Think

Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine, just for one second, that the Labour Party has good in its heart. Let us, for a while, entertain the notion that people like John McDonnell honestly hold their views. Let’s put aside their visceral malice towards their political rivals and just take them at their word. They are the nice party, the caring party; they have the monopoly on kindness. So, how would a Labour government change anything at all in a meaningful way, which would bring about all the things they claim to stand for?

Alan Sugar was ennobled by the Labour Party, but he left them over Ed Miliband’s hopeless leadership and is once more attacking their hard left, anti-Zionist stance; they don’t much like Alan over at Momentum Central. To be fair he had no business being in the party in the first place, but like many from working class roots he naturally admired their former championing of the working man. But – and here’s the nub of it – despite the high talk Labour hates social mobility. Get on in life and you’ll become a class traitor in their eyes.

This is particularly exemplified by their determination to eradicate grammar schools. How dare schools stretch pupils and give them ideas above their station? And how dare they promote the idea that some can and will achieve more than others? When Tony Blair said “Our top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education...” I am willing to believe he was sincere. But the trouble with education is that young people learn to reason. Maybe the mantra would more correctly be rendered as ‘indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination’.

Even this can be excused if you accept that the world would be a happier place if we all just tolerated each other and rubbed along, but in their admirable zeal to ‘rescue’ the ‘most vulnerable in society’ they simply do not see the reality. Despite socialism’s best efforts people do eventually begin to think for themselves and it’s all a matter of perspective; when you are young and broke it seems entirely reasonable that others should ‘do more’ (pay) to improve your lot. When you are old and rich, like Lord Sugar, it is easy to be charitable and donate directly. It’s just everybody else wherein the problem lies.

The real fear for Labour is that once people start to make larger than average tax contributions they have the annoying tendency to want to know how their money is being spent. And once you begin to question the profligacy of flawed policies throwing money at lost causes, it is inevitable that your sympathies become somewhat dissipated. Labour simply cannot be the tide that lifts all boats because at their core they are all about robbing the rich. And the rich often used to be the poor.

Forget the current round of anti-Semitism, that is just another symptom of the Labour disease. Ideology harbours contradictions and equality is the most malign ideology there is; outwardly harmless, it slowly drives its host mad. Because in order to bring about equality you have to practise inequality and penalise those you used to praise. And just like a whipped dog that one day turns on its persecutor, when the policies that once controlled you now arouse your anger, your perspective shifts. That thought experiment? Think again.