A dangerous time warp with Labour
It is as though the country is in a political time warp. The Left appears to believe it is in the ascendancy just as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Jeremy Corbyn, a Marxist who ploughed a lonely ideological furrow on the fringes of the Labour Party for 30 years, struts the political stage as if he owns it. At the TUC conference in Brighton he promised to “put power in the hands of workers”, in an echo of the rhetoric we once heard from the likes of Arthur Scargill. In the House of Commons, Labour MPS sang the Red Flag, just as they did in 1976 on the famous night when the Callaghan government pushed through legislation to nationalise the aircraft and shipbuilding industries.
This is a Labour Party which, according to the latest opinion polls, has the support of less than one quarter of the electorate. It has not won a general election since 2005. Its leadership is in thrall to a hard-left caucus utterly out of sympathy with most traditional Labour voters, let alone the rest of the country.
Yet because of the Government’s continuing difficulties over Brexit, Mr Corbyn seeks to give the impression that he is the tribune of the people rather than a throwback to a time of incompetent economic management and trade union dominance.
Mr Corbyn told his TUC paymasters that Labour would create a workers’ protection agency with powers to enter business premises and bring prosecutions. There would be a ban on zero hours contracts and unpaid internships; the enforcement of sectoral collective bargaining; and councils of worker and employer representatives to negotiate agreements with minimum terms, conditions and standards for the whole of a particular sector.
Mr Corbyn also pledged to repeal Conservative trade union laws, something three Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never did. The party is already committed to the wholesale nationalisation of privatised utilities and the railways.
It was also reported recently that Labour would allow private tenants to buy the homes that they live in at below market value. It is unclear whether this will be forced upon landlords who do not wish to sell. Labour, whose own Brexit policy is as clear as mud, is using the current political stalemate to position itself as some sort of moderate and sensible alternative government. But it remains as dangerous as ever.