BEWARE LABOUR'S PROMISES !

With the Labour Party's annual conference getting underway in Brighton, it's already very clear that a future Labour government would take our country back to the dark days of the 1960s and 1970s.

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, the Party's two ultra-socialist dinosaurs, have plans that would tax and borrow to a degree not seen since Harold Wilson's time, when tax at 98% hit some people. Both Corbyn and McDonnell are careful not to say much about this side of their plans concentrating instead on the giveaways to younger people which they hope will bring them into power.

Abolishing university tuition fees is obviously very attractive to some, but would cast the country tens of billions of pounds that it does not have; the answer, of course, would be more borrowing. A huge programme of nationalisation of industries such as rail, water and energy may also sound attractive but would be paid for by the printing of money, dressed up as 'Government Bonds', which would be handed out to the shareholders whose investments were affected. Additionally, it seems that Corbyn and Co. would not compensate the holders of shares in these companies for the actual market value but only for a figure to be determined by a future Labour government, certainly to be a lesser sum. This would adversely affect the pensions of millions while still incurring a new vast debt for the country. Nothing has yet been said about how these new bonds would operate, what interest rate they would carry nor what redemption date they would have, leaving savers with much to ponder.

Taking an assortment of industries back into public ownership would, say Corbyn and MacDonnell, allow the government to run them more efficiently and to invest in them. I think we all know how efficient government management is at the best of times, let alone the efficiency of a bureaucratic and highly ideological socialist monolith; as for future investment, that simply means still more borrowing and still government debt that has to be serviced and eventually repaid. It all adds up to more taxes to pay for it..

Corbyn always sounds so reasonable and McDonnell so fervent, and one can easily understand why it is that so many younger people, idealists themselves, fall for their ideology and promises. Older generations that have lived through all this before are less sanguine. The government owned industries of the past, railways, energy, water, telecoms, steel and, above all, car making, were disasters. Badly managed, far too little investment, inefficient, and constantly on the point of collapse; there was a time when the UK had a thriving car industry but the trades unions got rid of that, as they did ship building, coal mining and steel making, all with the connivance of Labour governments. Don't be conned into thinking that it was 'Maggie' who did away with coal or anything else; all she did was to clear up the mess left by Wilson and Callaghan.

However charming, appealing and fervent the old unreconstructed leaders of the Labour Party sound, never forget that these are men on a mission to destroy how country. Ideology is all very well but idealism rarely works and never in politics or government. A future Labour government overseen by Corbyn, McDonnell and their acolytes would be a disaster with control, snooping, monitoring, taxation and debt at hitherto unimaginable levels.

Beware - you have been warned !