LABOUR’s hard-left plans would represent the biggest shift in UK economic policy for more than 40 years, according to a report endorsed by the party’s former comms chief Lord Mandelson.
He said the radical agenda proposed by Jeremy Corbyn would be populist enough to have a chance of winning an election under another leader.
4
But Lord Mandelson, who masterminded Tony Blair’s landslide election win in 1997, said Jeremy Corbyn’s “extremely poor personal ratings” makes the prospect of Labour winning a majority government “an impossibility while he remains”.
A Policy Exchange report he endorsed warns that the radical agenda put forward by the Labour leader and his Marxist Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell would empower a new set of “unaccountable elites”.
And it says “almost no area of policy would be left untouched by Corbyn and McDonnell’s ‘transforming hand’”.
The report said ‘McDonnellomics’ would represent the “biggest shift in UK economic policy since the advent of Thatcherism”.
It warned that plans to concentrate the UK’s tax base further on corporations and the highest earners would increase the volatility of revenues – making it difficult for the Government to plan ahead.
Proposals to change the structure of private company boards and their shareholdings and nationalising industries would result in complex bureaucratic tiers of control that would hinder the effective management of companies, industries and their economic assets.
A financial transactions tax proposed by Mr McDonnell could lead to a contraction of a sector that supports 1.1million jobs and £29billion of tax revenue, the paper warns.
And proposed changes to employment law and empowering trade unions would raise the cost of labour and make the jobs market less flexible.
The paper concludes that even after a short period under a Corbyn and McDonnell government the UK economy would be less resistant to shocks, with a more concentrated and volatile tax base, less flexible labour market and lower investor confidence.
Writing in a Forward to the report, Lord Mandelson warned: “Instead of moving Britain forward, with new ideas and utilising the opportunities that digital technology and AI, for example, offer us to transform the economy and public services, a Corbyn/McDonnell government wants to reassert the statist mindset that New Labour disavowed.”
He added: “Labour’s prospects would be far stronger than the party’s detractors imagine.
“Labour’s agenda is populist as much as it is socialist. It targets a series of perceived public grievances: austerity, inequality, student debt, rising energy and transport costs.
“But we have to ask ourselves whether lots of free offers – abolishing tuition fees, providing free prescriptions and social care, together with nationalisation of the utilities – are going to help develop the well funded modern public services that address today’s needs in health, education and everyday living.”
4
4
4
