Dreamers

You have to feel sorry for Jeremy Corbyn, really. This man of principles appears to have abandoned every one of them since he took the reins of what is left of the Labour Party. A career-long opponent of the EU, he now painfully claims to want to retain membership of the single market. A once proud defender of ‘British jobs for British people’ he now has to declare that freedom of movement for low-skilled workers, lowering wages and displacing Labour’s traditional voter base is a price he is willing to accept for said membership. A former red ‘firebrand’ he now meekly acquiesces to the EU’s impositions on its workers.

After a week which he began with his ‘yeah, but no, but, yeah, but...’ clarification of his multiple and varying stances on these policies he has taken the stage at the Fabians conference and left with yet more egg on his face. His latest policy response to the laughter and despair he aroused last week is to re-establish his commitment to the very worst, simplistic principles of Marxism and populist socialism. The answer, he really wants to say, is nationalise everything. Starting with the trains and moving on to care homes, if his heart isn’t in the right place then there goes the last possible excuse for indulging his fantasies.

The formula ‘make everybody better off’ as a starting point is nothing but a soundbite for the masses. The idea that you can achieve this by making some people worse off is pure cant. And the proposal that you can keep happy those on the lower rungs of the earnings ladder by propping them up with state charity is demeaning and preposterous. Anybody can stand on a stage and say they will ‘save’ the NHS, or improve the railways, or tackle Britain’s productivity shortfall, or make our schools the envy of the world. But without a credible means by which any of these things might be achieved you may as well say you will levitate or reveal god, or resurrect the dead.

Actually, Corbyn has already brought many policies back from the electoral graveyard and is somehow keeping them on artificial life support to no discernible purpose. Even failed communist plans deserve a decent burial and to be left to rest in peace. But listening to Comrade Jeremy, I can’t help but feel like Winston Smith; I’ve heard all this before, I remember it didn’t work the first time, or the next, or the next, but I am being asked to believe that, as under Common Core, three times four can equal eleven.

Children grow up dreaming and hoping and imagining bright futures where anything is possible. For a very fortunate few, success comes about by accidents; of birth, of opportunity, of flashes of inspiration, of being in the right place at exactly the right time, of sheer luck. But the majority will only succeed by applying themselves to acquire the skills and responsibilities that participation in our system of mostly benign capitalism requires. The high dreams fade and are tempered into realistic objectives as the reality hits home. Somebody should shake Jeremy gently by the shoulder and wake the poor old fucker up.

The Cruel World Order

Well, the Spectator debate last night was fun and it showed the stark difference in the approach of those ‘on the right’ who reasoned with level heads and unsensational facts that the rich already pay more than their fair share of tax, and the rag-taggle of lefty activists arguing passionately that the world was a horrid place and they would stamp their feet and hold their breath until the unicorns arrived with the magic money. For me the defining moment was when the brilliant descriptive term 'wealth jihadists' was immediately decried as 'hate speech' by those so quick to condemn anybody not in line with their perverse agenda of state-controlled 'fairness'.  

But the comedy high point of the week so far has to be Arthur – admit it, you thought he was dead – Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party manifesto launch: Launch? Lunch, more like, as in ‘out to’.  Their website is a hark back to the glory days of the nineteenth century pamphleteers and their Key Policies page is a joy to behold. To save you from splitting your own sides reading it for yourself, I have fisked it for your delectation and delight and invite you into their wonderful world, along the yellow brick road, down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass…

It starts with the marvellously optimistic message contained in the provocatively titled: “Clause IV of the Socialist Labour Constitution”:“To abolish Capitalism and replace it with a Socialist system democratically controlled by and accountable to the people as a whole. A full return of all the wealth generated by the industries and services of our nation on the basis of common/social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange of each industry and service.” And so it continues. They will (their words):

·         immediately close the tax loopholes

·         take the banks into public ownership

·         build or refurbish 1 million homes every year for 5 years.

·         restore full employment

·         end nuclear power generation

·         abolish all private health care & social services, and

·         all doctors, dentists and nurses must work exclusively for the NHS.

·         pull out of all wars and military engagements overseas.

·         abolish all private education,

·         renationalise all rail, bus, tram, waterway and air transport

I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them pledging to resurrect Maggie just so they could burn her for real and not merely in effigy. To be fair they do advocate complete withdrawal from the EU, so on balance they may not appear to be so bad after all. But wait, what’s this? A NINETY PERCENT TAX on all income over £300,000? Well, wasn’t that just what the Spectator debate was all about? The left’s cause and argument hinges on their definition of fairness and social justice, hence everybody making a buck is somehow part of the cruel patriarchy of the right.

Some flying pigs are more equal than others.

But Scargill and his senile cronies were around when the last Labour government to enact such punitive taxes presided over the exodus of the great and good and the most austere period in Britain’s history since the Second World War. If Labour’s constant assault on ‘the rich’ has ever shown us anything it is that if you squeeze the honest rich more you will be left with only the dishonest rich. Tax the law-abiding wealth creators and only the civil criminals and corrupt public officials will thrive. Now that really would be a cruel society.