To a young Corbynista

Dear John, I really hope you won’t be offended by this letter from your uncle. I have nothing but respect for you and I would hate to damage the friendly relationship we have had since I first met you when you were six years old.

I understand from your aunt that you voted Labour in the latest election and that you are a ‘Corbynista’. In fact even your aunt herself — a lifelong Tory as far as I know — has been saying how nice Jeremy Corbyn is and how much better he handled the Grenfell Tower tragedy than Theresa May did.

Of course, you can vote for whoever you like and it’s none of my business. But I take the risk of irritating you because I would like to tell you why I did not vote for Corbyn.

I suppose this is going to sound like ancient history, but I became politicised in the early 1980s. I got a job in Hong Kong: then a relatively poor, ramshackle little remnant of the British Empire. Still, thousands of penniless refugees were risking their lives by crossing from mainland communist China to get there. I stayed some nights in a shanty town with no proper sanitation and the stink of human excrement.

Hong Kong was an unusual place in lots of ways but its economic policies were truly extraordinary compared to most other countries’. The highest rate of income tax was 15 per cent and there was no capital gains tax at all. Because of various accidents of history, the government’s role was minimal. Hong Kong offered free trade relations with every-body. It had zero tariffs on imports. It was  the nearest thing to a purely capitalist territory in the world. The result? An economy that grew like a triffid.