According to Boris Johnson:
If you listen to the aspirations of the young people I meet around the world, you will find there is not a single successful global economy that would dream of implementing the semi-Marxist agenda of McDonnell and Corbyn of nationalisation and state control.
Which is pretty strange because Corbyn is proposing state owned railways, which are common the world over. And state owned utilities, which are similarly common. And low tuition fees. No state owned housing. Which are hardly radical: just look at Singapore if in doubt. And modest tax rates, lower than in most EU states. Plus some encouragement for alternative business structures, like co-ops, which many other countries encourage. And banking reform so that we might look just a bit more like Germany.
In fact, what's so noticeable about Corbyn and McDonnell is that they think British railways should be run by British state owned railways companies and not foreign state owned railways companies, like those of the Netherlands and Germany.
And that British power stations should be built by Brtitsh state owned companies rather than French ones.
And on, and on.
To say Johnson was talking the sort of nonsense that inspires contempt in people on the street because they can see through it in an instant is to understate how crass this comment, and much of the speech, was.
And when he came to flat taxes, people will instinctively know (and rightly so) that only the wealthy might gain from these.
It's as if he wants to revive the nasty party. If that was the aim he was going the right way about it.
What's fascinating to watch is how a party, so recently so confident can have so badly lost its way.
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To edit Keynes’ quote about Capitalism* : ‘The Conservative Party : the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest (wo)men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds’.
*Sir George Schuster, Christianity and human relations in industry (1951), p. 109
Not conventional wisdom, but my take is that Johnson is desperate to get out. He’s doing all he can to get himself sacked from a position that was forced on him ( remember his shock and disappearance when he realised that his sham ‘leave’ campaign had resulted in a leave vote!). For whatever byzantine reasons, Theresa May is not playing his game.
I can remember when virtually everyone was of the opinion that Boris Johnson was a clown. They said that about a certain Mr Trump aswell didn’t they?
I would have thought the general public would have revised their assessment of Boris in the immediate aftermath of Brexit.
He owes Michael Gove a favour for being so revolting and pompously opportunistic as to give Boris a vital shred of victim status.
Fair enough but really the ‘nasty party’ never went away did it? Look what happened as soon as the Tories got into power in 2010? I was there. I will not forget. And nor should any progressive.
I mean l it is well known that you cannot polish a turd. Once a turd always a turd – that’s the Tory party.
And as for Blair ‘s dalliance with market forces – well that was the turd way. Oops – time I wasn’t here.
Indeed PSR!
Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire for you.
What this – only “semi-Marxist”? It looks like they’re starting to back down already.
Well spotted, Marco. I missed that!