Starmer’s ministers are imbued with the Marxist poison they inculcated at Britain’s fetid universities
The spiteful remark of John McTernan, a former Labour adviser, about “doing to the farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners” reflects an unwelcome change in the character of the Left.
The remark has brought out into the open what some of us suspected already: that a significant part of the Left is more driven by hatred of the rich than by love and concern for the poor. McTernan’s remark included nothing about any public benefit. It was all about hurting family farms. It reflected a desire for vengeance.
The imposition of VAT on private school fees was this attitude in action. The tax will raise less than first thought. The Labour Party appears not to have thought in advance about the extra cost to the state of providing schooling for those children priced out of private education. It did not care that the overall level of education in this country would be harmed by the tax. No, it only cared about demonstrating how it hates the rich and is willing to hurt them.
What is its attitude to the many wealthy people who are currently becoming tax exiles? There has been a barely concealed attitude on the Left of “good riddance”.
Such is the party’s level of antipathy that it is happy to push out rich people who can pay taxes and provide employment more than anyone else. The Left have come to loathe the rich so much that they don’t care if evicting them makes everyone poorer.
This is a change from the Labour Party of the Blair years. Peter Mandelson, the eminence grise of the time, once remarked that he was “intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich”.
Whatever you might think about Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair and their government, they were not animated by hatred. Personal ambition, perhaps, but not hatred.
The current Labour Party and its outriders are a throwback to the 1970s. That is when Denis Healey, who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he wanted to “squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak”. He went on to raise the top rate of income tax to 98 per cent.
The result of that, of course, was an exodus of wealthy people, including some of the most famous celebrities of the time. Not coincidentally, this was the time when Britain become known as “the sick man of Europe”, saddled with debt, inflation and strikes.
Why is it that Labour has gone back to that dismal time? It is a legacy of when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, bringing with him a cohort of far-Left activists who became parliamentary candidates.
These are people who are imbued with a poisonous, Marxist concept of society. It is a worldview in which society is seen as a class war between good workers and evil exploiters.
The big forecasts of Marx have all proven to be utterly wrong. He forecast, for example, that the communist revolutions would take place in advanced capitalist industrial countries. In fact, none of the 20 or more communist coups have ever taken place in such a country.
Despite his failed forecasts, Marx is treated with reverence in many of our universities. As the eminent historian of economic thought Mark Blaug put it, “Marx has been reassessed, revised, refuted and buried a thousand times but he refuses to be relegated to intellectual history.”
And that may be why we have a governing party populated by the products of these institutions who think they are righteous and good in loathing business and high achievers.
What Labour do not have is any Christian or humane concept of treating all individuals as worthy and important. For them, to be rich is to forfeit consideration.
There have always been two major motivations for those on the Left. One has been to care for the poor and the working class. The other has been dislike of those at the other end of the spectrum. But the balance between these two motivations has changed over time.
How good it would be to hear ministers really thinking and speaking of how to improve the lot of working people and the poor. How good to hear them making a major issue of getting those people of working age who are currently on benefits back into the dignity of work.
But we can see by their actions that this is not their concern. The increase in National Insurance will hurt the lower-paid more than any others. The increase in the minimum wage for the young will make it more difficult for them to start on the ladder of employment.
The Labour Party got into power by saying very little and misleading the public about its intentions regarding tax. It was voted into office in what has been called a “loveless landslide”.
And now it is being revealed as a party that gives money to public sector trade unions, mistakenly thinks that public spending creates growth and clearly is motivated more by hate than love.
We have been governed like this before in the 1970s. This won’t end well.
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