Britain risks stumbling into Marxist chaos with Corbyn

Over the agitated British political landscape there now hovers menacingly the Law of Unintended Consequences. In normal times, whatever the scale of parliamentary upheaval, it was always possible to chart the future course of events with some degree of accuracy since the long-established rules of procedure imposed limits on the constitutionally sanctioned outcome.

But these are not normal times. In a House of Commons teeming with Remainers and presided over by a Speaker prepared to jettison long-established parliamentary conventions, anything can happen.

The coteries of Remainer MPs currently devising ever more bizarre anti-Brexit expedients – including the proposal that a minority of 300 MPs should somehow outvote the majority – are projecting the impression that they possess an arcane knowledge of Commons procedure. In reality, like most supposed “experts” in the context of Brexit, they do not know what they are doing. It would take only one major misstep by the kamikaze wing of Tory Remainers, now looking increasingly unhinged to provoke a general election.

That would make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister. No ifs, no buts, no clutching at level-pegging in some opinion polls – the same polls that gave the Tories a 22-point lead before the last general election – the Conservative Party has doomed itself to extinction at its next encounter with the electorate. No government can conduct itself in the way the Conservatives have behaved over the past two years and expect to be returned to power. The Tories may count themselves fortunate if they are not reduced to travelling to Westminster in the taxi formerly accredited to the Liberals.

Outside the palace of illusions that is 10 Downing Street, the brutal equation is: a general election equals a Corbyn government. Not, be it noted, a Labour government – we have endured and survived that many times in the past – but a Corbyn government, which would be a totally different phenomenon.

Forget all the false reassurances, that the reality of office would change Corbyn, that his party would impose restraints on him, that his views have been caricatured. Such political placebos ignore the immense power and patronage conferred by the prime ministerial office. Anyone who doubts that should ask why Theresa May has proved immovable despite her being hell-bent on pursuing a reckless strategy. The same would apply, to the power of ten, were Jeremy Corbyn ensconced in Downing Street, his authority reinforced by the Praetorian Guard that is Momentum, an additional resource that Theresa May has never possessed.

The astonishing thing is not that Jeremy Corbyn is poised to enter Number 10, but that he ever secured election to Parliament. His politics, from his teenage years until the present day, consistent and unchanged, have always been those of an adolescent Marxist who has spent too much time in polytechnic lecture theatres watching grainy Eisenstein films. An intuitive sympathy for totalitarian regimes and a dark association with those engaged in the “armed struggle” are unhealthy affinities for a British parliamentarian.

For seven consecutive years, while the Irish terror campaign was at its height, Corbyn attended and made speeches at official republican commemorations honouring the IRA. He attacked the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the beginning of the peace process that Remainers now agonize over. A Daily Telegraph investigation has revealed that in 1984 the left-wing publication Briefing, in which Corbyn served on the editorial board, carried an article praising the Brighton bombing. A former Special Branch officer has revealed Corbyn was investigated by the police over his republican links.

But his sympathy for terrorists was not confined to Ireland. This leader of the Opposition who refused to talk to Theresa May about Brexit had no qualms about talking to Hamas and Hezbollah. He has presided complacently while Labour has become the most anti-Semitic political party in Europe since 1945. Heaven knows what cack-handed Palestinian initiatives and confrontations with Israel a Corbyn government would provoke.

A Corbynista future is not purely speculative: we have a blueprint for Corbyn’s Britain in the nation with which he most identifies admiringly: Venezuela. Corbyn supported Hugo Chavez, the architect of oil-rich Venezuela’s Marxist impoverishment. Even after the dictator’s death Corbyn tweeted: “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world.”

Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’ successor who has ended the right to protest in Venezuela and whose repressive regime is responsible for many deaths has similarly been endorsed by Corbyn. As for sharing wealth, according to the IMF Venezuela faces ten million per cent inflation, which is hardly a recipe for eliminating poverty. Yet Jeremy Corbyn thinks that is good government.

His declared fiscal policy for Britain under Labour is to escalate the burden of taxation to a 70-year high. In Corbyn’s world the “rich” are those earning over £80,000. Incomes above that level would be taxed at 45 per cent and above £125,000 at 50 per cent. We can be confident that is just a modest toe-in-the-bathwater preliminary hike. Companies with more than 250 employees would be obliged to disburse 10 per cent of their shares to workers, to be lodged in a centrally controlled trust. In other words, Marxist confiscation masquerading as responsible capitalism.

The worst policies articulated by Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell, it should be recognized, are just a preliminary agenda to avoid frightening the horses; the actual programme of a Corbyn government would be much more extreme. Yet useful idiots are bewailing the imagined consequences of a “no deal” Brexit while complacently ignoring the catastrophe that ill-considered moves to avert that outcome could bring down on their heads.

Business is as short-sighted as the politicians. Late last year a City headhunter who speaks regularly to senior bankers reported they were exclusively interested in Brexit: “It’s all they talk about now. This is such a crucial time. People don’t have the bandwidth for Corbyn as well.” One banker claimed, too, there were plenty of young traders who supported Corbyn because they “don’t think they’re in the top 5%”.

There are plenty of lemmings among the general public too. The very fact that Labour’s Brexit policy is unknown means it has not alienated many voters. Corbyn’s chief preoccupation is to conceal his Brexit views from his own party. If “no deal” Brexit occurred, the only man happier than Nigel Farage would be Jeremy Corbyn. He is an unreconstructed Bennite Eurosceptic.

The difference, of course, is that Corbyn sees Brexit as an opportunity to impose “Socialism in One Country”, free of EU restraints on public subsidy and competition rules. The Frankfurt School cultural Marxists in the EU are in conflict with the old Clause Four Marxism of Corbyn. If the kamikaze Remainer element in the House of Commons gets too carried away we may learn how that intra-Marxist conflict will play out – at Britain’s expense.