First Putin stole from me – now Corbyn wants to

Back in the years when Jeremy Corbyn took the side of the Soviet Union in its struggle for peace and the spread of communist ideas throughout the world, Leonard Cohen wrote his hugely popular song Everybody Knows.

Everybody knows that the Kremlin is rife with corruption. Everybody knows about Putin’s 20 years of dictatorship and his track record of stifling any dissent. Everybody knows that Putin’s gas, oil and money was taken from the pockets of his own people. Everybody knows that the current Russian regime supports war and the occupation of neighbouring states’ territories, as well as thieving dictatorial regimes all over the world. And everybody needs to know that Mr Corbyn’s vision for the country shares stark similarities with what Putin has done to Russia and its industries.

I am one of the victims of Putin, a man Mr Corbyn wants us to take a softer approach towards. Putin stole from my friends, my colleagues and myself. He stole what we built by ourselves: one of the largest companies in the world and what we hoped could be one of the most transparent and efficient public firms in the oil and gas sector, Yukos.

It was cynically taken away from us, and its leader and my friend Mikhail Khodorkovsky spent more than 10 years in prisons and prison camps. Many followed him to these Russian dungeons, some never to return. Hundreds of ordinary Yukos employees were forced to leave their homeland for fear of lawlessness and political repression.

Now my colleagues and I are facing the threat of being robbed for the second time by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Corbyn wants to nationalise large swathes of the country’s economy, including the transmission, infrastructure and utility companies that make up the most advanced and efficient energy sector in Europe. And he wants to do so while refusing to guarantee to pay a fair price for these assets.

Why nationalise something that works? Why nationalise and rob the shareholders of National Grid and the Big Six (some of whom are employees of these firms), as well as my own company, which has been developing the AQUIND Interconnector? Once completed in 2023, the AQUIND Interconnector will have the capacity to provide enough electricity for 5 million households, and will make investment in renewable energy more attractive.

There is no case for Labour’s nationalisation plans. The party’s supporters claim that they are necessary in order to protect consumers. This is nonsense. The consumer is already protected by a professional and effective regulator: Ofgem.

Thankfully, I doubt any attempt to nationalise the British energy sector by Corbyn will succeed. The entire industry has come together to protect their assets, and the United Kingdom has an independent judiciary that will require a fair valuation of the to-be nationalised businesses. The cost of taking over all these assets would ruin the country, too.

But I also have faith that the British people will reject Corbyn’s appalling vision. My hope is that these elections will demonstrate, once and for all, that the age of the Corbyns as well as the Putins is coming to an end.

Alexander Temerko is the director of AQUIND and a donor to the Conservative Party

at telegraph.co.uk/opinion