The Tories must be careful not to pave the way for Corbynism

To say one thing for John McDonnell, he shows a refreshing preparedness to use a general election to lay out big ideas. While so many candidates for high office will retreat into platitudes rather than risk upsetting some target group of voters, the man who could be Chancellor of the Exchequer in three weeks’ time made a speech on Tuesday signalling what would amount to an even sharper change in Britain’s economic direction than that brought about by Mrs Thatcher’s first election victory in 1979. It is the most striking contribution to the election campaign — and one which the Conservatives need to challenge far better than they have done so far.

His plan to nationalise broadband shows he was quite serious when, in Who’s Who, he listed his hobby as ‘fermenting [sic] the overthrow of capitalism’. His political vision goes far further than the traditional Labour belief in big government — further, in fact, than any left-wing government of any European country. He plans to confiscate shareholdings without compensation: nothing if not radical. He wishes the government to pay for broadband because he likes the idea of state control. But why on earth should the middle-class be given free broadband in a country with a million pensioners in fuel poverty?

When ideology supplants common sense, we end up with documents like the Labour manifesto. The Tories ought to be ready with a counter-attack, making a basic defence of liberty, property and prosperity, and now have a decade of evidence to put in front of the nation. But years of talking about Brexit seems to have left them unable to talk of anything else. Why is it a bad idea for the government to nationalise transport, water and telecoms? Why is it a bad idea for
the state to impose diktats saying there should be a pay ratio of bosses to workers? Such ideas have superficial appeal.