre-joseph Proudhon, the French father of modern Left-wing anarchism. He was utterly, pathologically wrong, of course: private property is the source of almost all that is great about our civilisation. It enables us to live free, unique lives, giving us power and control over our surroundings, and it is the reason for our astonishing prosperity. Private property is the most useful social construct ever developed, and a concept that is deeply embedded in our psyches.
So it is a cause for extreme concern that reading Proudhon, who predated Karl Marx by several decades, is now a prerequisite for understanding the modern Labour Party. A hatred for private property is one of the constant themes that runs through the policies of Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow Chancellor John Mcdonnell.
Their answer to the housing crisis? Find a privately owned home that is, for whatever reason, empty, then “occupy it, compulsory purchase it, requisition it”, Mr Corbyn said. The trains, gas and electricity firms, and big construction businesses? Launch Britain’s greatest ever nationalisation programme – not by paying market prices, but by imposing a confiscatory low rate set by Parliament. PFI contracts? They should be terminated without compensation.
The City and financial institutions? They will feel the full wrath of a Labour government, which sees them as “destructive, pernicious and undemocratic”, and face an onslaught the likes of which they have never before seen. Corporate mergers and acquisitions? Shareholders will no longer be able to sell their shares as they choose, and will be forced instead to sell only to approved buyers, guaranteeing yet more expropriation. Newspapers that write stories Labour doesn’t like? “Change is coming”, in the most threatening way possible.
That list, which is just the start, is tantamount to a declaration of all-out war on private property, yet many centre-left, middle-class voters are still in denial, especially in areas that voted heavily for Remain. Many such folk work in the City, so risk losing their jobs, or own homes that will be taxed much more heavily. Yet they continue to pretend that Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party is essentially liberal. Just as foolishly, they are convinced that it will eventually tone down its own hardcore Left-euroscepticism.
Yet one of the most intriguing aspects of the preposterous Corbyn-mcdonnell agenda is that it would be in flagrant breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in violation of many other EU rules. You can’t confiscate property or repudiate contracts without independently determined compensation. This is not an argument against Brexit itself, of course: staying in the EU only to constrain Mr Corbyn would be a democratic outrage. But the truth that so many centre-left voters can’t seem to admit is that Mr Corbyn’s vision is as incompatible with EU membership as Jacob Rees-mogg’s, albeit for different reasons. Their dream that voting Labour would mean cancelling Brexit is thus a dangerous delusion.
The British courts, as well as the Strasbourg judges, would rule that the ECHR’S “right to property” prohibits the sort of savage confiscation Mr Mcdonnell has in mind. Shareholders would sue, and the government would have to pay a fortune in compensation payments. Property rights are (entirely correctly) considered a fundamental human right in mainstream post-war European thinking, even though that approach to individual rights is more social-democratic than in countries such as the US, which codified its own constitution during a classical liberal era. But that is the point: Corbyn is so Left-wing that he doesn’t even fit into the post-1945 consensus: he’s a full-on revolutionary socialist, not a modern social democrat. Corbynistas only really believe in “positive” liberties (the right to free stuff, paid for by others), not “negative” ones (the protection of property or free speech); the centre-left and centre-right have long believed in both.
Since Tony Blair’s day, the ECHR has been incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act (HRA); and the Tories are not planning either to repeal it or withdraw from the ECHR altogether when we leave the EU, although such a move would be supported by many Brexiteers. I, for one, would be attracted to the idea of replacing the 1950s ECHR with a modern, British Bill of Rights that is strong in its defence of individual rights against the state and includes a digital dimension but is less susceptible to judicial activism. But the Tories are already biting off more than they can chew with Brexit, so there is no appetite for this for now.
Paradoxically, however, the main threat to the ECHR now comes not from free-market libertarians but from the far-left. It is an open question whether it would be legal for a country to stay in the EU without also remaining a party to the ECHR. What is certain is that, if they did cancel Brexit, rights violations of the sort being planned by Mr Corbyn and Mr Mcdonnell would at the very least trigger a massive, irreparable crisis between the EU and the UK, giving the Europeans an opportunity to suspend our voting rights and thus turn us into a pure vassal state. Alternatively, we may simply be expelled.
Mr Corbyn’s policies are also impossible to reconcile with the EU’S own Charter of Fundamental Rights –from which we will withdraw after Brexit, but to which Remainers remain attached. It states clearly in its Article 17 on the Right to Property that anybody deprived “in the public interest” of their possessions must be “subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss”.
Centre-left and other pro-remain voters toying with Labour at the May elections, especially in London, are being played: they risk becoming Momentum’s useful idiots. This is not the time for naive tactical voting. Mr Mcdonnell was serious when he wrote that his hobby is “generally fomenting the overthrow of capitalism”. Nobody who believes in private property should ever vote for Mr Corbyn’s Labour, or give it succour in any way. Thankfully, Brexit of one kind or other will happen regardless of who is in power; the only question is whether we want our future to be prosperous and capitalist, or impoverished and socialist.