Free broadband will cost the country dear
How funny that after 24 hours of gaffes and U-turns on immigration, Scotland and healthcare – and after several days of being accused of tolerating anti-semitism – Labour suddenly decided it wants to give everyone free broadband. Just like that. Could it be that this policy was made up on the hoof and tossed onto the table to distract from Labour’s troubles? Yesterday, John Mcdonnell insisted that his spending plans were prepared with “precision and discipline”, but of course the far-left can offer anything they like because they don’t operate by fiscal rules and what they can’t borrow, they will steal through tax. How should the Conservatives respond? By sticking to their own principles and fighting back with intellectual conviction. The Tories cannot win a public spending bidding war with Robin Hood.
No one would deny that Britain’s broadband regime is woefully inadequate: coverage is patchy and slow, with rural and poorer communities falling far behind. One of the biggest problems, however, is the lack of market competition – and thus it would be an act of utter madness to replace BT’S quasi-monopoly with state control. It would not be “free”. Labour calculates that its programme will cost around £20 billion; Philip Jansen, the boss of BT, puts the figure closer to £100 billion. The government would have to borrow to pay for nationalisation and running costs will be met by a tax on multinationals, which will send investors dashing overseas. Given the state’s past record on managing utilities, one can guarantee a dreadful service with, probably, no alternatives to turn to.
Having nationalised broadband, however, it will be nigh-impossible to get rid of it – because that’s what happens whenever the state creates a freebie justified as a “human right”. Gordon Brown did this somewhat cynically. Mr Mcdonnell has the terrifying glint in his eye of a true believer, and if broadband can be classed as a human right because, increasingly, we all use it, where will Labour’s powergrab end? Food, water, housing – all are even more essential than the internet, and Mr Mcdonnell is probably happy to see the state provide them, too, taxing and borrowing until the private sector is small enough that it can be drowned in the bathtub. As Boris Johnson beautifully puts it, free broadband is a “crazed communist scheme”.
That is exactly the kind of language conservatives and the business community should be using, because this is a fight over the fundamentals. For too long, those who ought to champion markets have apologised for them instead, or even attacked the wealth creators – ceding the emotional and intellectual argument to the point that a plan as insanely radical as Mr Mcdonnell’s can be reported breathlessly by the liberal-left media as if it were a gamechanger. Labour’s plan is, in fact, both silly and dangerous. The centre-right needs to point out that not only would it cost the country a lot of money and deliver a rotten service, but it is also an authoritarian proposal that, when it fails, will be used to justify an even more extreme response. That’s how the far-left works. Venezuela shows that when Marxists wreck the economy, they always use it as an excuse for yet more Marxism.
There’s a tension within the Conservative camp between neutralising Labour’s spending proposals with eye-catching announcements of their own or mounting a full-throttled defence of the free market – something that Mr Johnson is probably the most personally inclined and qualified Tory leader in a generation to do. The Prime Minister should follow his instincts. This election ought primarily to be about Brexit, but the reality is that it won’t be: if voters are asked to pick a government, not just a single policy choice as in a referendum, they will inevitably consider a whole programme and the philosophy behind it. Labour is motivated by desperation but also a genuine belief that it can afford to promise the earth. The Tories have to dig into their own reserves of reason and prudence – to argue that the state cannot and should not do everything, and that there are some things the market does best.
It’s an authoritarian proposal that, when it fails, will be used to justify an even more extreme response