
Jeremy Corbyn Win Will Rob Labour Of Its Greatest Asset.
Ability To Pretend To Be Something Else Always Was The Key.
If Corbyn Wins, Parliamentary Party Will Soon Despatch Him.
Maybe Labour Too Will Die Leaving Tories, UKIP.
“socialism always hurts most the people it proclaims the most noisily to want to help”
“the minimum wage is very hard to argue against while populists are shouting greedy Tory at you”
Jeremy Corbyn’s likely victory in the race for the Labour leadership is great news for us lifetime haters of the party because it will remove one of its most annoying powers; its ability to hide its real intentions from a gullible public.
Corbyn appears to be the gift that will keep on giving, although when something turns up that appears to be such a one-way bet, such a great bonus that came from nowhere, you have to ask yourself whether you are missing something. Why should fate be so kind to Britain? So far, though, I can only see benefits for the voters of Britain who have half a brain and want to improve their living standards and provide for their families’ economic needs and education.
I say I’m a lifetime Labour hater, but that’s not quite true. I have to admit that on March 31, 1966, aged 21, I canvassed for Labour in Hayward’s Heath, then and now a rock-solid Tory stronghold.
“You know Labour government works, just (5 hours, 4 hours, 3 hours etc) left to vote for Harold Wilson” I said, via a tannoy fitted to the roof of my Austin A35 to the commuters from London in the station car park. Wilson duly won and raised his unworkable majority from four to a comfortable 96, no thanks to my efforts.
I saw the light soon afterwards. Ever since then during the party’s ascendancy it has always managed to restrain the real radicals in the party who hated the Queen, America and Britain’s traditions, and wanted to impose its bone-headed and cul-de-sac economic theories and fellow-travelling defence ideas on us; always applied of course with a blissful ignorance of the Theory of Unintended Consequences. Jeremy Corbyn won’t follow these rules, apparently thinking debating is more fun than governing. That’s great for those of us who wonder just how much better off economically and intellectually we would be as a nation if the Labour Party hadn’t existed, and not bequeathed to us the welfare trap (sorry, state), the Stalinist NHS, crippling penal taxation, and ruined the life chances of generations of working class children by its war on excellence in education.
No matter that any rational, intelligent investigation of the consequences of socialism shows it always hurts most the people it proclaims the most noisily to want to help, its motor mouth but morally corrupt leaders always managed to divert attention from its core beliefs.
Grim Reaper of Mid Staffs
Populist grandstanding manages to paper over even the huge problems with the unworkable and doomed National Health Service, although this is getting more difficult. One of Corbyn’s competitors, Andy Burnham, has been nick-named the Grim Reaper of Mid-Staffs because of his involvement in the cover-up of disgusting and callous treatment which led to between 400 and 1200 more deaths between 2005 and 2008 than other hospitals might expect. How on earth Labour got out from under that one, it’s hard to explain.
Easier to understand, is its use of ideas like the minimum wage, which it is very hard to argue against while populists are shouting greedy Tory at you. Everyone who has walked past an economics book shop on the other side of the road knows that if you raise the minimum wage enough to make any difference to wage levels, simple arithmetic means you will lose jobs. The trick is to campaign noisily for a minimum wage, but make sure it never actually raises the wage level. The same goes for rent controls, another great lefty favourite, which leads to voter acclaim in the short-term, but lack of investment leads to less choice, less supply and of course, higher rents in the long-term in more sordid conditions.
Then of course there are the old lefty hardy perennials, state control of the commanding heights of the economy, and thinking they can repair their inevitable financial deficits by scape-goating the “rich”. Tony Blair, now reviled by the Labour faithful as if he had killed the firstborn and overlooked Jimmy Savile at the same time, managed to avoid ruining the economy too much for a while at least by dumping Labour’s Clause 4 (pledging nationalisation), and allowing the “rich” (many of whom probably aren’t very rich) to retain more of their income, and used the minimum wage issue to grandstand rather than cause unemployment. Unfortunately he didn’t have the cohunes to stop Gordon Brown gradually but relentlessly undermining the economy with crippling debt.
Suck up to loathsome Islamists
But Jeremy Corbyn, to the delight of all us on the intelligent side of the argument, has learned nothing in all his years as an MP, and positively delights in reminding the voters that given half a chance he would ruin our economy, undermine our defence as he withdrew from NATO, print money until we were more like Zimbabwe, and suck up to loathsome Islamists. I hear some commentators saying “Be careful what you wish for” but I can’t see any downside to a Corbyn victory. I do fear though that it wouldn’t last too long. The Parliamentary Labour Party won’t put up with this and will marginalise and eventually (quickly?) overthrow him. This will do huge damage to the rank and file membership who will leave in droves exposing the party to a huge defeat in 2020.
Presumably it will then revive itself, or maybe die on the vine with the LibDems, to be replaced by the Tories, with UKIP moving in on the right.
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