Interesting article - particularly as it's come from the Telegraph - on 5 things to like about Corbyn -
1. Renationalisation
Some of the early privatisations did pretty well. Very few of the later ones did - and the worst of all were British Rail and the utilities.
With the railways privatisation has given us an expensive, overcrowded, inefficient system that acts as a drain on our entire economy – and adds to environmental pollution by pushing us into cars. Even the once great East Coast Mainline now looks old and decrepit; it reeks of underinvestment and profit extracted. Rather brilliantly, one effect of privatisation has been that many of Britain’s rail operators are actually owned by foreign state-owned companies meaning the profit from our fares pays for state-owned foreign public transport. Fantastic, huh? Yet, in London TfL and the Mayor (hate him, love his record on rail) have shown us just how good a modern state run service can be.
The same is true of power. The line we were spun at the time of privatisation was that UK power companies would be sold to small investors, these being the “hard-working families” of the financial world. And... a lot of our power generation is now courtesy of EDF, which is mostly owned by the French state. I know, you couldn’t make it up. And yet, in the face of all this evidence that privatisation is bad for natural monopolies, the conservative zeal for privatisation continues undiminished. So, yes, Jezza’s plans to renationalise rail and power look pretty sensible to me.
2. Tax avoidance
A lot of people have said that Corbyn’s figure of £120 billion in revenues from tackling tax avoidance is crazy. Well, maybe it is – but nobody knows because neither Labour nor the Tories have made any real effort to do more than tinker round the edges of taxation. To do so would upset their powerful donors and people like Murdoch. We continue to be a country that welcomes anyone who doesn’t want to pay their fair share – and have now got into the dreadful position of being reliant on those who are taking us for a ride. It can’t go on forever – and the public hate it. Corbyn might be able to make some real headway here - because unlike most mainstream politicians, his soul is not 51 per cent owned by an offshore entity headquartered in the Cayman Islands.
3. The military
Here, I’m certainly not 100-per-cent Team Jezza. But I do agree with two things. First, the Trident replacement costs more than we can afford – and it’s probably not independent anyway. I’m pretty sure the US doesn’t sell kit like this without a back door and a kill switch. Besides, it’s useless. Our nuclear deterrent doesn’t keep any sort of peace (Russia and the US do that) and I cannot think of a single conflict we’d ever use it in, except a global nuclear war, where it would be a bit like bringing a pack of sparklers to a fireworks display. As for the supposed clout it gives us... well, I’d rather have Germany’s economic clout.
Second, Corbyn doesn’t want us to get involved in any more foreign wars. This is hard to argue against. Not only are they ruinously expensive at the time (has a war ever come in under budget?) but they have even more ruinous long-term costs. You know, like the terrorist groups who are currently laying waste to much of the Middle East and driving refugees to Europe.
4. The environment
Do you remember Dave with his huskies, back in the halcyon days of the Greenest Government ever? Well, that was all all over before you could say “let’s cut renewable subsidies”. Meanwhile, the headlines are terrifying and getting worse. Last year the WWF said the the world had lost 50 per cent of its wildlife in the last 40 years. Recently, the FT reported that China will need $1.1 trillion to clean up its contaminated soil; it is literally becoming too polluted to feed itself. 2015 looks to be the hottest year on record. Again. We’ll have hurricanes in the Persian Gulf (at least they’ll hit Dubai). And so on. We need radical thinking here and mainstream politicians won’t do anything to upset the status quo. Corbyn doesn’t care about the status quo – and when it comes to the world we’re going to leave our children, that’s a very good thing because the status quo is terrifying.
5. The National Investment Bank
Did you ever wonder why the banks and the City (who caused the great recession) were also the largest beneficiaries of re-inflating the economy with quantitative easing? And did you not perhaps feel a little aggrieved that, once they’d got what they wanted, they carried on as if nothing had happened, displayed no gratitude whatsoever and changed their ways not a bit? Anyway, history has shown that there is alternative in the form of a massive public works programme. You know, like the New Deal. A response to an economic calamity that benefits everyone, not just the people who caused it. Imagine if, instead of a few new towers in the City we had new jobs, new ports, new roads and new railways. Imagine, if instead of austerity, we had government spending. You wouldn’t even need to print money to do it. Rather, governments could borrow it - and at the lowest rates for decades. The Economist recently described the failure of governments to borrow to build as a “missed opportunity”, while Standard & Poor’s reckons that, for every 1% of GDP spent on infrastructure the UK’s economy would grow by 2.5 per cent.
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