Full Marx for a vision to bankrupt us, Mr Corbyn
WITH Theresa May pitching for the workers’ and carers’ votes, I am becoming seriously concerned about Jeremy Corbyn, the so-called Labour leader who launched his party’s official manifesto in Bradford yesterday. He drives me back to my chapel upbringing in Hebden Bridge.
As a one-man disaster area, he evokes that mournful hymn sung at the FA Cup final, “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide”.
Yet he puts on an air of Sunny Jim as if the electors see his ideas as God’s gift to the proletariat.
We have to ask whether this man lives in a world of his own and is suffering from delusions brought on by the classwar addicts who surround him and will do their best to make sure he remains party leader, even after the expected election massacre on June 8.
He may be the acceptable, stubbled face of the hard left, Trots and Len McCluskey, the Unite union leader and Corbyn’s paymaster. But he is really a genuine throwback not just 50 years but to the 19th century and Karl Marx, his “eternal Father strong to save” us all from a fate worse than death.
Marx had at least something going for him in the 19th century when Merrie England was much less merry than it is now.
Yet, in spite of Communism having oven and bathroom, not to mention central heating.
We should be alarmed that the latest think tank estimates suggest that he proposes to spend £93bn a year for five years but will raise at best only £63bn a year. Over and above that, he proposes to borrow £250bn for infrastructure.
Has he never heard of our £50bn budget deficit and a rapidly rising national debt approaching £1.8 trillion (thousand billion)?
Ye gods. As leader of the Responsible Party (so far six known supporters) it doth amaze me that anybody could be so irresponsible with our money.
But perhaps the most serious aspect of all this is how on earth Labour has been reduced to such ridicule, bringing the prospect of continuing ineffective opposition.
Is it a reaction to the “centrist” governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who made a fine mess of it? Is it just a phase, the most serious yet, that Labour is going through as in the past with the Bevanites, the CND crowd and a naive leader like Michael Foot?
Or could it be simply down to the incredibly stupid Ed Miliband undoing all Neil Kinnock’s good work in taming the militants with his £3 Labour membership fee?
That gave an opening to the hard left who now have moderate Labour MPs quaking in their boots over deselection and will seek to ensure that Corbyn remains party leader even if he is electorally massacred next month.
I think the Labour Party must wonder whether it knows how to rescue itself, having fallen into the hands of Momentum. Where is the “shining light amid the encircling gloom”?
Where are the potential leaders of the calibre of Clem Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Ernest Bevin, Hugh Gaitskell and, yes, Harold Wilson who wore himself out holding his party together?
The current deputy leader, that conspiracy theorist called Tom Watson? You must be joking. Hilary Benn, who has disappeared from view? Yvette Cooper, who would be a reaction to the Tories being on their second woman leader? I think not, assuming she survives the election
Chuka Umunna, who did not have the guts to fight for the leadership in 2015? Well, he would be Britain’s first nonwhite party leader. But what has he done to commend himself to the people?
This poverty of talent is an indictment of the stewardship of the Labour Party in the 21st century.
They have no “eternal father strong to save”. Indeed, they do not know whether their “redeemer liveth”. The darkness deepens. Lord with me abide.