Britain took a lurch to the far left when it's Labor party elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, replacing Ed Miliband, the man who dismally lost the last election. Corbyn (66) is a veteran of the time when British Labor was in the thrall of forcing socialism on the country and his stance today is a complete rejection of Tony Blair's "New Labor " manifesto - which gained the party control of the parliament for more than a decade.
Corbyn gained the leadership with 59.5% of the vote and his policy speeches left little doubt as to his intentions if he can win government. He plans to re-nationalise the railways and install a regime of socialism, to be financed by savage tax increases heaped on the wealthy and on all forms of business. He will order the Bank of England to run the printing presses and use this money to create public housing, energy and transport. That sends a shiver down the spine of most economists because it would certainly let the inflationary dragon out of it's den.
He constantly speaks out about the war in Iraq and we are likely to see a resurgence in the movement to impose unilateral disarmament. Britain's commitment to NATO involves nuclear submarines which will shortly need replacement and that opens the debate on both the fleet base in Scotland and the entire question of retaining nuclear arms. Britain would diminish from a world power to a similar status as Iceland or Norway.
Many older people will remember difficult times after the end of the second world war when Britain was in the grip of socialism. It's industry just could not compete with the strangulation imposed by militant unions and public services were hampered by layers of red tape and the ever present interfering bureaucracy. The country was referred to by competitors as "the sick man of Europe ".
It took the controversial policies of Margaret Thatcher and then Tony Blair to create a modern Britain that successfully engaged in world trade and dominated as the location of financial services for the entire continent of Europe. What Jeremy Corbyn proposes seems to be a step backward and to a socialist the very word "profit " is an insult. It seeks to tax all forms of commerce out of existence and replace it with government institutions that work to a set of rules that seem certain to lose money and create inefficiency. Most of the world's socialist governments totter on the brink of insolvency.
It remains to be seen how this vast change of direction is received by the wider British public. The Labor party is a broad church and the people who vote in a leader are a small minority, with the trade unions holding a disparate degree of power. Not only does Jeremy Corbyn have to sell his policy to the true believers of Labor, he must also convince the swinging voters of Britain to throw the country into reverse and adopt a policy that was an abject failure when it was last tried many decades earlier.
When he threw his hat into the leadership ring the pundits branded him "unelectable ". The fact that he won office handsomely is a surprise to many and he has five years to sell his policy to the broad masses before he goes to the polls. If he fails, it is likely that this "Labor experiment " will bring disaster to British politics. It may wreck Labor and destroy the party as the main force in opposition.
A country gets the best government when whoever is in office has an opposition snapping at it's heels and is a credible successor. To resurrect a failed policy from the twentieth century and try to rework it in this twenty-first century seems like tilting at windmills. Or perhaps a desperation measure !
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